|
I've been thinking about LotV and the design choices Blizzard is making, and I feel as if the game is begging for some form of strengthened highground advantage.
It seems to me that given the larger basecount and starting worker count that reducing the volatility of the game through a strengthened highground advantage would be advantageous to players of all levels. Low level players would die less to all-ins and would have an easier time defending large attacks, while high level players would find ways to gain skillful advantages through clever unit positioning.
People often bring up that this would increase turtling, however I disagree - while it is true that defensive playstyles would be strengthened, at the same time you would be able to defend your own bases with fewer units, thus freeing up army for sending out to engage.
I feel as if it would generally be a great change, and don't think that highground advantage necessarily = RNG. There are plenty of ways to do it that do not involve any randomness, and the possibilities this would create for map design are quite vast.
What do you think?
Poll: Would you like to see highground advantage strengthened in LotV?Yes, however no RNG please. (60) 42% Yes, and I would like it to be like BW. (51) 35% No. (33) 23% 144 total votes Your vote: Would you like to see highground advantage strengthened in LotV? (Vote): Yes, and I would like it to be like BW.
(Vote): Yes, however no RNG please.
(Vote): No.
|
Depends on the advantage to be honest.
|
Bisutopia19191 Posts
The brood war style worked. No one complains about it ever in the current scene. SC2 should have it.
|
Does not have to be like BW, but, like said above, it worked well in BW. When it comes down to it, a loss will not be due to the RnG aspect of missing a shot.
|
We have 50% damage reduction (with properly scaled armor) implemented in Starcraft Improved - that might interest you.
The original idea (and implementation) is actually quite old, check out the original thread by urashimakt - which is over 3 years old:
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/sc2-maps/335595-mod-high-ground-advantage
I doubt Blizzard has plans for that in LotV. This does promote positional, slower play. Many things might require rebalancing if that was introduced.
|
If they desire battles 'everywhere' around the map, They have to have high ground advantage or defenders advantage through stronger splash damage for all races.other you can win by using a deathball and crashing ur army into your opponent's
|
On July 18 2015 15:59 doihy wrote:
If they desire battles 'everywhere' around the map, They have to have high ground advantage or defenders advantage through stronger splash damage for all races.other you can win by using a deathball and crashing ur army into your opponent's
In order to really disencourage it you need an effect where few units can be insanely strong against a larger group of enemies so you can split out your units all over the map. Highground doesn't really accomplish, but an ability like Dark Swarm does.
|
On July 18 2015 16:39 Hider wrote:Show nested quote +On July 18 2015 15:59 doihy wrote:
If they desire battles 'everywhere' around the map, They have to have high ground advantage or defenders advantage through stronger splash damage for all races.other you can win by using a deathball and crashing ur army into your opponent's In order to really disencourage it you need an effect where few units can be insanely strong against a larger group of enemies so you can split out your units all over the map. Highground doesn't really accomplish, but an ability like Dark Swarm does.
I disagree with that. If a few units can be insanely strong against a larger group of enemies at any point in time and space - then what prevents you from incorporating these units into your deathball and push your enemy even harder?
There are ways to make units not scale, but it is not easy to accomplish.
High ground advanatage on the other hand is an immobile feature of a map. You cannot move it with your army. It lets you set up a strong defensive spot with few units, while the rest of your army goes somewhere else.
|
A good thing about high ground advantage is that if you don't want it, you can simply make a map that's flat.
It is optional to every map, and you can use it in any way that you want. It doesn't automatically cause problems to the game.
|
Would love to see BW high ground 
|
What exactly was the BW high ground advantage? A miss chance for the units attacking from the low ground like in wc3?
|
i want RNG. thats the reason its a disadvantage. you dont know. if its some kind of every 3rd hit, you will know.
|
Austria24417 Posts
I don't like randomness at all. There are far better ways to give a high ground advantage (range increase against low ground, even flat damage increase, etc.) that can still be calculated and planned for. Blizzard has said it in the past and it's one of the things I agree with the most - randomness should not be a part of SC2.
|
On July 18 2015 17:38 DarkLordOlli wrote:
I don't like randomness at all. There are far better ways to give a high ground advantage (range increase against low ground, even flat damage increase, etc.) that can still be calculated and planned for. Blizzard has said it in the past and it's one of the things I agree with the most - randomness should not be a part of SC2.
I agree, I'd like range decrease vs high ground to be tested.
|
It shouldn't be RNG, just a damage decrease to attackers shooting at high ground targets. Dawn of War series did something similar with areas of ground classified as 'cover'
|
Can they give decreased range to units on a lower ground attacking higher ground? Makes sense, as well as not RNG- based, and will give attackers a huge advantage as well as micro potential for the defender.
I don't really like the idea of having a flat damage decrease though.
On July 18 2015 17:32 Musicus wrote:
What exactly was the BW high ground advantage? A miss chance for the units attacking from the low ground like in wc3?
Yeah.
|
On July 18 2015 17:38 DarkLordOlli wrote:
I don't like randomness at all. There are far better ways to give a high ground advantage (range increase against low ground, even flat damage increase, etc.) that can still be calculated and planned for. Blizzard has said it in the past and it's one of the things I agree with the most - randomness should not be a part of SC2.
I dont see why its bad. BW imo was more of a grey than a black and white game. And it didn't stop the game from being bad. If things become too black and white, you end up with high volatility which is SC2 e.g the [i]simple[i/] damage system.
I would actually welcome more greys into this game. And plus even if its random, its still an advantage. By how much? we dont know but the advantage is there. To me, it becomes more of a probability thing than a flat number. It creates tension and i.e. drama of what will happen.
But if we say, give a certain flat bonus of some sort, that player will ALWAYS have the upper hand if he/she was the one controlling the critical map positions. The other player if not reacting quickly enough will have to sustain heavy losses to go through such positioning (or around which might also be disadvantageous). Its almost a forgone conclusion. But with abit of randomness, you can't be certain high ground advantage will 100% help you. Again creates the tension and risks. The advantages are there i.e. not 100% random but you can't be 100% sure.
People can relate to these scenarios because not everything is black and white but contrary to that. It happens in real life. I think it would be pretty beneficial to the game and create those "sc" moments ala spider mines WTF good bye half the tank line!?!
Reason why they also need to redo the damage system like how WC3 -> TFT.
|
On July 18 2015 18:12 Estancia wrote:
I don't really like the idea of having a flat damage decrease though.
Why not? Could you elaborate?
On July 18 2015 18:19 YyapSsap wrote:
But if we say, give a certain flat bonus of some sort, that player will ALWAYS have the upper hand if he/she was the one controlling the critical map positions. The other player if not reacting quickly enough will have to sustain heavy losses to go through such positioning (or around which might also be disadvantageous). Its almost a forgone conclusion. [...]
People can relate to these scenarios because not everything is black and white but contrary to that.
I see the first part as a contradiction to the second part. Even if there is a flat bonus for high ground, the real game is not so black-and-white. High ground gives you a bonus in one spot of the map. The opponent can push it through overwhelming forces, or use air to break the initial defense, or attack the position from a better angle, or use colossi, reaper, blink, drops, nydus, to bypass a cliff, or avoid it alltogether... there are always multiple solutions.
In bigger battles RNG is not going to change that either! Really weird results are improbable. What will happen you can predict with quite high accuracy.
|
if u want bw high ground system then u prolly need its vision system too.
|
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.
|
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.
|
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.
|
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.
|
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.
|
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.
|
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.
|
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.
|
Bisutopia19191 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.
|
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.
|
Bisutopia19191 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.
|
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.
|
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.
|
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.
|
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.
|
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
|
(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.
|
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.
|
Attacking highgrounds is already hard enough in my opinion.
|
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.
|
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.
|
I can't understand why this is being made into such a complicated subject. You have mapmakers asking for this exact change, and there are lots of fans and competitors looking for more stability in the late-game. What's the harm in trying?
|
On July 19 2015 09:15 BlackLilium wrote:[...] Show nested quote +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.
Yes, I know that the ratio isn't 1:2, but that's for an even fight. What you want is winning the fight convincingly when you're the one attacking, and that wouldn't happen without at least 3 times the units (4 times was probably overshooting it :D).
Currently, my feel is that a fight of 3:2 (low ground : high ground) is already even for averagely composed armies. High ground does already give an advantage (melee units and vision requiring air units staying alive, for example)
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)
|
Completely unneeded. The biggest change would be that you would have to have a much more significant force then your opponent to attack early game, and what exactly about this would make it more enjoyable? More fun? More skillful? Nothing. Simply makes early aggression harder if your opponent has ranged units. People are going to say positional play, but I'm going to say turtle. Its not going to free up any more units to attack in the game, because it won't matter later for standard harass units. Mutaslisk flying by won't be effected, and a zergling runby is unaffected. Terran drop play will not be hindered by this. Blink stalkers blinking into your base, adepts, warp prism drops, these do not care about the high ground advantage. This will not encourage anything but early turtle.
|
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)
I would be happy to play against you on a mod which implements it (you know which one). We could then decide first-hand if 50% damage is too much or not. But I fear there is a general skill difference (master vs platinum) which would negate the results  I wish I was able to click faster....
|
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.
Your misunderstanding my example. If you face an early game all in where you went for a tech-build and the opponent went for a "let me make a big army early on"-all in, then you will be significantly behind in army count. E.g. 5 to 20 army supply.
No type of percentage-based buff can save you from this situation. However, a defenders advantage that provides an absolute value (that means the same buff regardless of army size) would automatically make all types of all-ins a ton worse.
|
For me the death ball will never truly be dealt with untill a smaller army can deal with a greater one. At the moment it's pretty much always the bigger army wins and it often times feel like when casters are not exactly sure how the engagement will go, they will just look at the army supply. It's too great an indicator and that will never really change untill there's position advantage/defenders advantage/strong enough AoE or micro>all.
|
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 21:13 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.
Reread my post to see the context. Check out the below quotes
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.
Thus for Sc2 (LOTV) you obviously cannot make revoulutionary changes to the early game defenders advantage. I only suggest more mild changes to make the early game more about micro/harass than "luck"-based allins/cheese. But in a larger perspective (aka future of the RTS genre), these are just band-aid fixes.
@ All ins/cheese
The way allins and cheese affects Starcraft is imo something that gamedesigners must completely get rid of if the RTS genre is to survive in the future. It makes the learning curve unpleasant and forces the majority of the playerbase to do standard-builds. If you want to experiment with creative builds you are basically coinflipping as scouting often isn't very reliable.
The objective + high defenders advantage approach is on the other hand much much safer as the disadvantage of teching is related to you having a more difficult time securing objectives. But if the objectives aren't 100% neccesary to survive in the early/midgame, you'll have a much better foundation for rewarding creative builds/openings + less punishing learning curve.
This mentality of all ins/cheese should kill you if you don't scout it is one of the major reasons why MOBA's are more popular than Starcraft. Noone enjoys dying to a dumb protoss allins because their overlord was denied just before they got visision. And very few people are gonna bother trying to learning the game when they realize they need to know all these timings just to be able to survive to the midgame.
|
I wouldn't mind a "real" highground advantage (more then just sight), but it should be very small. Like 10% reduced damage when shooting up a hill (and no advantage for those on the top). Not an RNG reduction, but a flat 10% cut in damage. Too large of an advantage and it makes all-ins too hard to do forcing everyone into more of a macro game. But even with 10% reduction uphill, I think you would see a lot more people use the highground strategically when outside their base to try to hold hills and zone out the enemy.
|
Oh and if you do something like a 10%, but round down. That would mean those that attack fast for small amounts (like marines and hydra) are hurt the most by attacking up hill. Might be worth considering, given these kind of units do so well in attacking up hill as is (compared to say melee).
|
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.
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 21:47 Big J wrote:Show nested quote +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. 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.
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.
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, limited only by what you don't want it to be. You want to be able to defend in a 5 vs 20 supply scenario, but you don't want to kill all possible all-ins. It's hard to think of anything that satisfies those requirements, because at the moment I find them contradictory. However, maybe you have something more specific in mind? If so - please share!
|
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 19 2015 23:42 BlackLilium wrote:Show nested quote +On July 19 2015 21:47 Big J wrote: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. 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. 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.
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)
For that purpose there must not be a snowball effect from breaching your opponents defenses early. There must not be a possibility in which once I have achieved superior power in the opponents base, I can keep superiority. Any superiority must be temporary and locally limited, so that you can do damage and punish the opponent, but you also have to go back and it is assured that the game doesn't immidiatly end. And I think the tool for this is to design early offensive play around circumventing a large frontal defensive advantage.
That this might not be achieveable or desired in Starcraft 2 is of course a different discussion than its effect, but so is the question about how wanted or useful a highground advantage is in SC2.
*I believe this already makes sense from a fairness point of view, because the upside of (1) also is not an immidiate game winner, hence the punishment shouldn't be either. I furthermore believe that this dynamic of immidiate game ending damage if you play greedy and immidiate loss if your opponent blocks the offense leads to a dynamic in which everybody will tend towards option (2) very early in SC2, which in turn reduces actually played strategic variety. It is plainly better to be behind than dead, which is part of why we have this whole fuzz about "boring early game - stale meta".
|
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
This is what I was going to suggest. It makes sense since you're shooting up and your bullets might start falling flat. And then you could position tanks or something to outrange the other person's tanks.
Also, whatever the disadvantage, the Colossus with the nerfs it has should be immune to the lowground disadvantage since it's supposed to be tall enough where no matter what, it's shooting downward.
|
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.
"most greedy way possible" is not a relative thing. I define it as an economy/tech strategy played as if there was no opponent. If you introduce a defensive mechanism that allows you to defend against all attacks in - say - first 5 minutes, then people will follow the single line of "most greedy way" for the first 5 minutes and branch off afterwards.
Currently, the most greedy play often incurs a high risk and people opt to use a bit less greedy, but safer builds. To give a concrete example: I can go most greedy way Nexus-first in PvZ. It incurs a risk, but often I am able to defend sufficiently well. However, doing the same thing in PvT is often too risky to be viable. Even if I go for greed, I don't pick the most extreme version of it.
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
If I understand you correctly - you are now thinking about some defensive mechanism that has to be activated and somehow incorporated into a build order. From your description it sounds very close to Mothership Core's Photon Overcharge. It has limited, purely defensive utility with ways to avoid it (e.g. snipe MSC or force MSC to use up its energy). Protoss is hard to threaten in early game and people actually hate it!
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)
(3) leading to getting ahead or falling behind, without outright win or loss - this is already happening at higher level of play. In lower leagues this would be really hard to balance anyway, because of player-induced inefficiencies.
|
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,
If you reread my comments, you would find the following quote:
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.
(DS = Dark Swarm).
Here is a specific suggestion (inspired by Dark Swarm).
(1) Remove feedback and give High Templar a "Freeze"-ability.
(2) Freeze can be used on friendly and enemy units and is a target ground AOE "skillshot" (that means its projectile based).
(3) Freeze has a duration of 15-20 seconds.
(4) Freeze makes units take no damage against ranged and (most) abilities.
(5) Units that are freezed are however immobile over the duration of the ability, but can still attack.
(6) Freezed units take 50% extra damage from melee attacks.
Slightly complicated ability indeed, but I think it can have huge strategic implications and make the game much more multitaskbased. With Freeze you can split your Colossus into multiple areas over the map and when the enemy attacks one of the locations you can freeze the Colossus. This means that 1 or 2 Colossus can hold position against a big bio or roach/hydra ball.
However, the enemy can take advantage if you overuse/misuse Freeze by abusing the immobility of the Freezed units and attacking somewhere else. In terms of unit compositions, terran can "counter" it by getting more Hellbats (defined as melee), zerg can get Ultras and Speedlings and protoss can get Chargelots.
On top of being a "defend a specific location"-ability, it also has uses during teamfights where you can freeze your frontline (so the enemy wastes their attack). Or you can use it on enemy units to lock them/isolate them from the rest of the army.
|
what's up with people not liking RNG?
|
On July 20 2015 02:39 ROOTFayth wrote:
what's up with people not liking RNG?
Because ideally, the best player should win, and Starcraft should be a test of skill.
RNG means the lucky person has an advantage. Imagine you are microing two marines up a ramp to kill a stalker. Currently in SC2, if you know the hitpoints of each unit, you can know whether the marines will beat the stalker or not. With RNG, maybe a couple shots will go wrong, and suddenly you lost. You can't know.
Generally, in skill based games, you don't want luck to determine the winner.
|
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. Show nested quote +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.
That's a really good post (and whether you are 'right' or 'wrong' in the details is irrelevant.......it helped me understand a new aspect of Starcraft gameplay and design). Thanks.
|
On July 20 2015 02:20 BlackLilium wrote:Show nested quote +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. "most greedy way possible" is not a relative thing. I define it as an economy/tech strategy played as if there was no opponent. If you introduce a defensive mechanism that allows you to defend against all attacks in - say - first 5 minutes, then people will follow the single line of "most greedy way" for the first 5 minutes and branch off afterwards. Currently, the most greedy play often incurs a high risk and people opt to use a bit less greedy, but safer builds. To give a concrete example: I can go most greedy way Nexus-first in PvZ. It incurs a risk, but often I am able to defend sufficiently well. However, doing the same thing in PvT is often too risky to be viable. Even if I go for greed, I don't pick the most extreme version of it.
This goes back to what I said before: Of course if you interprete it as universal defense that is always in place against everything than you go most theoretical greed possible. If however said tool of defenders advantage can be circumvented in some ways and only protects you from straight up dying to frontal attacks, than you have to still prevent/minimize taking damage from such harassment. You are playing far from "optimal".
By the way you are pretending as if Nexus first was the optimal build. Well, it may be up to that point, but beyond that? 3Nexus before gate? 4Nexus? 5Nexus+Templar/Carrier? We are so far away from optimal play that you wouldn't lose anything strategical around the greed-defensive-offensive dynamic. They would only look different. And the game would be stupidly accelerated, which is again why I keep on saying leave early punishment mechanics in, but don't make them deadly.
Show nested quote +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 If I understand you correctly - you are now thinking about some defensive mechanism that has to be activated and somehow incorporated into a build order. From your description it sounds very close to Mothership Core's Photon Overcharge. It has limited, purely defensive utility with ways to avoid it (e.g. snipe MSC or force MSC to use up its energy). Protoss is hard to threaten in early game and people actually hate it!
No I'm not thinking of something like photon overcharge and I find it pretty cheap of you that you try to invalidate my example in that way. Last time I checked Photon Overcharge is an amazing tool to defend early air harassment, last time I checked you couldn't go around Photon Overcharge to harass a mineral line, last time I checked Photon Overcharge had siege range and thus countered siege weapons, last times I checked one could have two photon overcharges at the same time.
And you don't even need to question me how exactly the tool I'm trying to attribute would look like, because we both know that this is a theoretical discussion and we have both based our arguments on the vague concept of something 15supplish in power without giving specifics so far. I could try to give you an example, but it would probably be poor and only lead to a here-useless discussion about whether or not it could work and whether or not it would even fullfill what I wanted.
Show nested quote +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) (3) leading to getting ahead or falling behind, without outright win or loss - this is already happening at higher level of play. In lower leagues this would be really hard to balance anyway, because of player-induced inefficiencies.
I plainly disagree here. You just need to watch the top Korean level and see how few games go on when it is some real offense vs defense stuff. A game in which a zerg goes 10pool/baneling or a protoss commits to 5canons or a terran going for proxy raxes is going to end then and there with few exceptions. The thing is that these games are rare because players hardly ever play greedy at that level. They make a worker or two more, but they still play a build that is rather defensive by nature and often even the offensive player rather goes for a build order that can win, but that he also can transition of. Actually playing very offensive early is rare in this defensive meta. Hence, stale early game complaints.
|
On July 20 2015 03:01 phantomfive wrote:Because ideally, the best player should win, and Starcraft should be a test of skill. RNG means the lucky person has an advantage. Imagine you are microing two marines up a ramp to kill a stalker. Currently in SC2, if you know the hitpoints of each unit, you can know whether the marines will beat the stalker or not. With RNG, maybe a couple shots will go wrong, and suddenly you lost. You can't know. Generally, in skill based games, you don't want luck to determine the winner.
they should remove the fog of war then :D
|
On July 20 2015 03:10 ROOTFayth wrote:Show nested quote +On July 20 2015 03:01 phantomfive wrote:On July 20 2015 02:39 ROOTFayth wrote:
what's up with people not liking RNG? Because ideally, the best player should win, and Starcraft should be a test of skill. RNG means the lucky person has an advantage. Imagine you are microing two marines up a ramp to kill a stalker. Currently in SC2, if you know the hitpoints of each unit, you can know whether the marines will beat the stalker or not. With RNG, maybe a couple shots will go wrong, and suddenly you lost. You can't know. Generally, in skill based games, you don't want luck to determine the winner. they should remove the fog of war then :D
Some people advocate for that
There is no part of Starcraft that is not controversial. I'm still bitter about LAN play.
|
Big J, the reason I brought Photon Overcharge in this discussion is because it is the closest think that SC2 currently have to what I think you describe. It is early-game, purely-defensive and non-scalable +X army supply equivalent ability.
Yes, it shoots air. Yes in mid-game you can have 2 of them. But you can get around it (e.g. bait it earlier and attack later). It's just not convenient to do so.
For the sake of theorycrafting we could tune Photon Overcharge it up to better fit your requirements - for example:
- Must be cast on any defender's building
- Cannot be cast in proximity of minerals
- Reduce range to, say, 9
- Cannot shoot air.
Maybe not the most streamlined tool to use, but that's not the point. The question is - how would it affect the opponent who wants to punish our Protoss defender?
In my opinion punishing Protoss early game - because that's the scenario we are discussing (5-supply vs 20-supply army) - with a low-tech low-supply army would still be as inconvenient as before. You don't have access to air yet. Only approach for non-frontal harassment are reapers and zergling runbys.
And you don't even need to question me how exactly the tool I'm trying to attribute would look like, because we both know that this is a theoretical discussion and we have both based our arguments on the vague concept of something 15supplish in power without giving specifics so far. I could try to give you an example, but it would probably be poor and only lead to a here-useless discussion about whether or not it could work and whether or not it would even fullfill what I wanted.
Here is a thing. I fear there is simply no such posiblity for a thing that would fulfill all your requirements. But I cannot really prove it entirely. Relying to some a little bit more concrete mechanic would help analyze its strong and weak points. It does not have to be precise.
For example - you want it completely non-scalable. This is a domain of hero units. It could be tied to a specific building, since there are few of them early game. But I guess you want something different than static defense - since we already have that.
|
Big J, the reason I brought Photon Overcharge in this discussion is because it is the closest think that SC2 currently have to what I think you describe. It is early-game, purely-defensive and non-scalable +X army supply equivalent ability.
Bunker?
|
Any advantage related to terrain should have community-enforced map making implications, if there was some code regarding this so we continue to see interesting maps I have no major gripes with trying a bigger terrain advantage.
|
On July 20 2015 06:25 Caihead wrote:
Any advantage related to terrain should have community-enforced map making implications, if there was some code regarding this so we continue to see interesting maps I have no major gripes with trying a bigger terrain advantage.
At the very, very least, it would be nice to see a consistent high-ground advantage coded into the game as an option for mapmakers, so that this avenue of balance and design could be explored by the community, even if Blizzard remains obstinate.
|
On July 20 2015 06:17 Hider wrote:Show nested quote +Big J, the reason I brought Photon Overcharge in this discussion is because it is the closest think that SC2 currently have to what I think you describe. It is early-game, purely-defensive and non-scalable +X army supply equivalent ability. Bunker?
I do mention static defense as well, but you can have multiple bunkers, yielding +n*X supply boost.
Photon Overcharge is usually singular, you can have 2 tops if you saved enough energy (i.e. opponent didn't attack you for long)
|
On July 20 2015 05:48 BlackLilium wrote:Big J, the reason I brought Photon Overcharge in this discussion is because it is the closest think that SC2 currently have to what I think you describe. It is early-game, purely-defensive and non-scalable +X army supply equivalent ability. Yes, it shoots air. Yes in mid-game you can have 2 of them. But you can get around it (e.g. bait it earlier and attack later). It's just not convenient to do so. For the sake of theorycrafting we could tune Photon Overcharge it up to better fit your requirements - for example: - Must be cast on any defender's building
- Cannot be cast in proximity of minerals
- Reduce range to, say, 9
- Cannot shoot air.
Maybe not the most streamlined tool to use, but that's not the point. The question is - how would it affect the opponent who wants to punish our Protoss defender? In my opinion punishing Protoss early game - because that's the scenario we are discussing (5-supply vs 20-supply army) - with a low-tech low-supply army would still be as inconvenient as before. You don't have access to air yet. Only approach for non-frontal harassment are reapers and zergling runbys.
You can have oracles at 3:05 in your opponents base in LotV. Similar timings apply to zerg drops. Zergling runbies and reapers as you say. Banshee and medivac play can come quite early, (though not quite that fast) too. Adepts can tunnel through. And since both players have access to such a defensive tool you can much easier hold a counter against an opponent. I'm not sure that this sort of tool is fit for starcraft as we have it designed and balanced, that's for sure. But since this applies to the whole discussion about more defensive tools (whether highground or other) I think we should always consider at least moderate rebalancings and redesigns with this. With such a tool and its counterplays in mind I think it would be quite possible to create scenarios in which the offensive player can punish or draw even with the greedy or defensive player, without too much risk of ending the game right there. Then, the longer the game goes the non-scaling defenders advantage will wear off and rather normal dynamics will occur.
Show nested quote +And you don't even need to question me how exactly the tool I'm trying to attribute would look like, because we both know that this is a theoretical discussion and we have both based our arguments on the vague concept of something 15supplish in power without giving specifics so far. I could try to give you an example, but it would probably be poor and only lead to a here-useless discussion about whether or not it could work and whether or not it would even fullfill what I wanted. Here is a thing. I fear there is simply no such posiblity for a thing that would fulfill all your requirements. But I cannot really prove it entirely. Relying to some a little bit more concrete mechanic would help analyze its strong and weak points. It does not have to be precise. For example - you want it completely non-scalable. This is a domain of hero units. It could be tied to a specific building, since there are few of them early game. But I guess you want something different than static defense - since we already have that.
I think having certain buffs around your bases for a limited amount of units could work. A useful shield battery mechanic for Nexi for example (doesn't scale because of limited energy/limited nexi, doesn't shut down harass, makes your unit stronger).
Or say for zerg their hatcheries could absorb up to a certain amount of damage/second for the combat units nearby.
I think this wouldn't really be good against harass if implemented properly. But in frontal engagements your 1-2stalkers just wouldn't die to an overwhelming mass of roaches because they'd regenerate up to 1000health during the battle.
I guess it would also help with your third base, but again, since both those examples are of limited use they'd reach their support cap relatively quickly later on and they only help you where your army is being attacked. If the aggressor targets workers, or you plainly have no combat units around the mechanic does nothing.
|
On July 19 2015 06:04 Hider wrote:Show nested quote +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.
Your view is presented clearer here. Becomes easier to respond.
1) I think in SC2 the overall strength of armies have to be kept closer in relation to each other, and this I compare with League having to keep overall scaling or power curves more equal. In other words: 20000 team networth for one team will be made to roughly correspond to the same amount of scaling and strength that 20000 networth will for the other team. If that's not the case, then the balance designers in these games will actively strive to make it the case. That's the context I think of when I compare SC2 to League.
You cannot in these games easily introduce a team/army composition which requires a 15k networth lead against the opposing team/player for that "inferior" composition to be on equal footing with the better scaling one. Whenever that happens, the communities of both games tend to complain. "It's unfair: One team/army has to work much harder to be equally strong". This perception that audiences develop in my opinion stems from these games having, comparatively speaking, more limited potential to compensate scaling differences by the way of adjusting your economical approach and strategy.
I'm not saying there's absolutely NO differences between armies or team compositions. There are plenty of AD carrys considered to be midgame centered while plenty others are lategame centered. But what I'm saying is: if you compare league to its closest neighbour dota, then the latter has much more unequal scaling. The latter will have much more extreme networth differences whenever you tune in to watch games. The latter will have more heroes specifically designed to require much more "gold per amount of scaling added". You will not be surprised in the latter game if one hero is supposed to be able to farm at a rate where they should be at 30k networth by the time other heroes will be at 20k. You will tend not to see this same phenomenon in League. Wherever it exists it's much less pronounced, and Riot are more likely to step in and "equalize" the power curve wherever they identify this.
This is the sense in which I feel dota and BW are more similar. A 70 supply zerg can hold off a 150 supply M&M terran in BW. As you mention: really strong defensive spells like dark swarm allow for these major differences in army values while overall balance still remains solid. In my opinion, out of all the mobas, dota is the one most designed in a similar spirit of lesser value holding off greater value. Where in order for compositions to become balanced, one party has to aggressively outfarm or outexpand the other. That's what the balance of these games is based on.
Whereas in League and SC2, if there's a champion or unit causing a problem to overall strength, that unit will eventually get hammered down to ensure that the overall exchange between compositions remains roughly fair and equal.
It's an oversimplification, but that's my assessment of how these games in general are being balanced.
2) Counterplay. Yes you're probably right the community perception will be as you say. Most of the SC2 community would have that opinion of fungal growth.
Part of what makes that opinion so strong I think is how armies and battles aren't split, but very concentrated. There's always a lot riding on getting a good outcome in that big battle in SC2. That makes the spell doubly as frustrating to play against.
I'm just speculating here though. But I think fungal would be perceived as less of an issue if SC2 had a different type of gameplay. Just like crits and "anti-counterplay" spells, on the whole, aren't perceived as much of a problem by regular dota players. The game, and the kind of skills it puts emphasis on, determines a lot of what the perception will be imo.
|
just like bw, vision and nrg and all.
its about risk and reward for both players, adds to decision making. it becomes less predictable and can cause cool moments. i remember some game where a unit behind a doodad killed more than it should and it caused an uproar from everyone. this wouldnt happen without nrg.
simply taking high ground advantage as this or that much damage more or less is so boring.
|
i think sc2 high ground is fine but i think it shouldn't be possible to spot for low ground fire on the high ground just by having vision
i think you should only be able to shoot units that are on the very edge of a cliff unless it's with a unit like tanks or colossus. this lets tanks make more sense than "i sieged up in the right spot faster than you so i win!!1" and actually have a unique role as an aggressive siege unit, and also gives colossus some utility back since they suck now. being able to blink up cliffs with vision should still be fine
i dont really care what this would do to balance overall because its a beta and its a time to experiment, and i also realize that high ground isnt going to change anyway, so this is just how i would like to see it work. dont really care if anyone protests that it would mess up x y or z strategy, just my opinion
|
There's nothing wrong with the status quo. Below the highground you can't see or retaliate your enemy up there when you're being attacked unless you have air units to give you a vision. That just makes air units more important, as the vision from above makes the huge difference between retaliation with no miss and inability to retaliate at all.
|
On July 21 2015 13:22 TedCruz2016 wrote:
There's nothing wrong with the status quo. Below the highground you can't see or retaliate your enemy up there when you're being attacked unless you have air units to give you a vision. That just makes air units more important, as the vision from above makes the huge difference between retaliation with no miss and inability to retaliate at all.
I think the main time high-ground advantage (of any kind) comes into play is when charging up a ramp. That is the scenario where it is most critical.
With vision only, then once a few units are up, you have vision, and any advantage is gone. You might as well be attacking into a concave on flat ground.
With RNG miss, attacking up a ramp is always hard, if half your army is down on the low ground, they will be punished hard.
|
On July 21 2015 13:38 phantomfive wrote:Show nested quote +On July 21 2015 13:22 TedCruz2016 wrote:
There's nothing wrong with the status quo. Below the highground you can't see or retaliate your enemy up there when you're being attacked unless you have air units to give you a vision. That just makes air units more important, as the vision from above makes the huge difference between retaliation with no miss and inability to retaliate at all. I think the main time high-ground advantage (of any kind) comes into play is when charging up a ramp. That is the scenario where it is most critical. With vision only, then once a few units are up, you have vision, and any advantage is gone. You might as well be attacking into a concave on flat ground. With RNG miss, attacking up a ramp is always hard, if half your army is down on the low ground, they will be punished hard.
Then I guess the solution should be a range buff that enables the defending forces on the high ground shoot farther.
|
I think in SC2 the overall strength of armies have to be kept closer in relation to each other, and this I compare with League having to keep overall scaling or power curves more equal. In other words: 20000 team networth for one team will be made to roughly correspond to the same amount of scaling and strength that 20000 networth will for the other team. If that's not the case, then the balance designers in these games will actively strive to make it the case. That's the context I think of when I compare SC2 to League.
Okay my bad, I see I somewhat misinterpreted you.
This is the sense in which I feel dota and BW are more similar. A 70 supply zerg can hold off a 150 supply M&M terran in BW.
I 100% agree that I would like to see more of these abilities. That said, isn't it what they are trying to do with a lot of the units in LOTV? I look at the Disruptor as a complete anti-deathball unit that - unlike most other protoss units - performs better against a large group of enemy units than a small group.
But what I think Sc2 is lacking currently are defensive/positional anti-deathball units/abilities. Like DS that doesn't automatically make you kill anything, but simply allows you to hold a specific position against an infinitive numbers of enemy units.
I think you can't actually emphasize the importance Dark Swarm had on the dynamic in BW enough. Regardless of what economy or high ground you have, you can't hold multiple positions all over the map if the unit design doesn't allow you to be very cost efficient in low numbers.
I'm just speculating here though. But I think fungal would be perceived as less of an issue if SC2 had a different type of gameplay.
I think the forgivingness of a single misplay depends alot on what happens afterwards in the game. In sc2 a protoss/terran could simply not afford to get hit by a bad fungle growth. The game would bascially be GG afterwards.
In MOBA's the defenders/fallback-mechanic is significantly stronger meaning the overall effect of a splitsecond error feels more acceptable. That's also why I believe that the future of the RTS genre involves some type of modified tower approach and objective focus (reason to be out on the map).
The issue with relying only Dark Swarm'ish abilities to create a proper fallback-mechanic (and no "towers") is that the unit design can not be as diverse while maintaining a "proper dyanmic". E.g. if a unit composition doesn't have such a powerful positional ability, then it will be very unforgiveable to play.
|
On July 21 2015 16:55 Hider wrote:
I think the forgivingness of a single misplay depends alot on what happens afterwards in the game. In sc2 a protoss/terran could simply not afford to get hit by a bad fungle growth. The game would bascially be GG afterwards.
I think this single statement is a very important observation! Mistakes will happen, bad things will be the result. The question is the amount of "result contrast". Is it black-and-white (you win, you loose) or in shades of gray (you are behind, but still in the game).
|
Hider. I'm just interested in hearing what you think would happen if you introduced these strong fallback-mechanics in for example the current version of SC2.
Like do you think they could simply implement a dark swarm and there would suddenly be interesting interactions all over the place? Could the game be fixed just like that if they just changed the unit designs to introduce the things you're talking about?
You know my view because I tend to repeat it so often. I don't think you can put in strong defender's advantages, or turtling units/spells with successful results in games where it's easy or inevitable that both player or both teams reach max economic output.
Do you have any reason or arguments to believe that simply changing unit designs will be enough to make players approach the game differently? In other words: If I have 3 bases and if my opponent has 3 bases, and if it's fairly easy and inevitable for both of us to reach this point, then why would any of us freely attack into dark swarm'ish abilities instead of just camping and maintaining 3 active bases while waiting for favourable engagement positions?
What would trigger the action in this situation? Why would one player knowingly and consciously attack into the other's superior fallback-mechanic?
|
Like do you think they could simply implement a dark swarm and there would suddenly be interesting interactions all over the place?
Not at the caliber of Dark Swarm. Dark Swarm would be an extremely overpowered ability in Starcraft and could obviously only work if 3 conditions were met:
(1) The race has a lower army value/economy when Dark Swarm is researched --> This makes sure that the "powerspike" when Dark Swarm is researched is justified
(2) The race is spread out over multiple bases --> If not, turtling will be too easy
(3) The other races have later game counters --> If not, then the race with Dark Swarm would always win in the late game.
I think all of these conditions are very unrealistic in Sc2 (you would need a different economy/macromechanics).
However, that's not to say that replicating some of the dynamic (hold position) is impossible. In a previous page, I made the following suggestion. I designed it for protoss becasue I think protoss - out of all races - would benefit the most by a hold position ability.
The ability, unlike Dark Swarm, however have more disadvantages that I find neccesary in order to make it balanced, but the position-strenght of Dark Swarm is still there.
Here is a specific suggestion (inspired by Dark Swarm).
(1) Remove feedback and give High Templar a "Freeze"-ability.
(2) Freeze can be used on friendly and enemy units and is a target ground AOE "skillshot" (that means its projectile based).
(3) Freeze has a duration of 15-20 seconds.
(4) Freeze makes units take no damage against ranged and (most) abilities.
(5) Units that are freezed are however immobile over the duration of the ability, but can still attack.
(6) Freezed units take 50% extra damage from melee attacks.
Slightly complicated ability indeed, but I think it can have huge strategic implications and make the game much more multitaskbased. With Freeze you can split your Colossus into multiple areas over the map and when the enemy attacks one of the locations you can freeze the Colossus. This means that 1 or 2 Colossus can hold position against a big bio or roach/hydra ball.
However, the enemy can take advantage if you overuse/misuse Freeze by abusing the immobility of the Freezed units and attacking somewhere else. In terms of unit compositions, terran can "counter" it by getting more Hellbats (defined as melee), zerg can get Ultras and Speedlings and protoss can get Chargelots.
On top of being a "defend a specific location"-ability, it also has uses during teamfights where you can freeze your frontline (so the enemy wastes their attack). Or you can use it on enemy units to lock them/isolate them from the rest of the army.
For terran, I think you can justifiy much stronger Siege Tanks when you force players to take bases so much quicker/spread out more in the new LOTV economy. Even if the max-saturation cap is unchanged, it will be unlikely that an immobile race will be able to maintain the same income as the mobile race + just the fact that you need to defend more bases at the same time, will force a siege tank player to spread his tanks tank line thinner.
So theoretically it makes sense to me that you could buff Tanks (especially in the late game) to such a degree that a couple of tanks by them selves would be very cost efficient in a larger army. On top of that, I also believe that the Viking has a problematic impact on mech. It kinda prevents a lot of the counters you would see in BW. E.g. dropplay or air spellcasters gets shut down by the Viking. I think it's much "healthier" if the anti-air armored unit is on the ground (see this thread for my specific suggestions to mech: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/legacy-of-the-void/490611-liberator-in-tvz-is-it-imba?page=5)
If the latter was the case, it would also give more options for the opponent to abuse the immobility of the mech army.
At last, it's also clear that maps probably have to change in order to make it realistic that a mech player would opt to split up his army. On too many LOTV maps it seems to me that you can takes bases in order to get closer to your opponent, and I find that map design to be inconsistent with very strong Siege Tanks.
Personally, I would love to see games played on a map like Tal Darim that contains this immobile vs mobile dynamic.
If I have 3 bases and if my opponent has 3 bases, and if it's fairly easy and inevitable for both of us to reach this point, then why would any of us freely attack into dark swarm'ish abilities instead of just camping and maintaining 3 active bases while waiting for favourable engagement positions?
At least 3 reasons:
1. Units scale differently
2. You have strong harass tools that can cirvument the defenders advantage and allow you do something cost-effectively.
3. You can deal damage that reduces the future income of the opponent relative to your future expected income.
But it's really neccasary to analyze this dynamic by looking at mobile vs immobile and, mobile vs mobile and immobile vs immobile. For simplicity, let's assume that bio represents mobile and immobile = mech.
Bio vs mech
In order to determine whether there are reasons to expect army trading/action/harass in this matchup, we need to asses two factors:
1. The incentive
2. The tools
In bio vs mech, it's unlikely that the mech player will have the same income as the bio player throughout the majority of the game. In order to take an extra base he needs to have a critical tank count + must also be able to defend vs dropplay/runbys.
Since (a) the mech player scales better in higher numbers and (b) it's likely that there will be an income assymetry --> There is an incentive to army trade for the bio player.
It's also clear that the Medivac provides the bio player with the tools to be aggressive. Even if he is trading somewhat cost inefficiently, it can be worth it becasue the mech player benefits from scale and he will be able to take bases slower in the future.
It's also important to understand that when you have a mobile composition that have constant opportunities to attack everywhere on the map and - somewhat easily - can escape if things go wrong, that there will be lot of army trading.
The reason is that the bio player easily can move around and threatens attack everywhere. If he finds a weak spot he can attack it, and even if he fails the cost isn't very high. That's partly due to the mech player not being able of counterattacking very easily (even if the army size is larger).
This means that the disadvantage of a failed army trade --> Lower --> Increases the risk/reward for the bio player to trade.
Relative to the BW econ, it's definitely a concern that there won't actually be a reason for the mech player to attack. In BW you could make 2-4 base timing attacks. However, with the LOTV economy the mech player will almost always prefer to take an additional base instead (and you can't attack and defend at the same time as immobile race).
That said, I don't think this is so problematic as long as (a) the mech player can still harass and (b) the defensive style is an option not a must. If all you could do with the race was to turtle for 30+ minutes, that would be lame, but when its your choice to play this style it feels more acceptable.
Mech vs mech
The level of aggression depends on 2*2 factors:
1A. The strenght of harass-options
1B. How harass threats are countered. If you counter the threat of enemy harass by reacting after it's in your base --> More action will happen. If instead you try to set up your base defense to completely shut down harass --> You create an equilibrium where harassing isn't efficient.
2A: How efficient it is to be aggressive with Siege Tanks. This depends on two elements. (1) How probable it is that your efficient with your siege tank aggression and (2) how much damage you will do.
2B: The cost of the aggression gone wrong. E.g. if your opponent can catch all of your siege tanks and kill them easily after you have failed --> The risk/reward of being aggressive is reduced.
Assessing all of these factors can be quite comprehensive, but in general it should be obvious that it's definitely not impossible through unit design to reward aggression in mech vs mech. You should be able to harass with Hellions, hellbats and Banshee's (esp if that Viking is changed to anti-light instead of anti-armored).
And often time you are actually heavily rewarded for moving out with siege tanks and gaining positioning with them.
Mobile vs Mobile
I don't think mobile vs mobile is actually a healthy dynamic unless there is a very obvious defenders advatnage in place. In TvZ the defenders advantage is creep spread and wall-offs. The effect is that just because you have the strongest army, doesn't imply that you can go kill your opponent.
However this defenders advantage only works when its bio vs melee. In ranged vs ranged, the defenders advantage is efficiently removed and the dynamic therefore quite lame.
This is why I am not a fan of watching compositions like Warpgate vs zerg. Bio vs bio or bio vs Roach/Hydra.
|
On July 21 2015 21:19 BlackLilium wrote:Show nested quote +On July 21 2015 16:55 Hider wrote:
I think the forgivingness of a single misplay depends alot on what happens afterwards in the game. In sc2 a protoss/terran could simply not afford to get hit by a bad fungle growth. The game would bascially be GG afterwards.
I think this single statement is a very important observation! Mistakes will happen, bad things will be the result. The question is the amount of "result contrast". Is it black-and-white (you win, you loose) or in shades of gray (you are behind, but still in the game).
Definitely. In LotV there's an extreme focus on being able to make sick plays. This is a great thing, it adds excitement, the possibility of amazing comebacks, but it is sadly more often than not a game ender. It wouldn't have to be that way with much stronger defenders advantage on strong positions of the map.
|
Its a question of trying to implement a mechanic of broodwar in a game that plays nothing like broodwar?
Thats not something that sounds reasonable.
Broodwar and SC2 are compleatly different games, but it seems since they carry the same name we keep comparing them.
Its no wonder that there is so much polarization in terms of whats better/funnier/harder etc.
People are comparing apples to oranges and are still trying to discuss why their apple is better than the other apple (only its an orange) and vise versa.
High ground advantage is slightly pointless in sc2:
-If you are attacking from the bottom, you KNOW you need vision. If you dont have it, you will pull away.
-If you have vision, 99% of the time the person on the low ground actually has the advantyge (since most highgrounds are bases, and therefor the concave will favor naturally the person on the lower ground).
So... the thigh ground might as well be a wall that we can shoot over, since we need vision there too, as long as one player who would be on high ground does not need vision.
Broodwar had a different mechanic:
The advantyge was always there for ranged units, but it was random to a certain degree. This meant that to cement an atack over high ground, you needed to take it. It was not a matter of "will my shoots connect or not" but "How do I get up the ramp, with enought units to still beat what my opponent has".
Thats a much more interesting question than "will he land the forecefilds right or not" or "Should I blink into his main or not".
The idea of what you want to do in this case in broodwar is clear, what is unclear is how to do it.
In SC2 the question has two answers "Yes or No". In broodwar youd get more variations. (Of course I am simplyfiing a lot since you can blink in differently and from different areas, but the main question is still binary).
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/ISoPsWj.jpg)
