On the Ball: Out Of Control

[Nick Holmgren]

I feel your pain, which is why I usually go for the long game in RTSs. the lower APS I can get away with, the better.

Actually, in longer games, it's even more important to maintain a high APM for endurance.

There have been games where I have the early advantage and then tire myself out and nearly lose to simple plays because my arm hurts...

Each time I drag my cursor around a group of units and accidentally send a pair of SCVs into the fray, or missclick and end up ordering my marauders to fire at the Zerg lair rather than the group of Roaches whittling away at me from in front of it, I can't help but feel the controls are working against me.

I hate this feeling too, and it's gotten to the point where I just hardly ever rightclick to attack, ever. I just hit "A" and then leftclick on the ground next to the thing I want them to attack. It's messy but it's easier sometimes, especially when just advancing in a giant army. Much better than accidentally telling the troops to "move" towards machine-gun fire.

Trust me when I say USE THE ATTACK ON WHAT YOU WANT TO HIT!!! If you don't have your units do focus fire then they will not kill what they need to and you will deal less damage then you want to. Ideally you take down one target at a time by focusing ever last point of damage on it, then you hit the next thing. This is why its is imperative it be a keyboard. they can't lower the APM need just by changing the platform. and moving your fingers around a touch screen will be even more annoying as it will be harder to get the precision and the diversity of controls w/o needing a huge screen. You need the Hotkeys and a touch interface don't let you jump from group to group as fast as a key board. Also it would reduce micro to something silly.

 

[Nick Holmgren]

I don't see anything wrong with putting Star Craft on the iPad so long as it doesn't completely chug down the platform.

cause the amount of pants kicking will increase 10 fold and it would mean they would have 2 sets of leagues to run. Plaus they'd have to do a ton of balancing work to make sure it was fair on both formats, a change of platform will change the balance as zerg building from only one structure would be a god send on a touch format while it is only nice if your new now.

 

[Playbahnosh]

In SC 1 I was a quite a good player among my friends, though I haven't really played it on b.net since I didn't have an internet connection back then. I pwned the AI on every map and most my friends too, I felt strong. But after a short trip to b.net for the first time, I got my ass handed to me in mere minutes, five times in a row, that sent my ego plummeting and I had to re-evaluate my level of play in SC. Re-evaluate I did: I never played on b.net after that...

When SC2 rolled along and I got the key for the multi beta, I was excited. Falsely. In my first few matches I got pummeled so bad, my box of SC1 started crying on the shelf. I'm more of a slow and steady kinda guy, people call this style of play as "turtle" or tech-er. I usually build humongous base defenses, and then start researching tech, only building an army after I have the upper hand. I do build extension bases and I do send small raiding parties to test the holes in my opponent's defense, but I largely just sit in my base and jerk...uh...the researchers around to work faster.

In SC2 there is no impenetrable base defense. Defense buildings got scaled back so badly they don't worth shit now, especially the Zerg defense structures (seriously, WTF Blizzard?). The Protoss still have the cogwheel, but the Terran lost the Goliath, the only usable air defense unit (turrets ain't worth shit). Simply, they force players to build massive armies early on, and attack, they killed off the chance to play slow and thought out battles, like the turtle or guerrilla tactics. SC2 focuses on fast building and frantic rushing, I don't like that. Most matches I played on B.net with the beta ended after a few minutes because defense structures failed to live up to their namesake. (seriously 4 spine crawlers can't stop an early rush? WTF?)

 

[geldonyetich]

I don't see anything wrong with putting Star Craft on the iPad so long as it doesn't completely chug down the platform.

cause the amount of pants kicking will increase 10 fold and it would mean they would have 2 sets of leagues to run. Plaus they'd have to do a ton of balancing work to make sure it was fair on both formats, a change of platform will change the balance as zerg building from only one structure would be a god send on a touch format while it is only nice if your new now.

Oh, sorry, I forgot the so-ridiculously-over-competitive-that-if-a-game-goes-multi-platform-you-damn-well-better-eliminate-any-possible-advantage-from-that demographic.

Seriously, how do you sleep at night knowing people might be using peripherals such as the Peregrine [http://www.1337life.com/?p=2528]?

 

[Kaill]

You do realize Jordan that Starcraft is a giant cheat/mod fest right? Even in beta I'm pretty sure people are using it to fine tune their associative software, especially seeing as the mechanics have stayed roughly the same.

The reason why most veteran Starcraft players are so much faster than you in the execution is that they don't use the same interface that came with the game, rather they use side programs to automate or simplify entire processes for them. Especially in asian leagues this is viewed as part of the game, and isn't really considered to be "cheating" unless you invoke something like a god mode or whatever.

I point this out because of old jokes (some bordering on memes) about how "You don't really think an American kid can beat a Korean kid at Star Craft do you?" with the punchline being a view of two computer screens side by side with flags above them. The American one playing regular Starcraft "out of the box" and the other one so heavily modded as to be barely recognizable. Basically differant ideas on what playing entails, and something I incidently mentioned int he whole "dude stabbed in head for cheating at Counterstrike" article/thread
as part of my suspician that it was actually over gambling on the game, rather than cheating itself.

So basically, if your going to play Starcraft competitively online, and especially in a world circuit, you should at least start looking for mods and learn how to install/run them. Sure some people will gripe at you about it, but most of those people use mods themselves ironically. Chances are if your REALLY playing as well as you say using the default game, your probably "bionic" and will be a real killer when you start playing like most of the other "hardcore" players do.

Incidently all of this is one of the reasons why I don't play RTS games online, and also why I more or less retired from WoW PVP (I simply got tired of mod wars... I still use mods for raiding but it's far less intrusive and time consuming). I think modding blows chips, but really unless Blizzard finds a way to police it, which they have so far had no interest in, that's pretty much what your looking at. Heck, the way WoW is designed they pretty much encourage people to do it, having the directories set up specifically so you can dump mods into the game. Given Blizzard's attitudes so far I can almost guarantee Starcraft 2 is going to be pretty mod friendly.

Such are my thoughts.

You ARE joking, right? I don't mean about the WoW PvPing, that much is true. But uh. Do you know ANYTHING about Starcraft, or are you just pulling shit out of your ass?
I have never seen in my entire life a single mod for Starcraft, or Starcraft 2 that anyone would ever use to play in competitive play. Or that would be ALLOWED at all.
Have you ever WATCHED a tournament round? Their fingers are fast a lightning, and all the microing (Micro-managing) that the players do make them so fast and so good at the game that it takes years of practice to get to be as good as them.

I really hope you're joking, because you're making yourself look like a complete idiot, and it really shows you know nothing about the game you're talking about.

 

[Therumancer]

You ARE joking, right? I don't mean about the WoW PvPing, that much is true. But uh. Do you know ANYTHING about Starcraft, or are you just pulling shit out of your ass?
I have never seen in my entire life a single mod for Starcraft, or Starcraft 2 that anyone would ever use to play in competitive play. Or that would be ALLOWED at all.
Have you ever WATCHED a tournament round? Their fingers are fast a lightning, and all the microing (Micro-managing) that the players do make them so fast and so good at the game that it takes years of practice to get to be as good as them.

I really hope you're joking, because you're making yourself look like a complete idiot, and it really shows you know nothing about the game you're talking about.[/quote]

Nope, I'm simply not naive about it. I know about the subject because of a bunch of digging I've done in the past on things like gold farming, asian servers, and differances in attitudes and morality when it comes to games.

To put things into perspective, aside from the classic joke/meme about asian modding (which I mentioned) there was an issue years ago with WoW where one of the biggest Japanese guilds apparently cleared Naxx (when it was brand new, pre-BC) shortly after release. They put screenshots up showing the guild members sitting around and/or doing some of the fights where members were geared with more Naxx drops than could possible have dropped in the time period that Naxx had existed. This lead to a number of questions and differances between Asian and Western servers and gamers and their mentalities, combined of course with other hot button issues at the time with gold farming/sales and the like. This is about the time when I first learned about competitive Starcraft and was shocked to learn than there were guys in Korea who not only made decent money doing it, but were basically treated like celebrities. Apparently one of the things that was sold were mods created by the best players for the games. This point being made purely as a spin off from the main discussion. I'm not a competitive RTS player, but this was after all a Blizzard forum and a ton of people more or less reinforced this.

Ironically, your pretty much the first person I've run into who has claimed it isn't true.

As far as competitive play goes, Blizzard *DID* eventually change the code in WoW to make mods that did anything for a player in a purely automated sense illegal. This disabled programs like "Decursive" which were a staple for raiding things like Molten Core. Allegedly this was done both for WoW PVP, but also according to what I remember being said at the time, as part of a company wide policy for their games in general specifically due to things going on with Starcraft, and also because at the time botting was at an all time high. I even remember claims that there was one korean programmer out there that had both created a bot program that could automatically run through zones and collect chests for gathering gold, based on chest time spawns, and that the same guy allegedly had made an infamous Starcraft program that ran totally automated and had something like an 80% win rate including against veteran players.

Back when I did PVP and stuff heavily (which was pre-BC mostly) I followed a lot of things I don't pay that much attention to now. Especially seeing as I had to keep up with the latest toys. Starcraft players and such were a big topic of discussion.

But whatever, we'll have to agree to disagree. I've heard far more supporting my statements than against it, and I have to go with a preponderance of evidence (so to speak) on this one.

 

[John Funk]

In SC 1 I was a quite a good player among my friends, though I haven't really played it on b.net since I didn't have an internet connection back then. I pwned the AI on every map and most my friends too, I felt strong. But after a short trip to b.net for the first time, I got my ass handed to me in mere minutes, five times in a row, that sent my ego plummeting and I had to re-evaluate my level of play in SC. Re-evaluate I did: I never played on b.net after that...

When SC2 rolled along and I got the key for the multi beta, I was excited. Falsely. In my first few matches I got pummeled so bad, my box of SC1 started crying on the shelf. I'm more of a slow and steady kinda guy, people call this style of play as "turtle" or tech-er. I usually build humongous base defenses, and then start researching tech, only building an army after I have the upper hand. I do build extension bases and I do send small raiding parties to test the holes in my opponent's defense, but I largely just sit in my base and jerk...uh...the researchers around to work faster.

In SC2 there is no impenetrable base defense. Defense buildings got scaled back so badly they don't worth shit now, especially the Zerg defense structures (seriously, WTF Blizzard?). The Protoss still have the cogwheel, but the Terran lost the Goliath, the only usable air defense unit (turrets ain't worth shit). Simply, they force players to build massive armies early on, and attack, they killed off the chance to play slow and thought out battles, like the turtle or guerrilla tactics. SC2 focuses on fast building and frantic rushing, I don't like that. Most matches I played on B.net with the beta ended after a few minutes because defense structures failed to live up to their namesake. (seriously 4 spine crawlers can't stop an early rush? WTF?)

Actually, a lot of the defenses are pretty viable, just different. They made it MUCH easier for Terrans to wall off, for instance. And who needs goliaths for anti-air when you have Marines?

It's a much more intense feeling, knowing that you need to be ready and preparing for a potential rush right off the bat. I mean, I still always get to tech up, for instance. But you need to spend those minerals that you spend on Spine Crawlers on, say, Roaches.

I mean, I almost always build two Spine Crawlers as I'm building up my base, but I know I need an army too.

You ARE joking, right? I don't mean about the WoW PvPing, that much is true. But uh. Do you know ANYTHING about Starcraft, or are you just pulling shit out of your ass?
I have never seen in my entire life a single mod for Starcraft, or Starcraft 2 that anyone would ever use to play in competitive play. Or that would be ALLOWED at all.
Have you ever WATCHED a tournament round? Their fingers are fast a lightning, and all the microing (Micro-managing) that the players do make them so fast and so good at the game that it takes years of practice to get to be as good as them.

I really hope you're joking, because you're making yourself look like a complete idiot, and it really shows you know nothing about the game you're talking about.

Nope, I'm simply not naive about it. I know about the subject because of a bunch of digging I've done in the past on things like gold farming, asian servers, and differances in attitudes and morality when it comes to games.

To put things into perspective, aside from the classic joke/meme about asian modding (which I mentioned) there was an issue years ago with WoW where one of the biggest Japanese guilds apparently cleared Naxx (when it was brand new, pre-BC) shortly after release. They put screenshots up showing the guild members sitting around and/or doing some of the fights where members were geared with more Naxx drops than could possible have dropped in the time period that Naxx had existed. This lead to a number of questions and differances between Asian and Western servers and gamers and their mentalities, combined of course with other hot button issues at the time with gold farming/sales and the like. This is about the time when I first learned about competitive Starcraft and was shocked to learn than there were guys in Korea who not only made decent money doing it, but were basically treated like celebrities. Apparently one of the things that was sold were mods created by the best players for the games. This point being made purely as a spin off from the main discussion. I'm not a competitive RTS player, but this was after all a Blizzard forum and a ton of people more or less reinforced this.

Ironically, your pretty much the first person I've run into who has claimed it isn't true.

As far as competitive play goes, Blizzard *DID* eventually change the code in WoW to make mods that did anything for a player in a purely automated sense illegal. This disabled programs like "Decursive" which were a staple for raiding things like Molten Core. Allegedly this was done both for WoW PVP, but also according to what I remember being said at the time, as part of a company wide policy for their games in general specifically due to things going on with Starcraft, and also because at the time botting was at an all time high. I even remember claims that there was one korean programmer out there that had both created a bot program that could automatically run through zones and collect chests for gathering gold, based on chest time spawns, and that the same guy allegedly had made an infamous Starcraft program that ran totally automated and had something like an 80% win rate including against veteran players.

Back when I did PVP and stuff heavily (which was pre-BC mostly) I followed a lot of things I don't pay that much attention to now. Especially seeing as I had to keep up with the latest toys. Starcraft players and such were a big topic of discussion.

But whatever, we'll have to agree to disagree. I've heard far more supporting my statements than against it, and I have to go with a preponderance of evidence (so to speak) on this one.[/quote]

Preponderance of evidence? *Watch* matches of televised Starcraft 2 in Korea, and you won't see a single "mod." And if the best of the best don't use it, why would anyone else?

 

[fanklok]

Bah screw that crtl+1 nonsense I just ctrl click to select units en mass then macro their asses towards what ever needs to be deaded it kinda works if who ever you playing doesn't micro very well

 

[hyperdrachen]

I don't really see how the multi touch controls really fix the issues at hand, gesture based controlls seem to be even less precise at the current tech level, I would think this would lead to more mistakes and frustration with your hundreds of little units. An elegant control set for so many diffrent units recieving unique orders is no small accomplishment. I'm by no means pro but i can appreciate whats available to me in starcraft and C&C as far as getting my troops organized. Yes theres a learning curve, yeah its a ton of macros, and no its not sit down and do it intuitive, but turning the number of options there into a flick your finger left or right scheme isn't really feasible. I think this is more asking the game to be something its not. I think Halo Wars did a good job of presenting a streamlined version of the RTS where everything could be done with a few context sensative controlls. I really liked the game but I'll be the first to admit it was not as meaty as your more traditional RTS. It did however benifit from its easier to pickup controls and simplified micromanagement.

Besides the diffrent leagues let you play at a level you feel comfortable with, but if it bruises your ego too much to play in anything less than the top 10 spots then what you have is a personal problem.

 

[Ne1butme]

Nope, I'm simply not naive about it. I know about the subject because of a bunch of digging I've done in the past on things like gold farming, asian servers, and differances in attitudes and morality when it comes to games.

Um, Therumancer??

You seem to be very confused. Let me make this simple.

Starcraft != World of Warcraft. While they do share some similar syllables, one is an RTS and the other is a MMORPG with some competitive elements.

 

[Shjade]

Preponderance of evidence? *Watch* matches of televised Starcraft 2 in Korea, and you won't see a single "mod." And if the best of the best don't use it, why would anyone else?

While I have no stake in the mod/no mod conversation due to a combination of ignorance on the subject and utter indifference, this position is...well, silly.

The best of the best don't use crutches because they don't need them. It's those who are not the best who have reason to look for assistance.

I wouldn't expect to see mods/hacks/whatever you want to call them in pro play as it's professional. I would be much less surprised to find such things floating around in non-pro play because it is not professional.

I'd liken it to arm wrestling and steroids. Some Dude who wants to be unstoppable at arm wrestling at any bar he visits might jack up on steroids for a boost. Pro Dude who arm wrestles at big competitions eschews steroids because he trains to build strength naturally, he doesn't want to tarnish his reputation and health, and competitions screen for them so he'd be booted out if he juiced.

Remember, I noted I have no idea whether mods and the like are prevalent in SC/SC2 and, frankly, I don't much care since I don't play it competitively. That aside, hypothetically, it makes more sense for such things to appear in non-pro situations than on televised competitions with cash rewards that are highly scrutinized and observed on-site by a live audience, commentators and judges.

 

[RandV80]

It's funny because I have the twitch reflexes to play expert level tetris, plus the deeper thought out strategy to master turn based strategy games, yet I've never been able to quite grasp RTS' (except for Warcraft 2) for competant PvP play. Best I can figure is I never quite stick around for the learning curve, as to me it seems like your just doing repetive grinding to master the simplistic stuff: resource gathering, builds, teching, macros, etc, before you can get to the higher level strategy found regularly in games like Civilization or Total War. Those have learning curves too of course but all it takes is an hour or two to pick up then a game or two to fine tune and you can dive right into the strategy.

 

[Keava]

Actually i find SC2 keybinds terrible, why not use grid layout? Whats wrong with having my commands bind in QWERT | ASDFG | ZXCVB layout for rows <.< Not ot mention unit AI seems so idiotic that theyw ill always by default shoot something you dont want them shooting or will just stand around waiting to be killed.

Would it work with touchpad tho? Probably way to slow for a game that has competetive requirement of at least 80 APM. Thats what you got RUSE for, it was even advertised with first trailer showing guys playing it on MS Surface table

 

[Playbahnosh]

Actually, a lot of the defenses are pretty viable, just different. They made it MUCH easier for Terrans to wall off, for instance. And who needs goliaths for anti-air when you have Marines?

It's a much more intense feeling, knowing that you need to be ready and preparing for a potential rush right off the bat. I mean, I still always get to tech up, for instance. But you need to spend those minerals that you spend on Spine Crawlers on, say, Roaches.

I mean, I almost always build two Spine Crawlers as I'm building up my base, but I know I need an army too.

First of all, Goliaths with the Charon Booster had a range comparable to Guardians and Carriers unlike missile towers and other units or buildings with air attack, that made them the single best choice for base air defense, plus they were mobile. Marines have a short range, and are weak against everything, even a whole squadron of marines can't take down a carrier, never could. Terrans are almost defenseless from air attacks, just like the Zerg. That spore crawler is a joke. It's fragile and weak. Spore Colonies in SC1 were strong, albeit large. And two Sunken Colonies were enough to stop the early rush (supplemented with some hastily built zerglings). Spine Crawlers are a joke, doesn't even worth building them.

Sure, Supply Depos are passable now with the new lowering system, but why would I intentionally expose my supply generators? If they are destroyed I can't build units. The Protoss still has the cogwheel, why did Blizzard nerf the other base defenses, it's madness. SC2 is one hell of a lot more unit oriented instead of buildings. In SC1 at least I could build a strong base defense with every side, in SC2, only the Protoss.

And I don't know your level of playing in SC2, but in none of the matches I played in the beta was I able to tech up. My opponent simply overwhelmed me in minutes while I was still scrambling to get production going.

Also: Build times. In SC1, one factory of each kind was enough to build an army fairly quickly. In SC2, I need four of five barracks and six factories and three shipyards to produce units at the required speed. Minerals and gas is running off the counters, I have thousands of the stuff, yet my factories are unable to utilize the resources, I don't understand.

 

[Delusibeta]

I think that Starcraft wouldn't work to well on an iPad, since most of the problems associated with mouse control (e.g. too large grouping, attacking wrong units), plus the controls would have to be classic C&C style (left click to move or attack)...

However, if Blizzard made a dedicated iPad version, a Starcraft Mini, then it might work.

 

[Keava]

Also: Build times. In SC1, one factory of each kind was enough to build an army fairly quickly. In SC2, I need four of five barracks and six factories and three shipyards to produce units at the required speed. Minerals and gas is running off the counters, I have thousands of the stuff, yet my factories are unable to utilize the resources, I don't understand.

You can add on the fancy thingies as Terran that let you build 2 units at time, Zerg have heir Queen for larva boost, Protoss have the boost from HQ. Plenty of ways to build up rush force early on or continue the happy spam later in the game.

 

[Playbahnosh]

You can add on the fancy thingies as Terran that let you build 2 units at time, Zerg have heir Queen for larva boost, Protoss have the boost from HQ. Plenty of ways to build up rush force early on or continue the happy spam later in the game.

The factories with reactor can only build basic units, like maries or Hellions. But what if I want a truckload of Thors, Ravens or Reapers instead? I'm bummed, that's what. Also, larva boost and that protoss boost costs energy and needs way too much micro in my opinion.

Sure, I don't have Uber Micro? but I still could play SC1 well enough. Now, I'm a little pissed at SC2 for some of the changes, because the one thing they cranked up is micro. Its way more tedious to handle units and mount a successful attack since you have to use the special powers of all your units at the same time. Meh, I guess I'll just leave SC2 to the pros and play against the easy AI...

 

[Rack]

I'd love to see a great RTS on the Ipad or a similar touch interface, but not Starcraft II. Starcraft II is designed around using the keyboard to up your APM, take it away and all you have is a much fidlier experience. But if you build a game around larger scale strategy, simplified base building and good AI on your individual troops then that would be a blast on a solely touchscreen interface.