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Archerofaiur
United States4101 Posts
On December 17 2008 22:19 BlackStar wrote: Who says its not possible to make fun macro mechanics? Isn't SC so much fun because of macro? Weren't you the one who said On December 17 2008 22:07 BlackStar wrote: There's nothing that gives rise to intense multitasking gameplay and is not 'tedious and boring'. | ||
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Ki_Do
Korea (South)981 Posts
. tedious and boring are marked with '' cause its what the cancers think macro is | ||
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IdrA
United States11541 Posts
that would be acceptable to me, the big problem is not that you dont have to click enough, its that you dont have to look back at your base (away from your army) to make units, but newbies tend to bitch that its tedious and unecessary to go through and click 20 times to make 10 goons. its not really pertinent to this contest, but would do other people think that would be an acceptable solution to mbs? | ||
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hymn
Bulgaria832 Posts
Say you got 10 barracks. And you want 10 marines. So you can select them all. But clicking the Marine hotkey M will make only one marine. You have to click it 10 times in order to make 10 marines. In SC 1 you gotta make 10 more clicks, yes. It is harder, yes. But when I see replays and look for macro I don't think it's the 20 clicks on 10 barracks (as it is in SC 1) instead of 11 total clicks on 10 barracks (as it is in SC 2) the problem that keeps people from making armies all the time. It's that people are preoccupied with other things (aka micro in a large battle) and "forget" to go back home and make units. I don't think 9 more clicks in a barrack round would matter too too much. If I am wrong about the way MBS works, please someone tell me  | ||
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Ki_Do
Korea (South)981 Posts
the problem is, return the screen to your base, with this new problem u still can macro anywhere in the map | ||
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Latham
9563 Posts
On December 17 2008 23:24 hymn wrote: Idra, I think now MBS works like this: Say you got 10 barracks. And you want 10 marines. So you can select them all. But clicking the Marine hotkey M will make only one marine. You have to click it 10 times in order to make 10 marines. In SC 1 you gotta make 10 more clicks, yes. It is harder, yes. But when I see replays and look for macro I don't think it's the 20 clicks on 10 barracks (as it is in SC 1) instead of 11 total clicks on 10 barracks (as it is in SC 2) the problem that keeps people from making armies all the time. It's that people are preoccupied with other things (aka micro in a large battle) and "forget" to go back home and make units. I don't think 9 more clicks in a barrack round would matter too too much. If I am wrong about the way MBS works, please someone tell me You are correct, that's how it works and I agree with you. On December 17 2008 23:30 Ki_Do wrote: that is still stupid Hymn the problem is, return the screen to your base, with this new problem u still can macro anywhere in the map Don't people do 5sz6sz7sz8sz9sz0sd? In SC they don't return to their base unless they have WAY more production buildings then hotkeys, and even then they just hotkey a location with F1-F4(or up to F6? idk...) and then just make units in a few seconds. | ||
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Ki_Do
Korea (South)981 Posts
hotkeys arent all used for production buildings, T or Z use lots of keys ok? and F keys are for guess waht, change screen to rally points or production buildings screens. can u hotkey 12 or more? bonus have they considered allowing mbs, but not allowing hotkeying more than 1 building? that would be acceptable to me, the big problem is not that you dont have to click enough, its that you dont have to look back at your base (away from your army) to make units by Idra And even if early game or low eco ppl can 5t6v, the workers wont mine alone in brood war, you still have to change screens a lot, dont forget that in star2 u can queue supply depots infinitely too without having to pay for it too. | ||
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maybenexttime
Poland5637 Posts
1) The ideal new macro mechanic should be direct in its usage and provide beneficial gameplay. 2) The ideal new macro mechanic should have direct strategical value. 3) The ideal new macro mechanic should create a wide skill gradient and allow players of different play styles to distinguish themselves. 4) The ideal new macro mechanic should give the player alternatives, both of which should have their advantages and disadvantages. 5) The ideal new macro mechanic should be dynamic in the sense that it depends on the player and his opponent's choices. 6) The ideal new macro mechanic should allow for UI features such as MBS and/or auto-mining to remain unchanged and not punish the players for using them. 7) The ideal new macro mechanic should not be mindless nor repetitive. 8) The ideal new macro mechanic should provide a viable attention sink in the macro department in order to reward good multi-tasking and micro-to-macro decision making. 9) The ideal new macro mechanic's effects should not be random - its results must have definite results. 10) The ideal new macro mechanic should not force a specific map design or play style. 11) The ideal new macro mechanic should be flexible in its ability to be balanced. I'll be sending FA's/my solution (the Mineral Mechanic) tonight, hopefully. ;] | ||
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IdrA
United States11541 Posts
On December 17 2008 23:24 hymn wrote: Idra, I think now MBS works like this: Say you got 10 barracks. And you want 10 marines. So you can select them all. But clicking the Marine hotkey M will make only one marine. You have to click it 10 times in order to make 10 marines. In SC 1 you gotta make 10 more clicks, yes. It is harder, yes. But when I see replays and look for macro I don't think it's the 20 clicks on 10 barracks (as it is in SC 1) instead of 11 total clicks on 10 barracks (as it is in SC 2) the problem that keeps people from making armies all the time. It's that people are preoccupied with other things (aka micro in a large battle) and "forget" to go back home and make units. I don't think 9 more clicks in a barrack round would matter too too much. If I am wrong about the way MBS works, please someone tell me that is how it works, and i just said the clicking is irrelevant. but thats what the newbies complain about because they dont understand the game well enough to see that the difficult part of macro is going back and doing everything at your base while everything else is going on, thats where the real multitasking and time management requirements lie. all they see is 'mindless clicking', so give them that but maintain the requirements that matter, by not letting you hotkey multiple buildings. | ||
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Ki_Do
Korea (South)981 Posts
The Mechanic should force you to look back at your base if you want to make use of it. if not its an useless mechanic -.- and useless effort | ||
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Essence
165 Posts
the basic idea would be the following: The gas refinaries would have different levels of quality. When you finish constructing your refinary the first time you build it, It can allow to mine let's say 6 gas at the time. After a certain amount of time or gas mined (or potentially both) the refinary drops in quality, allowing for the return of 4 gas / worker (or whatever the number that makes it balanced). After a while it could further drop to 2. Also, there could be another level above the starter, let's say 8 gas / worker. Now if you want to repair the refinary or upgrade it, you need to use workers outside the building to fix it, more workers can upgrade it faster, but it would be limited (like 1-4 workers can upgrade a refinary at the time). This system is as flexible in tweaking as it gets, the developers can choose the different quality levels of the refinaries, the time (and potentially the resources, it could cost minerals to repair the refinary, but not neccessarily) it takes to upgrade a building, the time it takes for each race to increase the quality of the refinary etc. Depending on the timings chosen, this could require the player different amount of multitasking, the faster the building degrades the more attention / APM it requires to maintain the gas mining. This could also add trillions of strategical choices in build orders, especially early game; the different amount of workers sacrificed in maintaining the geysers would be sacrificed from mining minerals or doing other tasks. Since each race favours a different ratio of workers to army and mineral miners to gas miners (zergs come to mind mostly), it could be balanced for each race as Blizzard sees fit. If they wanted the players to spare from the insane amount of multitasking lategame with multiply mining gases, they could add a late tech upgrade for refinaries that would to a certain degree maintain effective gas mining. They could still make it imperfect to reward very high APM multitasking monsters, or in case some late game scenario arises where the player is highly dependant on gas on fewer bases and would prefer manually ensure that the gas flow is perfect. The idea is this in a nutshell. I sincerely hope it hasn't been posted by someone else (I am not trying to rip off anybody of his/her idea) and also that it doesn't sound like total bullshit. I believe it could use some tweaking, but it seems to fit into all the criterias listed above. EDIT: Naturally, this woldn't effect the total amount of gas mineable from a geyser, it could still dry up after X thousand, it would simply fluently effect the speed of the gas mining | ||
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Essence
165 Posts
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Archerofaiur
United States4101 Posts
On December 18 2008 00:22 maybenexttime wrote: 1) The ideal new macro mechanic should be direct in its usage and provide beneficial gameplay. 2) The ideal new macro mechanic should have direct strategical value. 3) The ideal new macro mechanic should create a wide skill gradient and allow players of different play styles to distinguish themselves. 4) The ideal new macro mechanic should have give the player alternatives, both of which should have their advantages and disadvantages. 5) The ideal new macro mechanic should be dynamic in the sense that it depends on the player and his opponent's choices. 6) The ideal new macro mechanic should allow for UI features such as MBS and/or auto-mining to remain unchanged and not punish the players for using them. 7) The ideal new macro mechanic should not be mindless nor repetitive. 8) The ideal new macro mechanic should provide a viable attention/APM sink (i.e. it needs to be used frequently enough to become a relevant task) in the macro department in order to reward good multi-tasking and micro-to-macro decision making (the biggest issue with MBS and auto-mining), however, it should not discourage micro. 9) The ideal new macro mechanic's effects should not be random - its results must have definite results. 10) The ideal new macro mechanic should not force a specific map design or play style. 11) The ideal new macro mechanic should be flexible in its ability to be balanced. 12) Macro mechanic must be fun. | ||
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Archerofaiur
United States4101 Posts
On December 17 2008 22:40 talismania wrote: Here's an idea for terran: building upgrades. How it works: instead of building new buildings, you can opt to upgrade the ones you already have for less cost in order to enhance their effectiveness / abilities. An SCV has to be called to the building to upgrade it, and if the building is a production building it would be inoperable during this time. Example: you have a supply depot. you want another, but are cheap. So instead of spending 100 for a depot, you upgrade your existing depot for some lower amount, say 75 to get the additional 10 supply. For barracks, upgrades could increase the production rate, for example, or maybe even increase the hp of units built, I dunno. Benefits of this feature: encourages user to come back to his base and manage it, as you must manually order an SCV over to the target building to upgrade it. Encourages choice-making: do I upgrade one depot a lot and risk that the enemy snipes it somehow, or do I build many? Do I want to upgrade that barracks now -- how will that affect my timing attack? Finally, it feels relatively natural, especially for terran, compared to the gas mechanic. It lends itself well to graphical representation as well. Also, it's easily balanced: you can adjust the power of the upgrades, upgrade time, nature of the upgrades, amount of upgrades, upgrade cost, etc. Interesting take on upgrading buildings. Can I make some suggestions? Have you considered moving this over to zerg. They are the race that upgrades buildings. Also, I like were your going with tweaking production parameters.Why not also give the upgraded zerg buildings some special abilities that they can use. Activating the special abilities would require macro oriented tasks. The special abilities would have cool effects to agument the swarm. | ||
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maybenexttime
Poland5637 Posts
I think the idea of 'fun' is way too subjective to objectively mean something in terms of rules people designing the new mechanic can abide to. I think that its being "not be mindless nor repetitive," "having direct strategical value" and "being dynamic in the sense that it depends on the player and his opponent's choices" ensures that the mechanic is more or less 'fun.' I'll reply to your post in the other thread soon, by the way. Haven't had time lately. ;] | ||
cgrinker
United States3824 Posts
jk I don't actually have my own. If I think of one though, you all will be the first to know. | ||
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Archerofaiur
United States4101 Posts
That being said I have a reason why I wanted to include that as one of your “12 commandments for macro thesis”. I believe that all too often new macro theorycrafters forget the WOW factor when creating there proposals. The WOW factor is what excites you to use the mechanic. It’s the tag line we put on the back of the Starcraft 2 box to get people to buy it. To demonstrate the WOW factor I am going to describe Warp-In in two different ways. Warp-In without WOW factor With this ability a player can upgrade his building. The player loses the ability to queue units. The player also loses the ability to create a unit with hotkeys alone or MBS. When the player wants to create a unit they must order the unit. Following this they must move there vision to where they want the unit to go and then they must click the place they want the unit to be created in. They must do this for every single unit they want to make. They can only create a unit in a certain radius of supply buildings. Warp-In with WOW factor This ability allows the protoss player to Warp-In units onto anywhere on the battlefield that has pylon power. . You can use phase Prisms to infiltrate behind an enemy base and warp your units from Aiur directly onto his mineral line. You can keep a large reserve ready for what ever expansion is attacked. The more warp gates you have the more mobile reserves you have ready to lay down on an enemy force. Try warping in units behind an attacking army to seal them off. Warping units is faster then regular production of units. Also, Warping units are accompanied by a splashy visual indicator that looks like something out of a cool sci fi flick. | ||
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Unentschieden
Germany1471 Posts
On December 18 2008 00:22 maybenexttime wrote: 8) The ideal new macro mechanic should provide a viable attention/APM sink (i.e. it needs to be used frequently enough to become a relevant task) in the macro department in order to reward good multi-tasking and micro-to-macro decision making (the biggest issue with MBS and auto-mining), however, it should not discourage micro. I generally agree with the rest but that one irks me for several reasons. First of all it´s longer than 2 lines which already is a bad sign (KISS). 2nd, why is a APM/attention sink a good thing? If we look closely - APM isn´t actually decreased all that much for example with automine you loose 1 Action per Peon - the rest stays even with the new system. Attention doesn´t change since it doesn´t depend on keystrokes but desicions, in fact you are faster if you do it WITHOUT paying attention. Also it´s not clear what exactly is wanted here: APM sink, multitasking, desicion making or not to discourage micro? Goal Definitions need to be free of contradictions, otherwise you might as well have said "make it better". | ||
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SuperJongMan
Jamaica11586 Posts
On December 18 2008 00:25 IdrA wrote: that is how it works, and i just said the clicking is irrelevant. but thats what the newbies complain about because they dont understand the game well enough to see that the difficult part of macro is going back and doing everything at your base while everything else is going on, thats where the real multitasking and time management requirements lie. all they see is 'mindless clicking', so give them that but maintain the requirements that matter, by not letting you hotkey multiple buildings. Yeah, I really really agree. The back and forth and back and forth is what makes/gives SC ridiculously fast feeling. | ||
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maybenexttime
Poland5637 Posts
On December 18 2008 02:56 Unentschieden wrote: I generally agree with the rest but that one irks me for several reasons. First of all it´s longer than 2 lines which already is a bad sign (KISS). 2nd, why is a APM/attention sink a good thing? If we look closely - APM isn´t actually decreased all that much for example with automine you loose 1 Action per Peon - the rest stays even with the new system. Attention doesn´t change since it doesn´t depend on keystrokes but desicions, in fact you are faster if you do it WITHOUT paying attention. Also it´s not clear what exactly is wanted here: APM sink, multitasking, desicion making or not to discourage micro? Goal Definitions need to be free of contradictions, otherwise you might as well have said "make it better". OK, fixed. "The ideal new macro mechanic should provide a viable attention sink in the macro department in order to reward good multi-tasking and micro-to-macro decision making." By "attention" I mean the fact that you need to split your attention between your army (units in general) related tasks and base related tasks, and that the new should reward being efficient at that. That's because it's supposed to be a compromise, as I've said in other threads, and what many competitive players believe is lacking in SC2 is the (alleged?) lack of macro related tasks, and thus the game feeling less intense/more shallow in terms of multi-tasking requirements. | ||
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