EPT[T] Potential Solutions to Automine - Page 8
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IzzyCraft
United States4487 Posts
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Liquid`Jinro
Sweden33719 Posts
The Starcraft engine is complete shit, its not nearly as responsive or as smooth feeling compared to a game like Red Alert 3 or Warcraft 3, you often have to press a key twice, etc. I have never in my life had to press a key twice in SC to build something -_- On November 18 2008 15:17 vsrooks wrote: Well put, also if you look at professional Wc3 scene, it's really quite boring. It's really really hard to make a 'mistake' in Wc3. All of the players have nearly identical macro and the game is based entirely on micro. The issue with this though is that there's only so much you can do with the units you're given. A lot of Wc3 games are decided by item luck, creep luck, etc.. You can argue that certain players are always winning events, but that's based almost entirely on game sense and slightly superior micro. The difference between the best pros and 'amateurs' is really really small. It's also hard to compare the Korean SC scene to the Wc3 scene as well. You're best off comparing the Wc3 scene to the Foreign SC scene, which the top players have remained on top in the Foreign SC scene. The WC3 scene is like somewhere inbetween the foreign SC scene and the Korean SC scene, which is why it always annoys me when people (not you) bring up Creolophus winning the WCG after being inactive. Hello, Draco finished 2nd in TSL while wearing a Retired_ tag!? Ok, back to your post: yeah, the top SC players have remained on top in the (EDIT: FOREIGN) SC scene, sure. But really, there's nowhere near the same influx of new players... And it's not like the WC3 scene is in constant turmoil with top players dropping in and out either, let's take a look at the Gosugamers.net top 10: Grubby - Around since what, 2004? He's been one of the top since 2005 at least. Lyn - Don't know how long he's been around, but he's dominated 2008. Fly100% - I think he's fairly new. ToD - Been around and on top for about as long as grubby. Moon - Been around since what, 2004? 2005? He was ranked 2nd just a few weeks ago too. TeD - I think he's pretty new school. Happy - New school. Check - I don't know how long he's been around, but fairly old school. Space - Again, don't know how long but at least a couple of years, but perhaps not in this prominent a position? Reign - Old school. As for luck and what not.. Yeah, I'm sure item drops and critical crits (blademaster) play a part, but SC2 won't have any of those. Even with all this supposed luck, the players maintain disgusting win ratios: Grubby: 74% Lyn: 67% Fly100%: 60% ToD: 71% Moon: 68% TeD: 61% Happy: 61% Check: 58% Space: 57% Reign: 62% EDIT: In fact, the WC3 ranking has more old school names than the SC top 10 does. | ||
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Augury
United States758 Posts
On November 18 2008 17:05 FrozenArbiter wrote: I have never in my life had to press a key twice in SC to build something -_- The WC3 scene is like somewhere inbetween the foreign SC scene and the Korean SC scene, which is why it always annoys me when people (not you) bring up Creolophus winning the WCG after being inactive. Hello, Draco finished 2nd in TSL while wearing a Retired_ tag!? Ok, back to your post: yeah, the top SC players have remained on top in the SC scene, sure. But really, there's nowhere near the same influx of new players... And it's not like the WC3 scene is in constant turmoil with top players dropping in and out either, let's take a look at the Gosugamers.net top 10: Grubby - Around since what, 2004? He's been one of the top since 2005 at least. Lyn - Don't know how long he's been around, but he's dominated 2008. Fly100% - I think he's fairly new. ToD - Been around and on top for about as long as grubby. Moon - Been around since what, 2004? 2005? He was ranked 2nd just a few weeks ago too. TeD - I think he's pretty new school. Happy - New school. Check - I don't know how long he's been around, but fairly old school. Space - Again, don't know how long but at least a couple of years, but perhaps not in this prominent a position? Reign - Old school. As for luck and what not.. Yeah, I'm sure item drops and critical crits (blademaster) play a part, but SC2 won't have any of those. Even with all this supposed luck, the players maintain disgusting win ratios: Grubby: 74% Lyn: 67% Fly100%: 60% ToD: 71% Moon: 68% TeD: 61% Happy: 61% Check: 58% Space: 57% Reign: 62% EDIT: In fact, the WC3 ranking has more old school names than the SC top 10 does. His entire point was that Wc3 had the same top players and SC didn't. His opinion was that the top SC players were continually changing because the smart players can't keep up APM wise and he wants Sc2 to be like Wc3 where mechanics don't matter at all and it's all about strategy and that way the top players stay on top. My point was that the Wc3 scene is just a lot less competitive than the Korean SC scene. A lot like the Foreign SC scene is less competitive than the Korean SC scene. As far as it being difficult to reach the top of the Wc3 scene because the game is dependent on game sense/strategy, because of the weaker mechanics is wrong. Weaker mechanics allow new players to take over with relative ease, the reason we don't see this in Wc3 is because the scene is less competitive. An example is SK.Violet, he went from being an average amateur to one of the best Orcs in around 2 weeks with a bit of extra training. I know him personally and witnessed it first hand, it wasn't just an improvement in results that appeared so sudden, his skill level increased dramatically with relative ease, because the game is so easy. Edit: Lyn is really old. Fly100% is actually pretty old, he was around in the scene as a practice partner for a lot of it though. TeD isn't necessairly new, he's just in the scene a lot more since the older and more popular UDs have stopped trying as hard. The only 'new' player on the list would be Happy I think, but I'm not sure as I've never bothered with the RU scene. | ||
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Liquid`Jinro
Sweden33719 Posts
You're best off comparing the Wc3 scene to the Foreign SC scene, which the top players have remained on top in the Foreign SC scene. I think I see what you are saying now but it's really confusing, because your first paragraph sort of contradicts the second.. Also, my definition of old and new is not necessarily in terms of how long they've been playing, but how long they've been "top tier". I could be wrong but I don't think TeD has really been top tier for much more than a year. Happy is 16 so it's physically impossible for him to be old school ;P | ||
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Augury
United States758 Posts
On November 18 2008 18:17 FrozenArbiter wrote: You mean YOUR point? Since I'm replying to your post, namely this: Also, my definition of old and new is not necessarily in terms of how long they've been playing, but how long they've been "top tier". I could be wrong but I don't think TeD has really been top tier for much more than a year. Happy is 16 so it's physically impossible for him to be old school ;P Well the original point I was making was that Wc3 and Foreign SC scenes are a lot less competitive than the Korean SC scene, which is why a smaller group of players can win a lot of events and keep a relatively high winning percentage. My other point was that easier mechanics decreases the skill gap and allows new players to enter the scene with relative ease, even if they're not necessarily more intelligent than other players. | ||
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Liquid`Jinro
Sweden33719 Posts
You're best off comparing the Wc3 scene to the Foreign SC scene, which the top players have remained on top in the Foreign SC scene. to mean "where the top players have remained on top, UNLIKE the WC3 scene". My bad. However, isn't the WC3 scene less competitive no so much because of the game as because it doesn't have the same infrastructure as Korean SC..? | ||
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Augury
United States758 Posts
On November 18 2008 18:24 FrozenArbiter wrote: Ok, I misunderstood what you were saying, I took this: to mean "where the top players have remained on top, UNLIKE the WC3 scene". My bad. However, the WC3 scene isn't less competitive because of the game as much as because it doesn't have the same structure as Korean SC.. Agree, wasn't trying to say the two go hand in hand. The Wc3 scene is less competitive for the same reason the foreign SC scene is. The point about Wc3 game mechanics and the Violet example were used to counter a statement from a different poster. Sorry for all the confusion. | ||
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Alizee-
United States845 Posts
On November 18 2008 17:05 FrozenArbiter wrote: I have never in my life had to press a key twice in SC to build something -_- I'm not saying it happens all the time, and when you use LL it certainly helps a lot, but it does happen sometimes especially if the connection isn't perfect. Regardless though the point about the engine being inferior is correct, even things like cycling ctrl groups while using the move command messes up if you know what I'm talking about. To clarify, I'm not arguing sc isn't the superior game, because it is, I'm just saying the engine isn't a thing it should be praised for. Also, some of the suggestions for mineral gathering/upgrades I think are perhaps too much. If you wanna stick with the simplicity of starcraft, then you can't over do it. Then again, as I say that, there's already the current gas mechanic and it is a different game so...I'm not sure that is the best point. I'm just curious what everyone's definition of automining is, I am thinking the fact that you can rally a worker to a resource and it'll start gathering as automining, is this a correct assumption? | ||
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EntSC
47 Posts
[B]EntSC: Very interesting, very mid-late game oriented as well. Expand on the idea? Hey Everyone I can’t write for long, because I’m at work, but a couple of people suggested that I expand on the crystal realignment idea that I had last night. To summarise it again, the principle is to increase macro in lieu of the actions lost by automine. The macro focus is on the crystals, rather than the workers, which I think is an advantage because it enables us to come up with a generic solution. I personally think SCV stim is quite interesting, but we would nee d to come up with similar mechanics for Zerg and Protoss, and ensure that they’re balanced. Not an easy task! I agree with one poster that I may have overcomplicated my suggestion with the inclusion of an arrow, so I’ll streamline it a bit here. The crystals should glow when in alignment, which will yield more minerals per worker gather. Over time they should dealign. Crystals should start aligned. To align the crystals, the player should click on each mineral patch, click a hotkey, and then click the CC/Nexus/Hatch (either alternately, or all the crystals once and then the HQ depending on balance). I think the gather rate has been reduced to 5, so I would suggest 6 for aligned crystals. To recap the benefits: - It’s a generic solution, so we don’t need to come up with something for all of the races. - It doesn’t affect worker speed, so there are no micro impact and balancing issues. - It’s easily scaled (crystal dealignment speed, gather rate etc). - It’s easy to do, but difficult to master when you’re microing etc at once too. - It will look to spectators because they will immediately understand that a progamer has pumped his economy with the glowing crystals. - It’s an additional mechanic rather than a change to an existing one. To be blunt, this allows Blizzard to jump on the automine casual gamer bandwagon (which to an extent I endorse from the perspective of getting more people into the game, though I would prefer it not to be included), but provides something additional that won’t feel like a restriction. - It will be essential at progamer level (20 per cent mineral yield increase), but at amateur level will not dramatically impact on their game. - It scales to the mid and long game (in my opinion emulating the present mechanic of non automine (where players build multiple strings of SCVs at CCs and then potentially forget about them)). If people feel that it has too big an impact on the long game, Blizzard could vary the speed at which crystals dealign (so first alignment; second alignment after 5 minutes; third alignment after 10 minutes etc). Additional: the skill requirement could be increased dependent upon how easily the different crystal groups can be clicked on (I guess this depends principally on the graphic). Personally, I think it might be quite nice to see a progamer rapidly click on multiple groups realigning them (method analogous to Boxer’s legendary blind of the observers when he was taking down the carriers). Cheers guys Ent P.S: One person said that he didn’t think that automine had a significant impact because the actions required to send the workers to the mineral lines were quite low (cited 2.5 per cent from memory). But in this instance, I think it’s important to recognise that actions don’t actually represent the benefit of the mechanic. The overwhelming advantage of automine is that workers immediately start mining the crystals when produced. When I used to play (APM of about 170, only gamed with Jamie and Cei if you know those players (I always lost  )), I regularly forgot about my workers because I was trying so frantically not to lose the battles in the middle of the map. So imo, the advantage of automine is:Number of actions required by non-automine plus average length of mining time saved. I think that’s another benefit of the above mechanic because it emulates the advantage / disadvantage of the present game. | ||
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Augury
United States758 Posts
My two cents: Dealignment should occur often.. if we're gearing towards making players look at their base we should make it actually impactful. I'd say when there are 2 workers per mineral, then it should take about 30-40 seconds to dealign. With different minerals coming out of alignment at different times, this should keep players pretty busy throughtout the game considering the multiple bases. The key is to force the player's attention away from just microing. This mechanic change would almost entirely solve the multitasking issue. | ||
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EntSC
47 Posts
Thanks - it was fun thinking about it! I agree with you re the potential to shorten the dealignment time... I tried to think of something that was scaleable so the sweet spot can be hit in testing. With a decent glow on the minerals or graphic effect it will be very obvious when someone has aligned the crystals or not (it even means Blizzard can do something that looks good, appealing to the casual gamers  ).Cheers Ent | ||
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Ki_Do
Korea (South)981 Posts
Mixing Kennigit idea with stim one. Workers now have a researchable upgrade (50/50) at command center/nexus/Hatchery Terran : Scv Anti-matter engine Protoss: Probe warp core Zerg: Drone "myxoma"(non sense btw) glands This ability will raise worker speed for like 15 to 20 seconds (it can be tweaked) and cant be set to autocast, the abilitty also have a cooldown of 3 to 5 seconds, progamers have enough apm to do that cause they are paid for this, noobs will get fucked if they play us, cause thats the way the life should be, the user will have to return home to activate this skill the whole game so the better multitasker will have the edge. You may ask, but if i drag all drones to ctrl+1 and press the hotkey? its so easy yeah but you have to build workers the whole game, and they wont benefit the upgrade unless you return home and manually do that, of course the pathfindin of the game is so great that noobs/casuals will not care about that unless they want to become good players, with hard work come benefits, this statement rule our lives since we are lil children. The Macro minded players /oov/ will most likely scroll over his expansions activating it abilities The Micro minded players /boxer/ will more likely still have less units than oov players but will be able to play art The Mechanic perfect players /Jaedong/ will be able to do all this shit listed above Pardon me, criticize it please | ||
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Doctorasul
Romania1145 Posts
"myxoma"(non sense btw) Actually, myxoma is a tumor, usually of the heart. Alright, that's it, I'm calling it. Blizzard no longer has any excuse for not solving the macro issue in the next month. TL has come up with very good, workable ideas. I personally like the speed boost and the mineral realignment, maybe even both of them at once. Either way, we need to push these ideas on the dev team, most of them really are win/win and really do solve the problem in the spirit of the game and without scaring away casual players or reviewers. | ||
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Ki_Do
Korea (South)981 Posts
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armed_
Canada443 Posts
On November 18 2008 18:43 Alizee- wrote:I'm not saying it happens all the time, and when you use LL it certainly helps a lot, but it does happen sometimes especially if the connection isn't perfect. Regardless though the point about the engine being inferior is correct, even things like cycling ctrl groups while using the move command messes up if you know what I'm talking about. Um, no. There isn't some inherent flaw in the SC engine that causes it to randomly miss inputs; it would be pretty ridiculous if there was, it's not exactly a great feat of programming to make the game manage to respond to all the player's actions. Unresponsiveness due to latency is just a given, obviously. | ||
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maybenexttime
Poland5552 Posts
On November 18 2008 06:27 Delvin wrote: Second the agreement with FA. Let's consider "No Automine" a macro mechanic. It rewards people who send workers to mine. It punishes people who don't. Haha, no. Seriously, it's more about if it makes sense to the player. Not lore-wise, just how intuitive it is. You were busy doing something and didn't have time to give your workers commands. You lost a few seconds of mining time, it's not so bad, it's your fault, it's fine. You were busy doing something and automine cursed your already mining workers with ensnare. That's lame, it's the fault of the game. Orb's situational speed boost was the best idea here so far really. You could work with it to get something reasonable for other races. Like, you could remove the passive speed boost from creep and allow overlords or queens or something to either assist the workers with temporary creep area buffs or choose to use them to get stuff to the battlefield faster. Like a Hatchery ability (upgradable?) that makes Drones work faster for a period of time where the duration of the spell is close to the cooldown I have to disagree with the notion that the speed bonus mechanic forces newbs to adopt the no-automining play style by being rewarded for manually ordering your workers to mine - it is really no different from microing your units in battle instead of relying on AI. I.e.: manually telling your workers to mine = micoring during a battle relying on automine = letting AI take care of your units Telling each and every worker he should mine is not very realistic, but neither is telling each Marine where he should move when fighting a Zealot. ;; And compared to that, neglecting to micro your units penalizes you so much more than neglecting to manually tell your workers to mine and go the auto-mining path instead. Yet, casual players are somehow not crying about being forced to micro - they simply don't and are content with how their units battle it out on their own. T___T P.S. Someone probably has already posted something along those lines, but I couldn't manage to read the whole thread yet and wanted to post this regardless. ;p | ||
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Liquid`Jinro
Sweden33719 Posts
1) Passive vs Active The benefits of handling your SCVs well without automining is sort of passive, if you are effecient, you get an advantage. The benefits of many of the mechanics suggested here are active; click this button and you'll get an advantage. I feel the active-type mechanics are pure arcade game features and I'm not comfortable with them being in an RTS game.. 2) Trade-off There is none. Pretty much all of the mechanics suggested you'd want to be on 100% of the time. You are not making a decision really, since there are no negative effects of using them. It could be argued that the decision lies in wether or not to do something else or perform these economy boosting actions.. But I don't think this is ideal. I don't think the idea of new mechanics to make up for ones lost is bad tho, and instead of just complaining I'm gonna post an idea of my own. Mining Efficiency (needs a better name ^^) Similiar to -orb-'s (I think it was -orb-, I'm sorry if I'm mistaken) suggestion that workers be given a one time/high cooldown speed boost ability, and borrowing from maybenexttime's gas idea, I think being able to set your workers to various efficiency modes would be interesting. Mode 1: 5 minerals per trip. Normal speed. Mode 2: 7 minerals gained per trip, but the mineral patch loses 9 (or whatever number ends up being balanced), normal speed. An alternative to this could be the worker moving faster in mode 2, only returning 5, and the patch losing 7. Now, these are just the first two ideas for modes I could come up with, there might be others. I think that not only does this type of mechanic have a higher chance of being impleneted, but it's gonna offer a lot of strategical options. If it ends up working out in such a way that you'd want to use only one mode most of the time, things could be tweaked, or (but I find this an unattractive solution for similiar reasons I dislike most of the other ideas so far) you could have the worker start in a mode opposite to what is generally prefered. EDIT: A more elegant solution would be to balance things in such a way that mode #2 is most effecient for part of the game (ie say your first 2 or 3 expansions) and then mode #1 (the starting mode) being more desireable due to the great number of mining bases you are at (ie your economy is stronger than you need it to be, so conserving minerals is fine). Good idea? Bad idea? | ||
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Ki_Do
Korea (South)981 Posts
Creep doesnt make drones faster and GJ FA what if instead of workers carrying 7 mins but the patch losing 10 you had to pay 5 mins for each speed boost? 5 x10 = 50 5x 100= 500 that would make the player want expansions ASAP | ||
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onepost
Canada297 Posts
On November 18 2008 19:02 EntSC wrote: Hey Everyone I can’t write for long, because I’m at work, but a couple of people suggested that I expand on the crystal realignment idea that I had last night. To summarise it again, the principle is to increase macro in lieu of the actions lost by automine. The macro focus is on the crystals, rather than the workers, which I think is an advantage because it enables us to come up with a generic solution. I personally think SCV stim is quite interesting, but we would nee d to come up with similar mechanics for Zerg and Protoss, and ensure that they’re balanced. Not an easy task! I agree with one poster that I may have overcomplicated my suggestion with the inclusion of an arrow, so I’ll streamline it a bit here. The crystals should glow when in alignment, which will yield more minerals per worker gather. Over time they should dealign. Crystals should start aligned. To align the crystals, the player should click on each mineral patch, click a hotkey, and then click the CC/Nexus/Hatch (either alternately, or all the crystals once and then the HQ depending on balance). I think the gather rate has been reduced to 5, so I would suggest 6 for aligned crystals. To recap the benefits: - It’s a generic solution, so we don’t need to come up with something for all of the races. - It doesn’t affect worker speed, so there are no micro impact and balancing issues. - It’s easily scaled (crystal dealignment speed, gather rate etc). - It’s easy to do, but difficult to master when you’re microing etc at once too. - It will look to spectators because they will immediately understand that a progamer has pumped his economy with the glowing crystals. - It’s an additional mechanic rather than a change to an existing one. To be blunt, this allows Blizzard to jump on the automine casual gamer bandwagon (which to an extent I endorse from the perspective of getting more people into the game, though I would prefer it not to be included), but provides something additional that won’t feel like a restriction. - It will be essential at progamer level (20 per cent mineral yield increase), but at amateur level will not dramatically impact on their game. - It scales to the mid and long game (in my opinion emulating the present mechanic of non automine (where players build multiple strings of SCVs at CCs and then potentially forget about them)). If people feel that it has too big an impact on the long game, Blizzard could vary the speed at which crystals dealign (so first alignment; second alignment after 5 minutes; third alignment after 10 minutes etc). Additional: the skill requirement could be increased dependent upon how easily the different crystal groups can be clicked on (I guess this depends principally on the graphic). Personally, I think it might be quite nice to see a progamer rapidly click on multiple groups realigning them (method analogous to Boxer’s legendary blind of the observers when he was taking down the carriers). Cheers guys Ent P.S: One person said that he didn’t think that automine had a significant impact because the actions required to send the workers to the mineral lines were quite low (cited 2.5 per cent from memory). But in this instance, I think it’s important to recognise that actions don’t actually represent the benefit of the mechanic. The overwhelming advantage of automine is that workers immediately start mining the crystals when produced. When I used to play (APM of about 170, only gamed with Jamie and Cei if you know those players (I always lost )), I regularly forgot about my workers because I was trying so frantically not to lose the battles in the middle of the map. So imo, the advantage of automine is:Number of actions required by non-automine plus average length of mining time saved. I think that’s another benefit of the above mechanic because it emulates the advantage / disadvantage of the present game. I never thought I'd say this but you're making interesting points. Actually, if you made your SCV-boosting exactly like stim packs, not only would it be coherent with marines mechanics (don't reinvent something stupid from scratch), but you could get something that's researchable, requires strategy in its use (use only in critical moments, or keep medics at bay), and give a boost to high-APM players (if that makes them happy, why not). What's more, it would help Terrans resist early rushes if they go the tech route (stim packs boost SCV speed, attack power... at a price). I wouldn't object to that. I don't think you need similar mechanics for zerg and protoss. The zealots and zerglings don't have stim packs and that doesn't make the game imbalanced. As for the mining advantage... the zerg always have more bases anyway, so they naturally mine faster. For the record though: I'm still against scrapping automine. | ||
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HeadBangaa
United States6512 Posts
On November 18 2008 06:49 Kennigit wrote: I never said i was right. I said it was a potential solution and that i wanted discussion about the pros and cons. By page 2 we already modifictions and even better or simpler suggestions. It's not about my OP or presenting some masters thesis. You are in a very small minority on this site that feels that automining isn't an issue - it is. All the progamers, top amateurs, staff, and high level thinking players note that it is a serious issue when the management of resources is automated so i don't care if you think its an issue. I'm not justifying the argument because its been argued and agreed upon for months. All i want is potential solutions from the core group of people who have issue with it an encourage some discussion. If you don't think there's a problem then don't post in this thread. I think the spirit of your suggestion is good, but clearly not aligned with the direction Blizzard is insistent upon going in. I really like the toggle-option idea. To answer those who say, "you'd never turn it off because it makes no sense to opt out of an advantage" well SC1 is already modal. I would think of automine as UMS. Or rather, because of Blizzard's intent to play down macro, automine/MBS would be the norm, and "SC1-mode" would be an alternate (set pre-game; you know when you join a game what the mode is). Ladders and professional gaming will standardize SC1 mode, and all the people who play against computer and never BNET, will simply be autominers/MBSers. | ||
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