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Multifront combat is really just a fantasy. When WC3 came out like 4 years ago, I really thought that the focus on micro would actually do something similar. After playing both SC and TFT for so long, I think this sort of thought really just comes out of a superficial understanding of the games. Here's why it's mostly not feasible:
1. There aren't necessarily that many expansions or units on the field.
2. Large army > small army.
SC2 won't somehow miraculously develop into a 6 expansion game. If you look at how almost any RTS is played, the fact is that any large tract of land is going to more or less reducible to a few major points. You aren't going to have 6 separate battles going on at any time.
Mobility cuts both ways. You can split your army up into 6 pieces, but if the opponent can warp in his entire army at any given point, then he can respond extremely effectively to all your attacks.
EDIT:
A focus on combat is really boring. The frantic pace of SC is at least for many of us why it's fun. I don't know if you've ever played WC3, but the late game is painfully boring. While you might have 200+ APM for a battle, most of the game, either out of battle or especially as money runs out, you will need less than 100.
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Well, as far as spectating goes currently macro is a more hidden side of the game unless you play Starcraft.
Sure, they try to show it with the first person views but lets face it, if you haven't _tried_ to macro a serious number of expansions before whilst doing good micro then you won't really get how impressive the players are.
Obviously, the same applies for combat micro but to a lesser extent. IMO, it is far more obvious when you see sAviOr's zerglings properly flank and surround or when Bisu micro's his zealots in and out, ganging up and coming out on top that the guy has made a good play.
Why? Because it just taps into a basic fighting concept like "surround the enemy" or "defeat in detail" which since his opponent can't do the same thing back to him that he must be a better player, regardless of how hard the interface is or even if you're not sure just how hard it is to do those things.
Furthermore, I think seeing four-six vultures get inside a base and totally demolish an eco-line in about 15 seconds also tends to get people going more than "oh wow, he lost all his dragoons and here comes another army!"
If you play the game or perhaps if the commentators play the macro up like "Iloveoov's cheater macro" then those macro aspects start to impress you far more.
I guess it's about finding the right balance and to be honest, I think SC2 is going in a good direction. In the battle report some of the mechanics did sound interesting like units that could slow down other units with their shots and other micro intensive dynamics which make the way you play a force affect its power on the field in a greater proportion to it's overall size comparative to Brood War.
Still, you're likely to see a Brood War/SC2 competitive split for some time as with CS 1.6 and Source. Even if they're fairly similar games at the core the specific differences in emphasis will be enough to drive a fairly significant wedge between the two communities.
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Here's why it's mostly not feasible:
1. There aren't necessarily that many expansions or units on the field.
2. Large army > small army.
Both are common, but not necessary, for a RTS.
If defenses are very strong, than a 6 expansion game wouldn't be hard. If small armies have some pivot factor that allow them to take on a big army (may it be storm or seige) and do serious damage anyways, than merged large armies is unnecessary.
The real problem is that people don't like strong defenses nor do they like endless skimishes over one climatic battle. That, and people do like 1a2a3a orgy of massed units all too often.
Why? Because it just taps into a basic fighting concept like "surround the enemy" or "defeat in detail" which since his opponent can't do the same thing back to him that he must be a better player, regardless of how hard the interface is or even if you're not sure just how hard it is to do those things.
If SC2 is to cater partly to the casuals, its core concepts should revolve ones that is intuitively understood and liked, over things not associated with a war game like speed in factory clicking.
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On January 02 2009 14:52 naventus wrote:
Multifront combat is really just a fantasy. When WC3 came out like 4 years ago, I really thought that the focus on micro would actually do something similar. After playing both SC and TFT for so long, I think this sort of thought really just comes out of a superficial understanding of the games. Here's why it's mostly not feasible:
1. There aren't necessarily that many expansions or units on the field.
2. Large army > small army.
SC2 won't somehow miraculously develop into a 6 expansion game. If you look at how almost any RTS is played, the fact is that any large tract of land is going to more or less reducible to a few major points. You aren't going to have 6 separate battles going on at any time.
Mobility cuts both ways. You can split your army up into 6 pieces, but if the opponent can warp in his entire army at any given point, then he can respond extremely effectively to all your attacks.
I don't see how you could possibly warp in your entire army...
Do you know how Warp-in works? It allows you to spawn NEW units within the matrix field. It means you can react to an attack with 5-15 units (your number of Warp Gates) at a time (cooldown!). You could maybe fend off one or two simultaneous attacks but not three or four, imo.
EDIT:
A focus on combat is really boring. The frantic pace of SC is at least for many of us why it's fun. I don't know if you've ever played WC3, but the late game is painfully boring. While you might have 200+ APM for a battle, most of the game, either out of battle or especially as money runs out, you will need less than 100.
That's what I hate about WC3, the reason why I switched to SC - the downtimes. ;/
I really hope it's not the case with SC2.
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SC2 has units specifically designed for harassment (Reaper is the most obvious example). Workers move as slow as in BW...
Warp in does not even allow defending. It takes 5 seconds and the unit is vulnerable at that time. I was punished a few times by trying to warp-in too close to the opponent. And of course as maybenexttime has already mentioned - it is just producing new units. For defending your main base it's even worse than units coming out of gateways because of this 5 second vulnerability.
While some units (Reapers, Stalkers) can move really fast the most still can't. Sure Medivacs help but they still suffer from the same problems as dropships (and blink on stalkers makes it REALLY risky to try to drop near protoss).
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On January 01 2009 18:57 FrozenArbiter wrote:Show nested quote +On January 01 2009 14:06 SlickR12345 wrote:On January 01 2009 14:04 Archerofaiur wrote:On January 01 2009 13:56 SlickR12345 wrote:
Go play WC3 you noob.
SC is about both micro and macro, 50-50%, half-half, do you understand or do you need me to draw you a picture?
Being more micro oriented just limits the styles of play, as well as strategy and tactics! Easy there. Your right about starcraft being about both micro and macro but there is no need to be a jerk about it. Try and start the new year on a good foot. suck it, i'd start the new year how ever i want and the least i could care is what i'm going to write to a stupid forum noob. ORLY? Well you can start it somewhere else then, see you in a week.
Talk about overkill.
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Sweden33719 Posts
On January 03 2009 01:06 spitball wrote:Show nested quote +On January 01 2009 18:57 FrozenArbiter wrote:On January 01 2009 14:06 SlickR12345 wrote:On January 01 2009 14:04 Archerofaiur wrote:On January 01 2009 13:56 SlickR12345 wrote:
Go play WC3 you noob.
SC is about both micro and macro, 50-50%, half-half, do you understand or do you need me to draw you a picture?
Being more micro oriented just limits the styles of play, as well as strategy and tactics! Easy there. Your right about starcraft being about both micro and macro but there is no need to be a jerk about it. Try and start the new year on a good foot. suck it, i'd start the new year how ever i want and the least i could care is what i'm going to write to a stupid forum noob. ORLY? Well you can start it somewhere else then, see you in a week. Talk about overkill.
He has a previous ban, so no I don't think so. First he pulls the "Go back to WC3 you noob" card - which is annoying as fuck - then he's needlessly rude to someone for no reason what so ever.
Possibly the length, but there's no option between 2 days and a week so I went with a week because of the previous ban.
On January 02 2009 14:52 naventus wrote:
Multifront combat is really just a fantasy. When WC3 came out like 4 years ago, I really thought that the focus on micro would actually do something similar. After playing both SC and TFT for so long, I think this sort of thought really just comes out of a superficial understanding of the games. Here's why it's mostly not feasible:
1. There aren't necessarily that many expansions or units on the field.
2. Large army > small army.
SC2 won't somehow miraculously develop into a 6 expansion game. If you look at how almost any RTS is played, the fact is that any large tract of land is going to more or less reducible to a few major points. You aren't going to have 6 separate battles going on at any time.
Mobility cuts both ways. You can split your army up into 6 pieces, but if the opponent can warp in his entire army at any given point, then he can respond extremely effectively to all your attacks.
EDIT:
A focus on combat is really boring. The frantic pace of SC is at least for many of us why it's fun. I don't know if you've ever played WC3, but the late game is painfully boring. While you might have 200+ APM for a battle, most of the game, either out of battle or especially as money runs out, you will need less than 100.
I'm not gonna say "oh sc2 will have multifront combat fooooor sure!", but there are differences between SC and WC3.
In fact, you bring one up yourself -
1. There aren't necessarily that many expansions or units on the field.
Definitely true for WC3, and they take forever to kill AND you can just TP to save them, but in SC they die quickly and there are plenty of them.
2. Large army > small army.
Sure, but at least you won't have heroes in SC2, so it will be slightly alleviated.
A focus on combat is really boring. The frantic pace of SC is at least for many of us why it's fun. I don't know if you've ever played WC3, but the late game is painfully boring. While you might have 200+ APM for a battle, most of the game, either out of battle or especially as money runs out, you will need less than 100.
I agree, but once again SC2 will have more expansions, wont have things like upkeep to make macro less attractive and a supply cap twice as high.
I think SC1 will probably be ultimately harder, but I think SC2 could potentially make up for at least some of it with the proper gameplay..
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And once again FA said everything I wanted to say on the subject a bit earlier than I got a chance to 
So, to sum it up (SC2 vs WC3):
- No heroes - which are a 'one man army' themselves
- No upkeep
- No TP
- High unit cap
- Cheap units
- No experience - losing units costs you military and economic power only, it doesn't give any additional advantage to the enemy (making his units stronger)
Which will all lead to:
- Producing more units - bigger armies
- Expanding more often - to sustain/increase the above
- More attention - more difficult to defend said expansions, have to keep your guard up at all times
There's really nothing to worry about in this matter in my opinion.
P. S.
To clarify one thing: unit cap in SC2 will be 3-4 times higher than in WC3 since even the most basic units (except workers) there consume at least 1 more supply than in SC2 (eg. marine/ling/zealot being 1/1/2 as opposed to footman/ghoul/grunt being 2/2/3).
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Sweden33719 Posts
Ah also one more thing, which RotterdaM brought up in his Dreamhack interview:
SC2 doesn't have as many slowing/stunning/ensnaring units as WC3, so small groups wont get trapped as easily.
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On January 03 2009 03:31 FrozenArbiter wrote:
Ah also one more thing, which RotterdaM brought up in his Dreamhack interview:
SC2 doesn't have as many slowing/stunning/ensnaring units as WC3, so small groups wont get trapped as easily.
I was just thinking about this - the thing is that since units die faster, the effect might be similar.
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On January 01 2009 13:42 naonao wrote:
The problem with small and split armies is that if they are to engage with a unsplit army, even if the player with the split army has a larger total army, the small armies would be completely destroyed. With larger maps, the distance between the small armies would be greater and the small parts would not be able to effectively work together because of the large distances between them.
Actually this isn't a big problem. This encourages attack versus defense. Where you can choose WHERE to attack your opponent, giving you an edge if your opponent has split his army. Basically this is how BW is right now. You split your army to defend your three expos, then the enemy scouts you and decides to attack the least defended one with his WHOLE army. But then again you can counterattack . SC2 right now looks like too much instant move armies and such. We need to make army positioning a key element of the game.
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Split Screens, though awkward, would work for spectating multi-front...
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On January 03 2009 03:41 naventus wrote:Show nested quote +On January 03 2009 03:31 FrozenArbiter wrote:
Ah also one more thing, which RotterdaM brought up in his Dreamhack interview:
SC2 doesn't have as many slowing/stunning/ensnaring units as WC3, so small groups wont get trapped as easily. I was just thinking about this - the thing is that since units die faster, the effect might be similar.
Not really, it simply means that unit conversion is less of a factor.
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Sweden33719 Posts
Conversion = Conservation?
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I think that this just adds more problems because then you have to have some way to balance the large vs. small armies
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On January 03 2009 03:41 naventus wrote:Show nested quote +On January 03 2009 03:31 FrozenArbiter wrote:
Ah also one more thing, which RotterdaM brought up in his Dreamhack interview:
SC2 doesn't have as many slowing/stunning/ensnaring units as WC3, so small groups wont get trapped as easily. I was just thinking about this - the thing is that since units die faster, the effect might be similar.
But units dying faster means that a small army can kill its equal worth of units against a larger army before they have time to place themselves in their proper formation.
Snares/roots means that you got a micro disadvantage with a small army vs a large one instead of a micro advantage while low lethality means that micro makes less of an impact except in terms of unit preservation which is impossible vs slowing armies.
A single reaver in starcraft can still kill a lot of a much bigger army, a single anything in wc3 is just free exp for your enemy. If all units had 4x the health this would not be the case though, then the single reaver would not kill anything at all if the opponent microed a bit.
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Wc3 seems like the game to play if you're interested in mostly micro, SC should stick with appealing to players that like to focus on micro and macro.
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I think this topic is a problem.
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Time is a "dimension of the battle field" that restricts big armies just like a choke point. If units have, say 1hp and same range for example, units would kill each other instantly and there is no way for a larger army to use its advantage in numbers to push throw out more firepower, there is simply no time to move into position. The ratio of movement speed to firepower/hp ratio is what determines how much firepower the bigger army can apply.
As for slowing abilities, it depends on whether it works better on small or large armies. If a slow ability only effect a part of the army (eg. ensnare) than it benefits the larger army more as it gets free kills. However, if an slow ability effects the whole army and more so for large armies, (eg. forcefield), it benefits the smaller army more.
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As for teleporting units, it does not necessarily mean less positional importance if one can still get an advantage holding a piece of ground first. Teleporting is no good if your opponent has mined the entire area...for example.
A game with strong small unit defenses and lousy mobility might end up in a rush to the center/critical point and lockdown game. Just imagine a TvT without dropships....
A game without strong small unit based defenses could end up in linear force on force pushes, and mobility only matter tactically...
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If you ask me, none of the the new mobility options is more mobile than mutalisks.
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On January 01 2009 18:57 FrozenArbiter wrote:Show nested quote +On January 01 2009 14:06 SlickR12345 wrote:On January 01 2009 14:04 Archerofaiur wrote:On January 01 2009 13:56 SlickR12345 wrote:
Go play WC3 you noob.
SC is about both micro and macro, 50-50%, half-half, do you understand or do you need me to draw you a picture?
Being more micro oriented just limits the styles of play, as well as strategy and tactics! Easy there. Your right about starcraft being about both micro and macro but there is no need to be a jerk about it. Try and start the new year on a good foot. suck it, i'd start the new year how ever i want and the least i could care is what i'm going to write to a stupid forum noob. ORLY? Well you can start it somewhere else then, see you in a week.
Woo I love Idiot Ban Ty! ")
Oh and I think that they need to keep it 50/50, micro and macro are equally important so just reducing one is stupid cause its cutting of some of the skill needed.
To be honest if SC2 was exactly like BW but with 3D graphics and physics and all that, who on TL wouldn't buy it...
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EPT
