EPTWhile writing this, all I can think of is CounterStrike: Global Offensive, and how absolutely abysmal it was when it first came out. Although I'm not an expert on its history, I do know that for the first year or so pros absolutely hated it, and even casual players disliked it quite a bit (I don't think it even had basic things like a ranking system) - there was pretty much no eSports scene for the game. However, Valve started listening to the community and incorporating changes, and within a year or two transformed CS:GO into the eSports juggernaut it is today. The reason for all of this success is Valve's willingness as a developer to listen to the community and let the community actually hold the reins somewhat. We all know how much power is in the hands of the community, simply let them work together and they can create masterpieces like DotA. By that same logic, you can let a community work together and make vast improvements to an already existing game, to the point of raising it from the depths of oblivion to one of the biggest eSports today. Occasionally I have browsed the Reddit for CS:GO and seen all the awesome suggestions that are made by people who are attempting to improve the game, and it is so immensely refreshing to see that almost without fail, Valve staff are actively participating in the discussion in those very Reddit threads. Not only that, but often times a few weeks later, the idea is incorporated into the game, or the bug is fixed. This quick turnaround time really makes the community feel super involved and vested in the health of the game.
Blizzard's recent attitude towards LotV has given me a little bit of that feeling I get when I see Valve working with the community to improve their games. It seems Blizzard, after all this time, has been listening to us, and working hard to incorporate our feedback into the game. In particular, Psione, who is quite active in the Starcraft Reddit, is really making me draw analogies to Valve and their participation with the CS:GO community. This is really the best opportunity Blizzard has to make some huge changes and really turn this game from something great to something absolutely amazing.
If that is the case, and Blizzard really is willing to work with the community to improve StarCraft, I would like to present three important topics that everyone should know about. These are topics that are possible improvements that could be made to Legacy of the Void, and I am calling for the community to have active, constructive discussion on these topics (and all the other topics as well). I truly believe that if we are loud enough, this new Blizzard that seems to have learned a page or two from companies like Valve and Riot may very well work towards incorporating some of these changes.
Of course everyone wants to talk about things like the new units and how they will be balanced, adding skins, the automated tournaments, additional game modes, improving the sound effects, improving the arcade, etc. etc. And all of these are EXTREMELY important topics (I could spend a whole other blog talking about the arcade and urging Blizzard to make some changes that the community has been calling for for a while now). However, for me, I think the three biggest changes are the ones that will fundamentally affect gameplay, as this is the most opportune time to incorporate them and they have the potential to completely change how the game is played and observed.
The first topic: Depth of Micro by LaLush
In this video, LaLush goes over all the problems with the current micro in StarCraft II, such as inconsistencies and poor handling and responsiveness - all of these which limit the ability of a player to make the most out of a unit through micro and differentiate their skill level in comparison to other players.
I think this is one of the most well thought, well put-together videos in the entire community. Not only does LaLush go over problems with current units, but he also provides quick and EASY fixes that could greatly improve microability. This is one topic which I find incredibly important because the micro in Broodwar was so awesome and exciting to watch, and a lot of that has really been lost in the transition to Starcraft II. Blizzard could easily implement a lot of these changes and make a huge difference in how the game can be played at the high levels, vastly improving the spectator experience and keeping the casual player's experience completely intact (with the exception that they will be able to see highlight video's of pros doing amazing things with the same units, and thus spur these casual players to improve and try to micro like the pros themselves).
David Kim has previously addressed this video, stating that he would not like to incorporate these changes because he feels like the complexity of the micro would be too difficult for the casual viewer to understand. However, this point is one that frustrates me a lot. I don't know the subtleties of basketball very well, or the complex strategies that go into American football and allow amazing plays to happen . . . but does that detract from my viewer experience at all? I can still very easily appreciate and get excited when I see something amazing happen, even if I don't really know all the nuances of how a certain play was executed or performed. When Kobe spins past 3 guys and does a sick behind the back layup or when Tom Brady makes a sick pass to the wide receiver to score a touchdown - there are many small things that my eye missed, but I still recognize that it was a sick play. It's like with Super Smash or any fighting game too. I suck at all of them and I am the most casual of casuals when it comes to those types of games. All I know is that there is combos that are immensely difficult to pull off in games like Street Fighter that come down literally to single frames, and that there's a bunch of techniques in Super Smash like wave dashing and directional influence and what-not, but I have no idea how to perform them. That still doesn't stop me from being amazed when I see the pros play, and doesn't stop me from seeing that there is a huge difference from when I play Smash and when a pro plays Smash. Players in Smash literally move around twice as fast as I can. I gain a huge amount of appreciation in knowing that such a huge skill gap exists. Thus, when it comes to Starcraft, it doesn't matter if someone knows if the damage point of a banshee is 0 or 0.167 or whatever and how that effects the attack animation or WHATEVER of a banshee. They will still be able to tangibly see how much better a pro player can control a banshee and do amazing, clutch plays with it, and they will get excited and appreciate how good the play was. THAT is what we should be aiming for, and thus I feel it is a completely moot point to say that "a viewer wouldn't understand all the complexities of the micro."
I think this segue's quite well into my second topic, which is based off a blog recently posted here on Teamliquid and another that was posted a while ago but I have been wholeheartedly supporting ever since.
The second topic: Prolonging Battles and Increasing Opportunities for Micro by Reducing DPS and/or Incorporating Dynamic Unit Movement
The Downfall of Starcraft 2
Dynamic Unit Movement
Although I don't necessarily agree with how pessimistic the first writer's view is, I do very much like his point that battles simply do not last long enough nowadays. The improved pathing and huge damage bonuses that units get against certain unit types leads to 5-second battles that are not as engaging or thrilling to watch and don't allow enough time for players to differentiate themselves by the skill of their micro. In addition, the battle is often the most fun and exciting part of both a casual and competitive player's game, by reducing it to such a short battle the game becomes much less engaging for a big majority of the player base, as the game becomes much more about build order and composition rather than actually interacting with units.
Funnily enough, Husky made a IMBA LEAGUE - All Units Do Half Damage video that was supposed to make the game silly to watch. However, what resulted was an unintended effect in that the battle's lasted longer and actually to many people were much more interesting to watch than in normal Starcraft! Now I'm not calling for a WarCraft 3-esque ten-minute battle where all the units have ten million HP and do 5 damage, but I do think that the game could benefit a lot from a battle that lasted a slightly more moderate amount of time. Battles in Broodwar lasted much longer than in Starcraft II but not as long as in Warcraft, which begs the question - what happened?
Well as I pretty much pointed out already, the first change was that units seem to be dealing slightly more DPS in general. We see many units doing 15, 20, 30, 50, even 125 damage in quick bursts. Compare that to the slow attacking, bulky dragoon which did 20 damage but explosive (so often it only did 10 damage) which often made up the bulk of the Protoss army (there were no void rays, tempests, immortal, and colossus that did insane amounts of damage with little micro. Only the reaver and high templar). The easily mass-able roach that does 16 damage to the 10 attack (5 damage to small units since it was explosive) hydralisk, or slow-attacking, positional lurkers to the high impact burst damage of the banelings. All of the buffs in unit damage contribute to battles that are simply way too short. An across the board reduction in DPS could help a lot in increasing the time battles take and thus increasing amount of micro opportunities and excitement when you see an epic engagement that actually lasts for longer than a split second.
Secondly, units nowadays simply move too intelligently. They "hug" each other while moving, meaning that almost as soon as you enter an engagement, all of your units are able to shoot at once. Before, it took a lot of skill to make sure your units were positioned correctly and in flanking positions in order to get your army to all attack at the same time, whereas tactical positioning has very much taken a backseat in Starcraft II to composition and timing windows. This is where dynamic unit movement comes in. Obviously we don't want to dumb down the Starcraft II AI to the point that they are bumping into each other and getting stuck on ramps like in Broodwar. However, there are minor tweaks to how units path that can bring back some of the skill required to take good engagements. I will let you read the thread itself to see what I am talking about, but here are the key points I'd like to say about it.
1. It's simply aesthetically a lot more pleasing. No longer will you have giant balls of units walking around until they finally slam into each other. It will look a lot more like a real army that is traveling across the map. Battles will potentially stretch across several screens and be much more epic.
2. Battles will last longer as units take longer to get in range of their enemy. This makes tactical positioning and flanking much more important as otherwise your units will simply arrive to the battle too slowly. As mentioned before, this also increases micro opportunity.
3. Splash can be buffed instead of nerfed to oblivion as it was in SC2, making it more impactful in battles and exciting to watch. Skilled usage of splash can very much lead to comebacks. A common argument against Dynamic Unit Movement is that "it will make splitting easy mode since you are already split against banelings and don't have to split anymore." This is countered by the fact that you can buff splash damage so that splitting is still very much necessary. Overall this will make splash much more exciting - remember guys storms used to be a huge deal and now they are pretty much just an afterthought, something you see in every battle anyways.
4. Ranged units take longer to reach that "critical mass" where melee units simply can't deal with them anymore. This is an indirect buff to melee units since there is more surface area for them to attack ranged units, but this creates a micro dynamic where a player using ranged units will actively have to get into better positioning and push his units closer together rather than already having them in the ideal "ball" formation.
The only real argument I remember that I encountered when I posted on that thread was really that "oh, clumping is a part of SC2." Well now is the perfect time to change that!
Also, here is a great related point brought up in the thread on page 3 by ledarsi.
On November 17 2014 20:09 ledarsi wrote:
An absolutely critical sub-point to the economy and micro issues is the problem of inflation of supply costs.
Starcraft 2 supply costs are much higher than Brood War supply costs across the board. The result is far fewer actual units, and a much higher ratio of workers to military units, and less total investment in military on the same amount of supply.
One of the simplest and most direct ways to create more micro opportunities is to simply put more units on the board, allowing more units to be spread across more locations. Most of the interesting types of micro also involve multiple units working in concert, such as rotating which units are taking damage, positioning, splitting, and so on. Adding more military units will very organically create more micro opportunities as there are more units that can accept commands for advantage.
Also, this will result in a slower hard max, which will mean there will be a lot more fighting when armies aren't both at the supply limit, which is very good. Trading at less than the supply maximum usually involves continuous reinforcements, skirmishing and maneuvering in the field. Maxed armies tend to just ball up to engage an enemy army doing the same, since it is not possible for the enemy to show up with more supply.
An absolutely critical sub-point to the economy and micro issues is the problem of inflation of supply costs.
Starcraft 2 supply costs are much higher than Brood War supply costs across the board. The result is far fewer actual units, and a much higher ratio of workers to military units, and less total investment in military on the same amount of supply.
One of the simplest and most direct ways to create more micro opportunities is to simply put more units on the board, allowing more units to be spread across more locations. Most of the interesting types of micro also involve multiple units working in concert, such as rotating which units are taking damage, positioning, splitting, and so on. Adding more military units will very organically create more micro opportunities as there are more units that can accept commands for advantage.
Also, this will result in a slower hard max, which will mean there will be a lot more fighting when armies aren't both at the supply limit, which is very good. Trading at less than the supply maximum usually involves continuous reinforcements, skirmishing and maneuvering in the field. Maxed armies tend to just ball up to engage an enemy army doing the same, since it is not possible for the enemy to show up with more supply.
That brings me to the third and final topic.
The third topic: LotV Economy Discussion
This thread has already gotten quite a bit of attention, but I felt like it is one of the most important discussions that needs to be had during this period before LotV. Although most of us are already quite pleased with the direction Blizzard is heading in LotV for economy, this thread details some of the problems that will still exist even with lower resources per base and outlines some ways to improve the economy even further heading into Legacy of the Void. The author explains his suggestions far better than I could, so I suggest you all go over and take a look and join in on the discussion, and perhaps Blizzard will consider an even more significant and all-encompassing change to the economy in StarCraft II!
Alright, well I wasn't planning on writing something so long (I was mostly just intending to make a quick blog where I highlighted three topics that I thought were interesting) so if my thoughts were rambling or disorganized I hope it wasn't too bad! I really hope this can inspire some good discussion about these potential changes, and hopefully Blizzard will take an active role in participating with us! I really think LotV has the potential to be absolutely huge, it will take a lot of patience and thinking from both sides as well as open mindedness to change, but be excited for the change! We can make Starcraft II one of the best again, I believe!
Also Blizz fix sounds pls lurker sounds so weak and same with all the other unit attacks I cry evrytim :'(
