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On May 28 2010 01:26 deadalnix wrote:
I guess the best way to solve this issue is actually to listen to people complaining about micro and how it have to be improved :D
If the units are powerfull only if driven properly casual playing against casuals will not havo trouble with them.
Remeber reaver ? lurker ? vulture's mines ?
Remember when tank where actually dealing more damage in siege mode ?
These stuff cannot be used esaily and prevent from a freewin against a non skilled person.
As far as I remember, on lower levels people have an extremely hard time fighting against/fending off lurks or sieged tanks. (while all you have to do is move into position and burrow/siege  )
In general though, the first reply in this thread sums it up perfectly: get good or die hard
It works like that for every game in which you play vs other players rather than computer controlled opponents. There's a single player mode for people who don't like to get that competitive. When you play any FPS game online for the first time you'll get owned until you practice more. Some people will do better than others but if you are a newcomer any average guy will toy around with you.
I have a friend who's excited about SC2 but doesn't have a beta key. I offered him one but he declined and said he'll only get trashed and isn't that competitive. He just wants to play the single player. If you want a casual SC2 game you can play vs computers, play UMS or stick to single player.
Another good example is WoW. It's very casual, you play co-op with tons of other people, however there also is a competitive PvP environment. If you suck at it you get owned. People will often try a few arena games (competitive 2v2, 3v3, 5v5 with rankings etc) and quit because they get stomped so hard and know it's just not the way how they enjoy the game.
When playing against other people there is no such thing as 'casual balance'. People on lower levels will always complain about certain things being too good, even in mirror match ups. People who aren't interested in getting good won't be playing competitively, people who are will be seeking help at certain resources such as TL/Liquipedia/Replays/Vods/etc. and become better.
Also, I believe that in order to join the ranks of White-Ra etc. you will need to have the right spirit and mind set; a competitive one that strives to becoming a better play at all times. I don't think there's any room for casual players that somehow become great players.
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On May 27 2010 17:15 Nitron wrote:
(Dow/Coh does not require any of those, i played a bit of those games but its highly unlikely they have cheese tactics)
They have their cheeses, they just tend to not be as instant-death.
For example, in DoW 2 and CoH it's pretty tough to completely kill off someone immediately in the Annihilate sense because of the base turrets. However, in both games you bottle players in their base pretty quickly which completely denies power + ability to tech and is basically instant-win.
Anyway, I'd say that 3x Sluggas against Space Marines and possibly Chaos as well is pretty cheesy in DoW 2 if you rush your Sluggas immediately at your opponent w/out capping. Gives you the opportunity to get a couple of really fast squad kills and from that take and hold map control really easily. Same for Hormagaunt spam early. Slugga rush can be invalidated pretty easily if the Space Marine went 3x Scouts (itself an arguably cheesy build although it lacks the killing power of Sluggas and such) and/or if the Space Marine is able to get his/her squads back to base w/out taking losses.
Turret spam/crawl, suppression spam/crawl, etc... All pretty cheesy.
Main difference though is that in DoW 2 and CoH skill/experience can overcome pretty much all those relatively easily and most "cheese builds" (like 3x Sluggas) aren't inherently cheesy- it's how they're used that can make them cheesy. There also tend to be safer, more standard-play strategies that with good micro can accomplish the same objective much more safely.
But anyway, as to the actual topic, I think that Smorrie and others have hit it quite squarely on the head that competitive MP is, well, competitive. You can help new players get accustomed to the game with tutorials, challenges, good AI (for example, AI that imitates rush builds, econ builds, etc... that are actually used in MP; for example how Brood War AI will 12 Nexus or 'ling rush or etc), robust replay system, and strong community. For the latter, L2P fever has kinda swept Dawn of War 2 recently as just a single community member created a Steam Group, made a bunch of forum posts, and started a massive effort to extend a helping hand to new players and match them with experienced players, helping them learn the ropes (DoW 2 L2P Steam Group).
My own experience with friends new to RTS games who decided to give SC2 Beta a try is that once I popped them links to TL and got them hooked on the Day[9] Daily and etc, they were fine and quite a few made it to Platinum (now Diamond) with ease despite never having played an RTS game competitively before at all.
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On May 27 2010 02:01 Dekoth wrote:+ Show Spoiler +
I am afraid it has little to do with elitism and more to do with unrealistic goals.
I have debated as to if I even wanted to respond to this, but it appears people simply don't get it. I am more then a little surprised that the OP claims to be a game designer and has that little grasp on the difference between a casual player and a non casual.
Simply put your example is never going to happen and here is why; The mind set between a casual player and a competitive player are completely different. A Casual player is NEVER going to become a competitive player. I think the core problem here is that most do not understand the difference between a Casual player, a new player and a competitive player. The three are not the same and there are some extremely distinct differences.
A Casual player is just that, casual. They aren't thinking in the competitive "How to I get better" mind set, they are thinking "I just want to have fun". The amount of hours you play does not dictate the type of player you are. So while you may have casual play hours due to RL obligations, if you think in a competitive mindset you are still a competitive player not a casual. I would go so far as to say there are few to no true casual players on this forum, but competitive players who have just had to accept playing casually due to other obligations.
A competitive player is constantly thinking on how to improve their game.
A new player could become casual or competitive, it simply depends on if they think "I want to have fun" or "How do I get good?".
So the real argument is does the product drive off a new player who could become competitive in your example? That question is difficult to answer because it really just depends on the individual player. If a player likes the overall game, then they are going to continue pushing to get better. If they don't they are going to move on when something else comes along. The balance you speak of is only going to be an issue on ladders, most true casual players are not going to bother with ladders. At the very least the tutorials and single player mode that we do not have here are going to up their skill sufficiently that the op example is a moot point anyhow.
I could go into a long drawn out debate as to why not catering to casual players is not going to affect this particular game, but I doubt most would read or comprehend it anyhow. Suffice to say I have been around this block more then a few times and catering balance on a casual level has always failed. There is not a single multiplayer game out that attempted to balance around casual play that survived. Every single game including WoW which is arguably one of the lowest skill demanding games out there is still balanced around the Max potential. To even attempt to argue that a game like this should be balanced around casual concerns such as suggested by the OP is simply absurd and smacks of a complete misunderstanding of gameplay balance.
(bold added) -eatthepath
I disagree with your post, but I'm really interested to hear your thoughts on why it doesn't matter in the case of SC2.
edit: Additionally, I'm glad this thread is filling out. Some really great posts, and the foreseeable not so great ones... but even the personal history rants are revealing. Looking forward to the response on the weekend.
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I think if a player is a future WhiteRa candidate, he wouldn't back off after a few early losses. He would start questioning and try to learn what he is doing wrong. And it doesn't take much logic to think 'if there are these million people playing this game and enjoying it, there has to be something wrong with me'.
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Greetings all,
I'm finally on my holidays so I now have some time to sit down and write a response to some\all of the points that people added during the week. I'm currently in norway and having to deal with a norweign keyboard so please forgive any punctionation errors  .
The first and most prevaling point I want to address is the idea that a casual player cannot become a competitive player and that a competitive player would never be put off by cheese plays. However, before I address the point I need to lay some groundwork so you better understand the concept I am trying to convey.
Every person, irrespective of current skill level, has these three traits:
What I will call "Decision Factor Time":
The time this person takes to make the decision "Do I want to play this game?". For example, the decision factor time of an Broodwar Champion might be 10 seconds. They heard Starcraft 2 was coming, confimed it was true and decided to buy and play it. The end. They would make the decision on the name alone.
A top champion of Supreme Commander like Unconquerable might have a DFT of 3 days. He was the top of the game at Supreme Commander, but it will take in a few days of play to decide if Starcraft 2 is the next game for him. During this 3 day period, he may decide that Starcraft 2 is not the next RTS for him and move on. This is the sort of "ultra competitive" player that cheese play (Creating the impression the game is all about cheese and therefore is shit) can put off.
A current skill level:
A skill level that they come to the game with.
Future skill level:
A future skill level they can\will reach if they decide to stay and play the game competitively.
I strongly refute the idea that players with a current skill level of say "Bad" or "Terribad" cannot have a future skill like of "Pro" or "Ultra pro". Really, this is what makes us human, we learn, adapt and grow. If we were all doomed to be at our current skill levels forever, I'd hate to think where the human race would be by now. I would agree that skill level does not generally move while a player is still in the DFT period.
This is because they are still deciding if they like and want to be better at the game or not. If they come to the conclusion "No I don't" then they will move on, be they awesome or awful. A DFT is a deeply personnal thing. Some will make snap decisions, others could take months, but generally once that decision is made, a player will stay and play your game for a good long time (until they are bored or feel they have exhausted the product).
So, now that groundwork is laid, how does this relate to the previous debate about tiered play? Well, it's important to understand that someone's DFT will usually, extremes aside, consist of the first half or beginning of your game. Therefore, if the game has "terrible" balance or a learning cliff at the beginning of the game, you can effectively cause a decision of "No, I won't stay and play this" from players still deciding if this game is for them or not.
Had they decided yes, they may have stayed and become great, or stayed and continued to be terribad, but either way they would have stayed and caused the community to grow. That is good for you as players. After all, you need an army of terribads to fill that audience at your esports games do you not?
This is why balance at all tiers is important, because even the best players or awesome players from other games will have a DFT and can still be put off early on if the early game experience is poor. Put off enough people and the game will stagnate at the top and die. A fate I'm sure none of you want.
Now, I know a lot of people were clamouring for me to give a solid example of a cheese actually in the game and address it without damaging the "competitive game". Sadly, I kind of predict that this will now make the thread all about this cheese rather than the arching points I've made, but whatever, I'll bite.
The cheese I want to address is bancheese vs zerg. The "pro" version of this cheese is to wall off, grab two fast banches and go queen hunting. Once the queen at the expand and at the main (if zerg is fast exanding) are dead, the game is over. Hydra's generally can't make it out in time, so the only real defence is more queens (a decision you'd only make if you knew this was coming). Sadly, zerg have terribad scouting and a terran wall-off will stop low and mid skilled players from detecting this cheese is coming before it's too late.
The terran player can expand into cloak and reinforce enough to ensure any additional queens that are produced are nuked. This is a relatively risk free and easy cheese to pull off against zerg as they have a heavily delayed basic anti-air combat unit in the hydra.
So how can we address this? The basic thing to understand here is that this is a timing attack. It works because it can arrive 10-30 seconds (depending on skill level) before a single hydra can be produced. If reinforced, bancheese can also dominate small groups of hastily aquired hydras.
So, I sat down on saturday and I thought about solutions and here is what I came up with:
Banchee's now start with a single attack, on the model one of the rocket pods will be missing. Banchee's now have two upgrades at the starport tech lab instead of one. These are:
"Rocket Pod" 100m 100g +XTime
Adds an additional rocket pod to the banchee, improving damage.
"Cloak" 100m 100g +Ytime
Adds cloak to the banchee
This change would have these effects:
The two banchee push on zerg would have it's damage reduced or the push would be delayed by the rocket pod upgrade time and 100m 100g.
There is a new push available in an earlier cloak push but at half damage. I would definitely like to see how this plays out, but I suspect it will be much easier to stop than the original cheese.
The end result is the same, for 200m 200g, you have full damage, fully cloaked banchees. Therefore, the competitive or higher end will be mostly unaffected, except in cases where cloak is not aquired (is this often? data would need to be gathered to find out).
The biggest benefit of this change is that TimeX and TimeY can be controlled and adjusted in future balance changes to delay the two different pushes (cloaked and twopush) independantly until a good balance is reached.
In conclusion, I'd just like to add that I don't feel like there is a problem out there that cannot be solved by a good designer. I feel like "oh it's too complex or too deep, etc" is just an excuse made by bad designers. Once you've indentified the problem (in this case timings), there should always be a way in which things can be adjusted (and even look cool or add depth) to fix any percieved or real issues with the game.
A percieved issue can be just as deadly as a real issue, when it comes to those players still deciding if this is the game for them. This is why the void ray got hit with the nerf bat and I do feel that it was the right decision for the overall health of the game (that said, I would have tried a different balance change to preserve the end game).
Anyway, thats enough wall of text for now.
Thanks for reading.
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I don't like this example because you discuss an ability that is not even looked at by top players - they never use ever - so it has no impact and won't affect both playerbases when you change it. The problem is when something balanced in top-level play but broken in bronze league is changed to fix it at the low level but disrupt the balance at the top.
For example, DTs kill new players too easily because they are invisible and new players aren't good enough to pre-emptively get turrets, or save orbital energy (assuming they even get orbital). Balance at the lower levels dictates that DTs now take longer to build, or are only cloaked until their energy runs out, or something similar. DTs at high levels are already rarely used because they are inhibitively expensive and this change to accommodate lower ranks adversely and significantly alters competitive play at the top.
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I happen to disagree with you in this situation, with your banshee example it is very easy to stop with proper scouting by making more queens. The thing that needs to be addressed is the learning curve, to teach newer players how to do things like scout.
I believe these things are being addressed by blizzard by making tutorial like challenges that would help newer players learn and refine basic skills. So with a solution like this you don't change balance, but give newer more casual players an opportunity to better fight cheese while not disrupting higher level play.
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On May 26 2010 07:26 Edmon wrote:
The point I am trying to make is this. A casual player could be the next WhiteRa or Sen. You just don't know. But if they lose 10 times to a cheese, they aren't going to think "well, I need to L2P". They will just leave because they think the game is shit and your game will die. Had they stayed, prehaps they would have become great. But they didn't because the cheese has killed the game for them early, when they are still deciding "Do I like this game?".
If you get cheese'd easily, then you need to rethink your strategy. If you can't adapt, then there's the bronze league for you.
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Sounds like you need to replace the word "casual" with "bad". The problems you're talking about are things that people should be able to adapt to in less than 10 games. If they lose 10 games straight to the same build they aren't casual, they are just bad compared to who they are losing to.
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I'm a fairly casual player, or at least a pretty bad one (fear my two-digit APM!) who landed on his arse in Copper League when he first got into the beta. I've since improved a fair bit and moved up a few leagues - not because my micro or macro have gotten much better, but almost entirely because I've learned to do two things:
1. Recognize and defend against early cheese.
2. Recognize and punish opponents who turtle and tech.
These only come with practice. You have to lose to cheese a few times before you learn to deal with it. And you have to lose to your own passivity a few times before you learn to deal with that.
For me there is absolutely no question that when it comes to questions of balance, top-level play has to come first. That's where balance actually counts, because you can isolate the properties of how the units interact when macro/micro fundamentals are no longer part of the equation because they've been nearly maxed out on both sides.
That isn't to say that casual balance shouldn't be a serious consideration; just that it ought to be of lower priority.
Where balance becomes an issue in low-level play is when it takes far, far more skill - macro, micro, timing, scouting, and game sense - to defend against an attack than it takes for someone on the offensive to pull it off.
One problem that I see in the lower leagues is that people virtually never build casters (Infestors, Ravens, Ghosts, HTs), mostly because they A-move everywhere. You even see a lot of armies that never bring Sentries along for force fields or shields. This is their loss, but it's okay to some extent because there are alternatives to these casters in terms of what they counter (e.g. scans instead of Ravens, or Colossi instead of HTs to deal with mass light units). And not having a Guardian Shield, at this level, doesn't mean you'll automatically lose. Setting aside unit compositions for moment, I think one should be able to defend against A-move attacks with A-move defence, but it should absolutely be a requirement to have good micro to counter good micro. And at some point, you have to learn to use casters to keep up. The point, though, is that the game should at least be playable while you develop different game skills layer by layer.
The best solution, I think, is to give casual players options (units, tech paths, upgrades, abilities) that are clearly suboptimal and nearly useless in high-level 1v1, but which are crutches they can fall back on to survive in the game.
For example: for an unskilled player who can't spend through the minerals in the bank, a supply drop or scan may well be a far better choice than calling down a MULE. Obviously, if that player wants to get better and tighten up on macro, he needs to wean himself off the dependency on scans for scouting, and not get supply-blocked so much. But that can be developed with time. If unskilled players die to early-game cheese all the time, they won't get much of an opportunity to learn mid-game skills like managing expansions.
Of course, this is all easier said than done.
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people arent saying bad players cant become good. They are saying quitters who quit games because something is cheesy arent good at RTS's anyway and if they quit who the hell cares. They can play UMS and single player or comp stomps
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I really don't like your first example: giving overlords energy could further change things on the pro level (maybe susceptibility to feedback will allow for easy shutdown of any overlord scouting, etc) and require you to make more and more contrived changes to compensate.
Is it really easier to add a new upgrade to the banshee, nerfing T harass instead of just asking the Z player to scout or sac an overlord if he sees a smaller army at the ramp? Making an extra queen at each hatch easily allows get to get up - I think these choices reward more active and alert play, thats all.
Similar story in sc:bw - as terran bunker rushing is considered cheese, easy to just end the game against a weaker opponent. However, at pro level a bunker rush is expected to be shut down, and the threat is just used to pull a few workers off mining and do some economic damage. Cheese IS a viable strategy, you can't just eliminate it all because weaker players don't scout and adapt their play.
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Edmon, Good thing you took your time and have posted that real game example. Cause now it's clear as day that you have absolutely no clue what are you talking about.
First of all, do you understand what you're saying?
You're saying that certain strategy (in your case Banshee rush) is imbalanced at lower tiers, because some people over there lose to it cause they don't know how to counter it and therefore it should be fixed. Holy shit, I hope I'm not the only who can't wrap his mind around over how ridiculous this argument is.
It's like saying that fork in chess shouldn't be possible because people, who never experienced it or bad enough to constantly fall to it, can't do anything to prevent it.
Or like saying that queen shouldn't move diagonally because people who don't know it can move this way or who never anticipate it moving like that are constantly getting trapped by it.
Moreover you suggest to fix Banshee in a way, that will make it useless in every game, except in a game between bad people who still don't know what to do about it.
And this
The end result is the same, for 200m 200g, you have full damage, fully cloaked banchees. Therefore, the competitive or higher end will be mostly unaffected
is just ridiculous thing to say and shows that you don't really understand how the game is played.
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On May 31 2010 02:43 InRaged wrote:
Edmon, Good thing you took your time and have posted that real game example. Cause now it's clear as day that you have absolutely no clue what are you talking about.
See, if you note, as I entirely predicted almost every post since mine has become a discussion about the banchee rush. Everyone has preconcieved ideas about what makes this rush good, bad, counterable, uncounterable, balanced, unbalanced, etc based entirely on their own experiences. I cannot defeat your experience, because you've experienced it and therefore it must be right. You cannot see outside of your own experiences, hence why I discussed something made up, to avoid this pit.
You also state quite strongly that the end result is not the same. It clearly is, if you get cloak. Do people always get cloak or not? This was something I would have to research carefully and adjust to accordingly. Lets say they don't, we could adjust rocketpod to just 50-50 and keep the delay, bringing cloak up to 150-150. Balance needs data, time, experimentation to be successful.
The zerg example is particularly potient, because players are led to believe the counter to this rush is hydras, not queens. Queens are almost seen as a drone-like unit to most casuals. So it can be some what counter intuitive to work out what you are meant to do. Especially when spore crawlers are quite unlikely to save you because they "suck" to use the terminology of the community.
Ah well, not to worry.
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I come back to this thread for one reason only: to see the average TL poster demonstrate time and time again that they suffer tunnel vision and cannot even begin to grasp a deeper consideration of game design beyond marauder is OP.
Why do you guys get so hung up on his words or examples instead of trying to appreciate his point? Take a step back and realize that the only thing you guys caught about his reply was the example he used and all you were able to do was discuss his example and not his IDEA.
Thanks for the laughs InRaged. Your post is a masterpiece of irony.
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Not every game needs to be declawed.
Look at counterstrike: You get 100hp without any means to regenerate that, single shot can kill you and if you die, you have to sit around until the round finishes. Not to mention that dying in every round punishes you by not having enough cash to buy optimal equipment. Now tell me, how a game, where you can get utterly dominated and embarrassed by the better player, is one of the most popular MP shooters of all time?
Causal players are people who don't want to get good at the game, you should never design for them as your main audience if you also aim at the hardcore crowd. Don't confuse that with making the game easily accessible: Everyone can play singleplayer, playing WoW 1-80 is piss easy etc.
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On May 31 2010 03:26 Zaphid wrote:
Not every game needs to be declawed.
Look at counterstrike: You get 100hp without any means to regenerate that, single shot can kill you and if you die, you have to sit around until the round finishes. Not to mention that dying in every round punishes you by not having enough cash to buy optimal equipment. Now tell me, how a game, where you can get utterly dominated and embarrassed by the better player, is one of the most popular MP shooters of all time?
Causal players are people who don't want to get good at the game, you should never design for them as your main audience if you also aim at the hardcore crowd. Don't confuse that with making the game easily accessible: Everyone can play singleplayer, playing WoW 1-80 is piss easy etc.
I agree that not every game needs to be declawed.
There is never any doubt in counterstrike about what you should be doing, however. Shoot the other guy first. Ironically, it's the single shot death that allows bad players to sometimes succeed, through the pure randomness of many of the guns (Outside of the Mag) and just through simple surprise and\or camping in weird places.
Sitting out in counterstrike is a weakness of the game, in a way. Players should be playing, but it is necessary for the type of experience the game is trying to create. Could this bit of the game be improved? On many servers it has been, with chat rooms and webgames, etc which you can mess with while you are dead. This has in many cases let to the growth of webcommunities who are intergrated with their CS server in this manner.
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I think a better example of this concept is the recent Forge nerf. Cannon rushes against Zerg were seen as a bit too powerful early on. This could be beaten by experienced players, but new players had big problems. The solution made it weaker, but had virtually no real impact on the higher tiers of play (correct me if I am wrong).
His point is that it makes sense to balance for all levels. The casual players having fun is as vital to long term health as hardcore players. If it isn't upsetting higher level play, or adding to it then it makes sense to balance for lower levels. I can come up with an extreme hypothetical, but I doubt it would really help.
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If you look at This and go to the challenge mode, there will be blizzard UMS made to help teach newer players basics, a better solution to the casual balance would be to just implement more scenarios like this to help newer players with common cheeses.
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a cheese that only works on newbs and doesnt affect competitive games is a design flaw. that overlord would only punish people going 14 CC, or people who dont have crisp build orders, while not requiring any skill on the zerg's end. therefore, this ability has no place in the game.
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EPT
