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On January 24 2012 09:22 zeden wrote:Show nested quote +On January 24 2012 08:30 ChoboDane wrote:On January 24 2012 08:04 zeden wrote: -remove smart-casting. -equal and harsher punishment for missing mules/larvae inject/crono. -bigger reward for great micro/control.
I] Smart-casting != intelligent-casting. Even with smart-casting, good players can select the individual casters with best positioning and energy to cast. II] If you think missing mules, injects and chrono-boost doesnt lose you the game, you probably dont understand Code S Starcraft II. III] Starcraft II rewards control extremely much thanks to the modern AI contrary to popular belief. Seems you didn't even read past the first item. -removing smart-casting: I made a mistake. I wanted to remove the attack priority for units, so a-move loses to microed army. -I said EQUAL AND HARSHER punishment. Right now missing mules or chrono is not even close o missing larvae injects. I want a equal punishment for all 3 races.-The reward for micro is extremely less than any previous successful rts (sc:bw, age of empires 2, warcraft 3).
Inject and chrono are entirely seperate things. Missing an inject is akin to letting WGs sit idle for the same period of time. Chrono is more minor, more comparable to something like creep spread (in the sense that they allow you to do something faster and missing chrono/creeping on CD doesn't end the game).
Not gonna touch mules because they are poorly implemented. Mules should be limited to one per mineral field (not patch) so players can't forget and drop 3 at once.
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On January 24 2012 09:40 Falling wrote: @roymarthyup
Thing is that sort of argument has been used to turn a lot of strategy games into microless slugfests. I like the poster that gave the difference between complexity and depth. We don't really want to be adding hindrances to make a simple thing harder for its own sake.
For instance Warcraft 1, you couldn't left click select, right click move forward. Instead you need to left-click select, click or press 'm' to move and and left click forward or else 'a' to attack move forward. We could force players to press 'm' and then left click rather and it would be harder/ more complex, but it wouldn't add more depth. We would be doing the same thing, only there's an extra step. (To me chrono boost kinda seems that way, but we'll leave that be.)
All the micro tricks that were in BW that don't exist in SC2 don't really add complexity. It's just as easy to a-move mutalisks in one as the other (ignoring the 12 unit cap). But being able to stack muta is something more you can do, combined with hold position micro or the chinese triangle to pick off scourge, suddenly it's the same unit, but it's got more use. It has added depth. We've given the player more tools and when we give them more tools, this will help them develop their strategy. And that I think was what we mean by wanting it harder. Not harder in the sense of useless steps like everytime you make a new worker, you need to jump out of your seat, run twice around and sit back down.
Without those tools, the strategy itself becomes limited because it simply becomes a matter of directing blobs of armies on the map. And then we might as well go to the grand strategy view and be able to zoom out and direct multiple armies at once and forget about how the individual units are fighting. But that's an entirely different game. It's the precise control of units on massive battlefields or small harassment has been at the heart of Starcraft's success.
hits the nail on the head.
From blizzards already early view on SC2 however i dont see this coming to fruition in SC2.
remember when fazing came about? it allowed void rays to damage two units at once through rapid right clicking which in turn allowed them to kill the two units around 30% faster then had you just attacked one unit then the other.
this bug added some depth to the void ray, protoss then had a unit that given 100% concentration could increase its dps by a large margin. however the downfall of using fazing was that you literally had to use all your concentration. you could not move other units you could not macro you couldnt do anything other then right click really fast.
however we had lots of whining and crying over its imbaness and blizzard instead of looking at a way to keep the bug to increase the void rays dynamics as a unit they just flat out removed it.
remember sock folding? a small almost beit mini game that could be used for players to gain focus and concentration at the start of the match as well as gain an extra 20 mineral bonus was removed because some people whined. why not just leave it in? Is it really that much worse to rally scvs to minerals then it is for players to just box workers?
what about the infestor underground casting bug? instead of flat out removing it they could have changed some sort of restriction on the bug, they could have adapted it and placed a restriction such as it would only work when 1 infestor was selected. but instead they completely removed it.
lots of small bugs such as this have already shown their face in sc2, but blizzard is insistent on removing them instead of incorporating them into the game, which is saddening and potentially an indicator of the lack of longevity of SC2.
just for the record:
IMO
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The game does need to be harder. But it also needs to make sense. Right now the game is hard not because of mechanics, but because of how coin-flippy it is. Sometimes it is almost impossible to tell what your opponent is doing, especially in matchups involving Zerg, both because of Zerg's poor scouting and, from the opponents perspective, because of Zerg's larvae mechanic. Zerg basically doesn't have build orders past 30 food, and it is very hard to tell what their army composition is until it is on top of you. Furthermore, it is pretty hard to stop many all-ins even when you know they are coming - some people say this is because of the weakness of static defense, this may be true, I don't know. In general Terran has the easiest time stopping enemy all-ins (some Protoss timings excluded) because of scans, bunkers, and the fact that Terran must always be building units (they won't be caught off guard with 20 Drones morphing).
Another problem is that the game's difficulty is not spread around equally, even at the game's current "easy" level of difficulty. Terran units require way more micro and control than Zerg and Protoss units. Terran must also multitask in every matchup and has the most APM-intensive macro mechanics. At the Code S level this is usually fine, since the skill of the players is so high that it nullifies differences, but even then the vastly disproportionate difficulty of some situations is pretty blatant (TvP after the Protoss has both HTs and Colos is practically impossible even for Code S players). This leads to a lot of risky early game play and coin flipping.
I think Terran is currently the best-designed race, hence why TvT is such a great matchup to play and watch. TvT has units that can zone the map, it has lots of multitasking, and it has a big defenders advantage. Protoss is dumb because so many of their core units require zero micro and because chronoboost and Warpgates turns them in to a timing attack race (unless they want to turtle to 200/200 and use their fast upgrades and deathball units)... The result is weak early game units that are vulnerable to all-ins but become unstoppable once they reach a critical mass (which can happen very quickly during certain timings). Finally, I dislike Zerg's larvae inject mechanic. It was a cool thing for Blizzard to experiment with, but in the end I think that the ability to bank and build 50+ units at once is too radical to result in a game that is both balanced and well-designed. Economic and unit composition choices should be made over time, not decided by holding down a button at the last second. I think BW had the best possible take on Zerg - you can bank larve, but only 3 per Hatch. So if you want to go for a remax/tech switch strategy, you have to build up to it.
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The game will eventually become harder. It's not coin-flippy, people suck at scouting. It's not based on luck with build order wins because there's no set build order yet. Every tournament there's a new metagame which has not been 100% set yet.
Mechanics are being figured out. In Broodwar you never had Mutalisk micro without the overlord trick, you never had patrol vulture and stuff at the very beginning where Starcraft 2 is right now.
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I think this would be for the best, besides I'm tired of hearing BW players bashing SC2 because is such an easy game and such, I for example I'm a new SC2 player and I would really like to play at Masters level (that's my goal for the moment), I'm at a disadvantage against people who have been playing SC2 since beta, but I can live with that. But to me BW is not an option, because I don't think is really fair to start playing a game against people who have been playing for like 10 years.
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6-12 months ago in the GSL most of the good players would get knocked out by randoms/cheesy scrubs in the group stage/round of 16 and by the late rounds we'd have 1/2 good players and a load of jobbers who somehow ended in the Round 4/8.
It used to be really annoying that we never got to see MC vs MVP or MC vs Nestea etc.. because they always lost to randoms and the game felt heavily luck based.
Nowadays top players just do not lose to anyone but other great players. The luck/random element is fast fading from the game as players get better and better and we're still nowhere near the skill gap with players like Flash yet to even try the game professionally.
It's way too early to write off the game as too easy and when players are still getting better and better every month. This season of GSL is way higher standard than the November season for example.
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On January 24 2012 10:00 Kluey wrote: Every tournament there's a new METAGAME STRATEGY which has not been 100% set yet.
METAGAME
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On January 24 2012 07:44 Lavi wrote: Doesn't have to be harder, i just want the game to promote and reward players with sick multitasking better
so MMA with his top-notch multi tasking, winning IEM Kiev, taking down MVP to win a GSL, taking down DRG to win the Blizzard Cup isn't "rewarding players with sick multitasking better"?
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On January 24 2012 09:43 Offhand wrote:
Not gonna touch mules because they are poorly implemented. Mules should be limited to one per mineral field (not patch) so players can't forget and drop 3 at once.
I still haven't heard any convincing reason ever why MULES are allowed to over-saturate mineral patches. Isn't it enough that Terans get six unkillable SCVs per orbital command for no supply? At least give them the same mining mechanics as SCVs to reduce the power of one-base plays.
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This just in: Imperfect Information leads to randomness and mindgames and thus build order disadvantages and luck.
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1001 YEARS KESPAJAIL22272 Posts
I don't want the game to be mechanically harder
I want the game to be more strategically diverse
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The game does not need to be made harder, the luck factor of the game that allows for players to take games off other players that are far above them in skill needs to be significantly reduced. The luck factor is the only real problem of SC2.
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Most of the things that made BW harder were just annoying. Not rallying workers to minerals, no control group buildings, small groups, etc. It was hard in a stupid way, you just had to micromanage mundane shit.
SC2 mechanics are easier, but they're easier for your opponent too. Both of you get to focus more on econ, micro, strategy, scouting, whatever, instead of spending your time sending scvs to mine. Fuck that shit.
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On January 23 2012 21:26 MCDayC wrote:Show nested quote +On January 23 2012 21:20 aTnClouD wrote:On January 23 2012 20:54 firehand101 wrote: TL DR The game being hard makes it better for the pros, but we owe the success of SC2 in the west compared to BW to its ease of use and accessibility
It's not proven that the SC2 success in the west comes from that. It's most likely just the fact it has been marketed on a larger scale as a game and eSport, and since we are way more superficial than asians we think graphic matters a lot. We can just make speculations but my eyes bleed whenever somebody take for granted that SC2 success is most likely given by the fact the game is easier than SCBW. Where does that come from? Considering the plastic culture of Korea, I'm inclined to agree with this sentiment....
I think the mechanical skillcap is too low. In BW it was a great feeling to have micro'd a huge battle and won, but in SCII it's not much more than 1a then split your units / kite. Often I find that it's better to just leave it at 1a because I'd probably get more out of larva injecting than microing anything.
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I wish you could just play with your mind.
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sc2 is still the hardest RTS game of its generation, though. It's still a game for the minority. But as a spectator sport we are seeing more than we ever did with BW, partly because of blizzard's reputation, but also partly because it's a graphically relevant game that can be played on any decent computer made in the last 5 years.
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higher skill should be rewarded through the gameplay mechanics more than it currently is.
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It doesn't have to be unplayable. Just let there exist a skill cap that isn't easily conquered.
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Welp, the people have spoken. Just waiting on you Blizzard.
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People need to stop spewing stuff about scouting.
Scouting is only one component. Many game decisions are necessarily made before it is possible to react to what the opponent is doing.
A1------A2-------A3 -----B1------B2--------
For instance, A must make decision A1 before B makes B1. Similarly, B1 needs to be made before A2, without knowing the result of A2.
The point is that you will always be making many reads AFTER the fact. There is nothing wrong with that if players can adapt and not die. Unfortunately, many of these are fatal in SC2, either in the short term or long term. The correct way to solve this is not to give more scouting, because scouting doesn't give you a crystal ball into the future. The correct way is to make it so that decisions aren't as fatal (caused by ridiculous macro mechanics).
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