SC2 could be so much more - design and balance - Page 7

On November 05 2015 02:31 Nazara wrote:
You have pointed out to me that my suggestions would require big changes to zerg or go way overboard, yet you have no problem suggesting a mechanic that hasn't been tried or tested in any rts, or at least those that I know of.
And yes I take it quite literally, we may be talking about rts design in general, but this thread is starcraft focused.

On November 05 2015 02:47 Nazara wrote:
First we need to determine if giving such a vision is beneficial to the game at all. In my opinion it is better to just start a new ip with such a big change.
You seem to argue that because lowest depth of bronze league doesn't scout at all, you need to help them by changing basic principle of rts games.
A solution is to simply give them a proper tutorial introducing them to basics and importance of scouting, and leaving single units across the map to gain vision in crucial areas.
Your idea is like giving a toggle button that will auto build scv's until saturation is reached because they don't know they need more workers.

On November 05 2015 01:12 Big J wrote:

I understand your concern but I believe it's only a question of tools you provide for the highest level of play. T/Ps make a lot happen against zerg despite the amounts of vision because of the speed at which a lot of them hit you.
Also keep in mind what I theorycrafted is a tool that works the other way around. You start with a lot of vision early, so good players don't sit around with stalkers preparing for a gameending zergling attack that doesn't come. But later on you have covered "your half" in fog of war through buildings or whatever creeping mechanic could be there, returning to a state in which it becomes increasingly harder to thwart enemy multitasking.

I believe currently early game aggression is too allin because you cannot keep track of your opponents movements, leading to the ridiculous situation that the terran hides behind walls and bunkers only knowing about 2zerglings, while the zerg positions in his base for a drop that doesn't come. --> boring build up process due to a lack of information while you could be more active with your units. Obviously more profits from being active on an "empty map" wouldn't hurt to begin with.

On November 05 2015 03:28 TimeSpiral wrote:


TOPIC: Fog of War is a relic.

I suggested something along these lines in another thread--I believe the thread was discussing lore and logic inconsistencies in the game rules.

Essentially: these three extremely advanced space-faring races would easily be able to see the entire theater unless specifically impeded. The Fog of War mechanic is a relic left over from the Warcraft 2 days, when it made more sense.

Why can my marine only see like 15 strides in front of him? It makes no sense.

Why can't an Overlord basically see the entire map, except for some spots beneath cliffs and ledges?

It could be argued that you could do it the other way. Each race has specific ways to hide what they are doing: cloaking, radar jamming, decoys, camouflage, moving silently, etc ... It could be done in interesting ways where collecting intel could still be required, fun, and interesting, but removes the silliness of an entire army "showing up out of nowhere".

You guys get it. Back in the Command and Conquer: Red Alert days, once you built an Airstrip (I think it was) you gained a minimap, and vision of the whole map. Then, each race had ways to "jam" the other person's radar, requiring units to make visual contact to confirm intel.

But, in the end, it's a game, and the rules are there to enhance gameplay, not to simulate or even hint at realism. SC2 is a game of severely limited information, where each unit is incredibly blind, has perfect aim, and can hear and see in 360 degrees at all times. All interesting choices, surely. But an RTS could easily experiment with simple differences that could create hugely complicated results!

Is this kinda what you're getting at, BigJ?

I wonder if Atlas's new RTS will have Fog of War. I'm guessing it will ...

On November 05 2015 04:23 Naracs_Duc wrote:


I've never played an RTS with non-360 vision. That just blew my mind. Squad games, small scale games, turn based games--sure. It sounds like a great thing to experiment on. Blind spots for different units forcing players to have to babysit them even while "turtling."

Sorry--just thought it's a very easy way to give players more things to do even when not on the offensive. And allows active players to gain advantages by flanking maneuvers and traps. Like, you could use hellions to do hit and run strikes against tanks and stalkers that are on the move. Set traps by hiding behind terrain and jumping on enemy troops as they pass. It sounds fantastic actually.

On November 05 2015 05:39 TimeSpiral wrote:


Haha. Cool! I just watched your mind get blown. I think it's easy to fall into the trap of "this is what an RTS is" when you've played SC or SC2 for so long, and we might forget some of the extremely basic questions a game designers asks themselves in the beginning.

I don't think any of the things I mentioned would be appropriate for SC2--just to clarify--because those fundamental design decision were already made, and even a seemingly simple change at that level would have dramatic cascading effects into the other layers of the game.

Imagine if units didn't have perfect accuracy? Now, all of the sudden, you have to consider what affects accuracy. Is it harder to hit a moving target? Is it easier to hit an opponent below you? Could my weapon upgrades also increase my accuracy? Could my armor upgrade increase the chances that I block or evade an incoming blow? I'm not saying I want this. It just seems in the nature of this thread to talk about radically different design directions. Sorry if I'm derailing too much.

On November 05 2015 03:28 TimeSpiral wrote:


TOPIC: Fog of War is a relic.

I suggested something along these lines in another thread--I believe the thread was discussing lore and logic inconsistencies in the game rules.

Essentially: these three extremely advanced space-faring races would easily be able to see the entire theater unless specifically impeded. The Fog of War mechanic is a relic left over from the Warcraft 2 days, when it made more sense.

Why can my marine only see like 15 strides in front of him? It makes no sense.

Why can't an Overlord basically see the entire map, except for some spots beneath cliffs and ledges?

It could be argued that you could do it the other way. Each race has specific ways to hide what they are doing: cloaking, radar jamming, decoys, camouflage, moving silently, etc ... It could be done in interesting ways where collecting intel could still be required, fun, and interesting, but removes the silliness of an entire army "showing up out of nowhere".

You guys get it. Back in the Command and Conquer: Red Alert days, once you built an Airstrip (I think it was) you gained a minimap, and vision of the whole map. Then, each race had ways to "jam" the other person's radar, requiring units to make visual contact to confirm intel.

But, in the end, it's a game, and the rules are there to enhance gameplay, not to simulate or even hint at realism. SC2 is a game of severely limited information, where each unit is incredibly blind, has perfect aim, and can hear and see in 360 degrees at all times. All interesting choices, surely. But an RTS could easily experiment with simple differences that could create hugely complicated results!

Is this kinda what you're getting at, BigJ?

I wonder if Atlas's new RTS will have Fog of War. I'm guessing it will ...

On November 05 2015 03:00 Nazara wrote:
I missed the "in future games" in your response. that's why I thought it is something you would like in sc2, especially after others have hijacked the thread with the idea.

Pretty much. There are many rules you can implement to solve a specific problem. Fog of war intially dealt with the problem that players would "suicide" a unit early to track what the other player was doing all game long. (you explored the opponents base and keep vision of it all game long)
I believe that in today's competitive and semicompetitive enviroment such "relics" as you call them are not the optimal solution. As I, and Thieving Magpie said before, this solution leads to a large anxiety amongst newer or more casual players, as they are in the constant fear of possible attacks. Additionally it leads players to position units defensively when there is no need to, simply because the fog of war creates a scenario in which you don't know whether an enemy oracle is just leaving the base, or whehter it is "just 15strides away" as you call it.
I don't think fog of war is bad, having certain elements of "controlled chance" that aren't really chance but hidden, theoritcally trackable decisions is good. I plainly believe that fog of war goas quite overboard.

As you said, RTS games could experiment more on these fronts. Fog of war wasn't a given thing in the 90s, it was a possible solution to certain problems. I can only theorycraft about my presented concept, but in practice we have only seen complete fog of war, or no fog of war at all. I think there is a lot of room for creativity between (what I presented) or fundamentally different from it.

"it leads players to position units defensively when there is no need to, simply because the fog of war creates a scenario in which you don't know whether an enemy oracle is just leaving the base, or whehter it is "just 15strides away"

On November 05 2015 09:21 Clear World wrote:
I still want to talk about this vision thing, since it does touch on a topic that I find worth talking about, the anxiety that people feel. Changes to balance is one thing, but actually talking directly about things that create anxiety is something many people shouldn't be ignoring.



First, I wouldn't call Fog of war a 'relic'. The way it works can be tweaked, but the concept of how it works, in my opinion, is good for the game. Especially for a game like SC. I'm hope I'm not misinterperting your goal Big J, based on the last two pages, but it sounds like a large reason for this idea for you is because of the anxiety it can create to newer or casual players. It is true that the unknown can be scary, but anxiety isn't just caused by the unknown but what the effect the unknown casues.



Using the idea that you brought up, completely vision except for the genearl areas where buildings are located. If you start with that concept, than the first road block would be: it would make nearly every non-all-in attack pointless since the defend will know where and how large your force is. Basically meaning, if the attacker doesn't out number the defender's forces, they are going to lose, since out munvering or finding the defender out of place would be near impossible since the defenders knows the attacker's positions at all time.(Note: With that first road block, I assume this means there would have to be abilities/units that would be specifically designed to block the vision)

This is the problem I see with your goal, reducing the anxiety. To reduce it, your attempting to removing the capability of actually attacking. Which makes the early game lose any potential player interaction. Even in Lol, when there is a lot of vision on the map, there is a actually a lot less aggression since proper positioning is hard to achive. A lot of aggression tends to come from the opponent's lack of vision.

Therefore, I believe having more vision will reduce anxiety and provide more defender's advantage, but the question and issue with that is, how much vision is enough to still allow the attacker to have options to attack without resorting to all-ins. And what options does the aggresser have to combat this vision?

You brough up this example:



With that example, I purpose a what if statement. What if the Oracle harassment wasn't anynear game ending, and what if the player, without having to do anything special, would noramlly be able to detour the Harassment without having to go out of their way to prepare for it? If this what if this situation existed, would you agree that the amount of anxiety any player would have would be a lot less? That the player wouldn't think of the harassment as a 'must stop' before the attack ever happens. (Note, this does not mean we get an ability like PO to completely stop the attack)

Essentially, my idea is, what if scouting was NOT required to survive early on in the game.

To clarify, scouting would be the better tactic overall, but even if you didn't scout properly, you would still have the means to not be killed. (Note, this is not talking about high ground advantage, because in the Oracle situation, high ground provides nothing) And that there is a key aspect that I feel is not dicussed about enough. The lack of ability to 'react' to an agression, instead of pre-reacting to a possible agression.

Let me use Lol as an example again. In that game, it has fog of war and it also has wards, creep, and other champions to give vision. But when a person feels in trouble or in danger, it is not vision that gives them the feeling of less anxiety. It's the turret that provides them the safety. It's the turret that allows a player to go "if something goes wrong, I have a place where I can retreat and recup the damage" or "I can hold up at this spot until the odds can be evened". And even if a champion dies, the 1 death does not mean the end for the match. It is still possible to overcome it, so it's not 100% important for the player to avoid death at all cost.

Now compare this to SC, where a lot of the counters follows the tend of, "if I don't scout/stop this tactic or harassment before it happens, I will lose the game". With something like this always looming over a player, of course the anxiety build up.

Though, I'm sure there are holes in my example, I use this as my example because, if you want to lower anxiety, then the player needs to feel safe.

But to sum up my idea, having more vision would be nice, but if the goal is to reduce anxiety. Then a bigger contributer of what reduces anxiety is the feeling of safety. Even if a player will take some damage, if they feel like they still have a viable chance of winning, than this would surely reduce anxiety of any player since you no longer have to be on top of everything at once.

On November 05 2015 07:13 Big J wrote:


Pretty much. There are many rules you can implement to solve a specific problem. Fog of war intially dealt with the problem that players would "suicide" a unit early to track what the other player was doing all game long. (you explored the opponents base and keep vision of it all game long)
I believe that in today's competitive and semicompetitive enviroment such "relics" as you call them are not the optimal solution. As I, and Thieving Magpie said before, this solution leads to a large anxiety amongst newer or more casual players, as they are in the constant fear of possible attacks. Additionally it leads players to position units defensively when there is no need to, simply because the fog of war creates a scenario in which you don't know whether an enemy oracle is just leaving the base, or whehter it is "just 15strides away" as you call it.
I don't think fog of war is bad, having certain elements of "controlled chance" that aren't really chance but hidden, theoritcally trackable decisions is good. I plainly believe that fog of war goas quite overboard.

As you said, RTS games could experiment more on these fronts. Fog of war wasn't a given thing in the 90s, it was a possible solution to certain problems. I can only theorycraft about my presented concept, but in practice we have only seen complete fog of war, or no fog of war at all. I think there is a lot of room for creativity between (what I presented) or fundamentally different from it.



No offense taken. I will try to leave this discussion about "my idea for vision" here, as you are right that this is not really the place to discuss it.

On November 05 2015 12:06 NewSunshine wrote:

Holy hell. Quotes like these need spoiler tags. Way too much. Sometimes it's still not enough, you still see the whole wall of text when you quote them yourself, try trimming some fat from the conversation here and there, leave only the relevant stuff in the post, as far as how many nested quotes are there. Too many layers.

Anyway, about line of sight. It's a conscious design decision. I can guarantee the designer of any RTS will look at things like this and come to a decision about how LoS works in their game at some point, it's not something that gets overlooked. In an RTS, you have lots of action going on, across every inch of the map, workers are mining, buildings are producing and being produced, armies have to be maintained and positioned in case of attack. It's a conscious decision to abstract the way a unit sees what's going on around itself. Obviously, I don't see everything in a perfect 10-meter circle around me at all times, and neither do you. Hell, while we're at it, I seriously doubt a Supply Depot has eyes and ears to let me know what's happening around it.

There's enough on the plate of the player, without having to worry about things like which way the unit is facing and whether that puts that unit at risk. Perhaps in a smaller-scale RTS, one where you don't have to worry about an army of 100+ units, or in a turn-based game, you'd have that luxury of design space, but in a game as fast and as busy as Starcraft, it's a layer of complexity that would just frustrate the players more likely than not. Sometimes having that layer of realism just isn't worth it from a gameplay perspective. And Starcraft was never a realistic depiction of war to begin with, there are levels of abstraction, layers even, that are used when convenient, throughout many layers of the series. It's just how it is.

I'm such a layered individual. Look at me go.

On November 05 2015 11:49 TimeSpiral wrote:


Vision could be greatly enhanced and interesting gameplay would still exist, it would just be very different. But with enhanced, or less restrictive vision, you could introduce interesting things that interact with vision. Maybe some units are more stealthy than others. Maybe the LoS blockers are more interesting. For instance, you couldn't see into a forrest, or through heavy fog, rain; big mountains or formation cast shadows and block vision, etc ... Maybe some units can hear really well. Maybe some tech jams radars. Maybe I can hear something coming, but can't see exactly what it is. All sorts of cool stuff could be done!

All unit interactions we've ever seen in SC2 is based on this extremely restrictive vision mechanic, so we don't really know how the game could or would be played if vision was less restricted. The closest things we have are creep, and sensor towers. Creep just straight up grants vision, but also conveys to the opponent "Zerg knows you're here." Same thing with the Sensor tower, but for some reason it doesn't grant vision, or even vague impressions of unit types. Just blips on a radar. But, similarly, the opponent knows. Yet attacks still happen. Interesting things still happen--it's just different!

On November 06 2015 01:30 greenelve wrote:

Well, there are already LoS blockers in the game with brush, bushes, smoke on space platforms and tall grass. Xel Naga Tower grants more vision.

Also there are units you can hear, but dont know exactly where they are or what they are. For example Nydus Worm, loading/unloading drop, Nuclear Bomb by Ghosts.

Sensor Tower is a terran only unit, so it had to be available for all three races if it would work like a Xel Naga Tower. And afair it has a greater radius than the Xel Naga Tower. Also im not sure if the Sensor Tower is still used as much as it used to be in the past.