Oh Micro, Where Art Thou?

[phazonjunkie]

(Madcow305)Yes, the moving shot isn't present in SC2, but that doesn't mean SC2 has less micro involved.

In fact, the very proliferation of high bonus damage against specific armor types, which you also complained about in your OP, leads to very micro-intensive battles.

Lets take a PvT early battle as an example: Protoss are fond of a 3-4 Warpgate + Robo timing push against Terrans.

Stalker/Sentry/Immortal/Zealot vs. Marine/Marauder/Ghost. In this battle, the Protoss needs to be doing a few things:

1. Keeping Guardian shield up on his entire army, using as few number of shields as possible so that you still have energy to Forcefield. This might seem easy, but how many people have you actually seen Micro their Sentries so that the shields cover their whole army, but don't overlap too much?

2. Form a good firing arc, in which all his Stalkers and Immortals are shooting at targets, but be as far range as possible at the same time so that the least amount of Marauders and Marines can fire back. Sounds easy, but how many battles have you witnessed where the Protoss has a few Stalkers or an Immortal out of range to fire, and they're just wandering aimlessly in the back lines, trying to move forward?

3. Have his Stalkers and Immortals always targeting Marauders, not Marines. Stalkers and Immortals gain large bonus damage chunks by shooting at Marauders, so ideally they should never fire a single shot against a Marine until all the Marauders are dead or are too far away. A single shot on a Marine by an Immortal is a potential +30 bonus damage being wasted.

4. At the same time, you can't just have all your Stalkers and Immortals on a single control group, and target fire Marauders, due to overkill. Stalker shots aren't instant, so I believe too many firing on a single Marauder will overkill it, wasting Stalker shots.

5. Have your forces spread out as much as possible to reduce the effect of EMP.

6. Use Forcefield as needed to disrupt the Terran firing arc, and keep Terran reinforcements away for as long as possible.

These individual points might sound easy for a Top 10 Plat, but here's the kicker: you have to be doing all of this at the same time.

You have to be doing #2, forming a good firing arc in which all your units are the perfect distance to do max damage and take min damage, while at the same time doing #5, making sure they're spread out as far as possible to reduce EMP damage.

You have to be doing #1, Microing your Sentries so that GS covers your whole army, while doing #3 and #4, constantly Microing your Stalkers and Immortals so they always shoot Marauders, while never overkilling any.

Are you doing this all perfectly, every battle, every game? No? Well then you're not utilizing the Micro potential of SC2 to its fullest. Oh, and lets not forget, you have to be doing all of this in the span of ~7 seconds, before the battle is already over and decided with.

Compare the scenario I described above to the common Protoss Bulldog timing attack vs. Terran Siege-Expand opening in SC1:

1. Drop your Zealots and bomb the tanks.

2. Shoot-move your Dragoons in until they're in range to shoot the tank(s), then target-fire the tank(s). Make sure not to overkill.

That's it. Two steps.

Sure SC2 may not have the number of Micro tricks (read: game engine bugs, aka Muta stacking) that SC1 had. But, that doesn't mean Micro is less prevalent in SC2.

In my opinion, the above response should have ended that discussion.

Not only that, IIRC, Blizzard actually DID have a unit that could shoot while moving in the initial builds. It didn't work out too well.....

[DemolitionSquid]

I love how Madcow305 points out all the micro a Protoss player has to do without mentioning what micro the Terran has to do. Because the Terran just has to hit Stim, EMP a few times, and then focus fire.

[dingdongs]

Here's your micro:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6suBjtfTTiM

[TheEconomist]

^ That's a prime example of some badaxe micro.

[sandwich_bird]

What's wrong with catering to the competitive community?

The competitive community, whether you like them or not, pretty much put SC1 on the map.

Starcraft 1 was on the map way before the competitive community was made because it was a game made by the same guys who did the highly successful warcraft 2 just before it. This alone made the game popular. The popularity of the game is what made the competitive community in my opinion, not the other way around even though the rise of of this community boosted the popularity.

And you're smoking something if you think the multi-million dollar industry didn't help Blizzard's financial success in any way. There IS money to be made from making a game competitive, and since Blizzard had made it clear multiple times that they want SC2 to be a competitive game, they should go the extra distance.

Did I say there's no money to be made there? Nope.

YOU think that making the "extra distance" (which is adding moving shots I assume?) is what is essentially needed to create a successful competitive community out of this game. I don't. Blizzard don't. Hell, I don't remember seeing Grrrrr ever doing any micro techniques more "complex" (or what we can see today in the BW scene) that what is in Starcraft 2. Yet, in his time, the competitive scene was already well established and growing.

Pretty much everything the competitive community is asking for in that thread wouldn't hurt casuals in any way. How is moving shot going to hurt casuals? Most casuals probably won't ever know what that even is, and they probably won't even encounter it at the Copper/Bronze levels. Refusing to add more depth to the game just because less skilled players can't handle it is backwards gaming design. Going by that logic, we might as well make every unit the exact same because regular Joe can't handle getting the right mix of units. You don't HAVE to use moving shot just like you don't HAVE to use the macro mechanics, but they are there for the more skilled players to use if they want to get better.

The thing you're forgetting is: if a unit receive moving shots, then by default you have to adjust his stats (or else it wouldn't be balanced anymore i.e: think about giving moving shots to the viking who already have 9 range, that would be ridiculous). Well guess what, if you change it's stats to adjust to the fact that some players can achieve the moving shots well this units automatically become crap in the hands of less skilled players unless every single units in the game have similar micro required to achieve their full potential. It will never be the case(though I assume that it could in theory). Think about the vulture, it's garbage if you can't do correct mine placement or if you can't do the moving shots. There's a reason why barely anyone was using it back in the days.

What bothered me most about the whole moving shot debate is how many people are utterly against it for absolutely no reason. I've heard the following arguments so many times it's ridiculous:

"SC2 shouldn't have moving shot because SC1 had it!"
"People will find more bugs in the future, SC1 didn't become competitive in one month!"

The problem is that both are completely retarded arguments. There's nothing wrong with SC2 copying features from SC1 if they are GOOD features. Moving shot takes zero away from the game, and adds a ton of depth, so why take it out? The second argument also rests way too much on wishful thinking. Yes there will be bugs in the future, but that doesn't mean that it will add depth to the game on the level of SC1. I'd much rather have Blizzard add "bugs" that are guaranteed to add depth rather than do nothing but pray that there will be some magical bug in the future that will magically fix every problem in SC2 and magically make it an ultra-competitive game.

If a meteor was about to collide with the earth, who would you support more? The scientific group that is planning to blow the meteor up with a plan that has a 99.9% rate of success, or the hippie group that demands that the scientific group do nothing and instead just pray that the meteor blows up on its own. The fact that so many people seem to side with the hippies really worries me.

Well that's not my reason. I believe that moving shots would unbalance the games at lower levels. If they can pull it off though then sure why not. My point is: even if it's not there, the game will be successful.

[Moradon]

Starcraft 1 was on the map way before the competitive community was made because it was a game made by the same guys who did the highly successful warcraft 2 just before it. This alone made the game popular. The popularity of the game is what made the competitive community in my opinion, not the other way around even though the rise of of this community boosted the popularity.

Starcraft 1 was already popular, I agree, but you can't deny the impact the pro-scene had on it. The mere mention of Starcraft immediately causes most gamers to think of the competitive scene, and it was so influential that Blizzard refused to make any dramatic innovations to SC2 purely because of it, so I definitely don't know why you're trying to downplay it.

Did I say there's no money to be made there? Nope.

YOU think that making the "extra distance" (which is adding moving shots I assume?) is what is essentially needed to create a successful competitive community out of this game. I don't. Blizzard don't. Hell, I don't remember seeing Grrrrr ever doing any micro techniques more "complex" (or what we can see today in the BW scene) that what is in Starcraft 2. Yet, in his time, the competitive scene was already well established and growing.

Don't strawman my argument. I never said that moving shot is needed to make a competitive game, but my argument is that it helps to create a competitive game and it increases the depth. Considering that Blizzard's major goal is to create "the ultimate competitive strategy game", more depth is always good.

The thing you're forgetting is: if a unit receive moving shots, then by default you have to adjust his stats (or else it wouldn't be balanced anymore i.e: think about giving moving shots to the viking who already have 9 range, that would be ridiculous). Well guess what, if you change it's stats to adjust to the fact that some players can achieve the moving shots well this units automatically become crap in the hands of less skilled players unless every single units in the game have similar micro required to achieve their full potential. It will never be the case(though I assume that it could in theory). Think about the vulture, it's garbage if you can't do correct mine placement or if you can't do the moving shots. There's a reason why barely anyone was using it back in the days.

Well that's not my reason. I believe that moving shots would unbalance the games at lower levels. If they can pull it off though then sure why not. My point is: even if it's not there, the game will be successful.

Vultures were underused at the lower level, but they were far from useless, and to be perfectly honest I don't see why balance changes should be made based purely on how newbies can handle it. If Blizzard followed that logic, we'd all be forced to have destructible rocks at our chokes because newbies can't counter rushes.

You also mention that the game would have to be balanced around moving shot, and I agree that it will, but at the same time I think it's very much worth it to do so. You trade off a little bit of short-term balance in exchange for long-term depth. It's not like it's impossible to balance around things like moving shot. I'd doubt that it would even imbalance the game longer than a few weeks, so I don't think we should keep micro tricks out of the game entirely because of it. More depth is good, and I still don't see why people are against it.

[n00bonicPlague]

I couldnt get past the first paragraph. This is beyond my reading capacity. I dont read that much in a year... I wont start now...

Have you met our friend Gifted?

[TheRabidDeer]

Starcraft 1 was already popular, I agree, but you can't deny the impact the pro-scene had on it. The mere mention of Starcraft immediately causes most gamers to think of the competitive scene, and it was so influential that Blizzard refused to make any dramatic innovations to SC2 purely because of it, so I definitely don't know why you're trying to downplay it.

When you mention SC1 to gamers, they do not think of the competitive scene, YOU do. You, and other people that had interest in the SC1 competitive scene will think of those things when you mention SC1, this is a huge minority of people. For everybody else they think of other things (the campaign, UMS maps, comp stomps, backstabbing, no rush games, money maps, tons of other stuff). Just because the forums you frequent think of it that way, does not mean that anywhere near everybody does.

And blizzard didnt make any dramatic changes (there are innovations) to the style of SC, is not necessarily because of the competitive scene. They tried new stuff with WC3 and took the feedback from that game and applied it to SC2 while keeping the same basic concept of SC.

[Triceron]

When you mention SC1 to gamers, they do not think of the competitive scene, YOU do. You, and other people that had interest in the SC1 competitive scene will think of those things when you mention SC1, this is a huge minority of people. For everybody else they think of other things (the campaign, UMS maps, comp stomps, backstabbing, no rush games, money maps, tons of other stuff). Just because the forums you frequent think of it that way, does not mean that anywhere near everybody does.

And blizzard didnt make any dramatic changes (there are innovations) to the style of SC, is not necessarily because of the competitive scene. They tried new stuff with WC3 and took the feedback from that game and applied it to SC2 while keeping the same basic concept of SC.

So true. People often forget that because they're on an enthusiast forum, and they believe what's generally accepted on forums to be indicative of what the common fan thinks of the game.

[Moradon]

When you mention SC1 to gamers, they do not think of the competitive scene, YOU do. You, and other people that had interest in the SC1 competitive scene will think of those things when you mention SC1, this is a huge minority of people. For everybody else they think of other things (the campaign, UMS maps, comp stomps, backstabbing, no rush games, money maps, tons of other stuff). Just because the forums you frequent think of it that way, does not mean that anywhere near everybody does.

People who don't play games are unaware of the pro-gaming scene, but I can't imagine there being many gamers who don't think of the competitive scene at least once when they hear Starcraft. The entire "ZERG RUSH KEKEKEKEKE" meme came up purely because of "kekeke" being "lol" in Korean, and almost every forum or article that reminisces about the quality of SC1 brings up the pro-gaming scene at least once. You may be right that only the minority invests in the competitive scene, but to act like it's mostly unknown to the average gamer is downright false.

And blizzard didnt make any dramatic changes (there are innovations) to the style of SC, is not necessarily because of the competitive scene. They tried new stuff with WC3 and took the feedback from that game and applied it to SC2 while keeping the same basic concept of SC.

I'll be honest, I find it extremely hard to believe that SC2 would have been the same as it is now if it wasn't for it being popular competitively. This is something we'll never truly know, but I just can't see it.