EPT
Not sure if I've learned from my last Omnibus Blog on A-moving units by design. I have tried to aim for shorter this time. Although if you were off-put the first time, I do have a tldr version (to shamelessly plug it.)
I'd like to make the case that taking advantage of map features is partially what makes RTS games interesting. Especially in the RTS franchise, we don't have cover fire and bunch of other things modern RTS's have. But seizing tactical or strategic advantages makes the game more interesting and less like a deathball. A boring game is an entirely flat map with no features and it turns into army chasing army.
That is limitless movement, limits decision making and leads to deathball. Restricted movement (within reason), allows for more creative decisions, leads to more positional games and move away from deathball.
I do want to be careful here because people are used to all or nothing arguments. BW has all the micro. SC2 has no micro, etc, etc. So I'm not arguing that SC2 has no map features or that the map is completely flat. Rather, SC2 has minimized and muted the importance of terrain and this leads to less positional game.
I of course am once again treading above my station (I only meddle in very amateur BW map-making). But when one of our per-eminent SC2 map-makers made an exit post, I was interested to see that many of his thoughts were similar to my own.
+ Show Spoiler +
Superouman
http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/6713481997?page=1#0
Hello everyone, I posted yesterday a blog on teamliquid.net about my retirement:
http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/viewblog.php?topic_id=371545
Many people wanted to know the reasons of my lack of interest in this game, I post them here so the ones who are mainly concerned can read them. I reduced my subjective opinion as much as possible.
- A-move units with zero micro needed to do a lot of damage: colossus
- Units that forces a very specific counter otherwise you have high chances to lose: colossus->viking/corruptor
- Units push themselves, even enemy units, this causes to never be sure if your unit wall is ling proof
- Moving units have a smaller footprint than a static one moving ball armies are even smaller.
- The perfect pathing combined with unlimited selection, i think they must do unlimited selection with worse pathing to make more space between units OR perfect pathing with limited selection.
- Inability to move units between 2*2 buildings and bunkers. Supply depots wouldn't be needed at the bottom of main ramp.
- The spammable low tech anti-micro skills: forcefield and fungal , you can't counter them once you get caught. With brood war statis, you can save the units and about lockdown, it's hard to pull off and it's on only one unit.
- Smartcast, if there was no smartcast, spells could be much stronger because you would have to select spellcasters one by one. This could create comeback situations.
- Comebacks are only very rarely possible.
- The high number of workers needed per base, this causes to not need many bases spread out on the map. The high income rate is a big factor as well of not taking more than 3 bases.
- No highground advantage, the one in sc2 is only present in early game and is an illusion in the rest of the game. It causes terrain to not have much meaning.
- The big range of units compared to their radius, the consequence is too many units shoot at the same time and thus the dps rate of the army is huge.
- The dps rate causes players to not micro a lot
- There is no multiples battles occuring at the same time, and no, harass and drops are a different thing. The high dps rate causes that as well.
- Protoss early/mid game is balanced around the forcefield and forces them to take a very very close third base, you can't have too many paths leading to it otherwise a protoss can't forcefield everything.
- You can't place a lot of chokes in the middle of a map otherwise forcefields break everything (cloud kingdom is borderline on this subject)
- Every 4 players map with reflection symmetry must have close positions disabled because natural to natural distance is too short, it takes away a lot of diversity
- Units move too fast
- Tiny area control available, only tanks and swarm hosts can do it. Creep does it too but not very much.
- The only choke control unit/spell is the forcefield
- The terrain editor is extremely rigid, especially for ramps.
- The big size of expands, the resource gathering building having a 5*5 footprint
- Forcing 8 minerals, 2 gas expands
This list isn't complete, this is what i remember at this moment.
Blizzard has tried to add a few map features to add strategic options, but I'd suggest that so far they have been rather lack-luster.
New Map Features
Watch Tower
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/jz8er.png)
I don't know. Maybe it's just me, but they've never really panned out to be a major feature to fight over. It's usually held by a couple units or else the entire army is camped around it. But it seems rare to see a battle initiated over the control of the watchtower. They're useful, but they don't seem significant enough to fight for control over it (beyond a couple unit duels every now and then.)
Rocks
![[image loading]](http://i.minus.com/iA51kjRXdn52Q.gif)
Rock. Rocks, rocks, rock, rocks. Everywhere there are rocks. I don't know what more to say except they are mostly used to slow down expansions. There's no real decision making behind Rocks blocking expansions except they are in the way and they must be destroyed. More a nuisance than anything else.
Collapsible rocks- we'll see how that pans out. I'm not going to make any judgement on it yet.
High Ground
One of the biggest issues is simply the almost non-existent High Ground Advantage. Or the advantage that does exist is either/or. You have either have vision and can fire up or you don't. In contrast, in BW units on the lower ground had a miss-chance. Now some people hate any sort of randomness with a passion. I personally like miss-chance, but if you are one of those people then perhaps substitute x% damage reduction for shooting up.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/uMjwI.png)
Blue- unhindered shots
Red- Shots reduced effectiveness.
Why this matters:
It's simply is not near as worth it to guard bases and positions with smaller forces. This is because as soon as the attacker has vision, the attacker can make an even trade (just assume mirror match-up to limit the variables), unit for unit. Not only that, but if the attacker commits enough, there becomes a critical mass where the attacker can destroy the smaller defending force without suffering much damage. It then would've been more worth it for the defender to keep their main army strong and not have committed those defending forces.
If there is either miss-chance or damage reduction, then holding high ground becomes a very cost-effective way of using your units. This creates a greater incentive to split up and hold because you are usually guaranteed to put up a decent fight due to High Ground Advantage. The attacker must commit more more forces than the defender has committed to guarantee a victory. In other words, there is far more incentive to take and hold specific map features rather than simply chasing armies around. This increases positional control on the map.
Without it, the map feels far more featureless. (High/low has very little difference.)
This applies to more than just attacking your opponent's base. Beyond fighting over chokes (or creating terrain with FF's) there are also very large ramps in the middle of the map. Heartbreak Ridge is a good example.
Heartbreak Ridge
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/onfMe.png)
Red- ridges to hold position against pursuing forces.
The large ramps provide a great place to stop your retreating dragoons because your opponent would be hesitant to push into forces on the high ground. This is simply due to miss-chance (or damage reduction.) The ramps are super open with no chokes in sight and yet it becomes a great map feature.
Yes there is some value currently to positioning forces on the ridge (Vision.) But once you have vision, the units will trade evenly high ground to low ground as they would if the ground were flat.
Incidentally, shooting into trees and a couple other Doodads also gave miss-chances, but I'm not sure this was heavily used in pro-maps.
Ramps: Chokes Either/Or
Getting up ramps is far easier in SC2, which makes holding positions on the map more difficult. Unless you have sentries, in which it case it's on/off access with FF. Either you can and it's easy. Or you can't and it's impossible.
This is closely related to High Ground Advantage. Yet another reason that gave great defender's advantage and therefore pushed the game to be more positional is that it was much harder to push up or down ramps with your units. This meant that a smaller force could hold the top of a small ramp, pummel the larger force (because of miss-chance) and it was harder for the attacker to get all their units to bear.
This was primarily due to unit AI Units blocked rather than push up against each other and then throw in some buggy ai in the mix and ramps were hard to break which allowed for comebacks, tech switches and positional strategy. Obviously replicating the buggy AI is not an ideal solution. But I wonder if making units travel slower when going up small ramps would be a workable solution?
It simply allows the defender a few extra shots before the attacker can get all their units up the ramp. This puts a greater premium on being able to hold expansions with small numbers of troops on top of ramps. This in turn, pushes the battles from simply chasing armies around.
Unit Blocking
The new unit AI flows around each other, and pushes and shoves in order to get to the spot that you ordered. That may be fine for allied units, but it is un-acceptable that enemy units can also push your units around. Specifically in regards to zerglings pushing probes back. SC is a very precise game and clutch holds using a handful of units and a bunch of workers is part of what makes a game exciting. Enemy units not pushing your units allow for a more positional game and for more precise builds.
Once the workers (and other units) properly hold the line against enemy units, you could even re-add the old Worker Drill to bust up ramps. (Last blog has a video on this.)
(As a side-note, the Sentry really seems to be the only current solution for Protoss to survive early game and many maps seem to be balanced around this fact. Slowing down units travel time up narrow ramps and fixing the pushing problem could at least partially move away from having to balance maps around Sentries and Protoss's ability to take and hold their 3rd.)
Cliff-Walking
When Blizzard first mentioned the cliff-walking Reapers, Stalkers, and Collosus, I was totally on board. Cool feature I thought. Cliffs are such a big deal in BW. Wouldn't it be neat if there were units that could climb those cliffs? I totally get that line of reasoning.
But I am now convinced this is a terrible mistake. Cliffs were a big deal in BW and cliff-walking negates their effectiveness, thereby negatively effecting the sort of positional gameplay that was so interesting in SC. Terrain advantage becomes muted and minimized.
I am now convinced that making this feature so prevalent, has in turn made the maps and games feel featureless. The ability is basically the ability to ignore terrain. I'd suggest this is the main reason the Reaper could never find that sweet spot and instead got nerfed into obscurity. The power to ignore terrain consistently, easily, and in the early game pushes away from more positional games (you can just go over the terrain.) It too heavily impacted both greedy builds and tech builds for too little investment. (Compared to any sort of drop harass.)
High ground with low ground immediately underneath used to be a great advantage because the cliff was actually a wall that you could fire down from. Now it's an enormous vulnerability that every map must take account for. (Need a lot of impassable terrain to limit the approaches of all the units that can ignore the terrain barrier.)
Fighting Spirit-*
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/97bCX.png)
Red- vulnerable to ground army
Blue- Can fire from high ground down. Attacker can fire back, but can't cliff prevents close engagement.
Yellow/Green- impassable terrain to all
* Now granted there are a wide variety of BW maps and they don't all have these extensive ridges. But map variety is a side benefit.
All that that blue creates an ideal set-up where the attacker can only push so far in and then is forced to go around to the ramp and try to force their way up. That or try drop harass or giant drops. In the meantime, the attacking army is funneled into an area with defenders attacking the entire time. (An especially big issue with melee units.) When you add the high ground advantage from before, this becomes a potent combo to halt the attacker and give you time to build up a counter-attack. (Come-back potential.) If there were stalkers on this map, one observer and they quickly hop into the base and start killing stuff. They can easily ignore the terrain.
Daybreak
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/dfRaC.png)
Red- vulnerable to ground army
Blue- note that what would've been blue is now red. Open ridges with low ground are as much another vulnerability. Instead we have a lot of terrain impassable to all. (Presumably so cliff-walkers can't endlessly abuse differing heights from absolutely everywhere.**)
Yellow/Green- impassable terrain to all
**Could be other reasons, I'm no SC2 map-maker so I'm a little hesitant to get too far into reasons why. On a tangent, I wonder how much (read too large) FF's dictate how maps are created.
This literally levels the playing field. Terrain does not matter near so much for Collosus especially. This is compounded by the Collosus' ability to ignore unit collision and walk right over anything. People talk about good Collosus positioning and while that's true, much of it is dumbed down because the Collosus can go pretty much anywhere. I talked at length about the problem of the Collosus in my last blog. But one thing I glossed over is this mobility issue.
A pattern I see in interesting late game damage dealers is they are very powerful in burst damage, their rate of fire is quite slow or else limited by how fast you can click them. Furthermore, they are restricted by speed. This applies to almost every ground, late game damage dealer. Except the Collosus who in fact goes where it pleases regardless of the map and at fairly high speeds.
Basically, positions on the map don't matter so much when you can just ignore position. Then it's just army chasing on a flat map.
Air Units
This isn't as big an issue as I'd thought it would be when I had the idea to write. Blizzard wanted to make air more important than it was in BW. I initially thought this was a good idea as I also thought it was irritating that many air units were not consistently used.
I no longer think that a bigger role for Air is a good thing simply because there is no terrain in the air. If an RTS must finish in the air, it will most likely turn into big Air to Air mob clusters. But there's nothing to maneuver around.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/7pRHH.png)
Blue- Air to Air battles don't really make a difference where on the map they are. It's all the same.
Red- Air to Ground- Terrain is everything. (Cliff abuse.)
Three Points of Clarification
1) Air to Ground is very interesting and is just is much positional. Cliffs are the air units best defence and the battle lines are drawn by dodging in and out and abusing the cliffs to get away. Asymmetrical air attacks can be quite good. Just so long as they other side can mount a reasonable AA ground force and doesn't just have their position over-run by as sudden switch to air.
2) Scourge actually create the same sort of terrain dynamic. It forces the attack-retreat for the air units or else be annihilated. There was also a bit of juking that air units could do to avoid scourge impact (at least for awhile.) I'm sure an entire blog could be devoted to analyzing the impact scourge had on air play, but I'll just skim by.
3) Moving Shot and Patrol Micro makes everything better. Air to Air can be interesting when the rapid response comes into play.
The reason this isn't such an issue is in the end is because Air isn't near as important as Blizzard had wanted it. Voidrays are hardly made and Carriers disappeared for long periods of time. Vikings and Corrupters are boring, but you can't over-run positions with them because they can't shoot down. However, the control on most air units remains sub-par. (The issue of delayed attack between moving/ sluggish unit handling.) There is of course Infestor-Broodlord, but that's a can of worms I'm not going to touch here.
Warp-Gates
Warp-Gates. Cool in theory. In practice it actually collapses the map on itself. By that I mean, reinforcing lines are extremely important in a more positional game. You are pushed back towards your base. This is bad, but then your reinforcement line just got shorter so you can shore up your forward defences faster than the attacker. This means holding positions on the map actually matter because units take time to travel to the front-line.
Distance is a crucial factor in a map actually being a map and not just a flat terrain arena to duke it out. Warp-gates collapse the distance and can instantly reinforce a pushed line no matter how far into the enemy base they are. Just so long as a pylon (cheaper than ever with the rate of income in SC2) or a warp-gate.
Proxy rushes actually risk something. You try and shorten the distance to your enemy, but risk losing valuable tech and production facilities. It's a huge risk, but the pay-off can be quite exciting.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/6fYUV.jpg)
Portable Gateways- skip everything inbetween
Pylons are basically traveling Gateways. Late game 20 of them (or more) can be parked at someone's doorstep. The ultimate proxy base. It has all the benefits and none of the risk. Distance does not matter. The terrain in between does not matter. You can successfully ignore all the terrain and reinforce right with your main army. This problem is compounded because warp-gates are front-loaded. Insta-reinforcements in the enemies base while they have to wait for their production cycle is complete. At 200/200, the Protoss basically has X number of additional forces where X is the number of warp-gates. There is a balancing cost to this crazy distance-negating advantage.
Besides of which, the Protoss already have early game recall and late-game recall. (Although having it stuck on one Hero Unit limits its use- especially on the late-game Super slow Unit.)
Caution: Balance on Movement Restriction
Although this is heavily emphasizes how to make holding positions on the map more strong, it is possible to swing to far the other direction. I once tried to create BW style maps for AoE II with one gap into the base, but it made for very boring, defensive play.
Good drop harass units are essential for the mid-game. And late-game it is necessary for there to be methods to get over or through strong defences. In BW, late game, the Arbiter comes out that is both able to give the ground army protective cloak until the melee can close the gap to engage the positionally situated tanks. But the recall could jump the army into the enemy base- in the late game. Similarily, Zerg has the defiler to give protective cover for their melee (Dark Swarm) to close the gap. And big Doom Drops with Overlords that are able to get over enemy lines. Terran's tanks are strong enough to bust through most lines, but big drop ship play can do the same trick.
Similarily in the late game, siege air can come out. (Although Guardians generally fell out of favour.) The main difference though, is it's the late game that units come out that really get the armies over defensive lines. It's also pretty limited compared to the Collosus native ability to climb cliffs immediately upon being created. Timing is everything. And being able to easily ignore terrain early to mid-game, negatively impacts positional play.
What can be Reasonably Changed.
Miss-chance/ Damage Reduction could be implemented across the board without too much effort. Yes it would impact the matches, but it ought to impact everyone equally.
Similarly, slowing units progress up ramps could be implemented without damaging too much the current match-ups.
Fixing enemy units pushing your own can and should be fixed even if zergling runbys are harder to do. (You can always balance it out.) This game relies on precision and enemy units bumping around yours is not at all precise.
Air Units- no change required really. Except to add freaking moving shot micro to everything. It really bothers me that we're ignoring our RTS Unit Control Revolution. (Basically what my last blog was about.)
Warp-Gate. Yeah. They're here to stay as damaging as I think they are. Our best shot is if warp-gates took longer to send out units then Gateways. Yeah, it's an old suggestion, but it's the best compromise that I've seen proposed.
Cliff-walking. I'm not sure what is reasonable. I'd like to see a complete overhaul of the Collosus (previous blog had a video describing further problems.) But getting rid of it's cliffwalk would be a start. Stalkers... dunno. If they had blink, but couldn't jump up cliffs? I'm sure they could use a damage buff. And if that were in addition to getting rid of the attack delay between moving. Not likely, but the Collosus is bad and has been bad since the previous Beta.
Conclusion
I guess I'm not really breaking any new ground here. I'm mostly restating what has been argued before by others. However, I think the sum of the parts is far worse when they've all been combined into one game. On their own, each one is irritating, but perhaps not game-breakingly bad. Put them all together and we have a game that on the whole levels the playing field, flattens the terrain and basically minimizes the importance of positional control of specific areas of the map. Army chasing becomes more important than holding multiple positions with smaller forces.
When people complain about almost any match-up with Protoss being extremely boring... is it any wonder? Granted this is only a partial explanation. But it's interesting to note that of all of the races, Protoss is the one that ignores terrain the most. A large bulk of the army can leap up cliffs, no problem. The ones that can't cliff walk, can be warped in on the cliff anyways (with warp-prisms.) The Protoss also have the one unit that can also ignore unit collision and furthermore can simply ignore map distances when reinforcing. Protoss is the races that most consistently ignores the terrain on the map (and subsequently throws up it's own map features in the form of FF's.) I wonder to what extent makes the Protoss army itself feel featureless by comparison.
I think High Ground, Ramps, and Unit Blocking are the most reasonable to change because we aren't getting rid of anything new. We're just attempting to see if it makes any difference on rewarding players take and cost-effectively hold positions on the map with smaller groups of units. Warp-Gate (and probably Cliff Walking) change is a pipe-dream, but I think they are also very big contributing factors. I'm generally fine with the current prevalence of air. More emphasis on Air could downplay the usefulness of terrain. Far more important is to add better attack-retreat micro on air units to make them more interesting.
Post-Script
+ Show Spoiler +
Some other Map Features (That got left behind)
1) Mineral Sliding and Worker Drone
2) Buildings as Defensive structures
Of course they are used for this purpose already. But dropping armoured bonus against buildings would certainly help. (Old as Beta critique.) But it's kinda funny how the supply depots were given that raise/lower ability and yet they are rarely used for that because depots are comparably much weaker.
Tougher buildings means it's easier to block off the tops of ramp. When combined with some of the high ground advantages mentioned in the main blog, then positional play would become much more powerful.
In addition, it wold be nice if there was at least the possibility of placing buildings far enough apart that for instance marines could get through, but zealots could not. Originally in BW this was due to differing measurements on how close buildings could be placed. This created situations where some units could get through and others could not. Not having to memorize specific ways of walling makes SC2 more accessible and we'll probably never go back the old system.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/7pN5n.png)
Blue- path of Marine
Red- path of Zealot
This very simple set-up (and others like it) can make for very powerful in-base defences in the early game.
What would be ideal is if we had the current system that makes it easy to block off paths. Then if there was also a way to place buildings slightly further away to get these sorts defensive set-ups... don't know if we can have our cake and eat it too, but it would be pretty awesome.
3) Stacked Temples: AKA What Rocks Should've Been
It seems to me Blizzard saw some of the BW maps with stacked temples and developed their Rock idea from there. However, the use of rocks have never matched what stacked Temples did.
Example: Neo-Medusa. (Electric Circuit is a modern example.)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/CZwap.png)
Note the red arrow on the mini-map and the minerals in front of the Temples.
i) Rocks are not stacked. There's something like 10 stacked temples which you need to target down individually, but mostly it's a big waste of time to do so. Instead, a unit that does splash damage (Archon, Siege Tank, or Lurker) targets the temple and damages the rest through splash. This is important because this keeps the path closed until at least the mid-game. It also give the defender time to prepare a defence behind it. The tech requirement of splash is really important for back door blocking.
ii) There is a very long, winding path on the high ground before finally getting into the main. It's extremely important that when the stacked Temples go down, it doesn't lead straight into the Main. Blistering Sands is the perfect example when Blizzard was still trying to use Rocks for things other than blocking expansions. The backdoor went straight into Main leading to extremely short, hyper-aggressive games. The long path is further compounded by BW units not flowing like water down the corridor.
iii) There is a little micro trick with the mineral patches, where you can slide individual units though the Temples and onto the high-ground. It's very easy to mine out the patch, so it's not a limitless trick. Furthermore, it's hard to do so it doesn't happen every game, but it's exciting when it happens.
iv) The Temples were rarely used to slow down expansions.
It's not so much that Rocks should never block expansions. Just they seem to be used that way in every map.
In short, there seems to be a lot more very cool stuff that was done BW maps (see Troy) that really have no replacement in SC2 maps.
1) Mineral Sliding and Worker Drone
2) Buildings as Defensive structures
Of course they are used for this purpose already. But dropping armoured bonus against buildings would certainly help. (Old as Beta critique.) But it's kinda funny how the supply depots were given that raise/lower ability and yet they are rarely used for that because depots are comparably much weaker.
Tougher buildings means it's easier to block off the tops of ramp. When combined with some of the high ground advantages mentioned in the main blog, then positional play would become much more powerful.
In addition, it wold be nice if there was at least the possibility of placing buildings far enough apart that for instance marines could get through, but zealots could not. Originally in BW this was due to differing measurements on how close buildings could be placed. This created situations where some units could get through and others could not. Not having to memorize specific ways of walling makes SC2 more accessible and we'll probably never go back the old system.
Blue- path of Marine
Red- path of Zealot
This very simple set-up (and others like it) can make for very powerful in-base defences in the early game.
What would be ideal is if we had the current system that makes it easy to block off paths. Then if there was also a way to place buildings slightly further away to get these sorts defensive set-ups... don't know if we can have our cake and eat it too, but it would be pretty awesome.
3) Stacked Temples: AKA What Rocks Should've Been
It seems to me Blizzard saw some of the BW maps with stacked temples and developed their Rock idea from there. However, the use of rocks have never matched what stacked Temples did.
Example: Neo-Medusa. (Electric Circuit is a modern example.)
Note the red arrow on the mini-map and the minerals in front of the Temples.
i) Rocks are not stacked. There's something like 10 stacked temples which you need to target down individually, but mostly it's a big waste of time to do so. Instead, a unit that does splash damage (Archon, Siege Tank, or Lurker) targets the temple and damages the rest through splash. This is important because this keeps the path closed until at least the mid-game. It also give the defender time to prepare a defence behind it. The tech requirement of splash is really important for back door blocking.
ii) There is a very long, winding path on the high ground before finally getting into the main. It's extremely important that when the stacked Temples go down, it doesn't lead straight into the Main. Blistering Sands is the perfect example when Blizzard was still trying to use Rocks for things other than blocking expansions. The backdoor went straight into Main leading to extremely short, hyper-aggressive games. The long path is further compounded by BW units not flowing like water down the corridor.
iii) There is a little micro trick with the mineral patches, where you can slide individual units though the Temples and onto the high-ground. It's very easy to mine out the patch, so it's not a limitless trick. Furthermore, it's hard to do so it doesn't happen every game, but it's exciting when it happens.
iv) The Temples were rarely used to slow down expansions.
It's not so much that Rocks should never block expansions. Just they seem to be used that way in every map.
In short, there seems to be a lot more very cool stuff that was done BW maps (see Troy) that really have no replacement in SC2 maps.
