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Overkill is Anti-Deathball - Page 4

Blogs > Falling
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jadeo
Profile Joined September 2012
Sweden18 Posts
September 25 2012 17:19 GMT
#61
repost this or a link on the us forum pls
BluemoonSC
Profile Blog Joined November 2010
SoCal8933 Posts
September 25 2012 17:24 GMT
#62
i've been saying this since the launch of SC2. thank you for writing into words what i never could or even bothered to take the time to. a very well done post!

i think this will also solve terran woes in the sense that they will be forced to lay deeper siege lines - something i've always felt will help them VS infestor play. deeper tank lines means that marines can continue to fall back while zerglings and festors are taking damage from the deeper siege line. if the zerg is a-moving, he clumps on a single tank and continues to take nearly free damage (minus the one tank being targeted by the ling ball). it will force more control out of the zerg player and potentially end the notion that zerg requires next to no micro in a big engagement.
LiquidDota Staff@BluemoonGG_
Falling
Profile Blog Joined June 2009
Canada11605 Posts
Last Edited: 2012-09-25 17:43:20
September 25 2012 17:38 GMT
#63
@Sumadin

What you are essentially asking is how do you balance skill. And really you can't except to make sure that all sides also have things they can be skillful at. It moves the mentality away from muta's were terrible in that battle, they need a greater buff vs light or armoured to mutas were terrible in that battle, I needed to control them better. (Incidentally, Thor vs Muta is a rather mundane example of skill compared to muta control in the past. It was simply a useful example for my promote behaviour/ allow response argument.)

That's also why I can't entirely agree with avilo's statement. Supply is certainly part of what makes tanks difficult to mass, but simply dropping the supply cost doesn't increase cool unit interactions. There is just more tanks doing more or less the same thing.

And for the bronze league, I don't know if most of the fancy tricks would help them. Macro is still ridiculously powerful in SC2- especially with the rate of income and macro mechanics. They would still have better success winning with the most units the fastest. So if the units are balanced around how well they can be used skillfully, they'll still work fine in the lower leagues a-moving around- you just have to make lots of them. And if they can figure out how to win with the most units the fastest in addition to the extra skill mastery, chances are they're going to be promoted.

Balancing around skill seems like a nightmare because the developers have less control (+15 light damage and the match-ups will swing back to being balanced.) But it is better because it puts balance more into the players' control on how well you played. That does assume that all sides have more skill based micro with their units (the movement changes would be for everyone of course.) But having the RTS equivalent of skill shot vs skill shot is not a bad problem to have. And that's why people are pushing for things like Carrier micro- it's more skill based unit attacks that help the player with the better control.
Moderator5000 of our finest Taliban warriors have been released! Rise up my brothers. Mashalla! al-Donald ibn-Frederick al-Masih allows it.
JaKaTaKSc2
Profile Blog Joined March 2011
United States2787 Posts
September 25 2012 17:50 GMT
#64
Holy shit man. Well done, thanks so much for sharing that.

This and NonY's Carrier Video make me think that reworking some AI in HotS would be really beneficial.
Commentatorhttps://www.youtube.com/JaKaTaKtv
mordek
Profile Blog Joined December 2010
United States12705 Posts
September 25 2012 18:16 GMT
#65
This was presented really well. I am convinced.
It is vanity to love what passes quickly and not to look ahead where eternal joy abides. Tiberius77 | Mordek #1881 "I took a mint!"
BisuDagger
Profile Blog Joined October 2009
Bisutopia19384 Posts
September 25 2012 19:52 GMT
#66
This article reminds me of why I love BW so much more. If the problems you stated well in the OP were fixed correctly, I would most definitely go back to play SC2 for a very very long time. Fix unit clumping + Fix tanks makes a nearly perfect world. I can deal with the units currently in the game. It's the behaviors as a whole that kills it for me.
ModeratorFormer Afreeca Starleague Caster: http://afreeca.tv/ASL2ENG2
ZeromuS
Profile Blog Joined October 2010
Canada13414 Posts
September 25 2012 20:08 GMT
#67
Good Read.

To a certain extent you can already see the pull down laterally and a move across to get a spread function. However, its a little harder to do and involves some manual shifting around, so its quite different. If anything I think the AI clumping makes the game harder in a certain way - you fight the AI and try to make it do what you want it to do and not what it wants to do itself. Though this isn't as big a deal at the moment because the splash doesnt punish it in quite the same way.

If anything, making the tanks able to overkill and keeping the clumping would increase the skill required to engage tanks substantially.

After all, you would need to put more effort into keeping the units apart.

StrategyRTS forever | @ZeromuS_plays | www.twitch.tv/Zeromus_
MavercK
Profile Joined March 2010
Australia2181 Posts
September 25 2012 21:41 GMT
#68
nice read. was very interesting.
depressing the reddit community is so ridiculously hostile towards these threads (atleast this is actual. good. game discussion.)
Brood War Remake - SC2BW - http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=145316
Hayl_Storm
Profile Joined April 2011
The Shire633 Posts
September 26 2012 00:01 GMT
#69
It is so refreshing to read something like this which is well thought out and argued.

10/10

Editor@TL_Hayl // Return of the (Marine)King
trifecta
Profile Joined April 2010
United States6795 Posts
September 26 2012 02:33 GMT
#70
Overkill -> screens of blue goo + hydra corpses were the best. I hope the community is slowly convincing modern blizz that they are sitting on a gold mine of unit ai/engine quirks from BW.
adius
Profile Joined May 2007
United States249 Posts
Last Edited: 2012-09-26 02:46:10
September 26 2012 02:39 GMT
#71
Browder already said that making "smart" unit behavior "dumber" (with smart and dumb referring to how good the units are at going exactly where you tell them and fighting effectively when they get there) is out of the question, regardless of whether it would make the game more fun. Straightforward AI is literally more important than fun in the SC2 design concept. Also they've claimed that it's not possible in the SC2 engine to have multiple "hitscan" attacks that will each kill a unit target that same unit because they'll never acquire the same target at the exact same moment

Also I think redesigning or removing the Colossus is at least at important as that stuff you mentioned because that is a very toxic unit concept to the idea of dynamic battles with interesting unit positioning, regardless of how you change the numbers on it.
Falling
Profile Blog Joined June 2009
Canada11605 Posts
Last Edited: 2012-09-26 03:19:42
September 26 2012 03:19 GMT
#72
Well that's kinda the whole point of my blog. Just because it's newer and it's called 'smart' doesn't make it so. Anymore than saying MMO combat is smarter than FPS combat because it hits every time (minus interrupts). I wanted to go beyond the labels and look at the actual implications of the two.

As for the Colossus, it's kinda a chicken and egg problem. Collosus is problematic to Terran positioning, but if people don't understand what mech positional play is, I'm not necessarily sure they will see how harmful the Collosus is to it. But you can definitely find my posts throughout TL adamantly arguing to change the collosus to something else.

Overkill -> screens of blue goo + hydra corpses were the best.

And this is rather the goal in my mind. Because this is immensely satisfying to pros and newbs alike. The pro's will be able to make use of the subtlies of mech play, but low level players will get tank lines that will shell the enemy lines to pieces.
Moderator5000 of our finest Taliban warriors have been released! Rise up my brothers. Mashalla! al-Donald ibn-Frederick al-Masih allows it.
neobowman
Profile Blog Joined March 2008
Canada3324 Posts
September 26 2012 05:31 GMT
#73
I'll be the devil's advocate here. Tanks as far as I know are the only units with smart targetting. However, rarely in Wings of Liberty do you see a mass of tanks large enough to worry about clumping. It's generally just bio with tank support. In HOTS you have seen some levels of mass tanks but everyone's experimenting and not actually going for serious builds so its not yet known if that many tanks is actually viable. If you have only 1 to 5 tanks though, it's not going to be as important.
SEA KarMa
Profile Joined October 2010
Australia452 Posts
Last Edited: 2012-09-26 07:03:26
September 26 2012 07:02 GMT
#74
On September 25 2012 02:00 Indrium wrote:
Show nested quote +
On September 24 2012 07:19 Falling wrote:
One of these days I'll figure out how to write concisely...


Please don't. I enjoy this.

As I mostly play PVT tanks aren't featured much, but I enjoyed the matchup in BW when it was more mech play. Do you think no overkill is one of the reasons mech isn't viable TVP, or is that just a bunch of other factors?


Both. Mech is not viable in PvT for a bunch of reasons. Tanks are not as strong as mentioned. We don't have a key feature in brood war, the mine, which delayed the Protoss significantly. Hellions are decent against zealots like vultures, but are horrendous against stalkers and pretty much everything else. Vultures in brood war in sufficient numbers could take down goons with mines and such, but hellions tickle stalkers comparatively. There are now many units that just plain counter the tank, like immortals, charge zealots, archons, etc. Tank damage got nerfed as well because of no overkill, and so does even worse against the protoss army. Colossus can take many siege tank shots, unlike the brood war counterpart, the reaver. Tanks are harder to produce, more gas and more supply. Probably over 10 more reasons, but I just can't name them off the top of my head.
"terrible, terrible damage". terrible, terrible design.
Salomonster
Profile Joined August 2012
Sweden67 Posts
September 26 2012 10:31 GMT
#75
Hey, I think this is some really awesome ideas.
I'm a zerg player and I have been thinking along theese lines about the siege tank for quite a long time. the way it works today doesn't really feel logical, and I always thought it would be a more interesting unit if it would be more powerful and sacrifice more. Your post is just a much better way of describing what I've already been thinking about.
I think a change like this also would give bio/mech more dimensions.

I didn't play BW so I have no experience with how the siege tank worked back then, but what I have seen from BW the maps was alot different. How do you think a change like this would work on the current map pool, or just on maps designed by todays standards? I'm mainly thinking about BW maps seemed alot mor open spaced than curren sc2 maps, and that elevations seems more common in sc2. (I might be totally wrong about that) wouldn't this type of mechanic be very powerful especially in the early midgames on maps with lots of chokes and few attack paths?

I would really like to hear some oppinions about this.
twitch.tv/salomonster
MavercK
Profile Joined March 2010
Australia2181 Posts
September 26 2012 12:33 GMT
#76
On September 26 2012 14:31 neobowman wrote:
I'll be the devil's advocate here. Tanks as far as I know are the only units with smart targetting. However, rarely in Wings of Liberty do you see a mass of tanks large enough to worry about clumping. It's generally just bio with tank support. In HOTS you have seen some levels of mass tanks but everyone's experimenting and not actually going for serious builds so its not yet known if that many tanks is actually viable. If you have only 1 to 5 tanks though, it's not going to be as important.


shrug, tanks being 3 food over 2 food is a pretty big deal in how many you can make.
im amazed at sc2 when both players max in 11 minutes and have tiny, insignificant armies. it's also why i feel like carriers have a hard time finding their place.
bw players had a REALLY hard time maxing. like in all my watching of BW i can't think of many games where both players max. only time i really see it, is when one player is ahead but can't end it. so he just macros.
so both players max in 11 minutes and then what, how to build carriers. you have to sac your army to build them, but then you're vulnerable for quite awhile.
Brood War Remake - SC2BW - http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=145316
MrF
Profile Joined October 2011
United States320 Posts
September 26 2012 15:29 GMT
#77
I don't quite know how to respond to this, I don't really like this idea, tanks are fine as they are. They game is fun to watch and play and I believe that while composition is important control and positional strategy are still the major factors in winning games. I don't see the boring death-ball centric games that (according to some) apparently plague the pro-scene, I see exiting nail biting games with interesting strategy choices and great unit control, positional battles where who gets the better engagement can change the tide of a game. I don't think changing the tanks as you said would necessarily improve the game, what I know is that it would drastically change the balance of the game and the way you have to use tanks and I don't see a good reason to go through all that based on a hypothetical benefit that you think would be achieved. No offense and I hope I didn't sound harsh I just see no good reason to make massive changes to the game. I read you posts and understand your points, I just don't agree with them.
HunterXHunter is awesome
Mazer
Profile Joined April 2008
Canada1086 Posts
September 26 2012 19:55 GMT
#78
Glad to see someone pointing out ways SC2 can be improved without adding some combination of new units. I've all but stopped watching SCII because the vast majority of games are deathball oriented and it's plain boring to watch. I suppose it's a preference thing but I would really like to see some gameplay changes made similar to what you're suggesting.

Thanks for the write-up. Maybe if Blizzard sees this, they might re-consider their approach to the game..
ArcticRaven
Profile Joined August 2011
France1406 Posts
September 26 2012 20:06 GMT
#79
On September 27 2012 00:29 MrF wrote:
I don't quite know how to respond to this, I don't really like this idea, tanks are fine as they are. They game is fun to watch and play and I believe that while composition is important control and positional strategy are still the major factors in winning games. I don't see the boring death-ball centric games that (according to some) apparently plague the pro-scene, I see exiting nail biting games with interesting strategy choices and great unit control, positional battles where who gets the better engagement can change the tide of a game. I don't think changing the tanks as you said would necessarily improve the game, what I know is that it would drastically change the balance of the game and the way you have to use tanks and I don't see a good reason to go through all that based on a hypothetical benefit that you think would be achieved. No offense and I hope I didn't sound harsh I just see no good reason to make massive changes to the game. I read you posts and understand your points, I just don't agree with them.


You don't agree ? Sure, that's no problem. Now give arguments to support it. "I don't agree" isn't enoug. Why do you not agree ?
[Govie] Wierd shit, on a 6 game AP winning streak with KOTL in the trench. I searched gandalf quotes and spammed them all game long, trenchwarfare247, whateva it takes!
kineSiS-
Profile Blog Joined September 2009
Korea (South)1068 Posts
September 26 2012 20:55 GMT
#80
On September 24 2012 08:17 HawaiianPig wrote:
Love these blogs, they explain some of the finer points of what made mech work in BW.

....But it's per se not "per say"


Sadly, we didn't have certain units that made Mech an unviable strategy like immortals and the lack of dark swarm is also problematic.
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