On November 22 2008 01:38 Osmoses wrote: Manual vs Automine Incorporate something like the warp gate mechanic (more work but with greater yield) into making workers. If you make them manually, they spawn faster, but do not automine (and perhaps cannot be queued). If you hotkey and rally, they take longer to make, but will start mining immediately. Mid/late game with several expansions, this would mean most people would make the switch to automine, leaving those who are good enough not to with an edge.
Restating: Harmful Gas Mechanic This suggestion didn't get any discussion, but I think it may be a good idea. The workers going into the refinery take a small amount of damage each run, meaning the player has to keep track of his workers lest they eventually die. Worse players would notice too late that they have no workers collecting gas left, maybe even good players too in the chaotic late game.
I would go aboslutely fucking insane if #2 was implemented. DO NOT WANT.
#1 is meh, it makes absolutely no sense why this would be the case and you are punishing people for using a game mechanic, which I don't think blizzard will do.
OK, #1 then. Obviously one could think of dozens of contrived reasons why this would happen, lore-wise (drones get more attention, mature faster, but are born "too soon" to really get into the hive mind, needs a nudge at first, whatever, it can be explained plausibly with some imagination, SCVs and Probes too), and stranger things already exist in SC1.
How about only being able to issue commands to 12 units at a time. Whatever the practical reason this had for being implemented in SC1, lore-wise I think you'd agree it's ridiculous. I mean, I agree that stuff ought to be at least plausible, but you can't deny mechanics solely on account of poor lore, you're limiting youself too much. In Starcraft2, Blizzard is giving us, among other things, unlimited unit selection, and automine, but despite it making perfect sense for things to work this way, few people seem to consider it a good thing, because it make the game less competitive. Less fun.
How plausible is it for a couple of scvs to be able to repair a building that is being destroyed from the opposite side? How plausible is it that shuttles don't have to land in order to pick up it's cargo? Can we please stop using lore to flat out deny game mechanics? As long as it doesn't make me roll my eyes every time I use it, I can handle it if it makes the game more competitive.
You want punishing game mechanics, how about the fact that you can queue up to 5 marines in a single barracks? Players who use this mechanic instead of making more barracks for production are punished by means of lacking efficiency. Like a worker that was easier to create but takes longer to build.
Regarding the practical use of this mechanic, there is no doubt that it would become very important as a means of discerning skill. This is where good players would be able to excel thanks to their superior APM. We want this, right? I'm no game producer (yet...) but punishing players for using a game mechanic that simplifies their play and rewarding those who do without does NOT sound to me like a bad, or even new, aspect in making a competitive game.
@ Manit0u. The question is why do we need automine? You say it isn't a big deal and that things like unit abilities add chores. But that is exactly it. It's adding even more micro and army babysitting tasks. This strays from SC's core gameplay and thus shouldn't be a part of the sequel. It's difficult for Blizzard because they apparently have no clue about the game they made on the meta level. But again, it should be fairly obvious that following the core audience will guarantee success.
Here's a post I found on MLG forums that spells out a huge flaw in current day developer's mindset. They think that casuals, the majority, won't buy their game if it's too hard. However it really won't cost them much revenue at all. Which begs the question, "Why is such a successful game company STILL dumbing down games when they are loaded in the first place."
Originally Posted by Hitzel_89 Okay, so we know that newbie-friendliness and casual appeal sells games in today's market. Blah blah blah, we've heard it all before. If a game has high-quality gameplay today, it then has to compromise greatly for casual appeal. That's where devs start dumbing their games down.
Bull****. I hear this same statement echoed ALL the time not only from this forum, but from just about anybody who enjoys games as something competitive. You know what sells games? Marketing, being a sequel, being synonymous with a genre. It has nothing to do with being built on random bull****. Do you think more people play Halo 3 because of the bullet spread? Seriously, find me one person who bought that game because it realistically conveys converging bullet trajectories and I will shut the hell up.
I'm going to tell you a secret. The majority of a games selling potential is determined far before anybody plays it.
A common example we see on these forums is thus:
X game with horrible core mechanics (pick anyone you want there are plenty) sells brilliantly.
Shadowrun with better mechanics doesn't sell nearly as well.
Typical Conclusion - Obviously Shadowrun was too hard for everybody so this just proves that good games don't sell.
BULL****.
Is anybody starting to see the huge glaring errors in this logic yet?
Shadowrun Marketing = 0 Number of games prior to Shadowrun building up hype for it = 0 Good industry buzz for Shadowrun (reviews and such) nonexistent.
I'm sorry if it seems that I'm being overly hostile to your ideas, I'm not. I just hear the same assumption a lot and I personally see fault in it. Endrant.
As you can see, SC2 will be a sequel. It was getting attention during the alpha. It has the marketing, It has the name, it will sell.
On November 22 2008 07:57 NatsuTerran wrote: Here's a post I found on MLG forums that spells out a huge flaw in current day developer's mindset. They think that casuals, the majority, won't buy their game if it's too hard. However it really won't cost them much revenue at all. Which begs the question, "Why is such a success.
This is actually a fairly good point that I didn't think about. Why am I arguing against the correlation between a big casual user-base and a successful e-sport, when the correlation between a game with easier mechanics and a casual user-base hasn't even been established (and games like Shadowrun contrary evidence that there IS NO correlation between a game with easier mechanics and a strong casual userbase)?
On November 22 2008 01:38 Osmoses wrote: Manual vs Automine Incorporate something like the warp gate mechanic (more work but with greater yield) into making workers. If you make them manually, they spawn faster, but do not automine (and perhaps cannot be queued). If you hotkey and rally, they take longer to make, but will start mining immediately. Mid/late game with several expansions, this would mean most people would make the switch to automine, leaving those who are good enough not to with an edge.
Restating: Harmful Gas Mechanic This suggestion didn't get any discussion, but I think it may be a good idea. The workers going into the refinery take a small amount of damage each run, meaning the player has to keep track of his workers lest they eventually die. Worse players would notice too late that they have no workers collecting gas left, maybe even good players too in the chaotic late game.
I would go aboslutely fucking insane if #2 was implemented. DO NOT WANT.
#1 is meh, it makes absolutely no sense why this would be the case and you are punishing people for using a game mechanic, which I don't think blizzard will do.
OK, #1 then. Obviously one could think of dozens of contrived reasons why this would happen, lore-wise (drones get more attention, mature faster, but are born "too soon" to really get into the hive mind, needs a nudge at first, whatever, it can be explained plausibly with some imagination, SCVs and Probes too), and stranger things already exist in SC1.
No. Nothing stranger already exists in SC. If you want to point something out, then go ahead, but I can't think of any intended mechanics that actively (ie make your units move slower in game, make your units lose hp, make your units go on strike) hurt you for using them.
How about only being able to issue commands to 12 units at a time. Whatever the practical reason this had for being implemented in SC1, lore-wise I think you'd agree it's ridiculous. I mean, I agree that stuff ought to be at least plausible, but you can't deny mechanics solely on account of poor lore, you're limiting youself too much. In Starcraft2, Blizzard is giving us, among other things, unlimited unit selection, and automine, but despite it making perfect sense for things to work this way, few people seem to consider it a good thing, because it make the game less competitive. Less fun.
How plausible is it for a couple of scvs to be able to repair a building that is being destroyed from the opposite side? How plausible is it that shuttles don't have to land in order to pick up it's cargo? Can we please stop using lore to flat out deny game mechanics? As long as it doesn't make me roll my eyes every time I use it, I can handle it if it makes the game more competitive.
Not talking about that type of sense.. I couldn't care less about lore. It just doesn't make sense to add rally-mining and then punish people for using it. It makes no sense to program in a flaw for the sole purpose of forcing you to click more - if you want to make people click more, give them something useful to do. If every 30 seconds a wack-a-mole mini-game appeared in your game, and clicking it gave you 100 minerals, would you like this? It makes about as much sense.
Blizzard capped the unit selection limit to weaken the power of rushing (I think.. or was that the reason for why they didn't include MBS? I don't remember). The equivalent to the automining mechanic you suggested would be that if you selected more than 12 units, they'd start to move slower or not react instantly or something stupid like that -.-
Which is what I was talking about like 8 pages ago when I brought up the whole passive vs active buffs/de-buffs.
You want punishing game mechanics, how about the fact that you can queue up to 5 marines in a single barracks? Players who use this mechanic instead of making more barracks for production are punished by means of lacking efficiency. Like a worker that was easier to create but takes longer to build.
Again, if queing 5 marines meant they built slower than if I queued just one, then you'd have a point. But they don't, and you don't.
Regarding the practical use of this mechanic, there is no doubt that it would become very important as a means of discerning skill. This is where good players would be able to excel thanks to their superior APM. We want this, right? I'm no game producer (yet...) but punishing players for using a game mechanic that simplifies their play and rewarding those who do without does NOT sound to me like a bad, or even new, aspect in making a competitive game.
My two cents of the week.
Or we could implement a mechanic that doesn't punish you for using another mechanic that we implented, but still requires a similiar/identical amount of attention. Such as the ideas proposed by EntSC (crystal re-allignment, unsure what page his post is on) or myself (2 different modes for workers, see page 8 for details).
@Unentschieden
Also, when did I ever say anything about spectators? I find it very hard to imagine anyone following competitions of a game (no matter what [e-]sport) they never played or don´t like.
I have never played quake (actually I have, like once), but I thouroughly enjoyed watching Zero4 vs Cypher from this years Quakecon, as well as the ESWC Athens Q3 finals / semis.
On November 22 2008 01:38 Osmoses wrote: Restating: Harmful Gas Mechanic This suggestion didn't get any discussion, but I think it may be a good idea. The workers going into the refinery take a small amount of damage each run, meaning the player has to keep track of his workers lest they eventually die. Worse players would notice too late that they have no workers collecting gas left, maybe even good players too in the chaotic late game.
I would go aboslutely fucking insane if #2 was implemented. DO NOT WANT.
I agree #2 has little chance of being implemented. Thought I'd try give a succinct explanation why. It's a good simple idea that makes sense, but it falls short in one respect. Blizzard and those in this forum are trying to come up with a clever idea that wont feel intrusive to casuals. Results of neglecting the other ideas?
* Blizzards current gas mechanic - workers idle. * EntSC's patches de-align - workers bring back slightly less each trip. * Gas mechanic from other thread - workers bring back 2 gas per trip.
A casual who neglects #2 sees their workers die. A casual will feel this mechanic is being forced upon them.
Ugh, reading through the last couple of pages this has gotten ridiculously off-topic - I haven't decided wether or not to mass delete off-topic posts, but stop the off-topic discussion.
This is not a topic about MBS vs No MBS. This is not a topic about how to make a succesful e-Sport (as interesting as that is).
This thread is about "Potential Solutions to Automine", and the discussion of ideas that come up in the process.
On November 22 2008 09:25 FrozenArbiter wrote: Ugh, reading through the last couple of pages this has gotten ridiculously off-topic - I haven't decided wether or not to mass delete off-topic posts, but stop the off-topic discussion.
This is not a topic about MBS vs No MBS. This is not a topic about how to make a succesful e-Sport (as interesting as that is).
This thread is about "Potential Solutions to Automine", and the discussion of ideas that come up in the process.
Well given that there seem to be 2 unrelated counterstatements to my "Players are likely to be Spectators" Thesis I´ll consider myself overruled.
But finally on the core thematic again: It´s hard to find a solution for a problem that isn´t really defined.
What is wrong with Automine? A popular answer here seems to be: To less Macro - to what I say: No, thats completely fine in that regard. There is no change in Macrodesicions, only a reduction in required clicks.
But Automine might SHARE a problem with Manualminig: Shallow economy, especially Gas.
Compared to the options you have in regard to Minerals it´s quite sad what you actually DO with Gasmining: 1 Building 3 peons - done. The only decision is WHEN to add the Building.
Solutions might be alternate sources/income Models like FAs suggestion. I´d like to see a market (as mechanic, not necesserly a building)that would let you trade resources (If you feel adventourous: Why not "sell" units).
Blizzard will not create an interface with the sole purpose of improving efficiency (like automine rally), just to punish players who want to use that interface. That would be bad game design.
You guys can argue that auto-ming is bad game design, but that statement would be inaccurate as it is fully accomplishing its intent (making the game easier). You guys might not want autominig because it's bad for competitive gameplay, but it's not "bad design".
So stop brainstorming solutions that result in punishing players for using design as intended. it's not going to happen.
edit - posts after this one suggesting such solutions should be deleted.
i've given it some thought and i haven't come up with anything worth sharing.
It's a difficult problem in the sense that to me it has not been clearly defined.
* i am not convinced that the game - even with MBS and automine - will completely remove physical requirements. I do think that MBS and automine will change when/where the physical requirements are needed, but i don't think that that's necessarily a bad thing.
* No one at team liquid knows how the game plays like. As far as we've been told the game was not being played at the fastest speed. Is anyone trying to argue that starcraft on the old ladder speed is as physically demanding as it is on fastest? Of course not. If anyone thinks that they know how starcraft2 is going to turn out with a few hours of gameplay under their belt, i hold their arrogance in contempt.
* i am not convinced that MBS is a cure-all for macro problems; early game absolutely, but not late game. By map makers (community ones if need be) compensating for easier macro by making more resource heavy maps to the point where you are making 15-20 barracks per game, and 5 of them are in one location and 5 in another and then 10 in your main, it would be a strategical blunder to just keep pumping your marines in all locations instead of focusing on one. This is just one example off the top of my head how the game can adapt for MBS.
* Assuming that the game does lack sufficient physical requirements, i'm not sure how i would want to tackle it from a mechanics perspective. To be clear though: any mechanic that increases physical requirements without adding strategical depth to the game is bad design. Such mechanics scream of an inability to make the game legitimately harder by making slow players struggle against the ui with no purpose other than to punish them for being slow.
* I do not know why the gas mechanic is so hated (though admittedly i haven't read enough about why people hate it). It adds a degree (though arguably small) of depth by cutting off ones gas production in intervals. This requires strategic adaptation to make sure that they are producing their tech and army composition in sync with their gas income. That is the most important aspect of the mechanic. The secondary benefit of the mechanic is to reward players who want to make those scvs do something in the interim instead of being idle. (this is what represents a good mechanic vs a bad mechanic. you want to reward good players for being good, not punish bad players for being bad.)
because of these reasons coming up with a solution has either not seemed completely warranted, nor easily solved.
edit - FA's idea has been the one i'm most inclined towards but still doesn't sit right with me. This is more my intuition than anything else, which is why i've not responded to it.
Geez, having to read 16 pages before replying is exhausting. I agree with Mora in that I don't see these solutions as necessary, but they're good exercises in game design, so I'll give it a try.
First, it's difficult to come up with a solid mechanic to fill in the multitasking gap that automine leaves, because SC2 must be a good game before can be a good e-sport. Therefore, its mechanics must exemplify good game design before one can consider the competitive aspects.
To help ensure good design, keep these two rules in mind:
1) The mechanic must have direct strategical value.
One of the reasons I believe Blizzard implemented automine is because manually sending your workers to mine has no direct strategic value - you always want your workers to go mine unless you want to use them for something else. Therefore, implementing another mechanic that only forces the player back to their base without any strategic implications would undermine the purpose of including automine in the first place, which is bad design.
2) The mechanic must not punish players for using automine.
Why teach players that they can place their rally point on minerals to rally their workers to mine, and then punish them for doing what you told them to? Being inconsistent with your mechanics turns players off of your game, and is fundamentally bad game design, regardless of how it might benefit the game competitively.
With these guidelines in mind, I'll review my favorite ideas so far in the discussion.
1) Worker speed-boosting
I like this mechanic because it's usable in a variety of situations outside of mining, like scouting. However, if you use it as a one-time boost, or use cooldowns or energy costs, then players will want to use them whenever they're available, cutting down on the strategic value of the speed-boost. Therefore, I think having a health cost for using the ability is the best solution, as players must weigh carefully the benefits of boosting against the disadvantages of lower survivability. It also naturally limits the number of uses of the boost, thus keeping potential for abuse low. Finally, I think the mechanic should remain the same for all three races, though visually different (stimpacks, afterburners, adrenal boosts).
2) Crystal realignment + fast workers
I'm combining EntSC's idea and FA's idea for this one. EntSC's idea of crystal realignment offered little in strategic value IMHO (at least before the most recent modification) and punished players who didn't use it, but was very visually clear. FA's idea, on the other hand, offers a good amount of strategic value but looks like it would be difficult to communicate to players. Therefore, I think a mechanic that combines the two would be the best route.
One way it could work is as follows: Minerals would naturally be in an unaligned state, which offers a normal rate of mining. The player can then send a worker to align the mineral, causing it to glow and offer more minerals per trip, but each trip causes the remaining minerals to decrease by a specific amount. Lore-wise, aligning mineral crystals makes it easier for workers to gather the minerals, but the increased sensitivity of the crystals in their aligned state means that some crystals break every time a worker gathers from the patch. The player can send a worker to an aligned patch to disalign it at any time (same hotkey).
Another way to implement it would use Unentschieden's idea about aligned crystals introducing an element of risk. In this case, aligned crystals would offer more minerals per trip, but it would reduce the armor of units within a certain range, making them more vulnerable to enemy raids. The lore would be that aligned crystals are easier to mine from, but produce harmful vibrations that degrade units' armor.
Finally, I'm going to present an idea I introduced a while back, and which IIRC someone presented recently, that I think would fit well.
Assisting
The basic idea is that you send workers to "assist" different buildings, with an associated benefit for doing so. Multiple workers can assist the same building, but with sharply diminishing returns. The disadvantages to assisting are that the worker is no longer bringing in minerals, and that there is a small mineral cost over time, like with repairing. The worker would assist the building until given another order, draining minerals the whole time, so the player has to decide when they want workers assisting and when they want them mining.
Assisting can be used in a variety of ways. The most common method is assisting a production building to increase the rate of production of that building. However, workers could also assist research buildings to increase the rate of research, or assist supply buildings to increase the supply count.
Assisting has many strategic implications, since you can effectively produce, research, or increase supply faster than your opponent expects by taking a hit to your economy. It also has enough of a disadvantage for using it that players are not punished for not constantly taking advantage of it.
How about changing the way rally points work entirely? Sorry if this has already been posted but I was only able to get about half way through the thread before I got sick of reading all the retarded ideas. Forcing the player to divert their attention back to their base is a great goal, accomplishing it through rather pointless and ill-contrived overly specific worker abilities is ridiculous.
In my opinion the best way to handle this would a complete revamping of the rally system. Rather than setting a permanent rally point for each building, the rally should only be set for the current unit training. Setting rally points for the queued units should be allowed as well by hitting shift (much like waypoints). This seems to me like a reasonable way to encourage multitasking as well as ACTUALLY SERVING A PURPOSE.
Often times you don't want all the varieties of units built from the same building to wind up in the same generic rally point anyways. This way a slower player could choose to queue up 5 workers and shift click the rallies for all queued workers and only have to go back to add rallys once all the units are completed. A faster player could queue up less or even have none in the queue at all. This change in the rally system would also add a bit more multitasking to unit production via mbs as well. You would have to continually add rallys for the 50 gates you have hotkey'd rather than just hitting one number, right clicking, and forgetting about it
I really like therapys idea and was thinking along the same lines myself. I may be easier then manually clicking on a specific worker, but atleast it requires you to glance back at your base.
also like therapy said,new players often queue up more workers then they need so the shift click would only be a mild inconvience to them. meanwhile good players only have 1 worker queued so they would have to glance at there base more often hence more multitasking.
On November 22 2008 15:49 Therapy wrote: How about changing the way rally points work entirely? Sorry if this has already been posted but I was only able to get about half way through the thread before I got sick of reading all the retarded ideas. Forcing the player to divert their attention back to their base is a great goal, accomplishing it through rather pointless and ill-contrived overly specific worker abilities is ridiculous.
In my opinion the best way to handle this would a complete revamping of the rally system. Rather than setting a permanent rally point for each building, the rally should only be set for the current unit training. Setting rally points for the queued units should be allowed as well by hitting shift (much like waypoints). This seems to me like a reasonable way to encourage multitasking as well as ACTUALLY SERVING A PURPOSE.
Often times you don't want all the varieties of units built from the same building to wind up in the same generic rally point anyways. This way a slower player could choose to queue up 5 workers and shift click the rallies for all queued workers and only have to go back to add rallys once all the units are completed. A faster player could queue up less or even have none in the queue at all. This change in the rally system would also add a bit more multitasking to unit production via mbs as well. You would have to continually add rallys for the 50 gates you have hotkey'd rather than just hitting one number, right clicking, and forgetting about it
If you don't want your units to be rallied to the same place, you should just change the rally point?
I mean, I prefer it over something like manually rallying workers for a speed boost, but it's still a bit awkward.
On November 22 2008 14:05 1esu wrote: Geez, having to read 16 pages before replying is exhausting. I agree with Mora in that I don't see these solutions as necessary, but they're good exercises in game design, so I'll give it a try.
First, it's difficult to come up with a solid mechanic to fill in the multitasking gap that automine leaves, because SC2 must be a good game before can be a good e-sport. Therefore, its mechanics must exemplify good game design before one can consider the competitive aspects.
To help ensure good design, keep these two rules in mind:
1) The mechanic must have direct strategical value.
One of the reasons I believe Blizzard implemented automine is because manually sending your workers to mine has no direct strategic value - you always want your workers to go mine unless you want to use them for something else. Therefore, implementing another mechanic that only forces the player back to their base without any strategic implications would undermine the purpose of including automine in the first place, which is bad design.
2) The mechanic must not punish players for using automine.
Why teach players that they can place their rally point on minerals to rally their workers to mine, and then punish them for doing what you told them to? Being inconsistent with your mechanics turns players off of your game, and is fundamentally bad game design, regardless of how it might benefit the game competitively.
With these guidelines in mind, I'll review my favorite ideas so far in the discussion.
1) Worker speed-boosting
I like this mechanic because it's usable in a variety of situations outside of mining, like scouting. However, if you use it as a one-time boost, or use cooldowns or energy costs, then players will want to use them whenever they're available, cutting down on the strategic value of the speed-boost. Therefore, I think having a health cost for using the ability is the best solution, as players must weigh carefully the benefits of boosting against the disadvantages of lower survivability. It also naturally limits the number of uses of the boost, thus keeping potential for abuse low. Finally, I think the mechanic should remain the same for all three races, though visually different (stimpacks, afterburners, adrenal boosts).
2) Crystal realignment + fast workers
I'm combining EntSC's idea and FA's idea for this one. EntSC's idea of crystal realignment offered little in strategic value IMHO (at least before the most recent modification) and punished players who didn't use it, but was very visually clear. FA's idea, on the other hand, offers a good amount of strategic value but looks like it would be difficult to communicate to players. Therefore, I think a mechanic that combines the two would be the best route.
One way it could work is as follows: Minerals would naturally be in an unaligned state, which offers a normal rate of mining. The player can then send a worker to align the mineral, causing it to glow and offer more minerals per trip, but each trip causes the remaining minerals to decrease by a specific amount. Lore-wise, aligning mineral crystals makes it easier for workers to gather the minerals, but the increased sensitivity of the crystals in their aligned state means that some crystals break every time a worker gathers from the patch. The player can send a worker to an aligned patch to disalign it at any time (same hotkey).
Another way to implement it would use Unentschieden's idea about aligned crystals introducing an element of risk. In this case, aligned crystals would offer more minerals per trip, but it would reduce the armor of units within a certain range, making them more vulnerable to enemy raids. The lore would be that aligned crystals are easier to mine from, but produce harmful vibrations that degrade units' armor.
Finally, I'm going to present an idea I introduced a while back, and which IIRC someone presented recently, that I think would fit well.
Assisting
The basic idea is that you send workers to "assist" different buildings, with an associated benefit for doing so. Multiple workers can assist the same building, but with sharply diminishing returns. The disadvantages to assisting are that the worker is no longer bringing in minerals, and that there is a small mineral cost over time, like with repairing. The worker would assist the building until given another order, draining minerals the whole time, so the player has to decide when they want workers assisting and when they want them mining.
Assisting can be used in a variety of ways. The most common method is assisting a production building to increase the rate of production of that building. However, workers could also assist research buildings to increase the rate of research, or assist supply buildings to increase the supply count.
Assisting has many strategic implications, since you can effectively produce, research, or increase supply faster than your opponent expects by taking a hit to your economy. It also has enough of a disadvantage for using it that players are not punished for not constantly taking advantage of it.
That's enough for now, tell me what you think!
Nice post. I do have to point out some issues though. Your 1st suggestion, (more speed less health) would be good if the 3 races were more similar - Currently Terrans would park 1 or 2 Medivacs over the SCVs, Zerg would periodically turn it on and Protoss would be screwed since Probes can´t restore their HP. It does show though that this "problem" needs to be adressed in the context of the whole game - and we have imperfect information about it.
The 2nd aproach is generally good but (unfortunately) workers are always targets of opportunity. A mere aromor debuff wouldn´t change attack priorities - it would be different if the debuff applied to Buildings - in that case your opponent might ignore the workers and try to raid your infrastructure which usually would take a "proper" attack.
I like the assist idea best because honestly, Workers are booring. I liked WC3s ghouls since they were combat and resource gathering units, making desicions a bit more complex. The current omnifunctual workers would work better if they weren´t so numerous (midgame)- it´s a difference when 1 worker out of 5 goes build OR if 1 out of 20 does that.
I'm combining EntSC's idea and FA's idea for this one. EntSC's idea of crystal realignment offered little in strategic value IMHO (at least before the most recent modification) and punished players who didn't use it, but was very visually clear. FA's idea, on the other hand, offers a good amount of strategic value but looks like it would be difficult to communicate to players. Therefore, I think a mechanic that combines the two would be the best route.
One way it could work is as follows: Minerals would naturally be in an unaligned state, which offers a normal rate of mining. The player can then send a worker to align the mineral, causing it to glow and offer more minerals per trip, but each trip causes the remaining minerals to decrease by a specific amount. Lore-wise, aligning mineral crystals makes it easier for workers to gather the minerals, but the increased sensitivity of the crystals in their aligned state means that some crystals break every time a worker gathers from the patch. The player can send a worker to an aligned patch to disalign it at any time (same hotkey).
Another way to implement it would use Unentschieden's idea about aligned crystals introducing an element of risk. In this case, aligned crystals would offer more minerals per trip, but it would reduce the armor of units within a certain range, making them more vulnerable to enemy raids. The lore would be that aligned crystals are easier to mine from, but produce harmful vibrations that degrade units' armor.
Hey 1esu - apologies, but I haven't had a chance to read your idea properly yet, but I just wanted to respond to this first point.
Originally, I was trying to come up with a mechanic that provided an acceptable alternative for casual and competitive players to automine. That was my only real goal. I just wanted to come up with a macro sink that reviewers wouldn't think was archaic, but actually retained that element of SC within SC2. However, on reflection, and having read this thread more thoroughly, I think I'm starting to agree that there should be a strategic trade off for use of the mechanic.
This leads into FA's suggestion, and your twinning of our ideas. I haven't really articulated it yet, but my argument against the suggested strategic impact is that good players will always take a strip mining approach. It might be true that progamers playing with 4 bases at saturation all with aligned crystals, might not align the 5th base, but it really represents very little in the way of strategic decision making because the window for NOT aligning the crystals is so small. True, weaker players that have worse control over their economy may rightly consider not aligning their crystal formations at 3 bases (or earlier), but the intention of this macro mechanic is to raise the skill ceiling and so our focus should be on impacting the top players (with a gradient that everyone can follow so the casuals and less competitive gamers benefit too).
The reason why I advocate taking time to align the crystal formations is because it's an instant decision with an instant opportunity cost. Progamers that have perfect control over their economy need to take the initial hit to their unit production to benefit from more minerals over time. It will encourage them to micro more effectively and preserve units. They will need to calculate the immediate reduction in their mining capacity within the context of their short and long term objectives, whilst also accounting for map structure and how well defended their base is. If, for example, they can't defend an expansion properly, that would be a strong argument for not aligning the crystals. The reverse is true for an increased yield implementation of the mechanic, and so I don't feel it provides any real choice. In essence, strip mining reduces the impact of raiding, because it provides a method of acquiring minerals from an undefended base more quickly and more easily.
On November 22 2008 14:05 1esu wrote: Geez, having to read 16 pages before replying is exhausting. I agree with Mora in that I don't see these solutions as necessary, but they're good exercises in game design, so I'll give it a try.
First, it's difficult to come up with a solid mechanic to fill in the multitasking gap that automine leaves, because SC2 must be a good game before can be a good e-sport. Therefore, its mechanics must exemplify good game design before one can consider the competitive aspects.
To help ensure good design, keep these two rules in mind:
1) The mechanic must have direct strategical value.
One of the reasons I believe Blizzard implemented automine is because manually sending your workers to mine has no direct strategic value - you always want your workers to go mine unless you want to use them for something else. Therefore, implementing another mechanic that only forces the player back to their base without any strategic implications would undermine the purpose of including automine in the first place, which is bad design.
2) The mechanic must not punish players for using automine.
Why teach players that they can place their rally point on minerals to rally their workers to mine, and then punish them for doing what you told them to? Being inconsistent with your mechanics turns players off of your game, and is fundamentally bad game design, regardless of how it might benefit the game competitively.
With these guidelines in mind, I'll review my favorite ideas so far in the discussion.
1) Worker speed-boosting
I like this mechanic because it's usable in a variety of situations outside of mining, like scouting. However, if you use it as a one-time boost, or use cooldowns or energy costs, then players will want to use them whenever they're available, cutting down on the strategic value of the speed-boost. Therefore, I think having a health cost for using the ability is the best solution, as players must weigh carefully the benefits of boosting against the disadvantages of lower survivability. It also naturally limits the number of uses of the boost, thus keeping potential for abuse low. Finally, I think the mechanic should remain the same for all three races, though visually different (stimpacks, afterburners, adrenal boosts).
2) Crystal realignment + fast workers
I'm combining EntSC's idea and FA's idea for this one. EntSC's idea of crystal realignment offered little in strategic value IMHO (at least before the most recent modification) and punished players who didn't use it, but was very visually clear. FA's idea, on the other hand, offers a good amount of strategic value but looks like it would be difficult to communicate to players. Therefore, I think a mechanic that combines the two would be the best route.
One way it could work is as follows: Minerals would naturally be in an unaligned state, which offers a normal rate of mining. The player can then send a worker to align the mineral, causing it to glow and offer more minerals per trip, but each trip causes the remaining minerals to decrease by a specific amount. Lore-wise, aligning mineral crystals makes it easier for workers to gather the minerals, but the increased sensitivity of the crystals in their aligned state means that some crystals break every time a worker gathers from the patch. The player can send a worker to an aligned patch to disalign it at any time (same hotkey).
Another way to implement it would use Unentschieden's idea about aligned crystals introducing an element of risk. In this case, aligned crystals would offer more minerals per trip, but it would reduce the armor of units within a certain range, making them more vulnerable to enemy raids. The lore would be that aligned crystals are easier to mine from, but produce harmful vibrations that degrade units' armor.
Finally, I'm going to present an idea I introduced a while back, and which IIRC someone presented recently, that I think would fit well.
Assisting
The basic idea is that you send workers to "assist" different buildings, with an associated benefit for doing so. Multiple workers can assist the same building, but with sharply diminishing returns. The disadvantages to assisting are that the worker is no longer bringing in minerals, and that there is a small mineral cost over time, like with repairing. The worker would assist the building until given another order, draining minerals the whole time, so the player has to decide when they want workers assisting and when they want them mining.
Assisting can be used in a variety of ways. The most common method is assisting a production building to increase the rate of production of that building. However, workers could also assist research buildings to increase the rate of research, or assist supply buildings to increase the supply count.
Assisting has many strategic implications, since you can effectively produce, research, or increase supply faster than your opponent expects by taking a hit to your economy. It also has enough of a disadvantage for using it that players are not punished for not constantly taking advantage of it.
That's enough for now, tell me what you think!
Nice post. I do have to point out some issues though. Your 1st suggestion, (more speed less health) would be good if the 3 races were more similar - Currently Terrans would park 1 or 2 Medivacs over the SCVs, Zerg would periodically turn it on and Protoss would be screwed since Probes can´t restore their HP. It does show though that this "problem" needs to be adressed in the context of the whole game - and we have imperfect information about it.
Good points, I was just aiming for a more permanent disadvantage than a cooldown or energy cost, as with those there is less strategic value as players would always want to use them whenever the cooldown ends or energy is restored.
The 2nd aproach is generally good but (unfortunately) workers are always targets of opportunity. A mere aromor debuff wouldn´t change attack priorities - it would be different if the debuff applied to Buildings - in that case your opponent might ignore the workers and try to raid your infrastructure which usually would take a "proper" attack.
I don't think it's necessary to change the opponent's attack priorities to have strategic value - the fact that more workers would die from a raid due to the armor decrease makes for enough of a risk/reward decision as is. Still, I think the building debuff has a lot of potential, with proper balance. Players would have to be sure that they could defend their base before aligning their crystals, as a raid could potentially take out the entire base if the player was caught unprepared.
On November 22 2008 23:32 EntSC wrote: This leads into FA's suggestion, and your twinning of our ideas. I haven't really articulated it yet, but my argument against the suggested strategic impact is that good players will always take a strip mining approach. It might be true that progamers playing with 4 bases at saturation all with aligned crystals, might not align the 5th base, but it really represents very little in the way of strategic decision making because the window for NOT aligning the crystals is so small. True, weaker players that have worse control over their economy may rightly consider not aligning their crystal formations at 3 bases (or earlier), but the intention of this macro mechanic is to raise the skill ceiling and so our focus should be on impacting the top players (with a gradient that everyone can follow so the casuals and less competitive gamers benefit too).
The reason why I advocate taking time to align the crystal formations is because it's an instant decision with an instant opportunity cost. Progamers that have perfect control over their economy need to take the initial hit to their unit production to benefit from more minerals over time. It will encourage them to micro more effectively and preserve units. They will need to calculate the immediate reduction in their mining capacity within the context of their short and long term objectives, whilst also accounting for map structure and how well defended their base is. If, for example, they can't defend an expansion properly, that would be a strong argument for not aligning the crystals. The reverse is true for an increased yield implementation of the mechanic, and so I don't feel it provides any real choice. In essence, strip mining reduces the impact of raiding, because it provides a method of acquiring minerals from an undefended base more quickly and more easily.
First, its true that without a significant cost, players would always align the crystals to 'strip mine' the patches. Therefore, the minerals lost per trip should be high enough to entice players to only use alignment in specific situations, instead of a constant practice. Players would get more minerals in the short-term, but in the long-term would run out far faster than their opponents and are thus forced to take expansions when they are not necessarily ready to defend them. Still, this concern is why I lean towards the unit/building armor debuff variation, where there is a clearer risk/reward situation. It also would mean that aligning crystals in undefended bases would be a bad choice, since one's opponent could take out the buildings more easily.
Second, I forgot to include it in my original post (probably because I was tired from reading the 16 pages straight), but I agree that the alignment process should take time, like building, and make the patch inaccessible during the alignment process. The alignment time would probably be shorter than you imagine, however, as aligned crystals would also have one of the above disadvantages and players won't use the mechanic if the risk is significantly greater than the reward.
Finally, I may have misinterpreted your post but it seems that you want dealigned minerals to have lower mining rates than normal, and for aligned minerals to dealign over time, so that players have to go back and re-align them. I think that it's bad design to punish players for not using a mechanic unless that mechanic is fundamental to the genre, like unit production. I would strongly prefer a mechanic that gives an increased yield to aligned minerals and allows that aligned state to last until the player dealigns them, but has a significant disadvantage associated with aligned crystals that entices players to align and dealign minerals in a strategic context. Players should not always want their minerals aligned.
I'm combining EntSC's idea and FA's idea for this one. EntSC's idea of crystal realignment offered little in strategic value IMHO (at least before the most recent modification) and punished players who didn't use it, but was very visually clear. FA's idea, on the other hand, offers a good amount of strategic value but looks like it would be difficult to communicate to players. Therefore, I think a mechanic that combines the two would be the best route.
Could you explain what you mean by "hard to communicate" and why you think the combined version is easier to explain?
I'm combining EntSC's idea and FA's idea for this one. EntSC's idea of crystal realignment offered little in strategic value IMHO (at least before the most recent modification) and punished players who didn't use it, but was very visually clear. FA's idea, on the other hand, offers a good amount of strategic value but looks like it would be difficult to communicate to players. Therefore, I think a mechanic that combines the two would be the best route.
Could you explain what you mean by "hard to communicate" and why you think the combined version is easier to explain?
By "hard to communicate" I mean hard to show it visually in such a way that players and spectators can readily distinguish the mechanic. An example of good communication is how all the units in SC and SC2 are visually distinct from each other, so that players and spectators can readily distinguish between the different types in fast-paced situations.
With your idea of mining efficiency, it seems difficult to visually express the concept of a worker going faster or collecting more while breaking minerals because of its lack of caution. On the other hand, with the crystal realignment mechanic aligned minerals glow brightly compared to dealigned minerals, so it's easy to distinguish which patches a player is using the mechanic on. Therefore, if you combine your mechanic with the crystal alignment visuals, you get a solid mechanic that is easy to distinguish during a base battle.
It's important to ensure that mechanics communicate well visually, since otherwise people might miss or misunderstand the mechanic in the middle of a pitched battle, which is bad for players and spectators. In fact, I should probably edit my proposed guidelines in the original post to include this one.
EPT
