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On August 08 2015 23:16 MJesk wrote:Show nested quote +On August 08 2015 23:02 Quineotio wrote:On August 08 2015 22:49 MJesk wrote:
I don't think queen injects are the only means of making zerg unique, but I do think that just removing it would make zerg less unique (leaving all else more or less the same). And arguing for removal because the other races do not have this specific burden is in my humble opinion, a very wrong way of looking at it. And that was the actual point I was trying to make. I agree that wanting to remove inject just because other races don't have something equivalent would be the wrong way of looking at it. Personally I want it removed because I find it really irritating to have to inject every hatch every 30 seconds. The negative definitely outweighs the positive. I think that a personal dislike of a mechanic in a specific race is a bad argument as well. The races are different for a reason. Play another one. Or come back here and argue that no one likes it, that it's fundamentally imbalanced or that it's bad for the game in general. I would go for the third option if I were you  .
Gets tiring writing the entire argument out in every post. Time to stop.
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On August 08 2015 23:20 Quineotio wrote:Show nested quote +On August 08 2015 23:16 MJesk wrote:On August 08 2015 23:02 Quineotio wrote:On August 08 2015 22:49 MJesk wrote:
I don't think queen injects are the only means of making zerg unique, but I do think that just removing it would make zerg less unique (leaving all else more or less the same). And arguing for removal because the other races do not have this specific burden is in my humble opinion, a very wrong way of looking at it. And that was the actual point I was trying to make. I agree that wanting to remove inject just because other races don't have something equivalent would be the wrong way of looking at it. Personally I want it removed because I find it really irritating to have to inject every hatch every 30 seconds. The negative definitely outweighs the positive. I think that a personal dislike of a mechanic in a specific race is a bad argument as well. The races are different for a reason. Play another one. Or come back here and argue that no one likes it, that it's fundamentally imbalanced or that it's bad for the game in general. I would go for the third option if I were you . Gets tiring writing the entire argument out in every post. Time to stop.
"I can't inject so inject should be removed" sounds like a stupid argument aswell
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Fantasy got dirty supply blocked around 12 minutes game 4 vs Patience IEM
#perfectMacro
#easyMacro
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I am not sure what these posts try to accomplish
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On August 09 2015 00:17 The_Red_Viper wrote:
I am not sure what these posts try to accomplish
Debunking myths such as
But most pros are very close to max efficiency
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Which these posts don't do at all
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How not? If pros are close to max efficiency they shouldn't be getting terribly supply blocked. There are countless examples. It's like every time I zone in on the macro details during an intense game I find a slip up.
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Well it obviously depends on how you define "close to max efficiency"
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Not only that, but quite often in korean vs foreigner mirrors they will have the same or extremely similar builds and the korean will be 10-20 supply ahead, even quite early on. But clearly all pros have the same or similar macro.
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Ya damn straight! I'm pleased about both that and the Reaver 2.0 (new disruptor)
Oh and I love David Kim: "we can... uh, theorycraft ... ... uh, all day, but..."
Now we can see for ourselves 
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Totally in accord with the article.
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Macro mechanics should definitely be removed. They're one of the core reasons behind SC2's steroided economy issue.
Remove them and make the game mechanically harder through conventional means. All of a sudden you have a more interesting and dynamic game that requires more skill to max out on.
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On August 04 2015 05:18 Dingodile wrote:
Why is "not fun to play or watch" no argument? I like the macro mechanics of Terran and Protoss. Injects is the most unfun and dumbest thing in sc2. And especially very dumb if you have to inject DURING a fight, otherwise T or P outmacroing Z (easily).
Zerg definitely need/should other macro mechanic than the current one. Forgetting one circle of inject is very unforgiving compared to Terran and Protoss macro mechanics.
This isn't true. Having to build supply blocks is the equivalent of injects because overlords are easy to do and don't work that way. So Terran has to build supply blocks, which is mechanically the same as injecting, and mule (which is about the same as how zerg does overlords).
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On August 09 2015 03:23 DemigodcelpH wrote:
Macro mechanics should definitely be removed. They're one of the core reasons behind SC2's steroided economy issue.
It isn't an issue related to economy. It's an issue about what tasks a player ought to be doing and how much time each task should take and how many decisions have to be made for each task.
If the current macro mechanics are causing problems for the economy (bursts of probe and drone production and mules distorting income) then their economic implications can be redesigned. The fact that WoL introduced macro mechanics that heavily influence the economy of the game does not mean all macro mechanics are bad for economy design. The important thing is that macro involves decisions and attention.
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The thing about the current testing is that it's not anything like putting the game through WCS for a year, for example. As long as they realize that, despite some "pros" playing LotV, the current beta testing tells them almost nothing about esports issues. I would hate for them to be misled by their own process. Long term, SC2 is a game centered around esports. Doing "rapid iteration" beta testing and then being very reluctant to make changes after release does not feel like the best way to develop an esports game. If they continue to stay quite involved post-release, as opposed to how they've been for HotS, then I guess it might turn out okay. I am against patching the game too quickly in response to race balance issues but I'm in favor of patching the game in a timely manner to address game design issues. If there aren't any "macro players" in WCS 2016 then I hope they're willing to do what needs to be done to keep variety in the game.
edit: I can get away with double posting because I'm privileged, but don't do it!
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there is no strategy involved in making workers and building supply depots, why is this still in the game???
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David Kim on macro mechanics:
For the multiplayer beta balance I just wanted to talk about two main things. The first is the macro mechanics being cut, something that we’ve been discussing with our community over the last week or so. I’d first like to thank everyone for giving us the feedback on both the pros and cons of potentially cutting this mechanic. And what we’ve kind of decided internally is we’d like to really try out in the next balance update how the game plays if we were to remove these macro mechanics from the game. And the reason for that is because we can theorycraft all day, but it’s really difficult to figure out the exact and specific reasons why these mechanics are good or bad for the game so we really want to identify those things. And the one other thing that I’d like to point out, as many of you guys in the community have pointed out also, is we have increased the difficulty of not just the micro in the game but also the macro as well. So because of things like resource changes now you have to spread out your bases and expand more aggressively which means you have to manage multiple bases at once. And not only that, because of how the resourcing actually works in legacy of the void you gotta check back at each of those locations and manage the probes and worker lines a lot more efficiently as well. Our current thinking is that because we made it a little more difficult on this side, even if we take away a little bit from the macro mechanics we wonder if end result is that it’s a very skillful macro experience for players.
Credit to TheWinks for transcription.
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On August 08 2015 22:48 Cascade wrote:Show nested quote +On August 08 2015 08:51 Trizztein wrote:
This debate is really interesting. There's just something I can't help but notice about stuchiu's article: I understand from what I read that the reason for injects to exist is to compensate for the extra charge of macro terran and protoss have to do compared to zerg, making it, by DEFINITION, a band-aid to a problem rather than an true cure to it. Writing it in italic and caps doesn't make it true. Or adding «double angle brackets» for that matter. (How do you even type those??) And please tell me what is the DEFINITION of a band-aid to a problem that separates it from a solution to a problem? Or a true cure to a problem for that matter? Anyway, just got a bit annoyed at your choice of words, sorry about that.  I think I understand what you are trying to say. Moving on: Historically, the mule, chrono boost and inject were introduced roughly simultaneously in the WoL beta (or alpha probably?), and the reason was mainly the huuuuge outcry from the ex BWers about how the macro was incredibly simplified through MBS and auto-rally workers. Those were simplified much for the same reasons people bring up now: it's silly to have people do mindless repetitive action (such as clicking through 10 barracks or tell every worker to go mine manually). They still wanted to keep people busy in their bases though, so they introduced the macro mechanics for each race that would introduce meaningful strategical clicks. Don't see what's band-aid about that train of thought. Show nested quote +Mechanics in Starcraft shouldn't just be «robot-like» based, but strategy-based (I really can't see why we shouldn't make the two things - decision making + good mechanics - happen at once when we can - is there a counter-argument to this I'm not aware of?). So, isn't the issue at hand to propose actual concrete changes rather than simply saying «remove the band-aid» or «don't remove it» since we all reckognize there IS a problem? Shouldn't we be focusing our energies on writing articles about these proposed changes with mods incremented in the game to test them, like I believe some mods have been set up to adress the mothership core and warp-gate design issues in the past? Then as you say, people figured out pretty quickly what was the best way to spend the queen/OC/nexus energy, and they turned into pretty mindless tasks for most of the time, especially the inject. So as you say, from that perspective, it'd make sense to try to change or nudge the macro mechanics, especially the inject, to introduce more meaningful choices (or strategy if you want) in the macro clicks. That's definitely a direction I'd welcome, and if you read around you will see suggestions to tweaks as you called for. I'd also like to question whether every single click really needs to be either a strategic choice or removed. If so, you could argue for removing or automating a whole bunch of other mindless tasks that really are pretty straight forward, both in macro and micro, and you'd end up with a game that me personally wouldn't enjoy playing. I don't think anyone actually argues that (so it'd be a strawman to just stop here ftw), but what it does show is that the argument "this click rarely involves strategy, so it should be automated or removed" isn't really enough by itself, unless you also want to remove all other clicks that rarely involve strategy. So before we remove or automate inject, we need to ask why we remove the mindless macro-click of inject, but not remove the mindless macro-click of building supply depots, or the mindless micro-click of blinking back injured stalkers?
Thank you for taking my post seriously. And sorry for the caps and such; I only now realised that yes they could be quite annoying when abused, as they did. Anyways, It's really just that oc, some mechanics in SC ask almost no strategical decision once you've figured out what to do with them, but still, as with any strategy, at least, they become part of one given strategy. Injects have to be part of all strategies (at least for games that extend past 5-6 min marks I guess). Period. Even making supply depots implies some decision-making in certain situations: if I invest a alot of money in pushing my army cap now, perhaps I'll have a steadier-production in the long-run, but my initial army input (for the short-term) will be smaller, so if i'm all-inning or want to support an explosive push, I will have to stop doing it at some point and/or do only a very specific amount of it to save my money for army. I will also have to adjust it to what kind of army I want and how supply consuming it is for production/minute. Supplies can also be targeted by my opponent and can harm significantly my production so I have to be wise about where I place them and they matter in the sim cities building placements and scouting and and ... (you get my point) Blinking stalkers is part of micro (not macro, which is the subject at hand here I think), but perhaps it is relevant to the matter and I'm wrong on this.
But just like you, yes, I like to have to do alot of stuff in an RTS, alot of it. It's this sort of «mental/physical juggling» that I find so impressive in pro players. I just want these actions to stay in touch, at least somehow, with the concept of strategy, since it is an Real Time Strategy game we are talking about, aren't we?
All of this being said, I have to admit not reading the entirety of the comments and the tweaks suggested (I'm happy to learn there are quite a few as you say, though; I just felt that the whole article published (not the comments) was perhaps not directed at the right problem and wished to encourage another way.
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On August 09 2015 04:25 mishimaBeef wrote:Show nested quote +
David Kim on macro mechanics:
For the multiplayer beta balance I just wanted to talk about two main things. The first is the macro mechanics being cut, something that we’ve been discussing with our community over the last week or so. I’d first like to thank everyone for giving us the feedback on both the pros and cons of potentially cutting this mechanic. And what we’ve kind of decided internally is we’d like to really try out in the next balance update how the game plays if we were to remove these macro mechanics from the game. And the reason for that is because we can theorycraft all day, but it’s really difficult to figure out the exact and specific reasons why these mechanics are good or bad for the game so we really want to identify those things. And the one other thing that I’d like to point out, as many of you guys in the community have pointed out also, is we have increased the difficulty of not just the micro in the game but also the macro as well. So because of things like resource changes now you have to spread out your bases and expand more aggressively which means you have to manage multiple bases at once. And not only that, because of how the resourcing actually works in legacy of the void you gotta check back at each of those locations and manage the probes and worker lines a lot more efficiently as well. Our current thinking is that because we made it a little more difficult on this side, even if we take away a little bit from the macro mechanics we wonder if end result is that it’s a very skillful macro experience for players.
Credit to TheWinks for transcription.
That's reassuring that at least he feels that macro will still be challenging. Nonetheless I hope that they'll be prepared to make changes for some time after release based on pro play. I'm disappointed that they're using this time to prune things rather than design things.
I feel like worker distribution management is something basic like army positioning. Macro has no equivalent to blinking back hurt stalkers or spreading marines or landing fungals. There could even be macro mechanics that promote fighting, like a channeled ability that makes a nexus build probes faster as long as it hasn't taken damage in the last 30 seconds. So harass builds would be encouraged because they'd get a ton of extra value just for tapping the opponent's nexus. And there'd be all kinds of interesting judgment calls on how much commitment and sacrifice is worth it. Anyway that's just quick brainstorming.. the point is that they could be making macro mechanics 2.0 that address the issues with the current macro mechanics and have synergy with their other design goals with the added benefit of giving the player options for style of play.
But there could be some macro mechanic that is just as important as blinking back hurt stalkers, that is just as challenging to do. That's what producing units without multiple building selection used to be. If you didn't keep up unit production, you were dead. But it took significant time and skill to do it. However if you didn't micro your units, you were also dead. So it is challenging and awesome to do both. Chronoboosting all your gates is similar, because you have to actually move your camera to your gates and move your mouse around and time your clicks, but that maneuver isn't done very often, not even in every single game (nothing like having to do it for every round of production in BW). Anyway, something mechanically difficult and effective like that, with some observer UI component to display it effectively so commentators can pick up on it.
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EPT
