Big Richard

Jul 18 2011, 08:24 PM

incog you can still scout with your first zealot or marine or zergling and can get a lot of info early game.

How? If your gate/hatch/rax is in your base (ie not proxy) then by the time your lot/rine/ling gets to his ramp there will be twice the number of units there to defend. You'll have wasted a unit without having seen anything at all. So no.

also i think micro is very, very important early game in sc2 and in some cases like when you bunker rush gs its all or nothing. Moving that marine and scv around effectively takes skill, same with trapping zerglings with probes to stop their rush or such things. Later in game, yeah I'll agree players usually just group their army and send it out, but there is still some positioning which will make a huge difference. Someone that takes the time to put tanks on a cliff and have a viking giving sight while holding off units at a ramp will easily wipe out someones huge army that they just bunched up. So sc2 has micro intensive potential, but just because the players don't take advantage of it, doesn't mean the game is bad.

I honestly don't see how you can qualify that as hard micro, what you're describing is as close to basic micro we can get. Blink is harder to micro, Burrowed roaches as well. Those are some examples of difficult micro where excellent manual control really does turn the tide. What you cited was not. It would be much better for the game, imo, if every unit required micro to be the most effective, but for SC2 it's only the case for a handful of units. In Aoe3, where there was a hard counter system, all units needed to be micro'd to be effective and attack move was situational.

anyway like I was saying staying on top of things is still important in sc2 its just much more enhanced. If the developers really thought that clicking each individual unit/building was a good/intentional thing why would they have changed it? I feel that it is more of removing the distractions of the game, and allowing the player to better control his/her units and better manage his/her buildings. This way the elements of strategy in the game move on from how you build something or order an action, and begin to focus more on what you're building and how you are using your abilities like storm.

Removing distractions from the game, as you say, is something I once thought was a good idea, but it really does make it harder for a player with better macro to outplay his opponent which isn't necessarily a good thing. I think it wouldn't be a problem if there was something else to occupy a player but there isn't really anything a player can do with his "spare time" to make a huge, game-winning difference. I think perhaps players should start dropping more, MMA is an example of how effective that can be. I'm quite sure it's underused.

I'll agree that AoE3 is a much more micro-intensive game but many of the complaints you have about sc2 are also in aoe3 like grouping buildings and spamming build buttons. So I'd say your only real complaint about sc2 is that you can't scout effectively, but like I said you can send in a few zealots or minor units to scout a base early on. The units you lose is minimal to the information you gain. And if they wall off by then you can combine info you got from your initial probe scout with what you saw when your units tried to scout and work with that. Most likely you will see the units he has when they kill your units trying to break their wall.

To this I add that Aoe3 does indeed have easy building management, with hot-keys that can be assigned to a building type and hot-keys that can be assigned to a unit within a building. The UI that tells who what is training is priceless as well. What makes macro a bit harder in Aoe3 isn't the speed required to make units like in BW and to a lesser extent AoC. It's the fact that there are 3 different resources, that don't gather at the same rate and that all have different upgrades. To that you can add resource and eco upgrade shipments, which complicates things, as well as the fact that most civilisations don't have the same villager distribution. The same thing applies to strategies. This complicates things sufficiently so that you do actually need to pay attention to macro. In BW you needed mechanics to macro, in Aoe3 you needed to pay attention. In SC2 you need neither as it has 2 resources and very easy building management.

Furthermore I maintain that you can't scout until you tech to a proper flying unit. I'm sorry but you will always see marines at the ramp to prevent scouting, you can't tell what he's up to because of those marines. The same applies to a zealot wall off and lings/queen at the natural. You just can't scout early game. You can't, you can't, you can't. If you can it's because your opponent fucked up.

So just because you see other games as better, that does not mean sc2 sucks. And your idea of a better game is debatable anyway. But w/e we'll just have to agree to disagree :P

I'm actually enjoying this debate, it's given me the opportunity that was deprived from me at RTSS to portray my thoughts and hone them into what I believe is the true. To make sure what you're saying isn't bollocks I find the best way is to find someone who disagrees and presents counter-arguments and to then refute them. It permits one to lay down everything clearly and find which arguments are the real deal and which aren't. Thank you Richard.

DragonLegend

Jul 20 2011, 07:16 PM

Internet is fine. But the program keeps disconnecting.

gs

Jul 20 2011, 09:01 PM

are you playing on wifi or with a lan cable?

DragonLegend

Jul 21 2011, 06:40 AM

gs

Jul 20 2011, 09:01 PM

are you playing on wifi or with a lan cable?

Nope, still WiFi.

Incog

Jul 21 2011, 06:37 PM

noit'snotmywifidoesn'tlag

Redemption

Jul 21 2011, 07:38 PM

Opening ports has plenty to do with it. I've had the same router for years (I have an upstairs computer and a slow, old one in my basement) and when I first started doing AOE, I had serious connection issues. In around a fifth of my games I was lagging out; then I opened ports and the issue stopped outright. If not the ports, what else could it possibly be?

gs

Jul 21 2011, 07:49 PM

Redemption

Jul 21 2011, 07:38 PM

Opening ports has plenty to do with it. I've had the same router for years (I have an upstairs computer and a slow, old one in my basement) and when I first started doing AOE, I had serious connection issues. In around a fifth of my games I was lagging out; then I opened ports and the issue stopped outright. If not the ports, what else could it possibly be?

it has nothing to do with stability. the lag you speak of is not a stability issue, but simply, like you said, lag.

Hyperactive Jam

Jul 21 2011, 11:17 PM

I'd forward my posts, but I don't have the username for my router although I have the password, BECAUSE PEOPLE DON'T WRITE THINGS DOWN IN THIS HOUSE!

Ichigo1uk

Jul 21 2011, 11:55 PM

Hyperactive Jam

Jul 21 2011, 11:17 PM

I'd forward my posts, but I don't have the username for my router although I have the password, BECAUSE PEOPLE DON'T WRITE THINGS DOWN IN THIS HOUSE!

You have a reset button right?