[D] What changes could help with death balls? - Page 6

On October 22 2012 18:02 Topdoller wrote:
Space the units out, its that simple. This discourages deathball, reduces DPS per square inch, encourages micro of units and the use multi pronged attacks

When you here of a caster shouting that was an amazing storm or fungal he will actually mean it, unlike the present where you simply cant miss the units you are after because you got 100 supply bunched up together

Everything dies so fast currently in SC2 you blink and the game is effectively over, this has to change.

On October 17 2012 22:00 winsonsonho wrote:

Exactly what I wanted to say about what makes balls so strong and so necessary. With the ball being so tightly clumped up, normally almost all units can attack at once. This leads to it being the by far the strongest formation for attacking or defending. Like you said the only way to beat a ball is with another ball. This has to change. The colossus is a prime example showing that Blizzard was either keen on the ball or has/had no idea how to fix it. The colossus can stand on top of other units and hence makes the ball smaller for toss and more destructive because again; the whole ball can attack at once almost. So its balls vs balls unless some major change is made.

Changing pathing like in the post below is a step in the right direction, however it doesn't change the fact that armies CAN still clump up into balls which are more powerful. So in the end players will just have to do some more clicking to have the most powerful ball mechanic again. So possibly alongside this change to pathing we need another solution.

Strong positional units allowing for positional play is in theory a great idea. This seems to be the way Blizzard is trying to fix the ball problem with widow mines and swarm host (by the way Blizzard where is toss' strong positional unit.) The widow mine and swarm host are able to do damage to a bigger army if used well. So why do I think it will not work in practice? It's because these new units can still be incorporated into the ball. This just makes the ball stronger especially in the case of swarm hosts. I would agree that the widow mine is not really usable with the bio-ball but its being used with tanks and hellbats in a larger ball pretty effectively. I would have to assume that the sentry is supposed to be protoss' positional unit, as it can split armies and do the other defensive stuff that it does. However it cannot damage armies in the way that the widow mine or swarm host potentially can.

So what is the other missing element that could make the deathball suboptimal. I think the problem lies in how close units are to one another when moved to an area. Even if the pathing was changed, as in the video above, the potential would still be there for the units to clump into a ball. And if there is a potential the good players will make a deathball if they can and if it is the optimal way to engage. I feel the one element that could stop the ball superiority is by increasing the unit collision radius and making the colossus have a collision radius too. This would spread out the units making the ball bigger and mean that units at the rear of the ball cannot engage until the ones in front of it die. Obviously this already happens, but definitely not to the degree that it should.

So why would this stop the ball. Well, if the rear of your army is doing nothing its better to split it up and try and sandwich the opposing army so that all the units can engage. Furthermore a smaller army would be able to damage a larger one (if not sandwiched - by being in a favourable position perhaps) because not all of the opposing force is engaging your smaller army. Also, if your positioning was very good and engaged in a favourable manner with a smaller army you might actually be able to force them to retreat or lose your whole army but also take out an equal or greater amount of theirs. This would promote positional play because a few smaller better position armies could over time take down a bigger one or be more cost effective. And I think everyone would agree that positional play with smaller battles all over the map is more fun to watch and promotes skillful micro play that will set higher level players further apart from lower level players.

Blizzard obviously wants to keep the game noob friendly but this change will not decrease lower ranked players ability to play the game, lower ranked players can still ball up their armies and fight. However it won’t be the most effective way to play. Two fat balls would just take longer to kill each other, which would possibly make it a little more noob friendly as players have more time to react when sending a full strength army vs another. The fact that battles would take longer is also what is wanted for spectator. So its win win.

Lastly, from a realistic and visual point of view it makes sense that units don’t stand on top of each other. Yes, the Spartans did well standing on top of each other in the Phalanx formation but that did get beaten by the looser roman legion formation Imagine being a marine standing shoulder to shoulder with your friend in battle. Your friend behind you is pushing you in the back because he’s so close and you’re basically mounting the guy in front of you. This would not be good in the real world for battle, which of course SC2 isn’t, but it should be somewhat based on realistic possibilities. Firstly it would hinder my ability to move around in battle and aim, and secondly would be great for the opposing side because aiming to kill would be unnecessary. This is all obvious, but it seems Blizzard hasn’t figured it out. Marines do stand on top of one another and a colossus can nonchalantly walk around on top of a tightly packed army without standing on anything or anyone.

This clumping mechanic looks ridiculous, damages the duration of battles and inevitably leads to the deathball. Blizzard just needs to make unit collision radius bigger in relation and do some rebalancing and we’ll have a much more dynamic skill intensive game on our hands. With the addition of changing the pathing mechanic slightly too, such as in that youtube video above, we could very easily be back to the BW look of game play with lengthy smaller sized battles all across the map.

On October 22 2012 22:08 SarcasmMonster wrote:
For those who think less clumping is the solution, give your support here:

http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/6573699544

On October 22 2012 22:36 HeeroFX wrote:
Well, too be honest death ball's will always be a piece of the late game in sc 2. Protoss and zerg generally want to get to that state because there units are so powerful in a ball of death. Terran death balls don't exist unless going mech. The way to break up a death ball may actually be on the maps and make it so that greed can be punished easier.

On October 22 2012 23:17 anon734912 wrote:
Some unit ideas I can offer, since I personally like SC2's unit clumping/pathing system.

Terran:
Siege Tank - Change attack into a missile (~0.5 sec to reach max range) with higher damage. Small groups/individual units will be easily micro'd to dodge these attacks, while deathballs will not.
Hellion - Smart fire that makes it move to about half range before attacking (when in a large group), greatly increasing its effectiveness in deathball battles, because their first attack (usually the only one that manage to get off before being destroyed) hits only the first unit of the target deathball.
Nuke - Lands quicker, smaller AoE. Also a price increase, since they become viable in army-army battles.
Thor - Primary attack piercing/overkill. E.g. when attacking a Zergling, normally the first shot will kill it and the second would go to waste, but the second shot should rather still fire and hit a unit behind the primary target.

Zerg:
Infestor - Fungal Growth to become a missile attack with a longer range, missile art/effect like a large Infester Terran egg. Basically a baneling launcher. Fungals thus become powerful and safe counter to deathballs, and inefficient against small groups/individuals due to energy cost and evasion.
Ultralisk - Increase damage and splash, and also costs to rebalance. It's really underwhelming to see an Ultra "go to work" on a group of any type, and have to dish out so many attacks, eventually dying before even managing to kill one.
Baneline - Applies a debuff, e.g. reduces armour or disables healing. They already kill light units immediately, so this would make them UTILITY against armoured, not necessarily a counter/efficient.

Protoss:
High Templar - Psi Storms that can stack, and have lower damage and a larger radius.
Stalker - Reduce size. Increases the ball's damage output, but also increases risk against AoE.

On October 22 2012 22:08 SarcasmMonster wrote:
For those who think less clumping is the solution, give your support here:

http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/6573699544

On October 22 2012 22:37 Decendos wrote:


everybody with an US acc plz support this! it would be awesome to see how HOTS would work if they would just patch this unit movement for 1 week and see how it works. just try it for one single week of beta.

On October 23 2012 06:11 Jasiwel wrote:
I hate deathballs. Period. I feel like an AoE will happen and deal so much damage, not to mention they're a pain in the ass to deal with. It makes gameplay stale and it really just looks stupid. More unit spacing by default would look nice, but I DO like how certain units like Sentries and Zealots can walk beneath the Colossus.

On October 23 2012 10:18 oxxo wrote:
Stronger AoE, stronger positional units, and unit pathing more like BW/WC3. It doesn't seem like Blizzard is very interested in any of these options though (judging by past buff/nerf/unit changes).