Should the player have to come back to the base to produce reinforcements?

[SaharaDrac]

This has come up several times. To everyone who thinks he is talking about production queues: What does production queues have to do with anything he talks about in that paragraph? Especially the scrolling back to base part.

Oh and Aesop (the original translator) says that the translation "go back to the base" was actually "scroll back to the base".

What it has to do, is that he's mentioned this exact same thing in the exact same wording before, when specifically addressed about production queues. I wish everyone would just calm down...

[ArcherofAiur]

What it has to do, is that he's mentioned this exact same thing in the exact same wording before, wehn specifically addressed about production queues. I wish everyone would just calm down...

What do you mean? Ive never seen another interview where he talks about this.

[SaharaDrac]

What do you mean? Ive never seen another interview where he talks about this.

I mean, he's been asked by some general gaming sites (AKA people who don't really play RTS more than the campaigns and would think this is a valid question): "Hey, duuurp, can you queue units before you can afford them?" and he answered "No we want the players to go back to their base to produce reinforcements." Not meaning you actually have to move the view back to your base, simply you have to interact with those buildings at the appropriate time and not before.

You DO NOT have to move the view back to your base to produce units. You can hotkey your buildings and produce form them at any time your economy allows, from anywhere on the map. You can fully interact with any buildings you have hotkeyed at any point. I've played the game. I know this is true. Removing this would not just be taking a step backwards, it would be a complete plunge back into RTS games well before StarCraft was released. Stop worrying so much, Stop misinterpreting everything everyone on the SC2 staff says as an omen of doom. Stop reading the fine print on every Blizzard page and then decrying it as a harbinger of the games year long delay. Just STOP, people! Relax!

WE don't have to discredit Browder.

THE GAME discredits Browder well enough on its own.

We're just trying to explain to you HOW it does so, since you clearly can't see it.

Although I agree with you entirely in this thread, and I'm glad you see truth and reason here, I trust Browder significantly more than you as a game designer, simply because his design philosophy is not "Remove some fun, add some algebra."

[ArcherofAiur]

[COLOR="DarkOrange"]

I mean, he's been asked by some general gaming sites (AKA people who don't really play RTS more than the campaigns and would think this is a valid question): "Hey, duuurp, can you queue units before you can afford them?" and he answered "No we want the players to go back to their base to produce reinforcements." Not meaning you actually have to move the view back to your base, simply you have to interact with those buildings at the appropriate time and not before.

I did a google search and the only other thing ive been able to find where Dustin Browder talks about production queues is this

http://starcraft.incgamers.com/blog/...-interview-up/

Which actually is the same interview...

[DemolitionSquid]

Although I agree with you entirely in this thread, and I'm glad you see truth and reason here, I trust Browder significantly more than you as a game designer, simply because his design philosophy is not "Remove some fun, add some algebra."[/COLOR]

I meant specifically in relation to that point, ie. Dustin either made a mistake in what he said, or Archer is interpreting it wrong.

On the topic of my opinion of Browder, you probably do trust him more than me, but I have never said nor asserted in any way his design philosophy is "remove some fun, add some algebra."

[Norfindel]

Q: Gamestar Magazine
A: Dustin Browder
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/view...topic_id=92932


Q: So manual labor instead of automation?
A: Exactly. There is a nice story about this. Back then, I was working on addons to Mechwarrior 2. That's how I know that there was still automatic targetting in an early version: You only had to decide, which weapons to fire in what order, the Computer would guide them to the target. The only thing you had to watch out for was not to overheat. That might even have been interesting, but just for few players. The majority wanted action, and they got it in the end. The same applies to Starcraft: We want the players to go back to their base in order to produce reinforcements. We want them to really take care instead of relying on an automatic process.

This answer is very odd, he says that they want the players to go back to their bases to produce units, but there's no mechanic that causes this, with the exception of Spawn Larva.

Also, the Q&A immediatly before it, talks about unit queues:

Q: And what about production queues?
A: There you see that Sc2 is orientated towards esports. We have to keep a fragile balance: The game should offer comfortable usage, but it should not play by itself, else the challenge would evaporate. Let's see what the Beta testers say about it.

So, it's possible that they were talking about the manual checking and re-filling of the queues, instead of allowing unlimited queues, which would make the process more automatic.

[ArcherofAiur]

This answer is very odd, he says that they want the players to go back to their bases to produce units, but there's no mechanic that causes this, with the exception of Spawn Larva.

Also, the Q&A immediatly before it, talks about unit queues:

So, it's possible that they were talking about the manual checking and re-filling of the queues, instead of allowing unlimited queues, which would make the process more automatic.

Can you think of anything else in that interview that he might be refering to? Like if his statement lead them to....

[rcp181]

Building pylons/supply depots is another screen-changing mechanic required assuming you're not maxed or just lost most of your army. Warping in potentially requires a screen change as well. They're definitely looking for ways to force multitasking, but it doesn't look like it will require nearly as much as SC:BW

[Nicol Bolas]

Building pylons/supply depots is another screen-changing mechanic required assuming you're not maxed or just lost most of your army.

That's not exactly new, though. And it uses finite resource (money), so it has to be factored in to other decisions.

Warping in potentially requires a screen change as well. They're definitely looking for ways to force multitasking, but it doesn't look like it will require nearly as much as SC:BW

Except Warp-In doesn't seem particularly designed for the purpose of making you change screens. It seems more like an interesting mechanic, something that naturally fits with the lore of how Protoss build units.

[Kimera757]

To those of you that played C&C: Red Alert and those series of games, if I remember correctly you did not have to return to your base to produce units and begin to research buildings. You just had the bar on the side where you would just click and it would automatically produce the units for you back at your base.

Yes, but even in C&C3 you still had to go back to your base to move your rally point, something you could do even in StarCraft I.

Perhaps here lies in this thought. Would you rather force the player to select each building or each group of buildings to produce units? Or would you rather just have some sort of option ala C&C on the side that would do this for you automatically without having to physically select the buildings. You can see what I mean at: http://www.mobygames.com/game/window...meShotId,6468/

Either MBS as it is now or C&C-style interface, but if the latter you must have the ability to rally point without going back to base. Given how many StarCraft I and Warcraft III players are likely to play StarCraft II, it makes more sense to use something similar to StarCraft I, but with the flexibility of MBS.

Personally I think people enjoy the way that SC deals with this issue and they don't really want to see it messed around with too much.

StarCraft II is using a Warcraft III-style UI, and I rarely see complaints about that (other than the usual "too easy" cries).