Death of Micro in the RTS Genre? and Maybe SC2 will save it?

Oh, I see. Well the second case I'm going to just add a foot note, and that is with the old UI all the stalkers would blink at the same time...

Your argument plays into my point, if a skilled player can utilize their units well enough then the battle counts as much as which units you build. If 'x' ALWAYS beats 'y' because of the ease of single casting, then the depth of battle is replaced by just build counters, no battle counter, which makes the wars superficial but the building no more profound.

 

Blizzard has stated many times that they are making the game where skilled players can show off their moves.
If you are a pro then you know where to move your stalkers, what position to blink them to, and where to strike!
If you are pro then you will know what targets to hit with lockdown and you will still do it faster!
The fans do make the game what it is... But don't you want new players to enjoy the game? The way you want it will drive off players by the thousands! Nobody will play this game casually! I do care about skill alot, but do you really want the game to be anoying? Pros will still be faster, make better decisions, scout more, expand better, and use abilities faster. The game is very fast paced already; the SCVs I think should have enought intelligence to know that when they appear they need to go harvest! Its like getting homework; "Once you are in your SCV your first mission is to go get gas."
Setting a rally point is like ordering the units ahead of time. My belief personally is they should make macro simpler and keep micro the same. So far most of the skills they have shown take skill. Placing time bombs at the right spot, psionic storm duh, focus firing with Warp Rays, activating Phoenix overload ability at the right spot, Sieging tanks at the right time, activating stim packs, Morphing vikings, targeting with yamato gun/plasma, using comsat, utilizing nomads healing and defense matrix abilities. THERES SO MUCH TO DO IN A BATTLE! (This doesnt even include dancing units or avoiding other players AoE spells. This game will still take tons of skill! Thers a difference between skill and common sense. Telling an SCV to harvest is common sense and having medics heal units is common sense.
:good: Blizzard

 

What I'm suggesting is not to drive everybody away with annoyances, its a balance of AI and UI which have been so far from the games I've played completely too automated, to the point where new players and old players are on the exact same level and the room for improvement is tiny. (i.e. Humans of WC 3) since you want to bring up Blizzard only.

Yes it takes skill to blink and pheonix and such, but once again this is my personal belief that SC2 will save the genre. Other games you have so much less to do. You don't have to move units, flank, cast is auto, and AI automatically attack the weakest units.

The improvement from hotkey+click to hotkey+key a little fast from hotkey+click+single select+move units+single select and back, there are so many ways to do it and so many different improvements in timing and clicking that can be made.

 

Leave it to 10-Neon to give reasoning for macro commands as having to go to the bathroom!

"MOVE FASTER, I HAVE TO PEEE!!!!!!!!"

But anyway... I haven't yet decided which one I'm for. I think automatic mining wouldn't be all that bad, and of course I'm going to vote for anything that makes things less micro intensive because I'm more of a macro-manager.

But on the other hand I don't like auto cast spells and abilities. That's something you should have to do yourself.

 

Great way to top that off. I agree with most points in this article, I love micro-ing or else the newbs will be evenly matched with me.

 

I disagree with you on some of your points and agree with you on others.

I think mindless decisions like spreading out your workers on the minerals shouldn't be included. The AI should handle decisions like that. The game shouldn't be about who ever can use their mouse the quickest, it should be about strategy and having fun. I see things like that equal to if units didn't auto-attack and you had to click to attack every time, it wouldn't be fun and who ever can maneuver their mouse the best would win.

I do agree that it shouldn't be a point, click, and win type of game. There should be some activity with your units while they fight. They just need to find that sweet spot.

 

i totally agree with pajamasalad, and i'd like to add: relax, have fun

 

Well said pajamasalad. owerup: I think the 'flaws' that made starcraft original a good game is overhyped. A game shouldn't be good because of an inneficient UI...

 

@pajamasalad

With your mineral thing, I see why not. If you click 39 workers to one resource, like a tree, or in SC's case minerals, they should at least stumble a little. It gives Macroers a bit more of an advantage, even if it's just a couple seconds. Of course, after the sumbling, the AI should take over and place them one by one, but you just lost a few seconds of mineral mining.

The attack/click/attack/click we'll leave that to stupid, pointless, neverending, java-coded RPGs, I NEVER would suggest that. However, casting spells is different. A spell defines the caster units of RTS games, they are fragil(mostly) and must be minipulated correctly to use in battle rather than the damage soaking meat shields. Do have the autocast makes no sense in my mind.

P.S. Please, if you're going to say something against me about micro and SC2, read the second part of my title.

 

WRT to the OP.

I would like to cast my vote against all but point 4, 6 & 9.

I've always thought, if you can say in English what you want your units to do faster than you can order them in the game, there's room for improvement. And if there is something that is always

In a very simplistic view, you can divide a player's skill up into two parts: The right ideas, and translating those ideas into orders via the UI. It seems to me that the latter is just a crank-the-handle mechanism that is more about latency, fast and accurate mouse and keyboard use, and PC specs. Whereas the former, (having the right ideas), is the intended discriminator of skill in an RTS. Again, the latter is just a byproduct of an imperfect environment.


1. No Smart-Casting? Disagree.
Makes sense. Perhaps holding down a modifier key like ALT could reverse the function so that multiply-cast spells (Like Yamato I expect) are single-cast, and single-cast spells (Like Snipe I expect) are multiply cast. Then you have the best of both worlds

2. Limit Unit Selection. Disagree.
IMO the only benefit to limiting this is a more consistent HUD, but per-unit HUD display isn't that important when you have 100 units selected.

3. Smaller maps. Disagree.
I don't like the ease in which most RTS's allow you to run home to base. I like large maps but I would really like to see major differences in unit speeds. I would prefer fast units to be approximately three times the speed of slow units.

4. Units too large. Not sure.
I would like a great deal of variation. From the previews I think we'll get that. Zerglings are still pretty small.
As for the problem of large (especially air) units making small units difficult to select, My idea would be to offer masking keys that mask specific classes of units, making them unclickable and either invisible or highly transparent. So holding down the "mask = air" key allows you to select or target units underneath air units.

5. Resource micro. Disagree
Resource piles fall over all the time during the game. You talk about trees. In WC3 if you had to tell your peasants / ghouls / peons to harvest each individual tree after the one they were chopping fell over, that might occupy a very significant portion of your control. It would also require regular checking. I guess SC is different in that resource piles rarely fall over. However, I still don't see why I should be required to click each target if it's plainly obvious what is desired. It's just clicks for click's sake.

6. Damage vs Health ratio. Agree.
I like it when units die fast. That way running injured units home during battles to heal up is less of an issue. I'm not a great fan of healing or repair in games.

7. Speed (I'm guessing APM). Disagree.
I don't see why deliberately disadvantaging a two fingered non-hot-key-knowing player is a good thing. There will always be an inherent disadvantage to being that way, but IMO that's not a quality of the game. (I don't think, however, that attempting to reduce the inherent disadvantage is worthwhile). The two-fingerer who scouts the enemy and builds the perfect counter-army should wipe the floor of the high APM guy that uses a standard strategy.

8. No Auto-Casting. Disagree.
Medics should auto-heal, right? The same logic goes for other units and spells. Not sure about equivalent spells in SC, but I think the ghost's snipe, the stalker's jump, zealot charge, reaper's jetpack etc should all be autocast. I would actually like to see multiple-autocasting for units with two or more auto-castable spells (like a priest in WC3). There could be a selectable primary autocast (eg for determining whether a WC3 priest should inner-fire or heal if both have valid targets).

9. Strategy. Agree 100.000%
To encourage good strategy, I think the damage a well-chosen counter unit should do should be almost orders of magnitude higher than a poorly-chosen unit. IMO marines vs ultralisks should be at most 10% as effective as siege tanks vs ultralisks. (Hopefully I picked a good example, if not please substitute sensible units - I haven't played SC properly for a long time). This makes scouting very important.

The idea of making an RTS more like a general controlling an army is IMO a good idea. Not because that's where the genre takes much of it's design from, but because it separates the smart and inventive from the uber-clickers.

I'm awaiting SC2 as the successor to WC3. I won't miss items they were a negative (especially any teleport items). I won't miss heroes that much, although XP was great as an incentive, especially as it made FFA more action-packed than other games. But I will miss creeps, as they added many new dynamics into the game.

Perhaps I'm playing the wrong series of games since I don't like the micro. But blizzard are so good at clean interfaces, uncluttered game display (SC2 may need to tone down the effects intensity to remain in this group), simple clean and powerful game editing, quality online match-making and atmosphere.

Anyway, just another perspective for your consideration.

 

Lets start at the beginning:

I believe that besides having a strategic brain is NOT all you need and the latter of your two points is limited only physically and the person who knows the game the best should always win. When it comes down to it, RTS grenre is still a game, and games test hand eye coordination as well as keyboard knowledge, pressing the right keys, having fun, and of course, how smart you are in strategy.

1. I see nothing wrong with your suggestion, I am personally against the computer smart casting for you entirely. If you have a hot key to do it I have no problem with it, as long as the player still does something to distinguish the order, everyone cast there, and one of you cast there.

2. Once again, I think that high unit selection leads to laziness and unrealistic battles, no one is expected to command 200 troops by themselves.

3. NEVER suggested smaller maps. But when the modern 'calvary' units takes 2 full minutes to go across a 'tiny' map, which happens a lot, there's is undeniably something wrong. Scout units are obsolete because by the time you do reconnaissance, and decide to rush and get your army in position, it's far too late.

4. Scale is all I ask for, and by scale I do not mean 6:1 units to buildings like some games are responsible for.

5. Once again, I don't say have NO auto-macro management. Let the workers stumble a bit at least before the comp. takes over, once again, it's small and I can see why you guys would just like one click and comp. does everything.

6. /

7. A two-fingered person can be skilled enough to know the hot-keys. You use WC3 a lot so I will use it also. Imagine if you used NO hot keys, including hero spells and building units. Now imagine if someone who did that could use their hero as efficiently as you who do use hot keys.

8. My argument for medic is, they don't have an attack, so they're not autocasting, but if they use blind and such auto that would make terrans overpowered from misses. For priests, just make heal more hp per and more mp and get rid of auto cast, that or remove priest attack.

9. /

General controlling army, no problem. But an army general must learn commands, an army general can't control an entire army step by step, they hire brigadiers, lieutenants, and then they command these people in groups of 12 or 24 or whatever.

I've played RPGs, MMOs, and loved DotA so I can see where you're coming from.

 

One thing that pissed me off in the rts genre was that in command and conquer 3 nearly EVERY unit could attack on the move, that is like a gigantic broadsword in the back of micro for most people (I still like cnc3)

and while cnc usually was a lessly microed game imo 3 made it impossibly simple

I loled when I heard early impressions on cnc3 of the amount of macro it would take to have to build silos I think that silos are for the weak, you just gotta spend like crazy.