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On July 18 2015 19:38 FueledUpAndReadyToGo wrote:
I don't understand why it is necessary? It's already so hard to attack up a ramp. This would just kill any early game aggression. Also would give an large advantage to terran that can easily bypass highground with mass medivacs. And 3rd and 4th bases which actually need a little defensive help are on the low ground anyway.
New "unkillable" WarpPrism and "free" Overlord drops achieve the same thing as the medivacs which, btw, cost 100 gas each.
Maps are tailored to the current game, so in the case of high-ground advantage, new maps will have to be made. Thus, how 3rd base is on low ground is not an excuse.
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On July 18 2015 19:38 FueledUpAndReadyToGo wrote:
I don't understand why it is necessary? It's already so hard to attack up a ramp. This would just kill any early game aggression. Also would give an large advantage to terran that can easily bypass highground with mass medivacs. And 3rd and 4th bases which actually need a little defensive help are on the low ground anyway.
I wouldn't worry about maps too much. But your other point is very valid. The races profit very differently from highground advantage and maybe it's just my limited imagination, but I cannot really see a way that creates a highground advantage that helps a zergling as much as a marine, or a mutalisk as much as a siege tank.
And yes, mass medivacs dropping into a highground base (e.g. main base next to the ramp) and forcing your opponent to run into an offensive position with highground advantage in his own base sounds quite stupid.
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To me it doesn't matter whether it's RNG or some other solution. If the outcome is positive, we shouldn't be obsessing about the implementation.
My view about strong defender's advantages is that they must be combined with the potential for economic snowballing. You cannot put strong defender's advantages in games where players are limited in economic development. There must be something which provides strong incentives to attack into unfavourable terrain and position, or else the defender's advantages will only lead to passive play.
I have strong views about this ever since I went through a large data set of League of Legends and Dota2 games and compared the average gold leads in those games.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/shg4s2m.gif)
Top blue cross: 95th percentile (only 5% of winning teams had a lead greater than this marker).
Top of whisker: 90th
Top part of box: 50th-75th
Bottom part of box: 25th-50th
Bottom whisker: 10th
Bottom red marker: 5th (only 5% of winning teams had a lead smaller than or deficit larger than this marker).
It would be very difficult to find someone in the dota community who would seriously agree with you that RNG such as crits and miss chances don't belong in dota. In my opinion this general attitude of the player base is connected to the overall macro design of the game. Dota is a game where heroes are not necessarily so much balanced in relation to each other, but rather balanced against a backdrop of extremely strong defender's advantages.
Why would anyone in dota ever be willing to attack 5v10 into buybacks, high ground advantage, glyphs and choke points with the power of spells in that game? In my view the economic snowballing fuels and incentivizes a great deal of the action.
League of Legends, meanwhile, is designed according to a philosophy where in-combat decision making is held above everything else in importance.
What I do resist is that everything is good, and variety is the highest value. No. We value specific game design fundamentals that define League, and that those elements purposefully and specifically differ from that in other MOBAs. Just like I feel like DotA does (and should) embrace it's more planning-weighted focus and making characters have insane stuff that feels good, we embrace our focus on a good, interactive experience that result in-combat decisions mattering more. That should result in a game we want to be fair and balanced, but balance is a result of that, not a goal to avoid things.Ryan "Morello" Scott ( source)
If you want in-combat decisions to matter more it also makes sense that you try to steer the champion balance and the economic design into a greater degree of equality. League has a much greater obsession over terms such as equal "power curves". The economic rubberbanding keeps heroes within a handful levels of eachother and it keeps gold leads from growing out of control. The primary differentiator in skill should be how you move and aim in combat. To make sure that is the case, we push everything into a more symmetrical state to ensure a "fairness" in these combat exchanges. That's part of the reason why Riot has an aversion to asymmetrical laning set ups during the laning stages. That makes the laning stage be more about planning and strategy than it is about mechanics and in-combat decision making.
These things, among others, are why you'll find that in League, when a professional player complains about crits and rng, those sort of threads can actually be upvoted to the top of the League subreddit. Overall balance in LoL is influenced to a much higher relative degree by how champions are balanced and calibrated in relation to each other. You don't have half a dozen cushioning fallback defender's advantages like dota2.
That's why have the strong view that RNG is not something which "inherently" does not belong in competitive games. Rather, RNG is something which fits in certain systems of game design, because it produces a desirable and beneficial overall effect for the game. And in those games, the player base will not be negatively inclined against RNG.
In general I think SC2 is designed much more in the style of League. Armies are balanced more in relation to each other than they are, like in BW, against a backdrop of ridiculous defender's advantages and mechanical demands which accentuate them. Economies are more rubberbanded and forced to equality. In-combat decision making and battles have a greater deal of influence on the outcome of a game than the macro scale decision making. In essence: the battles are more important, they translate more decisively into won objectives and won games.
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On July 18 2015 20:06 Big J wrote:Show nested quote +On July 18 2015 19:38 FueledUpAndReadyToGo wrote:
I don't understand why it is necessary? It's already so hard to attack up a ramp. This would just kill any early game aggression. Also would give an large advantage to terran that can easily bypass highground with mass medivacs. And 3rd and 4th bases which actually need a little defensive help are on the low ground anyway. I wouldn't worry about maps too much. But your other point is very valid. The races profit very differently from highground advantage and maybe it's just my limited imagination, but I cannot really see a way that creates a highground advantage that helps a zergling as much as a marine, or a mutalisk as much as a siege tank. And yes, mass medivacs dropping into a highground base (e.g. main base next to the ramp) and forcing your opponent to run into an offensive position with highground advantage in his own base sounds quite stupid.
It is the other way around. What we really suggest is not a "high ground advantage" but "low ground disadvantage". Only ranged ground units on low ground are affected. So, if there is a marine drop into your base and your respond with zergling/baneling response - that battle won't be affected in the slightest! Units on high ground have no buff, and units running on low ground are melee.
You could argue that roaches on the low ground will be weaker. You are right. But if the situation is reversed, and you have high-ground roaches against low-ground marines then the Terran will be at a disadvantage. Because all Terran units are ranged, they are potentially the most often affected by the low-ground disadvantage.
I don't want to jump to a conclusion that Terran would be nerfed by it so hard that some addintional balance change. Instead, I just say that with the change Terran is most position-dependent.
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On July 18 2015 20:36 BlackLilium wrote:Show nested quote +On July 18 2015 20:06 Big J wrote:On July 18 2015 19:38 FueledUpAndReadyToGo wrote:
I don't understand why it is necessary? It's already so hard to attack up a ramp. This would just kill any early game aggression. Also would give an large advantage to terran that can easily bypass highground with mass medivacs. And 3rd and 4th bases which actually need a little defensive help are on the low ground anyway. I wouldn't worry about maps too much. But your other point is very valid. The races profit very differently from highground advantage and maybe it's just my limited imagination, but I cannot really see a way that creates a highground advantage that helps a zergling as much as a marine, or a mutalisk as much as a siege tank. And yes, mass medivacs dropping into a highground base (e.g. main base next to the ramp) and forcing your opponent to run into an offensive position with highground advantage in his own base sounds quite stupid. It is the other way around. What we really suggest is not a "high ground advantage" but "low ground disadvantage". Only ranged ground units on low ground are affected. So, if there is a marine drop into your base and your respond with zergling/baneling response - that battle won't be affected in the slightest! Units on high ground have no buff, and units running on low ground are melee. You could argue that roaches on the low ground will be weaker. You are right. But if the situation is reversed, and you have high-ground roaches against low-ground marines then the Terran will be at a disadvantage. Because all Terran units are ranged, they are potentially the most often affected by the low-ground disadvantage. I don't want to jump to a conclusion that Terran would be nerfed by it so hard that some addintional balance change. Instead, I just say that with the change Terran is most position-dependent.
True, I guess I didn't quite think it through. However, what you are saying already implies a specific advantage (I guess 50% miss chance).
In that case it is a disadvantage, but a minor one because the opponent still must come down. Even if he takes reduced damage, he still takes free damage if he doesn't come down so it's only for a few shots.
If we talk about other variations like +1range or +1upgrade damage for high ground units, there is a distinct advantage for sitting on the high ground against lower range units.
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Dota is a game where heroes are not necessarily so much balanced in relation to each other, but rather balanced against a backdrop of extremely strong defender's advantages.
High ground advantage, however, doesn't come close to replicate the defenders advantage you see in MOBA's. Towers in MOBA's allows you effectively survive at a position when severely outnumbered. Highground advantage only makes it possible to be even if you have a 10-30% lower army count.
I don't think high ground is bad per se, but it shouldn't be seen as the "best way" to make armies spread out more.
In general I think SC2 is designed much more in the style of League. Armies are balanced more in relation to each other than they are,
I think you are trying too hard to create similarities here that doesn't actally exist.
First of, League towers are stronger than Dota towers, and the defenders advantage in LOL is definitely very high.
Attacking enemy towers can therefore be difficult, but that's why you have a Baron objective as that allows you to push enemy towers easier. The combination of high defenders advantage and objective focus is something that doens't really exist in Sc2 or BW (but it's definitely a concept I would love to see implemented an RTS... along with proper unit design).
Secondly, the main way League champs are designed relative to Dota champs is through counterplay. Each champion should be able to do something against any other enemy champion. There are some champs that are better in lane against other champs, but it's usually within the 40-60/60-40 range.
That's not the case at all in Sc2 (air units vs ground, maurauder/immortal vs speedlings, you need detection etc.). You have lots of pretty strong hardcounters in Sc2.
On the other hand BW probably is a bit more softcounter-focussed than Sc2, so I would argue that its philosophy - in that regard - is more comparable to LOL than Dota.
You could then argue that BW abilities are more comparable to that of Dota abilities in terms of how strong they are - which I agree with.
However, that doesn't imply that the design of LOL abilities is comparable to the design of Sc2 abilities. When I started playing LOL, I quickly realized that Riot had managed to make each ability/skillshot feel satisfying to use properly while simultaneously making sure that addequate counterplay exists. It's clear that they spend lots of hours tweaking the numbers in order to get just the right interactions.
That is in sharp contrast to most of the Sc2 abilities. E.g. reaper bomb doesn't have any practical counterplay as it's not worth trying to dodge it, and it doesn't feel satisfying at all to land either. Sc2 abilities seems to be more about APM for the sake of APM.
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It's not the entire story no. Travel time, pathing and the mechanical difficulty of transporting/reinforcing your army also played a large role in BW battles being more favourable for the defender. You would frequently see the best progamers' newly produced units stand idle for 30-60 seconds (they'd stand idle longer the more bases, bigger armies and more production buildings the players built, since the mechanical demands grew in complexity with them).
It would be difficult to recreate that part of the defender's advantage effect in SC2.
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Bisutopia19290 Posts
On July 18 2015 21:19 LaLuSh wrote:
It's not the entire story no. Travel time, pathing and the mechanical difficulty of transporting/reinforcing your army also played a large role in BW battles being more favourable for the defender. You would frequently see the best progamers' newly produced units stand idle for 30-60 seconds (they'd stand idle longer the more bases, bigger armies and more production buildings the players built, since the mechanical demands grew in complexity with them).
It would be difficult to recreate that part of the defender's advantage effect in SC2.
That's a huge point. For example, with the warpgate mechanic protoss never have units home to defend that just sit their idly from macro if they are on the offensive.
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On July 18 2015 23:22 BisuDagger wrote:Show nested quote +On July 18 2015 21:19 LaLuSh wrote:
It's not the entire story no. Travel time, pathing and the mechanical difficulty of transporting/reinforcing your army also played a large role in BW battles being more favourable for the defender. You would frequently see the best progamers' newly produced units stand idle for 30-60 seconds (they'd stand idle longer the more bases, bigger armies and more production buildings the players built, since the mechanical demands grew in complexity with them).
It would be difficult to recreate that part of the defender's advantage effect in SC2. That's a huge point. For example, with the warpgate mechanic protoss never have units home to defend that just sit their idly from macro if they are on the offensive.
I don't think that's what LaLuSh meant.
In BW you had units sitting in your own base instead of contributing to an attack, because of the mechanical difficulties. As a result the attack was weaker.
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Bisutopia19290 Posts
On July 18 2015 23:59 BlackLilium wrote:Show nested quote +On July 18 2015 23:22 BisuDagger wrote:On July 18 2015 21:19 LaLuSh wrote:
It's not the entire story no. Travel time, pathing and the mechanical difficulty of transporting/reinforcing your army also played a large role in BW battles being more favourable for the defender. You would frequently see the best progamers' newly produced units stand idle for 30-60 seconds (they'd stand idle longer the more bases, bigger armies and more production buildings the players built, since the mechanical demands grew in complexity with them).
It would be difficult to recreate that part of the defender's advantage effect in SC2. That's a huge point. For example, with the warpgate mechanic protoss never have units home to defend that just sit their idly from macro if they are on the offensive. I don't think that's what LaLuSh meant. In BW you had units sitting in your own base instead of contributing to an attack, because of the mechanical difficulties. As a result the attack was weaker.
I was agreeing by saying the warpgate mechanic eliminates the macro mechanical difficulties of the protoss army from BW. But also because of warpgate, you never have units sitting at home which actually has some advantages even if they are idle because of over taxed macro. I'm sure I'm just not being clear but we are thinking the same thing.
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You keep bringing up League towers are stronger than Dota towers as some form of argument everytime I bring this up. You have to make a much more compelling argument than that for me to be convinced.
League towers have a much greater damage output. You don't dive into league towers to he same extent as dota. That sums up the extent to which they're stronger.
On the other hand, League towers are less tanky and can be cut through like butter in the mid and lategame. Especially off of a won teamfight. A won teamfight in league almost always translates into hard objectives, moreso the longer the game goes.
- You don't have buybacks to fall back on in League.
- You don't have high ground advantage to assist a fewer amount of champions to fend off a greater amount of attackers.
Buybacks in combination with this in dota2 is a reason why all attackers can't fully commit to a push or a dive following a won teamfight. They have to think about how they position themselves a great deal more when pushing/diving. At any moment there can be one or several buybacks which punishes the overextension. In general only a few heroes can position themselves in such a way that they are hitting the tower from the high ground as opposed to from the low ground (in the case of tier3 towers). Sometimes no heroes are able to position themselves on the high ground.
- In League the power of champions grow much faster in relation to the tankiness of towers with game length. Towers melt. What are you going to do about an incoming push following a lost team fight in a 2v4 situation in League? Poke the enemies to death? It's possible to get great initiations, but it's not nearly as common that a numerically disadvantaged defender can hold off a numerically superior attacker.
- Spells in dota in general gobble up a much greater percentage of one's mana pool and have higher cooldown timers, meaning heroes have less sustain and are forced to a greater degree of committal. This makes defensive access to regeneration stronger in dota2.
- The strength of spells, radius of AoEs, duration of CCs, range of waveclears, range of initiations, makes it more difficult -- in relation to League -- to walk into a choke point and push in dota2. Even versus fewer opponents. This further accentuates the fact that very few heroes will be able to position themselves in a way where they're able to deal damage to a tier3 tower.
- You don't have glyph to fortify your towers.
- I made a comparison of kills per minute in dota2 and in league of legends. In the entirety of LCS Spring 2014, League had an average KPM of 0.7 per game. Meanwhile, dota during a 3 month period of all games played at the start of 2014 had a KPM average of 1.2. Dota2 professional games during this period averaged 35 minutes of game length, whereas League was at 38 minutes. Dota2 kill rates have remained high while avg game lengths have fluctuated (as high as 43 minutes in the fall of 2014). What I'm trying to imply here is that Dota2 is less volatile to heroes dying in a game. Even if heroes die at a higher rate, it has additional defender's advantages in place to counteract the effects of this. And who's to say more heroes don't die and more trades don't occur as a result of the higher defender's advantages?
Furthermore I don't understand how your mention of Baron or Dragon strengthens your point. Riot's changes this season to Dragon removed gold bounties upon killing it, and instead grants temporary buffs which increase in strength the more times your team kills the dragon. They removed gold bounties to counteract early economic snowballing. Furthermore, slaying dragon while behind grants experience rubberbanding:
If the killing team is lower average level than their opponents, Dragon grants a bonus XP of +25% per average level difference.
Bonus XP is sharply increased for the lowest level members of the team, +15% per number of levels behind Dragon squared (max total +200% extra).
In dota2 you can see a 10 level difference between a midder/carry and a support and you wouldn't think it was out of place. In League everybody stays closer together. This means killing a support as well as killing an AD carry or a midder is gonna punish them with roughly the same death timers. Furthermore, all league champions tend to reach maximum level earlier in the game in comparison. This makes death timers more punishing and mid-lategame fights super imortant, because they will almost always translate into hard objectives like inhibitors, or to securing Dragon and Baron, which are designed to temporarily grant extra pushing power and extra scaling to champions.
Baron, which spawns later in the game, grants fixed gold and xp bounties and grants a buff which adds ability power and attack damage, along with making minions stronger/faster/longer ranged. You take Baron, you gain a temporary scaling-incentive to push.
I don't see how Baron drastically differs from Roshan. Roshan grants your team xp, gold and the aegis of the immortal (resurrection), along with a cheese (regeneration) if Roshan is slayed for the third time or more. It's also put in place as an objective of contention, and as an added incentive to push your enemy. Personally I think roshan and its aegis are a weaker version and less direct incentive than baron and dragon, which outright improve your scaling and the pushing power of every lane.
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/sS0J1Kj.png)
Dota2 teams outearn League by roughly 20% in gold. Meanwhile the 40 most expensive recipes you can buy in Dota2 cost 50% more to buy than the 40 most expensive recipes in League. As a result, league heroes will scale to full power and to full slottedness sooner in matches. This scaling limit makes "equal power curves" more important, as if one champion scales inherently better, they'll play and delay to reach the scaling limit. Additionally, death timers grow larger faster for the entire team as even supports are rubberbanded along, causing fights to be picked with more caution the later a game goes.
Secondly, the main way League champs are designed relative to Dota champs is through counterplay. Each champion should be able to do something against any other enemy champion. That's not the case at all in Sc2 (air units vs ground, maurauder/immortal vs speedlings). You have lots of pretty strong hardcounters in Sc2.
This is incredibly vague. Air units vs ground units? Is that something which doesn't exist in BW? What kind of an example is that even? More hard counters in SC2? Marauder/Immortal vs speedling? How is that any different to dragoon versus speedling? Firebat versus speedling? Vulture versus zealot? Vulture versus dragoon? Zergling < Vulture < Speedzergling < Speedvulture? Hydra < Zealot < Speed Hydra < Speed Zealot? If you give examples of two isolated units it's easy to manifacture strong counter relationships. Fortunately for us, in the real world armies are generally not made up of only one single unit.
The claim of stronger counterplay in general I find is very vague and subjective. You don't ever bother giving any compelling arguments, just one-liners of the type "for example x unit versus y unit", while pretending that's evident enough to settle the argument.
Isn't a big orange cloud into which ranged units deal 0 damage a pretty strong counter to a race based on ranged units? A red goo disease which brings everything down to 1hp? What do you call those? Soft counters? Yeah... in your opinion. Even so, I'm not even referring to unit relationships. I'm talking about the strength of entire armies in relation to each other. When I say "the strength of armies in relation to each other", I mean the power of a mech army versus a protoss ground army in BW as compared to SC2.
If you had an equal power and strength discrepancy between armies (these extreme strength differences exist in SC2 too btw, mass raven/mech versus zerg ground for example, or swarm hosts behind static defenses), in which game would you be more likely to see trades, attacks and offensive attempts by the inferior army? And why would it be that you saw more trades in one of the games? That's what I'm trying to figure out. I really couldn't care less about marauders vs lings in that context.
Secondly, the main way League champs are designed relative to Dota champs is through counterplay. Each champion should be able to do something against any other enemy champion.
Blah blah blah. Again a domain of subjective opinion. You can argue this to death. What is counterplay really? The fact that you can dodge most if not all shots and that you're CC'd short durations? In that case League wins. League has in-combat counterplay that puts an emphasis on movement and aim. Is this form of counterplay somehow inherently purer than other forms of designing a game?
Is it less counterplay if you can purchase a hero or two heroes' worth of spells and actives to add to your hero's arsenal? Your teammate is trying to run from a fight? Forcestaff him. Your teammate is hexed? Lotus orb disspell that shit. Enemy about to ulti you with large AoE stun? BKB. You got silenced or ultied by a projectile? Eul's into the air and into invulnerability, purge the silence. Unreliable stuns? Set that stun up with an Eul's. Lack mobility and initiation and want to blink like Anti-mage? No problem, buy an item that lets you do it every 12th second. Buy an item that guarantees stunlock on your opponent? Buy an item that gives you a hex? Buy one which silences? Buy two which make you invisible? One which refreshes all your spells? One which blocks all targetted spells for you or for an ally of your choice?
Is this somehow a lesser form of counterplay? Said who?
Yes... but Lalush, you have to realize if you get CC'd for a 4 second black hole, or a magnus RP, or a tidehunter ravage, how are you supposed to counterplay that? If you get caught you're instantly dead. Surely this is bad counterplay. One blink from where you can't see the enemy, and the game is over! You call that a game with counterplay?
I think this line of thinking suffers from two big deficits in thinking:
1) It assumes a certain type of counterplay is purer than another, because it accepts the definition of the word counterplay as the word was defined by a party which favored a very specific and narrow school of design, and did so in a rather biased way (Riot Games).
2) It never takes the full picture into account. Your team were idiotic enough to position themselves in a way where they could get 3 or 4 man black holed? Ok. That's bad. We temporarily agree with Riot that positioning is a lesser form of counterplay. You're now at a disadvantage. But did you instantly lose? The enemy are now pushing without ultimates and you have buybacks, you have ultimates and can turn on them if they commit too far. Is that not a valid form of strategic and economic counterplay?
No, because Riot told me that stuff isn't real counterplay, right? Unless you're juking a skill shot or trying to land one, your counterplay is not as pure as Riot's counterplay.
Ok. Different topic now. So you said League towers are stronger, and I went as far as agreeing they deal more damage. I obviously strongly disagreed they grant more cumulative defender's advantages as a result of dealing more damage and gave you half a dozen reasons why. You can't just give one isolated example (not even specifying what's actually "stronger"), without looking at the overall system they're built into.
So what were my opinions if you were to reply once again to me?
* League of Legends is more rubberbanded, as such the game needs weaker defender's advantages to ensure that players are willing to push into disadvantageous positions. In my opinion, players and teams in a rubberbanded game are less likely to attack into a strong fortified position the more rubberbanded the game is. To freely be willing to attack into a strong position, you need to have accumulated a strong advantage.
I showed League has smaller gold leads. League items cost less in relation to how much gold is earned in both games (meaning League champions will scale to full power faster). League has smaller experience differences and reach max level faster (higher death timers and higher risks when engaging in combat). Riot actively work to remove and reduce early gold bounties to ensure in-combat "fairness" in the early parts of a game. Then they also add pushing and scaling incentives to objectives (Dragon, Baron) to incentivize pushing later on.
Dota2 has more kills per minute and averages roughly the same game length as League. Dota2 has hugely larger gold leads expressed as a percentage. Dota2 has slower scaling to full slottedness. Dota2 heroes have less sustain and longer cooldowns. Dota2 has buybacks. Dota2 has high ground advantage. Dota2 has more powerful tools of initiation combined with more powerful spells, making it harder to breach high ground.
Now these are all things that I think support the claims I've made that Dota2 has stronger defender's advantages than League. The higher amount of kills, bigger leads, difficulty of breaching high ground, buybacks, all factor into how heroes are less balanced in relation to each other and more to a backdrop of strong defender's advantages.
This general macro scale design of allowing economic snowballing, a slower scaling to full power, strong defender's advantages to balance out imbalanced armies, is something which I think BW has in common with dota.
Your counterargument to this was that towers are stronger in League and that SC2 has more hard counters than BW because marauders versus lings? You have to forgive me if I am not convinced.
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I've been advocating a from low ground to high ground disadvantage of -1 range for non-melee units. Since there's already the no vision of high ground disadvantage it cannot be too huge, however, with so many air units being support units/detection the high ground advantage is almost gone.
-1 range also make engagements more concave depend, which is hard to get moving up a ramp. I think it also makes sense, since gravity is a thing.
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You keep bringing up League towers are stronger than Dota towers as some form of argument everytime I bring this up.
This is the first time I have ever written it (your welcome to check my post history).
Anyway, I do have to apologize as I think I made it sound like I was arguing that Dota defenders advantage was lower than the defenders advantage in LOL, which resulted in you writing a long posts (where I don't really disagree with a lot of what your saying).
So let me be clear here: That wasn't my intention. I was talking more about how the defenders advantage of LOL is very high and imo higher than that of both BW and Sc2.
The latter comparision is ofc kinda comparing apples to oranges, but at least in one way it makes a ton of sense:
- If you make a significant early game error --> You are not gonna instadie in LOL, but you frequently will in Sc2 or BW.
Late game ofc you could perhaps argue that the defenders advantage in LOL is lower than in BW, but it's still such a weird comparison. Becuase in a MOBA the game - at that point - tends to drag on for so long and you actually want to encourage 5v5 teamfights rather than splitpushing (that's at least my opinion and most people will agree with me).
So in LOL it does make sense that the defenders adantage (which the towers provide) is being reduced over time. If your point is that the defenders advantage shouldn't be reduced over time in Sc2 (and I guess be more like DOTA?), then - too an extent - I can agree with you. However, even then I am not a fan of the high ground approach.
@ High ground
Relative to the "tower" approach, a high grond advantage doesn't provide an "absolute boost" but a percentage based advantage. This has two consequences that I don't find desireable (but not neccesarily bad either):
(1) Early/mid game timing attacks/all-ins aren't nerfed as a consquence of the defenders advantage. I find it important that it's easy to survive the early game as it will allow a greater amount of build order options (and also make the game easier to play for players that do not have super refined builds - Neither Sc2 or BW does a good job of this).
(2) It doesn't really allow a low army count to beat a larger army count. Instead, the counter to a small army count is a higher army value. Thus, a high ground advantage is unlikely to have a significant positive effect on more spread-out armies.
Instead, I would like to see abilities like DS in Sc2 as they allow you to split your army into multiple positions. Strong positional AOE units like Siege Tanks and Reavers can also do that.
This is incredibly vague. Air units vs ground units? Is that something which doesn't exist in BW?
The intention of these examples were to demonstrate that there were multiple hardcounters in Sc2 which would never be there in LOL. I didn't write that they didn't exist in BW either, instead I just wrote that BW was a bit more softcounter-focussed than Sc2.
Immortal, Maurauder obv a harder counter vs armored than the Dragoon is. Then you have the Colossus < Vikings. And you have our newly beloved Cyclone that can kill a lot of stuff without taking any damage in the proces.
Those types of units are very contrary to the design philosophy of Riot. I don't disagree with your claim that Riot is designing champs in relation to each other (they obviously are), but I fail to see how this is the case in Sc2. Or at least the way it is being executed in Sc2 is opposite of how the champion design proces would work in LOL.
Think about the Tempest? How does that unit interact with anything? This would be comparable to Riot implementing an ADC with 3 times the standard attack range and then make it slower to compensate.... They would never do such a thing because they are interested in making it possible for all types of champions to deal damage, cast abilities/dodge abilities against each other.
Isn't a big orange cloud into which ranged units deal 0 damage a pretty strong counter to a race based on ranged units? A red goo disease which brings everything down to 1hp? What do you call those? Soft counters? Yeah... in your opinion.
What do you do when the enemy casts that cloud on your units and lings come near you???
Answer: You move away = Countermicro. The only case where countermicro cannot be done is when you have Siege Tanks (where they cannot move) or perhaps when the cloud is being cast inside your base/natural (so you cannot retreat further).
Blah blah blah. Again a domain of subjective opinion. You can argue this to death. What is counterplay really? The fact that you can dodge most if not all shots and that you're CC'd short durations? In that case League wins. League has in-combat counterplay that puts an emphasis on movement and aim. Is this form of counterplay somehow inherently purer than other forms of designing a game?
Counterplay is related to engagements/small skirmishes. If one player does a specific action with his units/hero/champion (during the engagement) and the enemy can do an action that minimizes the effect of that action --> Counterplay.
Amongst others, counterplay includes:
- Splitting vs banelings
- Moving out of clouds/Psy storms
- Pulling back a unit that is being focus f ired
- Drop micro
- Dodging skillshots.
It assumes a certain type of counterplay is purer than another,
No it's really just a definition based on how people generally use the terms. Whether counterplay is good or bad is a different discussion.
With regards to itemization, that's related to decisions outside combat. In Sc2 that would be "which units should I buy or what upgrades to get?" If this proces is non obvious and depends upon a lot of factors, I would argue that there is lots of strategic depth.
In my opinion both BW, Sc2 and LOL doesn't have good strategic depth. Dota definitely has the best system in place here. And I am also very fond of how Dota items changes how you can play each hero. I think that's something Starcraft definitely could learn from.
We temporarily agree with Riot that positioning is a lesser form of counterplay.
Positioning prior to combat isn't counterplay. Positioning during combat is however in a different category as you often will position your self relative to what the opponent is doing.
How do I "know" this? Because i am basing this on the general community perception. Remember WOL Infestor. Noone would ever say that there is counterplay(micro) to Fungal Growth even though you could position yourself better (prior to combat) to minimize the impact of the ability.
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On July 18 2015 19:53 _indigo_ wrote:Show nested quote +On July 18 2015 19:38 FueledUpAndReadyToGo wrote:
I don't understand why it is necessary? It's already so hard to attack up a ramp. This would just kill any early game aggression. Also would give an large advantage to terran that can easily bypass highground with mass medivacs. And 3rd and 4th bases which actually need a little defensive help are on the low ground anyway. New "unkillable" WarpPrism and "free" Overlord drops achieve the same thing as the medivacs which, btw, cost 100 gas each. Maps are tailored to the current game, so in the case of high-ground advantage, new maps will have to be made. Thus, how 3rd base is on low ground is not an excuse.
Except they don't.
Speedprisms are by far the fastest flying unit in the game O_O. It's insane how long it takes a small pack of mutalisks to catch up to them. Medivacs are only as good as they are due to the cheap cost and speed of the boosters.
I wouldn't go claiming that overlord drops achieve at all the same dynamic as speedivacs and speedprisms. They don't. Overlord drops are hella' slow. They are so slow that at times I wonder what use they are. You can use speedprisms and speedvacs to FORCE army movement, they are that fast. The only forcing overlord drops let you do involves dropping the main, and even then there is no back and forth. They are too slow.
It's not really that OV drops are "too slow." It's that speedvacs/prism are way too fast, lol. It's absurd.
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On July 19 2015 06:04 Hider wrote:
@ High ground
Relative to the "tower" approach, a high grond advantage doesn't provide an "absolute boost" but a percentage based advantage. This has two consequences that I don't find desireable (but not neccesarily bad either):
(1) Early/mid game timing attacks/all-ins aren't nerfed as a consquence of the defenders advantage. I find it important that it's easy to survive the early game as it will allow a greater amount of build order options (and also make the game easier to play for players that do not have super refined builds - Neither Sc2 or BW does a good job of this).
(2) It doesn't really allow a low army count to beat a larger army count. Instead, the counter to a small army count is a higher army value. Thus, a high ground advantage is unlikely to have a significant positive effect on more spread-out armies.
Instead, I would like to see abilities like DS in Sc2 as they allow you to split your army into multiple positions. Strong positional AOE units like Siege Tanks and Reavers can also do that.
To what high ground advantage idea you are refering to? 50% miss chance or 50% damage reduction for uphill shooting allows you to defend a spot when fighting in 2:3 army size ratio.
(1) can be achieved when there is a ramp to your base.
(2) 2:3 is a noticeable, but not dominant difference
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(1) can be achieved when there is a ramp to your base.
This won't allow you to take bases at the pace that is neccasary to be in the game. Thus I highly dislike the high-ground defenders advantage as a tool to make it easier to survive early game. My favourite approach in a new RTS is definitely to learn from MOBA's and create the game around "towers".
That's obviously not realisitc in an Sc2, and for Sc2 I would instead suggest a combination of multiple changes:
- Defensivebased macromechanics (one for each race)
- Make it less costly to defend various types of all-ins/cheese + redesign of the Oracle (more microbased, less numbers-based).
To what high ground advantage idea you are refering to? 50% miss chance or 50% damage reduction for uphill shooting allows you to defend a spot when fighting in 2:3 army size ratio.
This is irrelevant as both are percentage based (I do dislike crits though). On the other hand, a tower in a MOBA provides an "absolute value" boost. A percentage boost is ineffective early game as you easily can be behind by 5 to 20 army supply. Even if we assume you could take advantage of the high ground to defend (which isn't always possible) that might only count for a value of an additional 2.5 army supply. Thus it will be 7.5 vs 20 army supply and you will die.
On the other hand, if you had a defenders advantage that provides an absolute value it would be different. Let's assume that value is equal to "15". This means that you will fight (5+15) 20 vs 20 army supply in the early game if the enemy attacks into you --> Easier to survive against timing attacks --> Allows for greater build order diversity.
A potential issue with this approach is ofc that it could reward heavy turtling, but that's why it must be combined with an objective-based approach --> So you have a reason to go out on the map.
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To me, high ground advantage would only "have to" be implemented with any "DH-HMH"-like economy, and even then it would have to be very subtle. It's not BW anymore, in SC2 50% less DPS when attacking an area-efficient range army is impossible to overcome.
It's only sensible to attack a position when you have a big numerical advantage (there's probably some Art of War quote to back that up, and it's true in Starcraft 2), so you would have to bring like 4 times the units to attack up a ramp. 4 times the units is probably a really big chunk of your army, if not your full strength. Not very interesting. BW had several other "features" that made high ground advantage not as decisive, like less unit clumping (aka bad AI :D) so less DPS per area.
I probably prefer micro-based changes like the -1 range suggestion (it's already a huge nerf, but I like the idea). I prefer 50% miss rate to straight up 50% damage, but either way I think it's too much. At least with the first solution you can gamble for some lucky colossus or tank shot or I don't know what else :D.
And overall, I have to say that defensive playstyles really don't look good in SC2. Aside from the top 10 players, most defensive games are reaaaaallllyyyy boring (hello every foreign mech or swarmhost play!). It's unfortunate enough that people like to play boring playstyles, but we can't encourage them by making defense even stronger. So yeah, high ground advantage only if you can somehow create action somewhere else, like raising the number of bases.
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Attacking highgrounds is already hard enough in my opinion.
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On July 18 2015 11:50 BisuDagger wrote:
The brood war style worked. No one complains about it ever in the current scene. SC2 should have it.
If something works in BW, it does not follow it would work in SC2.
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On July 19 2015 06:53 Hider wrote:This won't allow you to take bases at the pace that is neccasary to be in the game.
We are talking about early game. Today every main has high ground. Naturals can be a bit harder when they are not at high ground, but usually there is some other ground structure helping your defense, such as a choke.
To what high ground advantage idea you are refering to? 50% miss chance or 50% damage reduction for uphill shooting allows you to defend a spot when fighting in 2:3 army size ratio.
This is irrelevant as both are percentage based (I do dislike crits though). On the other hand, a tower in a MOBA provides an "absolute value" boost. A percentage boost is ineffective early game as you easily can be behind by 5 to 20 army supply. Even if we assume you could take advantage of the high ground to defend (which isn't always possible) that might only count for a value of an additional 2.5 army supply. Thus it will be 7.5 vs 20 army supply and you will die.[/quote]
Where do you get that 2.5 army supply increase from 50% uphill? Roughly speaking 50% uphill reduces unit overall strength by about 25-33%, allowing you to fight in 2:3 ratio. I wouldn't call it irrelevant. If you are being attacked by 45-supply army, you may be able to fend it off with around 30-supply army.
On July 19 2015 06:59 ZenithM wrote:
To me, high ground advantage would only "have to" be implemented with any "DH-HMH"-like economy, and even then it would have to be very subtle. It's not BW anymore, in SC2 50% less DPS when attacking an area-efficient range army is impossible to overcome.
It's only sensible to attack a position when you have a big numerical advantage (there's probably some Art of War quote to back that up, and it's true in Starcraft 2), so you would have to bring like 4 times the units to attack up a ramp. 4 times the units is probably a really big chunk of your army, if not your full strength. Not very interesting. BW had several other "features" that made high ground advantage not as decisive, like less unit clumping (aka bad AI :D) so less DPS per area.
50% less DPS, in ideal situation, translates that to around 2:3 for an even fight. While noticeable I wouldn't call it impossible to overcome. Besides, there are units that ignore the uphill shooting - all melee units, air units, drop play, blink can help overcome this inefficiency.
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EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/ISoPsWj.jpg)
