Strengthening highground advantage in LotV - Page 3

On July 19 2015 09:15 BlackLilium wrote:
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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.

On July 19 2015 13:51 ZenithM wrote:
But I don't know, I would be ready to be proven wrong through testing and actual gameplay. It just feels like a huge nerf to attacking uphill when it actually already feels quite difficult to me. But I would think of myself as a pretty aggressive player, so maybe that's why I don't want a big high-ground advantage. I'm guessing that people who push for a high ground advantage are not the ones who play by attacking relentlessly as soon as they have a handful of units. Myself I'm already disappointed with how offense was generally nerfed since the beginning of the game (there are basically no Terran cheeses anymore, with Protoss being nigh invulnerable early game and Zerg being zerg, and it probably goes the other way, I don't think I'm very vulnerable outside of TvP)

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 21:13 BlackLilium wrote:
If there is a constant +15 army supply defense, no one will ever bother to all-in with a 20 supply army. That removes one aspect of the game without giving anything in return.

My favourite approach in a new RTS is definitely to learn from MOBA's and create the game around "towers".

That's obviously not realistic in 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).

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.

On July 19 2015 21:13 BlackLilium wrote:
If there is a constant +15 army supply defense, no one will ever bother to all-in with a 20 supply army. That removes one aspect of the game without giving anything in return.
If you go for greedy or techy build, scouting an all-in is part of it. It is a challenge. But if no all-in can come, you can tech blindly - that's not a good game design.

On July 19 2015 21:47 Big J wrote:


Why isn't it good game design? As far as I understand good game design does neither include nor exclude the ability to allin your opponent early. If there a strategic dynamics that let you outplay your opponent in some way that is enough for me. Especially if we are talking about early game incomplete information games, I believe letting the game play out with dynamics but no immidiate end is a very good approach to competitive design for various reasons:
1) players have a phase in the game in which they can do what they want; this probably allows for more strategic variety later on, and more different games later on. (instead of immidiatly having to be narrowed into surviving)
2) A "guaranteed gamelength" lets you experience more content of the game in a single game. You don't end the game with 6zerglings and ask yourself why there are even 15different units in the game when half of the time you win or lose based on 3.
3) Talking specifically information based, you have more preparation time and thus there should be less randomness.
4) Talking specifically esports, there are guaranteed gamelengths which are more planable.

On July 19 2015 23:42 BlackLilium wrote:

But having a constant +15 supply defender advantage would exclute an ability to all-in by your opponent.
If players are given X time to do whatever they want without any risk, then they will exploit it in most greedy possible way. This reduces the amount of meaningful choices you can make. You cannot choose more rewarding but risky play, because no play is risky. You cannot manage risk based on the knowledge how your opponent plays (as we see in high-level tournaments), because risk=0 period.

On July 19 2015 23:57 29 fps wrote:
not sure if this has been mentioned yet, but what about -1 range for units shooting from lower ground?\

EDIT: it has been mentioned, and I'm all for it. it makes sense logically (the vertical distance accounts for some of the range), and it's not random. this would have huge implications in mirror matches

On July 20 2015 00:02 Big J wrote:
You keep on using the phrase "most greedy way possible", as if "greed" wasn't a relative thing and as if "most greed possible" wasn't the best way to play right now. Pretty much regardless of the exact defensive feature, what is possible is a thing that would change and greed then has to be seen in the context of this. Opening 4hatch with tech might probably still lose against opening 2base bruteforce.

Now the +15supply defense is such a vague theoretical concept that if we only use that phrase either of us can be right if either of us just interpretes it in his own favor. You are obviously right if we go to a concept in which you always have +15supply that is always exactly where it is needed defensively and that 15supply doesn't have some strong unit counterrelation, then yes, of course everyone will just sit there and build up 4bases and tech up in 10mins.
However, my point goes rather along the lines that you have some protection feature around your starting and natural location that can deal with frontal threats. Something that doesn't work when your opponent goes around it or uses special harassment techniques like air units. Something that you may be able to wear down over time with dedicated siege tools like tanks. Something that can only be at one location at a time. But nothing that you can run into and just take down.
Such a tool would still allow you to punish your opponent for claiming areas outside of its protection bonus, or outgreeding your opponent. It wouldn't shut down harassment efficiently, so you could still punish your opponent that way. But he couldn't just build more units and kill you early. How that would exactly look like and how strong it should exactly be (hence Hiders original range of +5 to +20supply) is of course a different question

The problem with punishing greed through (early) allins is that they kill one player most of the time. Basically every player has 3ways to play:
(1) you play greedy which might get you ahead (2) or kill you (3)
(2) you play defensive which might let you fall behind(1) or kill the opponent(3)
(3) you play offensive which might win(1) or lose(2) you the game

Now the game design challenge* should be to turn option (3) into:
(3) you play offensive and you might get ahead (1) or fall behind (2)

Hider, your context is a bit confusing. You do not want a %-based high ground advantage, but also you admit that tower approach is no realistic in SC2. You want some kind of "Defensive-based macromechanics" but that is a very vague statement,

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.

On July 20 2015 02:39 ROOTFayth wrote:
what's up with people not liking RNG?

On July 18 2015 20:30 LaLuSh wrote:
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.


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.



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.