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Recently, there have been a deluge of posts here and there about how to 'save' Starcraft 2. One of the things that has come out of the veritable storm of opinions is that casual gamers are important to the life, longevity and popularity of SC2 as a whole. I think that the nature of both 'maps' and 'custom games' can play a crucial role in attracting and keeping that so-called 'casual' audience.
But just what do we mean to mean when we say 'casual' gamers? Know thy audience and all that.
To take the term from Day9's storytime daily on MTG, I have to imagine that there are (or could be) a lot of 'casual-tryhards' playing SC2.
This kind of gamer is interested in winning (not just having a blast with friends, like the casual-social gamer might). But they also aren't so 'hardcore' as to dedicate dozens of hours out of their week into refining, mastering and optimizing builds and technique in order to demonstrate their mastery of the game.
In a variety of places, I think it has been correctly said that the minority of potential SC2 players are of the class of gamer for which 1v1, ranked ladder matches is the preferred option. This highly competitive, skill-rewarding, mistake-punishing gameplay mode simply isn't for everyone, even if it is the kind of play that constitutes things like the GSL or IPL.
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On one hand, people might like to point out the shiny new Arcade section designed to promote UMS custom games that are not really RTS games at all that should appeal to the 'casual gamer.'
True, to a casual-social gamer, things like Storm of the Imperial Sanctum, Battle for Sky Fortress, Runling Run, etc, etc, are all the kind of game in which the skill -> success formula isn't quite as tight. The many elements of 'chaos' and places in which to deflect blame for losing take the sting out of 'losing (if the map even has such a condition)'
This is probably one of the reasons that MOBA genre games have been on such an upswing as of late. It's also the reason why most people probably won't play the resource-intensive, $60 SC2 client just to play MOBAs that are free-to-play elsewhere.
The existence of these kinds of games - MOBAs, ship battles, hero arenas, survival challenges, tower defences and so on - in some ways, are 'icing on the cake' that can provide an interesting and fun diversion from core-gameplay, but ultimately may not result in lasting playership.
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These kinds of games do nothing for the 'casual-tryhard.'
The casual-tryhard wants to play SC2.
This means that they don't want to play BGH with its infinite resources, nor Fastest Maps with instant build times. They also might not want to play modded melee maps with their new units and balance (even though I personally think they're awesome).
To this end, the proposed introduction of unranked 'find match' modes by Blizzard would indeed be an obvious solution to the ladder anxiety that allegedly disuades many from playing SC2 and make the experience more easily enjoyable by more players.
But still, many may not want to face the pressure of going it solo. Indeed, many people have been commenting on the insane fun that went on in 4v4s in BW when you played with friends or strangers in a non-ranked kind of way. Being able to play Starcraft, without really having to worry so much about optimization and being able to rely on teammates and do team tactics and such is a social dimension to a melee game after all. And those kinds of experiences can be rather enjoyable and help retain players as players.
In playing some kind of Starcraft - rather than DotA in SC2-client - there can even be peripheral interest generated in the ultra-refined 1v1 prowess of the pro scene. The casual-tryhard can become at least somewhat familiar with melee and gain a better appreciation for the things that pros can do that casual players cannot.
So, the question is, "Will unranked 4v4 mode be enough to retain the casual-tryhard players?"
This brings me to the part where I actually suggest a possible change, rather than simply list my opinions and possible insights into things:
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With the current maps that are available for 2v2, 3v3 and 4v4 gameplay, it might not be possible to have fun games in SC2. At least, not fun for the casual-tryhard.
I'll freely admit that I don't have a superb understanding of map design, nor of high-level 1v1 tactics and strategies.
But I feel as though I know enough to say that if you try to go 3 hatch before pool on any map in the non-1v1 (hereafter, multiplayer) map pool, you will die with almost 100% certainty. Or, you might end up putting your third in your opponent's natural.
I suspect, though may be wrong, that there is consensus that Blizzard's multiplayer map pool is awful and produces terrible games. They tend to involve impossible-to-hold rushes and extremely-low-econ games.
In the past, there have been a few discussions on attempting to create viable multiplayer maps that are able to support economic or tech focused openers that do not simply die to concerted rush builds from the opposing teams.
So much of the 1v1 metagame has evolved around taking expansions in order to grow one's economy while defending with minimal, but efficient defences. On the current multiplayer maps, it is almost impossible to grow your economy safely, and you cannot get by on minimal defences due to the possibility of getting 4v1 busted as well as the undefendable nature of many of the maps.
Starcraft 2 is a very econ-heavy game. More than in some other games - like Warcraft 3, or maybe even BW - you really need a strong economy to be able to do most of the things that you would want to do in 1v1 games.
For this reason, the casual-tryhard may not enjoy multiplayer games either. It's all 'rush or be rushed (and die)' and not very strategic. It would not well approximate the core gameplay mechanics of a strategy game.
- if anyone has stories about 4v4 being other than I describe it, I invite you to share them; the few I've played were fairly terrible in my view.
I won't pretend to have a solution about how to fix the terrain such that a zerg can hatch first safely, or that FFE will be viable, or that CC first won't be crushed by double 7rr. I actually don't really think it's possible to balance multiplayer purely through terrain.
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Perhaps this is going about the problem the wrong way.
Multiplayer will never be a good place to practice 1v1 strats. This seems reasonably uncontentious. But the casual-tryhard doesn't want to go as far as having infinite resources available - he/she still wants to be limited and constrained by some amount of strategic considerations.
Somewhere in the middle between 1v1 constraints and BGH is where the casual-tryhard wants his/her experience.
Instead of trying to create terrain suitable for transposing 1v1 strats into multiplayer, perhaps the issue can be circumvented by having More Resources per Base (MRB).
Having more resources in your main might accomplish many things:
- it allows you to tech faster, meaning rushes may be less effective
- it means that there is a less dire need to expand to other bases, meaning that the map terrain can be less constrained insofar as there is no strong need for defensible nats and thirds
- non-infinite resources means that eventually you would have to expand, just not necessarily within the first 5 minutes of the game or risk falling behind.
- it doesn't require changing unit build times or costs; it only means redesigning the mineral and gas lines.
- using high tech units make it a more enjoyable experience for the player
Balance is already almost impossible due to the very nature of multiplayer. That MRB would cause massive upheaval in 1v1 strats is irrelevant since 1v1 maps would have the regular amount of resources in base.
It wouldn't require Blizzard to do anything except make their bases different. They could even keep the maps where some players have no logical natural expansion . . . . maybe. As we have seen in the past, Blizzard is reluctant to even do something like put neutral depots on maps. But can an extra geyser or some gold patches in your main really 'confuse' people?
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I actually have no idea whether MRB is a viable idea, or a completely terrible idea. I also don't know whether or not multiplayer needs fixing, or if MRB fixes anything. For all I know, it might make all-in-ing absurdly powerful and even more unstoppable (although, perhaps terrain could alleviate that concern?). I also don't know if my casual-player distinction holds water, or if these speculations square with reality in anyway.
But suggesting fixes and possible solutions seems to be the new in-thing this month. And so, I humbly submit my ideas for the consideration of the community.
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It seems we may have come full circle. Is it time to bring back BGH?
I think that many of the true casual players you are talking about have either already left, or are just left to watching streams. I think MRB would really only be fun in a BGH-like setting, a sort of sandbox thing where anything goes. Bunker up your choke, then see who can build 200/200 3-3 BC's and Science vessels first. 1v1 is very competitive by nature and doing MRB in 1v1 would be something like playing chess where all the pieces are queens; it doesn't really teach you about the game and it will lose that fun factor even faster. just my 2c
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How about just larger maps with more bases? Right now most 3v3/4v4 maps are really only designed to allow each player to take 2 bases - all the 3rds are easily contestable, and there generally aren't enough for everybody. Allowing each player to take 3 or even 4 bases would expand options and still keep the game exciting instead of everyone turtling on 1 (higher resource) base.
I posted this 3v3 map a while ago here. It's not very well made/decorated, since it was only my 2nd SC2 map, but it's the sort of general idea that I'm talking about - it is feasible, though difficult, for each player to take 4 bases on this map.
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The original BGH *was* MRB, not IRB (infinite resources per base). There were certainly a lot of minerals per base, but I have played in games where bases have mined out back in BW. I actually don't know if there are truly infinite resource bases in SC2's BGH, but regardless that not really the point.
There is already a way to achieve MRB very easily, two actually. The first way would be to use gold minerals and just increase the rate per patch. The second way would be to increase the number of patches and make there be room for more workers per base. (or both more patches of gold patches =X)
In the original BGH, the latter was the case which allowed for more worker production to be more rewarding. Unfortunately in SC2, just about always going to have a 3x Patches max efficiency, but regardless let's say this is the case.
What have we accomplished? Well, we've increased the efficiency of mining past the first 16 workers. Does that make 4 players going 11/11 rax together less strong? Does it make canon rushing less strong? Does it make 6 pooling less strong?
If a teammate or two is ganked by one of these scenarios, I guess the remaining players have a better chance to bounce back to win it for the team, but I'm not sure that this completely solves the problem the way you seem to envision, does it?
I think you can answer your own question though with some simple testing. Open up the editor, grab a Bliz map, modify the resources to the way you desire (3hyg @ 25000, 12gold min @ 15000... go, or w/e), and then publish it as MRB Yarfbinkle, or w/e. Play it with the buddies you 4v4 with and then post back with your findings. If you are lucky, you map will become the new top played map in the arcade, or wherever you publish it to.
And if you are right about the amount of casual-tryhards and what they are looking for in their gaming, you should have no problem single-handedly bringing back to melee all the people who at the moment are playing Squadron Tower Defense, Nexus Wars, Desert Strike, and the other fairly competitive UMS's out there, which *imo* is where that demographic (that still opens the SC2 client) currently resides (for the most part).
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I think making team games more popular/accessible for casuals would be a great way to increase the SC2 playerbase. I don't think gold minerals is a good idea, as timings would just hit a lot quicker, but more minerals per patch seems fine.
Really, the rush problems that pop up in 2v2/etc. is the maps aren't made correctly for the format. If some decent team maps were made and blizzard actually put them on the ladder (that is the real hurdle), rushes wouldn't be so OP.
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Team games are played both by casuals and by competitive players that want to fool around / take a break from the stress of 1v1. I think the current maps idea of 3v3 and 4v4 is decent, the only problem is we need new maps, I don't really mind not having to many expansions, while it can be irritating when games do get to a later stage, games are very fun still. If you play as a team, you will not die to rushes.
I think the best thing that can be done about 3v3 and 4v4 is to rotate new maps in to the pool all the time, but you can keep most of them with the same size, maybe only 2 or 3 maps with enough 3rds for all players, and max 1 with possible 4ths, since a map with so many bases would be huge and not fun to play by everyone.
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I agree soooo much. The terrible team map pool has turned half my friends away from the game. A lot of people don't like customs and don't like 1v1 ; they just want to fool around and have fun with their friends, and that's not something you can achieve when only 2 maps allow both players to take a third+ and the rest have such ridiculous stuff as shorter-than-steppes-of-war rush distance, double backdoors into the mains, siegeable mains - seriously wtf Blizz, do you even have a clue how to make playable maps...
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there was some discussion around team maps a few month ago here, but i cannot remember if i have ever seen maps that came from all the ideas that were discussed there.
also you need a good form of advertising team maps to get them to casual players.
from FPS map making communities i remember temporary groups of map makers who collaboratively produced map packs on themes or topics like christmas but also on specific modes like capture the flag. Possibly map makers could produce some nice team maps and we give them to blizzard as a christmas present.
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United Kingdom20326 Posts
There is already a way to achieve MRB very easily, two actually. The first way would be to use gold minerals and just increase the rate per patch
You dont want to do this, ever. The longer it takes to get up to full income, the better. If you can reach 2 probes per mineral patch +3 on a gas by 20 supply then it takes power away from tech (and arguably makes it worthless) because an 8-patch+gold base would not speed up production of say immortals or the first stalkers, but would massively increase the power of any proxy gate, cannon rush, 3-6gate all in from 1 base, etc.
If you make minerals return 3 or 4 instead of 5 per trip, the balance of power in 4gate or blink vs robo shifts QUICKLY in favor of robo, unwinnably so if you dont take expansions into account, but if you increase mining per patch, the opposite is true with strengh of immortal play
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I really liked NegativeZero's 3v3 map 7 posts above ^. The concept is the same as for a 1v1 map, which I think is really great. That is certainly a lot better than ANY of the current maps in the 3v3 map pool. Especially Dig Site, Monsoon (omfg why did they add this again?), temple of the preservers, Silent Dunes, Ulaan Deeps, the Bio Lab...... Ok, so 2 out of 8 maps are decent, not great. Thats just horrific.
I like the suggestions of the OP, but I'd rather have accessible natural expansions instead of MRB. Remember 1v1 maps like xelnaga caverns, Incineration zone and Lost Temple, where all the expansions were on the low ground? That should not exist in ANY map, team or solo league. Can't think of any map that has a low ground natural expansion in 1v1 since XelNaga Caverns actually..
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On October 23 2012 23:04 Cyro wrote:Show nested quote + There is already a way to achieve MRB very easily, two actually. The first way would be to use gold minerals and just increase the rate per patch You dont want to do this, ever. The longer it takes to get up to full income, the better. If you can reach 2 probes per mineral patch +3 on a gas by 20 supply then it takes power away from tech (and arguably makes it worthless) because an 8-patch+gold base would not speed up production of say immortals or the first stalkers, but would massively increase the power of any proxy gate, cannon rush, 3-6gate all in from 1 base, etc. If you make minerals return 3 or 4 instead of 5 per trip, the balance of power in 4gate or blink vs robo shifts QUICKLY in favor of robo, unwinnably so if you dont take expansions into account, but if you increase mining per patch, the opposite is true with strengh of immortal play
I do not see how this is necessarily true. First of all, if you are using gold minerals, you might as well you high yield gas, so while the proportion isn't the same, it helps to mitigate the kind of balance shift you are talking about. Secondly, replacing blue minerals with gold changes *nothing* about how long it takes to get full income, it simply makes your income per worker/trip higher, so your full income number is higher and you can build things faster (including taking gases earlier...). Third, and this is probably the most important -- we're talking about improving the game for casual-tryhards who want to get stuff up faster and with greater quantity than the normal game, but not as stupid, insta-silly as something like Kulas Extreme. I doubt somewhat minor (relative to the kind of players / game experience we are talking about) balance issues are really going to come into play in any meaningful way. And it's not like they aren't going to *want* to rush to and play with more tech units anyway. With such a fast income, I doubt there is going to be too much worry about very early game concerns. I may be wrong, but I really don't see why the suggestion to use gold minerals (or someother modified higher income minerals/gas) wouldn't be something to try.
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- it allows you to tech faster, meaning rushes may be less effective
I am not convinced.
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I feel strongly that that the 3v3 and 4v4 map pools in particular are pretty darn awful. (3v3 being the worst) In the past I've put forward some ideas for different layouts and concepts using both standard bases and FRB. I'm gonna post them here because why not. They're all published on NA and unlocked so feel free to use my terraining to try out your ideas.
4v4 - Sand Ocean /FRB BGH remake - Small Game Hunters /FRB 4v4 Concept /My best known map is a 2v2
Hey NegativeZero, did you stop working on that 3v3 map? it was/is really good!
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Time for some replies: (It's so nice to get some well-mannered replies. Not like in so many of the other threads on TL these days. Thank you for that.)
@HypertonicHydroponic
- you can actually change worker / patch efficiency by changing the 'time spent on patch' number in the data editor. But I'm attempting to find a solution that doesn't require changing data fields since Blizzard doesn't really like that. And it moves it even further away from the 'standard' 1v1 experience. You can even make workers mine from green-tinted mineral patches and return gas if you really wanted to. (I did these things once in a fastest map I tried to make while experiementing with the data editor).
I would go and do some mapping, but I'm in the middle of mid-term season at university until next week, so I don't exactly have too much time at the moment.
And ironically, my buddies I used to 4v4 with no longer play SC2 because the games weren't fun. . .
@-NegativeZero-
I'd certainably be amenable to thinking that superior base design / terraining could also go a long way towards making team games better. I just remember that some people weren't too keen on having a massive 256x256 fortress map with over 30 bases. But on the other hand, maybe that's how we can introduce variety into the map pool.
Some standard resourced bases on gigantic maps with tons of expos. And then some relatively smaller maps with MRB with a different gameplay emphasis than taking expansions and macroing up.
@Aunvilgod
I'm not convinced yet either. But then that's what musing and then experimentation is for. I don't know with any certainty how the impact of MRB would interact with possible terrain features on yet-uncreated and yet untested maps. It's within the realm of logical possibility that some combination of MRB and non-Blizzard maps might yield something good. Maybe marginally faster tech + much better base design could trump marginally faster concerted rushes. I have no idea.
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Now time for some new comments:
The thing that makes theorizing balance about multiplayer games difficult - maybe almost impossible - is that there's the ability to support your team mates, to divide and conquer and stand united. The 'balance of power' of individual openers that one might consider in 1v1s almost goes completely out the window in the face of collective power. Which of course ties into the map topography and how you design the bases and how your allies can reinforce you in times of need. And of course, many Blizzard maps perhaps aren't well designed in that regard either.
There's simply so little data and experiementation in team game balance in general, that it's really hard to say a priori. Hence experimentation (real life permitting that is).
Also, what do you think about unchecking the 'locked alliance' box for team melee games?
If you're playing ranked matches, it would have made sense to lock them to prevent backstabs and abhorrent unfairness to your ladder points.
But if it's unranked or custom, why not? I seem to remember that the diplomacy tab was a source of incredible chaos and fun memories in the past. Early on in SC2, I remember a lot of my friends bemoaning the greyed out option in the lobby.
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On October 24 2012 07:58 TheFish7 wrote:I feel strongly that that the 3v3 and 4v4 map pools in particular are pretty darn awful. (3v3 being the worst) In the past I've put forward some ideas for different layouts and concepts using both standard bases and FRB. I'm gonna post them here because why not. They're all published on NA and unlocked so feel free to use my terraining to try out your ideas. 4v4 - Sand Ocean / FRB BGH remake - Small Game Hunters / FRB 4v4 Concept / My best known map is a 2v2Hey NegativeZero, did you stop working on that 3v3 map? it was/is really good!
At the time I stopped working on it I thought I was done since that was all I thought I was capable of at the time (especially regarding aesthetics), but as I gain more experience with the editor I might go back and try to improve it a bit.
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what you need is this barrier that splits the map in half and at the 10 min mark it disappears and you an attack your opponents. that would stop those rushes cold. maybe just a custom map first idk....just an idea.
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Hey everyone!! I've been ranked 1 master multiple season at 2v2, beating some GM and beating like 30% of the time the number 1 team in Europe, Aristo and his buddy.
Here is my 2 cent about why you do have to rush and cant expand safely in 2V2 :
- The rushing combos from different races are absolutely imbalanced. The different races were never meant to work together and some units have far too much synergy. Think about the so classical helions-speedling combo. What does counter helions? marauders, roaches, stalkers. What does counter those? Ling. Nothing in 1v1 will ever come close to that power.
-Because the different races rely on different mechanics to defend themself early on. Protoss relies on forcefield and sim city vs Z for instance. In current 2v2, 3v3 maps you cant use sim city and force field to protect urself, because guess what? The Z has a terran buddy! Plus if u used sim city on the toss expand, they can go and kill the other expand. Money invested in sim city/canon is now useless, etc. So if you need to wall vs Z but need to not do that vs terran, then what?
More on the subject : The creep need to not block you ally's structures!! how do you make spine crawlers to defend if you mate has to make bunkers at the same exact place?
-Because the rushers have multiple possible targets (instead of the single target represented by a main base in 1v1), a rush force an answer from both. Example of 2v2 : one Z 6 pools, he can choose to go in either ennemy base. Both have to make canon/bunkers/spines. If you drone after your 6 initial lings, you have forced twice the amount of loss ressources (worker cutting) by your ennemies! Same goes for muta
-Why will even late game never be balanced : think about those combos : Collo + Vikings, Fungal + Storm (rofl haha). even better : fungal + collossus. The Best Combo Ever : Fungal + Siege tank!!!!! (muahahahahahah). I've seen 400 ennemy food die to ~10 fungals and the constant fire of 5 sieged tanks. And I didnt lose any units in this engagement!
-To solve all those problems, here is my point : the only map i would ever see viable in 3v3-4v4 for antyhing else than rush would have to include a wide base with 3 spawning points and more inbase expansions. All of that protected by a single choke that should be wallable by 2 players very quickly (so that you can have zerg players in your team). No destructibe rocks. A 7 RR can kill destructible rocks in time for the rush, so what about 7 rr+ling+marines+stalkers? The choke has to not give vision ofc, and has to be small enough to be locked by 2 force fields. It has to be either that or the map has to be as big as 2 taldarim altar together. Now ofcourse it would be so easy to macro on those maps it would be the forced answer every game. But I think there is no in between. If possible you want to watch out to not make a contain too easy to execute and too hard to break.
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Blizzard should have built on maps like Fastest and BGH. They can easily do this by adding a 'casual' or 'fun' league where it only contains maps like Fastest and BGH.
Its obvious team games will never be balanced. Why not just completely separate team games and 1v1 so that team maps dont have to obey standard 1v1 map rules? Ive personally stopped playing team games after I found out 9/10 games is a 5-8min timing or just cheese.
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Interesting perspective Natalya, thanks. I wish you had posted this a day or two ago, as we actually just had a map competition for 2v2 maps :-P And I think the maps might have been different if we had read this first. 2 topics were randomly picked out of a hat, and 1 was "2v2". Most of us are pretty ignorant about how to make a good 2v2 map (actually, I don't think anyone really knows how to make a good one, which is part of the problem).
One other thought - in the editor you can increase the hp and/or armor of rocks. Would destructible rocks ever be viable to create a good 2v2 map if they had, say, 10k hp instead of 2k?
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mmmmh, I dunno exactly. I guess it all depends on how greedy you want to let players play. 10k hp on the rocks seems a little overkill, those rocks would look unkillable, a little retarded lol. I dont like the idea of rocks as back door to main bases anyway. If you want to put rocks, then put them like in cloud kingdom, the rocks that are close to the nat : put them so that when destroyed the choke's getting larger. So that it wont nullify the bunkers/canons protecting the first entrance. Because if you want to rush and there is a backdoor entrance, the problem is also that you nullify those costy defenses.
Also, i've now been thinking for a couple hours about what the next expos should looks like (the expos after the in-base expos). I think that in a 3v3, they should be all quite close to the shared main and that nearly every attack path beside very sneaky and longer ones should be covered by xel'naga. I've never really played some 3v3, but the idea should be this one : if one guy spot the other coming for his 3rd, the armies of the whole defending team should be able to be there in time to defend, meaning it cant be too far from the main. If you dont do so, if you spread out bases too much, the bases will be picked off all the time and in the end no one will take them. Another solution could be to make xelnagas very powerfull, to place them so they can see the attack coming from afar. 2 base is better than 1 base, but Z needs 3 bases when other races needs 2...
Another point i could see is that the 3rd bases have to be quite wildly open, because well, there will be 6 armies fighting there!!
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EPT
