In other words, there currently isn't much of a high ground advantage in SC2. ---
The high ground advantage is pretty much what sold me on the fun of melee mapmaking in the first place. I always thought it was cool, but it wasn't until I watched Day[9] Daily #44 some time in SC2 beta that I began to understand the potential.
Match Point is a great map for many other reasons, but it was the two high ground pods that were most intriguing to me. The idea of defending (...or even attacking...) a lot of area from a central location on the map, with this location being dynamic as the game goes on.
Match Point by itself only begins to show what mapmakers can do with High Ground, but you get the idea.
POSITIONAL UNITS
It's hard to say which can/should be more important for controlling area, but strong positional units are also a big part of the picture.
I'm talking about units and abilities that once deployed (this alone ideally has a delay) are efficiently like "THIS SPOT IS MINE! Your move". Ways you can continuously spread yourself out across the map/board in a methodical chess-like fashion, as opposed to being "deathball"-oriented.
In Both Missile Turret Bunker Siege Tank Nuclear Missile Cannon Reaver/Colossus Psi Storm Colony/Crawler Guardian/Brood Lord
These are the kind of units I'm talking about. I would argue that the BW counterparts are relatively stronger. Perhaps the stats are roughly the same, but you also have to look at what is there to kill it (more things to kill it in SC2 imo).
I actually like Creep. I would like Force Field if there was more interesting stuff to use with it, but it seems like Protoss relies on it too much (though Protoss did thoroughly lack in BW). Don't get me started on the fail of XWT's and Sensor Towers. The rest aren't very significant really. <3 Creep <3 Force Field <3 In the end, the only heavily meaningful positional unit/ability new in SC2 is the Force Field (I know a lot of people who don't even like Force Field).
Spider Mines are the shit yo. Lurkers are bejujularly badass. Consume+Dark Swarm is a force to reckon with.
Perhaps it has a lot to do with the units being unable to benefit from a high ground advantage, but in the end let's just say that nobody is saying that there is a lot of strong positional units in SC2, indeed it is fairly common knowledge that Blizzard is trying to target this in HotS (by making units that force you to spread out).
BLIZZARD'S PLANS
"High ground mechanic: They like how it is now. According to Dustin Browder, it gives a clear advantage at first and then it eventually disappears. " - (source)
"For the sake of new experience we’ve also removed the 1/3 miss target chance for ground units on hitting units placed on higher ground. ..." - Dustin Browder (source)
"In SC1, there was a chance that units on the lowground would miss enemies on high ground. We removed this percentage since we do not like chance elements. The players ought to know exactly what advantage they have. And how to counter it." - Dustin Browder (source)
“…or maybe, I’m on the High Ground, +2 Armor! … Ultimately we decided this prevented a lot of player skill…” - Dustin Browder (source @25:00)
In other words, he probably' is perfectly fine with the "Deathball" formula. From what I can tell, if Dustin Browder really understands the true value of high ground advantages, he pretends not to.
Maybe in SC2 with so many resources in each base your lack of a need to expand as rapidly across such an expanse means you simply don't need a high ground mechanic to tie large areas of maps together (nearly as much).
SOMETHING IS MISSING...
High ground isn't just for connecting large areas of the map. Entire strategies can be built around it.
First I want you to imagine the best strategy in SC2 you can think (or have seen) of that heavily involves high ground. Then I want you to watch this game (English subs courtesy of source)
Recommended: Hiya vs Boxer on Blue Storm
Now after (seriously) watching that, let me guess what strategy you had in mind for SC2. It didn't happen to look something like this did it?:
PROBLEMS WITH FRB/6M
I wrote this partly to highlight what I have learned to be the biggest problem with current FRB.
"FRB adds the need to control more space, but not the means." -Gfire
There is a fair deal of deathball-ishness happening in FRB games (no more than I expected really), and when people ask me why this is, I have told them "people are not good at FRB yet" or "FRB is a new game, give it time" which given what people have said defending SC2 seemed more than fair to say. But that's not the whole story.
With all the extra bases FRB gives, there's not a whole lot tying it all together. There's not enough positional advantages driving the game into a spread out chess game as believers in FRB would prefer.
By not using a strong high ground mechanic, Dustin Browder is essentially min-maxing Terrible, Terrible Damage. I've said it before, I don't actually hate Terrible, Terrible Damage. It does have it's merit. I'm afraid that 8m without high ground is even better than FRB without high ground. So, IMO
FRB with strong high ground > 8M without strong high ground > FRB without strong high ground
I'm really not trying to sugarcoat it so I'll say it again: FRB without a strong high ground mechanic is not an overall improvement.
This is a rather big obstacle that wasn't adequately explored in the original article. The main problem with the FRB movement here is actually educating people (especially Dustin Browder I think) about the strategic potential of High Ground and Positional advantages (partly what this thread is for).
WHAT CAN MAPMAKERS DO?
This is not all doom and gloom for mapmakers. And let me reiterate that this is important to ALL of us, not just FRB. We can work with this. It is mostly a matter of more drastic use of other tools at our disposal. For one, chokes. Consider the following scenario:
I dare say the terran army probably won't win here... unless...
Now we're talking. This is really just one example, but hopefully you get the idea. This is not new at all: I am merely urging that we be more liberal with [forward chokes]. This is what I feel is the greatest thing about my current favorite 8m map
(2) Crux Whirlwind
I should not have overlooked this map, it is also very good, you might have heard of it ^^
(2) Cloud Kingdom
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Perhaps the essence of High Ground is merely to create incentive to have your army on top of it - making the units statistically stronger is not entirely necessary for this.
Consider the high ground above the third bases on
(2) ESV Korhal Compound
The high ground pod above the third (and the attack route on the other side) just begs you to take control of it and move your army out onto the field.
In other words, a high ground advantage doesn't necessarily have to give good defensive potential, it can also simply give good attacking potential making the defender want to take control of it anyway.
The point is to make a contrast between having the high ground and not having the high ground.
This tends to work a lot better in FRB because each of your first few bases is not quite as important to the whole, allowing you to be more aggressive and intrusive with the high ground.
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You can also simply have high ground and then even more high ground in the way between you and the enemy, ever encouraging you to go higher from where you started.
This was essentially popularized by
(2) ESV Haven's Lagoon
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I really tried to simulate most of the best things about high ground positioning in SC2 in my latest map
(2) Overtake
and the next map to enter the FRB pool with Overtake also has many of these qualities
(2) Afterglow
CONCLUSION
After all is said and done,
there is really nothing that can replace what a strong high ground mechanic brings to the table.
Maybe it's not needed in 8m,
and maybe it's absolutely critical for 6m.
Either way ALL of us can try to counteract it by being liberal with multiple high grounds and forward chokes.
Are we satisfied with this? (I won't be for long, personally)
I tried being concise and I think I succeeded (perhaps too much?); I am happy to elaborate on or clarify anything if needed.
Barrin, this was an excellent read. I feel as though if Blizzard took the advice of mapmakers to heart and actually listening to feedback, SC2 would be a much more enjoyable, less mechanical game than it is today.
On April 18 2012 04:13 Barrin wrote: [list][*]there is really nothing that can replace what a strong high ground mechanic brings to the table.
This for me is the most important point. While chokes are nice and give you positional advantages, they are the same in BW and SC2 regardless of highground advantage. So while using chokes more and better is indeed also important, there really isn't anything that replaces the highground advantage. Just look at Match Point, those highground pods are quite open yet give an advantage, which obviously isn't the same as using chokes.
Really sucks that Blizzard felt the need to change this. I never played BW so when I started playing DotA 2 recently I really felt how much a real highground advantage means and I can only imagine how many possibilites it would give us mapmakers for better and more interesting layouts, and how much more positional and interesting the game could be.
The more I look at Afterglow the more I like it. Although this effect could easily be drastically greater you really WANT the be on that highground. And thus be forcing an engagement. I would really like a watchtower in the middle though.
Thanks for the great post. I got like 3 new ideas off this.
On April 18 2012 04:13 Barrin wrote: [list][*]there is really nothing that can replace what a strong high ground mechanic brings to the table.
This for me is the most important point. While chokes are nice and give you positional advantages, they are the same in BW and SC2 regardless of highground advantage. So while using chokes more and better is indeed also important, there really isn't anything that replaces the highground advantage. Just look at Match Point, those highground pods are quite open yet give an advantage, which obviously isn't the same as using chokes.
Really sucks that Blizzard felt the need to change this. I never played BW so when I started playing DotA 2 recently I really felt how much a real highground advantage means and I can only imagine how many possibilites it would give us mapmakers for better and more interesting layouts, and how much more positional and interesting the game could be.
I'm sure you could replicate the effect with triggers in the editor. Maybe we could do a similar experiment to FRB?
Another great read here. I'm going to guess that I wasn't the only one with map ideas flying through my brain while reading it. I wish my college professors had broken down and explained ideas this well back in the day.
As for the 33% cover on high ground, its definitely replicable with triggers and/or the data editor, but ideally we would keep the maps "melee"...
On April 18 2012 06:50 TheFish7 wrote: ideally we would keep the maps "melee"...
Probably impossible. Originally I was thinking upgrade modification but at the moment I'm messing around with trying to reduce attack range when attacking up as per ArcticRaven's suggestion. I'm not an expert with triggers so if someone else wants to take a crack at it, please do. I'm having trouble
I'll start with some of my thoughts about positional units: It's seemed to me like BW had too strong of space control (too easy to set up defense which takes 0 apm to maintain) and SC2 has too little (all units go into a deathball.) And I have Force Fields with a passion. It does seem to me like it's too easy to just burrow some lurkers on top of a ramp and completely remove any option for the opponent to attack there, which is why I enjoy the Swarm Host, as it encourages more action and forces engagements rather than passivity. Siege lines in SC2 are easier to break with good unit splitting (mostly good) and also the right counter-unit (mostly bad although "just in time" brood lords or whatever are exciting, but immortals aren't good since stalkers are already so effective against tanks). I greatly enjoy how the thor acts as a slow long-range anti-air space control unit, adding some positioning and space control to the air plane which is cool, but has little to do with map-making. I love positional units and a creation of a "chess game" so long as passivity or turtling doesn't become too good. (These days I approve of the removing of the Shredder.)
I think the good pathing of SC2, which allows you to get through chokes and such, combined with a lack of high ground advantage, can make it really hard to defend multiple points in SC2. I'm torn as to whether or not to have a high ground advantage, but it's not up to me so I fortunately don't have to form an opinion. High ground advantage is good for making areas stronger but it's limited in the way that, physically, high grounds work. It's in layers, and you can't make Escher style terrain in a map. If there was a way to add the positioning of certain areas being at an advantage which isn't tied to terrain height, I think that would be ideal, although potentially a bit complicated or difficult to understand. Creep is a good example, but it's not very strong.
Choke Points: These do need to be used more. One thing I was thinking about was creating stronger contrast between the tightest chokes and the openest areas in maps. Entombed valley is the best example of this right now, and it also makes for (imo,) most of the best games in the GSL. It's got some flaws but the basic idea is there.
People complain about too small of chokes for whatever reason, saying that tanks will be imba, etc. This has been the case whenever I've really tried anything like that (though I can't say I did a great job at it.) I think one issue is that a chokepoint can at least appear to be good for certain army compositions, rather than being good for the player whose units are in a specific place (that is, the defender.) PvP will turn into 4gate vs 4gate without a ramp no matter how small you make the main choke, won't it? It's difficult to use chokes in a way that helps one player over the other, based on position rather than army composition. Maybe this is a misconception, or maybe it's a side effect of SC2's pathing.
As you said about high grounds on Korhal Compound, it might not be something which inherently gives the defender an advantage. It could give them an incentive to control a point so the attacker can't abuse it. This is kinda what I was headed toward when I made (2) On Rainy Days although my understanding of things was considerably worse then.
I don't think it plays out well on that map, but it might work in some cases. A Zerg player, for instance, might want to control the space beyond the choke point, so a Terran can't set up tanks there in a place where the Zerg would have to funnel units through the choke in order to attack the tanks. However, this isn't a purely good thing for the Zerg to do because it makes it harder to pull back through the chokes to the main or natural or whatever to defend another attack, maybe a drop. This makes it a risk-vs-reward scenario, rather than a "try as hard as you can to control this space which it's always good to control scenario" putting the focus on decision making rather than execution, which is a general trend when moving from BW to SC2. Then again, going through a choke doesn't slow down an army that much when it comes to getting to another point (unless the army is big enough,) but it does make it diffucult to get all your units attacking, and so it might always be a good decision to move your army out there.
Of course this example is more for a choke which isn't all that forward. The forward chokes are good because they give you space to get your units in between the choke and the base you need to defend, or whatever, and you'll have time to do so after spotting some army on the move or whatever. Generally it's good for more passive or space controlling defense, as well.
It definitely has a lot of potential mappers can explore.
High Ground: Generally you have a lot of points here and I agree with them. For a while I've tried with different designs to make use of all the layers of terran. Generally making higher ground in more forward positions is good for positioning. I started a map this morning with this type of concept, although I need to work on it some more. High Ground is something I want to learn more about and come up with better ideas.
Generally map makers have to get better overall. It felt there in the post-daybreak era that what was left to explore in map making hit a bit of a halt. FRB of course opened up to more bases and thus more creativity, but what was good to put in those maps was yet to be figured out. I think this is the first real advancement in that area, and should, for lack of a better term, raise the skill cap in mapping.
Thanks for writing the thread, it helped me understand a bit more. I will use this knowledge to adjust some things about the map I'm working on.
In almost any map thread I visit there's something along the lines of:
"There's high ground in location X, terran with tanks will be imba on this map"
This really bugs me, it seems like no amount of high ground is acceptable to some people. I hope this thread will make map-makers less scared of high ground.
"In SC1, there was a chance that units on the lowground would miss enemies on high ground. We removed this percentage since we do not like chance elements. The players ought to know exactly what advantage they have. And how to counter it." - Dustin Browder (source)
Anyone actually capable of rational thought could have realized that the 50% miss chance could be easily replaced with 50% damage from low to high ground, achieving the same effect but with no randomness.
I too have been thinking I like FRB less and less. The games just aren't any better from what I have seen. 8M maps have really been playing well recently, and the games continue to get better as new maps as released. Imo maps make a bigger difference in gameplay than the mineral count, and basically all of the FRB maps being used are fairly bad. They don't encourage any more harassment or expanding than other maps except that they have 6 minerals... a concept which, in itself, doesn't make games inherently improved except 4 bases is optimal instead of 3 (3 mining bases usually). The only solution to making the game have more depth is by changing the fundamentals, which is out of our control. The best thing is to focus on using features of maps to improve gameplay; highground and chokes.
That being said, I will be releasing an update for Afterglow w/ 6m and 8m versions. I hope the changes will improve it ^^
I wanted to try an experiment with High Ground and Line of Sight Blocker. There is the representation of what i have done:
The Blue and the Red square represent the location of a line of LOS blocker
In the Case of the Red location, nothing change really. The marine cant attack the tank until he is on top of the ramp.
In the Case of the Blue location, something really strange happen. It basicly create a Low-ground advantage. It is not drastic, but the tank can't attack the marine until the marine is on top of the ramp. A map using this feature will be a completly retarded map, with all the pvp 4gate problem and etc.
When both LOS blocker are set, the result is the same as the Blue case.
In conclusion, i believe that high ground in SC2 is just a big illusion. High ground can be replaced as a path blocker and a one way sight blocker and you will have the same result gameplay wise. I forgot to mention that air unit ( and the Collossus) completly nullify any high ground advantage that sc2 have.
I want to high my sentence : An High ground is just a path blocker and a one way sight blocker ( it negate vision from low to high, but not from high to low). So the only positionnal feature in a map that the mapmaker can use is the choke. If we want a positionnal game, mapmaker should go crazy with any choke.
What is regrettable in the game atm is that a single unit that have vision give it to everyone else.
Well, if you have a low-ground advantage, you could make the mains on low-ground and PvP would be fine, perhaps?
I do think the use of more losb is something we need, as well.
The psychological side of high ground is funny. It so often feels like such a huge advantage while, if they have spotters it is no advantage at all. Of course the high ground still has some advantage even if it's only vision-related. There aren't always air units around and they can be killed, and scans are costly as well.
I do support the high-ground having little to due with positional advantage, but we might need something (hopefully in addition to chokes,) that actually does give more positional advantage.
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I do support trying maps like 8m2g on the main and nat and 6m1hyg on further expansions. This was the original method to get rid of the 3-base deathballing issues, which were pretty problematic a year or so ago, and are still poor for gameplay even if they are racially balanced.
The low-ground advantage that i have found is more of a gimmick than a feature, plus you need to plant a lot of LOSB to be effective, which add a lot of doodads and reduce the performance of the computer.
Also, i think it's stupid to have a low-ground advantage, it's counter intuitive
I don't understand the statement "8m > FRB." Is this because FRB has supposed racial imbalances? Besides that I don't know how that inequality is based on any more than opinion. I don't think FRB > 8m but I do think it certainly creates certain situations more often than 8m. (And vice versa of course.)
Now, I won't argue with you at all if you want to say "FRB didn't work as well as we wanted it to." OR "8m is improving despite its problems, and given the marginal gain of FRB it's not worth it to push it any harder." However, you are guys are seriously confusing me by denying the fundamental efficacy of the inherent purpose of FRB. It doesn't matter if shitty players also play deathball games on FRB because that says nothing about cutting edge competitive play. It's simply a fact that FRB offers greater opportunity for harassment and multi-engagements. Positional play, as this article outlines, is hard to achieve despite mythic-status mapping due to the game mechanics (or lack thereof), regardless of FRB or 8m.
Because I know you are wondering if you should argue with me, I'll present it clearly here and save us one iteration if you still so choose to comment:
It takes 4 bases in FRB to achieve the same "maximum" economy as in 8m -- which we call "maximum" and benchmark based on how many bases you need to max out your supply and reach late game tech, in an 8m game. (To digress briefly -- a 4th mining base has minimal utility in 8m because you decrease your army supply by adding more workers, and you gain nothing by spreading your workers to more expansions, unlike in BW which is what Lalush's thread was all about. If you're not going to fully saturate a base, it's not worth the liability of creating and defending it.) FRB doesn't change the mining dynamic at all, but it does require you to have more mining locations. By the time you have a 4th mining location, your main is almost done, so you really need 5 bases in FRB to be in full swing. This means you have 4 mining locations, at least 2 of which will be "out on the map", and all your infrastructure in your main which is also up for harass. This is 5 places where the enemy can damage you, compared to 3 places in the same "full swing" scenario in 8m.
How is this not more opportunity for harassment? Interestingly, the increased number of location of vulnerabilities actually decreases the severity of the damage from successful harassment, because you have less eggs in any one location-basket. This means players are far more likely to suffer setbacks -- not lose the game -- in FRB.
That's as far as I want to go. I could list many more observations and conjectures about how FRB promotes desirable game traits more than 8m, but that would be anecdotal and hypothetical. My intent was simply to rebut this notion that FRB is not doing it's job, when that is necessarily not true.
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About highground, I don't think you can pin so much on this one mechanic, in terms of whether its existence would significantly alter how SC2 plays. In terms of the utility of ramps and height differences as part of a mapper's arsenal, it would certainly make a huge amount of difference in how we are able to reward map presence. It would be one step towards greater breadth, just like FRB is.
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I hesitate to bring it up because the topic deserves a thorough treatment, but I don't want to leave it out. There are various factors centering around unit AI that lead to the discrepancy in breadth and engagement dynamics between SC2 and BW. SC2 unit AI being the way it is, you can only "recreate" BW so much. I'm not saying it should be one way or the other, but this piece of the puzzle should not be discounted, and it has deep ramifications on how the game works. High ground advantage and whatnot can only access so much potential for change. I guess my main point here is to warn you that you shouldn't think about adjustment goals as "more like BW" but instead as "a different kind of SC2". Needless to say, duh, but it bears repeating.
I'd like to second EatThePath's sentiments for the most part. Especially:
By the time you have a 4th mining location, your main is almost done, so you really need 5 bases in FRB to be in full swing. This means you have 4 mining locations, at least 2 of which will be "out on the map", and all your infrastructure in your main which is also up for harass. This is 5 places where the enemy can damage you, compared to 3 places in the same "full swing" scenario in 8m.
I have mentioned this before, too. To play well, your play needs to become more dynamic because your opponent is going to be more dynamic.
Regardless, while I generally enjoy reading these articles, I can't help but get the sense that you are trying to find a new "silver bullet" that would fix SC2 gameplay. While I don't necessarily disagree that there needs to more use of ground level disparity, forward chokes, etc., I don't think you can simply pin any one aspect on "what's ruining SC2 gameplay as far as maps are concerned". I think you came really close to doing that with FRB -- I'm really unsure that there is another single aspect that is just going to make deathballing stop. Even with forward chokes, someone who has a large ground army is just going to figure out a different way to engage their deathball in those chokes. You can't force someone to do multipronged attacks, even if it might be better that they do.
Deathballing happens -- should be a bumper sticker.
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