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On November 09 2012 23:24 AmericanPsycho wrote:Show nested quote +On November 09 2012 20:32 Rabiator wrote:On November 09 2012 20:29 AmericanPsycho wrote:
I feel that the smaller unit groups thing will never be implemented, it will alienate allot of lower league players, due to the huge increase in skill level required to simply move your army. Look at this from a <diamond level, this change will seems stupid to anyone at that level, which is probably more than 50% of players. Thats illogical, because BOTH SIDES will have fewer units coming to a battle and battles with less units are easier to watch over and control since they are slower. If you have 10 Marines shooting a group of targets they die in a much slower speed than if you had 30 Marines. So less units makes it easier for lower league players, because the battles are slowed down. I understand your argument, but I'm just trying to be realistic here, there will be way too much complaining from the "casual" majority, the games will be less fun for them, most people won't appreciate the skill, they will just be frustrated at the "dumbed down" unit control. You are better off thinking of different solutions, that's all I'm saying.
This... and caping the unit groups is like suggesting that each player has one hand bound to his back to make battles slower. Capping the mechanics is not the way to go imo. Giving more strategic depth is.
So... why do units move in a ball? A reason is, because they move at the same speed. Take Marines and Marauders for example. If marines moved slightly faster and/or Marauders slightly slower, marines would usually end up at the front, where they'd get wiped first, instead of the beefier Marauders taking the damage first. More micro would be needed to position them right.
Protoss does have this problem, but only at the start. Stalkers are faster than Zealots, so Zealots have to be microed to the front to tank damage. This gets somewhat compensated with Charge though. Zealots are a lot faster than Stalkers when charging, even though they have to move around the Stalkers, which makes deathball movement a lot easier as soon as Charge is done. And then, if something gets stuck still, just blink Stalkers out of the way.
It has been mentioned before, but it can't be said often enough imo. Colossi are too fast! It's way too easy to reposition and move them with the ball for such a high splashdamage siegeunit. Siegetanks and Broodlords have to be positioned correctly before you engage and are risky and/or slow to reposition, which is absolutely right as is. Why not with the Colossus?
I think giving more strategic depth to the game makes it a lot more fun to watch, more fun to play and opens another skill branch. Now it's just micro and macro. Positional strategic thinking should be a required skill for a Strategy game, or not?
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One Idea by me would be to make Tier 1 Units (Marines (with a Upgrade)/Marauder, Roaches, Stalker) splash like Archon in a small Area with a percentage of their damage.
This would require alot of Micro to stay spread for ALL races.
This would make acquiring a Deathball harder since you need to defend alot harder stuff (Since buff for early Units)
This would make early game way more interesting since micro is way more required there.
Therefore more empasis on Early/Midgame and less on Lategame, but a player who can play/acquire deathball rocks.(would require some Buffs maybe to Deathball Units)
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On November 09 2012 23:24 AmericanPsycho wrote:Show nested quote +On November 09 2012 20:32 Rabiator wrote:On November 09 2012 20:29 AmericanPsycho wrote:
I feel that the smaller unit groups thing will never be implemented, it will alienate allot of lower league players, due to the huge increase in skill level required to simply move your army. Look at this from a <diamond level, this change will seems stupid to anyone at that level, which is probably more than 50% of players. Thats illogical, because BOTH SIDES will have fewer units coming to a battle and battles with less units are easier to watch over and control since they are slower. If you have 10 Marines shooting a group of targets they die in a much slower speed than if you had 30 Marines. So less units makes it easier for lower league players, because the battles are slowed down. I understand your argument, but I'm just trying to be realistic here, there will be way too much complaining from the "casual" majority, the games will be less fun for them, most people won't appreciate the skill, they will just be frustrated at the "dumbed down" unit control. You are better off thinking of different solutions, that's all I'm saying.
Nah ... with the right guys explaining it (Day[9], Husky, ...) the casuals will understand how and why it is better for them to have smaller battles. Propaganda is a mighty tool and it works and you can sell the dumbest stuff with the right ad campaign. Since you understand the purely mathematical argument and example I gave there is hope that others might start understanding the benefits of "low-number-low-killspeed BW settings" compared to "highspeed SC2 settings" as well.
I know there will be a lot of whining and stupid dumbass comments like "just go and play BW", but they are the stupid ones who shouldnt be allowed to dictate how the game will evolve over time. They need to be ignored and shown their own stupidity through constant arguments ... which is the opposite of the usual way to solve the problem of trolls on the internet (ignoring them). The stakes are high and the "wise changes" of forcing spread unit movement and limiting the unit selection are really necessary to make the game more interesting and easier to balance. No one has yet given any arguments - other than "I like the current way of SC2" - which show a flaw in the reasoning behind those changes (and my other argument that the production speed boosts need to go). I cant wait until someone tries to REALLY argue with me about these things ...
On November 10 2012 01:55 ChillPhiju wrote:
One Idea by me would be to make Tier 1 Units (Marines (with a Upgrade)/Marauder, Roaches, Stalker) splash like Archon in a small Area with a percentage of their damage.
This would require alot of Micro to stay spread for ALL races.
This would make acquiring a Deathball harder since you need to defend alot harder stuff (Since buff for early Units)
This would make early game way more interesting since micro is way more required there.
Therefore more empasis on Early/Midgame and less on Lategame, but a player who can play/acquire deathball rocks.(would require some Buffs maybe to Deathball Units)
... and it would make a Marine/Marauder deathball overpowered against Zerglings. "More more more" is NOT the right solution and we already have had a solution in our history where the deathball did not work/exist ... BW.
Keep it simple to keep it easy (to learn and balance)!
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@Rabiator
It would make MM not overpowered since you can balance those(More AoE for Roaches/Stalker less for Marines OR Marauders(not both can splash (the marauder would fit better))) and Infestors would still fungal and Broodlords would still have a good range. But building a alot of them will be harder since the downtime on tier 1 units which are good against a big chunk of units when they get to attack. On top of that Zerg and Protoss will have an easier time spreading because Zealots/Speedlings surround quite well while Terran maybe got more AoE potential (I would doubt it since you can't build that many Marauders like roaches and P could keep up with Stalker production) and still Micro counters alot.
And they don't want to copy Broodwar so not an option :O
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On November 10 2012 00:16 BurningRanger wrote:Show nested quote +On November 09 2012 23:24 AmericanPsycho wrote:On November 09 2012 20:32 Rabiator wrote:On November 09 2012 20:29 AmericanPsycho wrote:
I feel that the smaller unit groups thing will never be implemented, it will alienate allot of lower league players, due to the huge increase in skill level required to simply move your army. Look at this from a <diamond level, this change will seems stupid to anyone at that level, which is probably more than 50% of players. Thats illogical, because BOTH SIDES will have fewer units coming to a battle and battles with less units are easier to watch over and control since they are slower. If you have 10 Marines shooting a group of targets they die in a much slower speed than if you had 30 Marines. So less units makes it easier for lower league players, because the battles are slowed down. I understand your argument, but I'm just trying to be realistic here, there will be way too much complaining from the "casual" majority, the games will be less fun for them, most people won't appreciate the skill, they will just be frustrated at the "dumbed down" unit control. You are better off thinking of different solutions, that's all I'm saying. This... and caping the unit groups is like suggesting that each player has one hand bound to his back to make battles slower. Capping the mechanics is not the way to go imo. Giving more strategic depth is. So... why do units move in a ball? A reason is, because they move at the same speed. Take Marines and Marauders for example. If marines moved slightly faster and/or Marauders slightly slower, marines would usually end up at the front, where they'd get wiped first, instead of the beefier Marauders taking the damage first. More micro would be needed to position them right. Protoss does have this problem, but only at the start. Stalkers are faster than Zealots, so Zealots have to be microed to the front to tank damage. This gets somewhat compensated with Charge though. Zealots are a lot faster than Stalkers when charging, even though they have to move around the Stalkers, which makes deathball movement a lot easier as soon as Charge is done. And then, if something gets stuck still, just blink Stalkers out of the way. It has been mentioned before, but it can't be said often enough imo. Colossi are too fast! It's way too easy to reposition and move them with the ball for such a high splashdamage siegeunit. Siegetanks and Broodlords have to be positioned correctly before you engage and are risky and/or slow to reposition, which is absolutely right as is. Why not with the Colossus? I think giving more strategic depth to the game makes it a lot more fun to watch, more fun to play and opens another skill branch. Now it's just micro and macro. Positional strategic thinking should be a required skill for a Strategy game, or not?
Dont think too much about "ball" when thinking about the deathball. Its NOT necessary to have a round shape to have a deathball and the better definition is "all your fighting units in a tight formation" (no matter which shape). There are two reasons why this is possible from the technical side:
1. Units clump up automatically compared to the "bump into each other and spread out again" mechanic of BW.
2. You can have all your units in one control group.
There are two reasons why players use this strategy to their advantage (apart from "its easy to use"):
1. You maximise the damage output from your infantry by getting the maximum amount of infantry in range of your target(s) in the shortest amount of time.
2. There are no really threatening AoE attacks which a defender could use to defend against this.
So how do you implement "strategic positional play" into the game then?
Option 1: Increase the AoE damage.
Sure, lets have Siege Tanks which deal 80 damage (just an example to make it clear). This kills Roaches/Marauders/Zealots in 2 shots, Marines/Banelings/Zerglings in one and Stalkers in three. What would be the consequence? Zerglings are about useless against Siege Tanks and the power of the unit would be HUGE when there are less than a swarm of them; just imagine a "1 Siege Tank rush" against a Zerg with not that many units. Devastating! So this approach doesnt work.
Option 2: Increase the health/armor of the Siege Tank.
Siege Tanks die left and right due to friendly fire, their minimum range and the absurd amount of infantry which can get close enough to shoot at them. So if you give the tank more health and armor they live longer, right? Sure they will, but the same problem as for option 1: What happens when there are only a few Tanks against relatively few opposing units? The tank is OP. Simple.
So with these two possible changes you can clearly see that fixing the Siege Tank wont work if you simply adjust its combat values simply because they get too powerful in a "few vs. equally few" situation. Basically it would come down to battles like THIS ... just with tanks instead of that other underpowered unit [which is underpowered for the same reason: too tight clumps of ground units which are able to shoot it down easily].
So tackling the problem from the Siege Tank side seems pointless or rather impossible, because the basic problem of SC2 remains: How to make AoE "fair" when you can have 1 or 30 units in your targeting area? This is the true problem ... you have too much of a variance in those areas because of the tight formation - which at the high end mean the tank dies quickly. So the best solution IMO is to reduce the number of infantry charging the tanks and there are two ways of doing it:
1. Forcing units to spread out while moving.
2. Making large chunks of infantry harder to use by limiting the number of units in a control group to 12.
If you have a better idea then tell me, but please stop rhetoric like "I think giving more strategic depth to the game makes it a lot more fun to watch" [which I fully agree with] while trying to discourage the "limited unit selection solution" by ridiculing it. If you think that limiting the number of units is a bad idea then tell me why; I have given you a reason why an unlimited number is a terrible idea. The gist of it is - for me at least - that reducing the "unit density" drastically will solve several problems:
1. The deathball will not be as viable again.
2. Positional play will be viable more because anyone attacking into a position will have less concentrated firepower.
3. Air units - especially capital ships - will be viable again, because ground based anti-air wont be stacked as tightly and they have at least a chance to run if sh** hits the fan.
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The biggest problem about death ball is..... Dustin Browder :D noob friendly dude  I h8 protoss in SC2 i love protoss in SCBW i only play protoss ...
Problem is that protoss is the most suffer race from death ball mentality and gameplay plenty of toss unites are death ball gameplay unites...
so protoss are the ugliest race to play... Force feald Colloss are the moust broken thing and they bring death ball in gameplay for toss ppl...
So remove Death ball you need to remove Dustin Browder :D ... REMOVE DB  ))))
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Hi this is my first post here but I think I got a reasonable idea. Another way of avoiding large armies would be to make low econ games more common. One way of doing this would be to emphasis differing ways of harassment in the early game. In WOL now, P and T just wall themselves in so that there are very few ways of harassing and doing damage without comitting to an all-in (keep in mind that this comes from a mere diamond league player so I might not have a sufficient understanding of the game). Also zerg can easily prevent any harass by making a spine or two in addition to some queens. This promotes passive play and makes it easy to macro up and make one of the infamous deathballs. Additionally, this leads to a predictable and unexciting early and midgame.
The reaper change in HOTS will obviously help in this regard but in addition I believe there should be several other ways of harassment that is not completely negated by a wall. I think it is very important though that this harass should not have the potential to straight out win you the game as an all-in. They should rather be ways of gaining small advantages, on the back of superior multitasking, micro and scouting.
I will provide some ideas but I suspect that some of you guys would have better ones:D
1. Have Overlords be able to carry units without the upgrade but only be able to carry half the (or some other lower) amount of units (the upgrade could still be there in order to make larger drops viable at later stages in the game). This way zergling harass would be possible early game even if a terran or protoss has walled (this would also make FFE far worse and zvp far less predictable). This might not work out wery well on small maps where the overlord could reach the opponents base at the time when a 6-pool arrives, but with larger maps I dont think this would be a problem.
2. The warp prism and terran dropship/medivac could be made available earlier. One way to do this could be to have a terran dropship available with the factory, but not be able to heal the bio it carries. The heal could be made available at the starport as an upgrade. Something similar could be done with the warp prism such that it either only carrier or only warps in units before a certain upgrade is researched. Either way the capacity should be reduced so that they can't be used for all-ins.
3. There could be more early game harassment only units such as t he reaper. Personally I like the idea of a guerilla unit wuth a temporary cloak oncooldown that runs in and snatches a few kills before it moves out again. The oracle could be made such that it works well in collaboration with the pheonix for harassment.
4. The nydus worm is one of the most exciting weapons in the zerg arsenal but is seldomly used. Maybe it could be reworked to not warn the opposing player, but be nerfed in another way?
My point is that more ways of harassment in the early game (that is not negated by a simple walloff) could decrease the predictability of the early and mid game while making the gameplay more exciting and demanding. I also really like scaling harassment as a way of making sure that these tools are not simply being used as all-ins. I believe that such a change would lead to games being played at lower levels of economy and therefore decrease the deathball effect.
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On November 09 2012 19:56 MikeMM wrote:Show nested quote +On November 09 2012 19:31 eviltomahawk wrote:On November 09 2012 17:26 MikeMM wrote:On November 09 2012 16:49 Alex1Sun wrote:On November 08 2012 19:04 MikeMM wrote:
I copmpletely can’t understand 40% of people who voted for «Stronger positional units for better space control». What units do they have in mind? So much hated Colossus, sentries and infestors can very well fall into this category because fungal growth, beams and fields are great against Deathballs. Do they want more of them?
I think people were thinking more about units like tanks and widow mines. Colossi may be made interesting if they slow them down and make them more micro-intensive. Investors IMHO are interesting units that just need a nerf. Yes, tanks do help in some extent. TvZ and TvT more often than not can produce interesting games. But that is being achieved only thanks to delay of 3-5 seconds while tanks move into and out of siedgemode. That is why T Deathball with tanks is not so mobile and it’s interesting to watch. But the same delay of 3-5 seconds in moving whole P or Z Deathball can easily be achieved if 12-unit selection cap is introduced in sc2. Why does it have to be a 12-unit selection cap? An 8 unit or 6 unit selection cap would greatly increase the skill ceiling and discourage deathballs even more. Any cap not bigger than 12 will help to make the game more interessting to watch and harder to play. Someone also suggested cap based on supply.
How about a 4-unit selection cap. That was the selection cap in Warcraft 1, so surely they were onto something brilliant.
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Besides the fact that Blizzard will never change unit selection cap selection, dumbing down the control scheme in not a solution, this is going backward not forwards, and may mask problems that would otherwise be fixed over time.
Also what does it really solve? If players wanna play the death-ball style then they will quickly get accustomed to 1a2a3a4a etc, and what stop players from using multiple unit groups at the moment? The whole argument is extremely silly.
This is like saying machine guns are imba in MW and forcing player to play at a low sensitivity.
You guys can get together with your friends and play with unrallied bases and 12 units per group max etc, but please don't try and force these outdated game mechanics on the rest of us, think of real solutions to the problems in hots, were wasting everyone's time here.
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On November 10 2012 03:15 Rabiator wrote:Show nested quote +On November 10 2012 00:16 BurningRanger wrote:On November 09 2012 23:24 AmericanPsycho wrote:On November 09 2012 20:32 Rabiator wrote:On November 09 2012 20:29 AmericanPsycho wrote:
I feel that the smaller unit groups thing will never be implemented, it will alienate allot of lower league players, due to the huge increase in skill level required to simply move your army. Look at this from a <diamond level, this change will seems stupid to anyone at that level, which is probably more than 50% of players. Thats illogical, because BOTH SIDES will have fewer units coming to a battle and battles with less units are easier to watch over and control since they are slower. If you have 10 Marines shooting a group of targets they die in a much slower speed than if you had 30 Marines. So less units makes it easier for lower league players, because the battles are slowed down. I understand your argument, but I'm just trying to be realistic here, there will be way too much complaining from the "casual" majority, the games will be less fun for them, most people won't appreciate the skill, they will just be frustrated at the "dumbed down" unit control. You are better off thinking of different solutions, that's all I'm saying. This... and caping the unit groups is like suggesting that each player has one hand bound to his back to make battles slower. Capping the mechanics is not the way to go imo. Giving more strategic depth is. So... why do units move in a ball? A reason is, because they move at the same speed. Take Marines and Marauders for example. If marines moved slightly faster and/or Marauders slightly slower, marines would usually end up at the front, where they'd get wiped first, instead of the beefier Marauders taking the damage first. More micro would be needed to position them right. Protoss does have this problem, but only at the start. Stalkers are faster than Zealots, so Zealots have to be microed to the front to tank damage. This gets somewhat compensated with Charge though. Zealots are a lot faster than Stalkers when charging, even though they have to move around the Stalkers, which makes deathball movement a lot easier as soon as Charge is done. And then, if something gets stuck still, just blink Stalkers out of the way. It has been mentioned before, but it can't be said often enough imo. Colossi are too fast! It's way too easy to reposition and move them with the ball for such a high splashdamage siegeunit. Siegetanks and Broodlords have to be positioned correctly before you engage and are risky and/or slow to reposition, which is absolutely right as is. Why not with the Colossus? I think giving more strategic depth to the game makes it a lot more fun to watch, more fun to play and opens another skill branch. Now it's just micro and macro. Positional strategic thinking should be a required skill for a Strategy game, or not? Dont think too much about "ball" when thinking about the deathball. Its NOT necessary to have a round shape to have a deathball and the better definition is "all your fighting units in a tight formation" (no matter which shape). There are two reasons why this is possible from the technical side: 1. Units clump up automatically compared to the "bump into each other and spread out again" mechanic of BW. 2. You can have all your units in one control group. There are two reasons why players use this strategy to their advantage (apart from "its easy to use"): 1. You maximise the damage output from your infantry by getting the maximum amount of infantry in range of your target(s) in the shortest amount of time. 2. There are no really threatening AoE attacks which a defender could use to defend against this. So how do you implement "strategic positional play" into the game then? Option 1: Increase the AoE damage. Sure, lets have Siege Tanks which deal 80 damage (just an example to make it clear). This kills Roaches/Marauders/Zealots in 2 shots, Marines/Banelings/Zerglings in one and Stalkers in three. What would be the consequence? Zerglings are about useless against Siege Tanks and the power of the unit would be HUGE when there are less than a swarm of them; just imagine a "1 Siege Tank rush" against a Zerg with not that many units. Devastating! So this approach doesnt work. Option 2: Increase the health/armor of the Siege Tank. Siege Tanks die left and right due to friendly fire, their minimum range and the absurd amount of infantry which can get close enough to shoot at them. So if you give the tank more health and armor they live longer, right? Sure they will, but the same problem as for option 1: What happens when there are only a few Tanks against relatively few opposing units? The tank is OP. Simple. So with these two possible changes you can clearly see that fixing the Siege Tank wont work if you simply adjust its combat values simply because they get too powerful in a "few vs. equally few" situation. Basically it would come down to battles like THIS ... just with tanks instead of that other underpowered unit [which is underpowered for the same reason: too tight clumps of ground units which are able to shoot it down easily]. So tackling the problem from the Siege Tank side seems pointless or rather impossible, because the basic problem of SC2 remains: How to make AoE "fair" when you can have 1 or 30 units in your targeting area? This is the true problem ... you have too much of a variance in those areas because of the tight formation - which at the high end mean the tank dies quickly. So the best solution IMO is to reduce the number of infantry charging the tanks and there are two ways of doing it: 1. Forcing units to spread out while moving. 2. Making large chunks of infantry harder to use by limiting the number of units in a control group to 12. If you have a better idea then tell me, but please stop rhetoric like "I think giving more strategic depth to the game makes it a lot more fun to watch" [which I fully agree with] while trying to discourage the "limited unit selection solution" by ridiculing it. If you think that limiting the number of units is a bad idea then tell me why; I have given you a reason why an unlimited number is a terrible idea. The gist of it is - for me at least - that reducing the "unit density" drastically will solve several problems: 1. The deathball will not be as viable again. 2. Positional play will be viable more because anyone attacking into a position will have less concentrated firepower. 3. Air units - especially capital ships - will be viable again, because ground based anti-air wont be stacked as tightly and they have at least a chance to run if sh** hits the fan.
You're missing an important point on the uniform movement speed dilemma.. If units like the collosus move slower your whole ball moves slower. You could then lose out to positional play and drops if you stay in one ball because its so immobile.. I like the idea of slowing certain units. Its not too difficult for blizzard to rebalance and will help promote positional play.
Unit caps aren't going to happen, and nor are changes to unit pathing. Some of the other drastic changes proposed in this thread that I have also promoted are also not going to happen.. Blizzard is already having issues balancing the game (think marine, collosus, infestor), they are not going to change the game so that they have to start over again. New positional units and slight changes to old units are the only viable options for us to talk about and for blizzard to consider.
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On November 10 2012 10:15 winsonsonho wrote:Show nested quote +On November 10 2012 03:15 Rabiator wrote:On November 10 2012 00:16 BurningRanger wrote:On November 09 2012 23:24 AmericanPsycho wrote:On November 09 2012 20:32 Rabiator wrote:On November 09 2012 20:29 AmericanPsycho wrote:
I feel that the smaller unit groups thing will never be implemented, it will alienate allot of lower league players, due to the huge increase in skill level required to simply move your army. Look at this from a <diamond level, this change will seems stupid to anyone at that level, which is probably more than 50% of players. Thats illogical, because BOTH SIDES will have fewer units coming to a battle and battles with less units are easier to watch over and control since they are slower. If you have 10 Marines shooting a group of targets they die in a much slower speed than if you had 30 Marines. So less units makes it easier for lower league players, because the battles are slowed down. I understand your argument, but I'm just trying to be realistic here, there will be way too much complaining from the "casual" majority, the games will be less fun for them, most people won't appreciate the skill, they will just be frustrated at the "dumbed down" unit control. You are better off thinking of different solutions, that's all I'm saying. This... and caping the unit groups is like suggesting that each player has one hand bound to his back to make battles slower. Capping the mechanics is not the way to go imo. Giving more strategic depth is. So... why do units move in a ball? A reason is, because they move at the same speed. Take Marines and Marauders for example. If marines moved slightly faster and/or Marauders slightly slower, marines would usually end up at the front, where they'd get wiped first, instead of the beefier Marauders taking the damage first. More micro would be needed to position them right. Protoss does have this problem, but only at the start. Stalkers are faster than Zealots, so Zealots have to be microed to the front to tank damage. This gets somewhat compensated with Charge though. Zealots are a lot faster than Stalkers when charging, even though they have to move around the Stalkers, which makes deathball movement a lot easier as soon as Charge is done. And then, if something gets stuck still, just blink Stalkers out of the way. It has been mentioned before, but it can't be said often enough imo. Colossi are too fast! It's way too easy to reposition and move them with the ball for such a high splashdamage siegeunit. Siegetanks and Broodlords have to be positioned correctly before you engage and are risky and/or slow to reposition, which is absolutely right as is. Why not with the Colossus? I think giving more strategic depth to the game makes it a lot more fun to watch, more fun to play and opens another skill branch. Now it's just micro and macro. Positional strategic thinking should be a required skill for a Strategy game, or not? Dont think too much about "ball" when thinking about the deathball. Its NOT necessary to have a round shape to have a deathball and the better definition is "all your fighting units in a tight formation" (no matter which shape). There are two reasons why this is possible from the technical side: 1. Units clump up automatically compared to the "bump into each other and spread out again" mechanic of BW. 2. You can have all your units in one control group. There are two reasons why players use this strategy to their advantage (apart from "its easy to use"): 1. You maximise the damage output from your infantry by getting the maximum amount of infantry in range of your target(s) in the shortest amount of time. 2. There are no really threatening AoE attacks which a defender could use to defend against this. So how do you implement "strategic positional play" into the game then? Option 1: Increase the AoE damage. Sure, lets have Siege Tanks which deal 80 damage (just an example to make it clear). This kills Roaches/Marauders/Zealots in 2 shots, Marines/Banelings/Zerglings in one and Stalkers in three. What would be the consequence? Zerglings are about useless against Siege Tanks and the power of the unit would be HUGE when there are less than a swarm of them; just imagine a "1 Siege Tank rush" against a Zerg with not that many units. Devastating! So this approach doesnt work. Option 2: Increase the health/armor of the Siege Tank. Siege Tanks die left and right due to friendly fire, their minimum range and the absurd amount of infantry which can get close enough to shoot at them. So if you give the tank more health and armor they live longer, right? Sure they will, but the same problem as for option 1: What happens when there are only a few Tanks against relatively few opposing units? The tank is OP. Simple. So with these two possible changes you can clearly see that fixing the Siege Tank wont work if you simply adjust its combat values simply because they get too powerful in a "few vs. equally few" situation. Basically it would come down to battles like THIS ... just with tanks instead of that other underpowered unit [which is underpowered for the same reason: too tight clumps of ground units which are able to shoot it down easily]. So tackling the problem from the Siege Tank side seems pointless or rather impossible, because the basic problem of SC2 remains: How to make AoE "fair" when you can have 1 or 30 units in your targeting area? This is the true problem ... you have too much of a variance in those areas because of the tight formation - which at the high end mean the tank dies quickly. So the best solution IMO is to reduce the number of infantry charging the tanks and there are two ways of doing it: 1. Forcing units to spread out while moving. 2. Making large chunks of infantry harder to use by limiting the number of units in a control group to 12. If you have a better idea then tell me, but please stop rhetoric like "I think giving more strategic depth to the game makes it a lot more fun to watch" [which I fully agree with] while trying to discourage the "limited unit selection solution" by ridiculing it. If you think that limiting the number of units is a bad idea then tell me why; I have given you a reason why an unlimited number is a terrible idea. The gist of it is - for me at least - that reducing the "unit density" drastically will solve several problems: 1. The deathball will not be as viable again. 2. Positional play will be viable more because anyone attacking into a position will have less concentrated firepower. 3. Air units - especially capital ships - will be viable again, because ground based anti-air wont be stacked as tightly and they have at least a chance to run if sh** hits the fan. You're missing an important point on the uniform movement speed dilemma.. If units like the collosus move slower your whole ball moves slower. You could then lose out to positional play and drops if you stay in one ball because its so immobile.. I like the idea of slowing certain units. Its not too difficult for blizzard to rebalance and will help promote positional play. Unit caps aren't going to happen, and nor are changes to unit pathing. Some of the other drastic changes proposed in this thread that I have also promoted are also not going to happen.. Blizzard is already having issues balancing the game (think marine, collosus, infestor), they are not going to change the game so that they have to start over again. New positional units and slight changes to old units are the only viable options for us to talk about and for blizzard to consider.
Stop thinking that the problem is limited to Protoss only. Its not! Every time you see a swarm of Zerglings and especially Banelings you are faced with a "too high unit density". So fixing the problem with the unit movement speed of one unit doesnt really change anything. Sure the Colossus has too high mobility, but if he is forced to "spread out" among the other Protoss units while moving the whole problem solves itself somewhat because you are only facing 1-2 Colossi while the rest are moving into position.
HINT [and I apparently need to put it in CAPS so people finally understand]: the DEATHBALL is NOT about A BALL, but rather TIGHTLY CLUMPED MASSES OF UNITS.
Please dont say things like "Unit caps aren't going to happen, and nor are changes to unit pathing.", because that is simply counterproductive. What I would like you to do is ARGUE with my reasoning and try to find flaws in it. Am I wrong? Then I want to know why ... otherwise I am right and if we repeat this often enough we *might* get lucky and the devs "see the light". Your comment is just like "giving up berfore you started".
HINT: The beauty of having less dense armies and smaller groups of units battling each other is that it makes the game slower and thus easier to balance, so if they changed it now they would have no problem designing new units for HotS and the last expansion because they would not have to walk a tightrope for the balancing act.
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Simple answer - make current deathball-ey units (I'm looking at you, colossus) have a 'much stronger when alone' passive (think Drow in Dota2, if you know it), then make them ~20-30% weaker when balled. Suddenly positioning becomes incredibly important (flanking with colossus to keep the buff? Lone colossi at chokes?) and the 'hard counter it or bust' dynamic becomes much less prevalent - getting caught without vikings/corruptors won't just lose you a game.
Instead, it'll be all about positioning/micro - and that's fucking starcraft.
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On November 10 2012 07:46 AmericanPsycho wrote:
Besides the fact that Blizzard will never change unit selection cap selection, dumbing down the control scheme in not a solution, this is going backward not forwards, and may mask problems that would otherwise be fixed over time.
Also what does it really solve? If players wanna play the death-ball style then they will quickly get accustomed to 1a2a3a4a etc, and what stop players from using multiple unit groups at the moment? The whole argument is extremely silly.
This is like saying machine guns are imba in MW and forcing player to play at a low sensitivity.
You guys can get together with your friends and play with unrallied bases and 12 units per group max etc, but please don't try and force these outdated game mechanics on the rest of us, think of real solutions to the problems in hots, were wasting everyone's time here.
preface: Your whole post is trying to ridicule the arguments and the discussion from the sole reason that you dont like it. You dont THINK about it and argue the reasoning behind it one bit. Posts like this might be considered "trolling" ... You are also very obviously a disciple of the "Everything new is automatically better and nothing from the past can be any good" religion ... which is a narrow minded and stupid religion. You should ALWAYS try to prove why something new is supposed to be better.
Why do you say "dumbing down the control scheme"? Just because you have to work more? [*] You will have to work more than before and think about grouping your units smartly before the battle and a full army might not even fit into 10 hotkeys of units, so you will need MORE micro to control it. It is also a fact that BW has had awesome games, so your argument that it is "dumbing down" doesnt really matter, because the quality of the games will stay the same; its just the style of games which will change.
With a limited unit selection you cant retreat or move around as easily, so your assumption that the "max army battles" will just be replaced by "1a2a3a" is false. The deathball wont happen and part of the solution is also forcing the units to spread while moving ... this you obviously ignored in your argumentation. A spread out army will not have as easy a time of assaulting a static positional player who has had the time to prepare a bunch of his units next to a choke by microing them into a tighter positioning. This will force the attacker to think about something clever to try and break it OR to find a way around such a position; in other words: MORE strategies are required in the players repertoire than just massing your army and dancing around the opponent in an attempt to try and beat him. Fancy spells like the Vipers abduct will have a reason for their existence too and other seldom used spells and units will probably see the light of day more than they are now, because now the mass battles are just the most efficient way to win and fancy stuff takes too much micro anyways.
[*] Maybe the devs should add something like THIS for you to make the game super smart.
On November 10 2012 15:48 Jehct wrote:
Simple answer - make current deathball-ey units (I'm looking at you, colossus) have a 'much stronger when alone' passive (think Drow in Dota2, if you know it), then make them ~20-30% weaker when balled. Suddenly positioning becomes incredibly important (flanking with colossus to keep the buff? Lone colossi at chokes?) and the 'hard counter it or bust' dynamic becomes much less prevalent - getting caught without vikings/corruptors won't just lose you a game.
Instead, it'll be all about positioning/micro - and that's fucking starcraft.
Why do you think it is a good solution to try and fix it through adjusting each unit? Thats stupid, because you have to change every unit and look at how it affects every other unit. Too much work.
"Passive effects" should stay in MOBA games and have no reason to exist in an RTS. Just name one that already exists and if you cant then it is clear that the devs would have to implement totally new variables and checks into the programming, which would make the whole effort much more complicated. Keep it simple!
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On November 10 2012 15:56 Rabiator wrote:Show nested quote +On November 10 2012 07:46 AmericanPsycho wrote:
Besides the fact that Blizzard will never change unit selection cap selection, dumbing down the control scheme in not a solution, this is going backward not forwards, and may mask problems that would otherwise be fixed over time.
Also what does it really solve? If players wanna play the death-ball style then they will quickly get accustomed to 1a2a3a4a etc, and what stop players from using multiple unit groups at the moment? The whole argument is extremely silly.
This is like saying machine guns are imba in MW and forcing player to play at a low sensitivity.
You guys can get together with your friends and play with unrallied bases and 12 units per group max etc, but please don't try and force these outdated game mechanics on the rest of us, think of real solutions to the problems in hots, were wasting everyone's time here. preface: Your whole post is trying to ridicule the arguments and the discussion from the sole reason that you dont like it. You dont THINK about it and argue the reasoning behind it one bit. Posts like this might be considered "trolling" ... You are also very obviously a disciple of the "Everything new is automatically better and nothing from the past can be any good" religion ... which is a narrow minded and stupid religion. You should ALWAYS try to prove why something new is supposed to be better. Why do you say "dumbing down the control scheme"? Just because you have to work more? [*] You will have to work more than before and think about grouping your units smartly before the battle and a full army might not even fit into 10 hotkeys of units, so you will need MORE micro to control it. It is also a fact that BW has had awesome games, so your argument that it is "dumbing down" doesnt really matter, because the quality of the games will stay the same; its just the style of games which will change. With a limited unit selection you cant retreat or move around as easily, so your assumption that the "max army battles" will just be replaced by "1a2a3a" is false. The deathball wont happen and part of the solution is also forcing the units to spread while moving ... this you obviously ignored in your argumentation. A spread out army will not have as easy a time of assaulting a static positional player who has had the time to prepare a bunch of his units next to a choke by microing them into a tighter positioning. This will force the attacker to think about something clever to try and break it OR to find a way around such a position; in other words: MORE strategies are required in the players repertoire than just massing your army and dancing around the opponent in an attempt to try and beat him. Fancy spells like the Vipers abduct will have a reason for their existence too and other seldom used spells and units will probably see the light of day more than they are now, because now the mass battles are just the most efficient way to win and fancy stuff takes too much micro anyways. [*] Maybe the devs should add something like THIS for you to make the game super smart. Show nested quote +On November 10 2012 15:48 Jehct wrote:
Simple answer - make current deathball-ey units (I'm looking at you, colossus) have a 'much stronger when alone' passive (think Drow in Dota2, if you know it), then make them ~20-30% weaker when balled. Suddenly positioning becomes incredibly important (flanking with colossus to keep the buff? Lone colossi at chokes?) and the 'hard counter it or bust' dynamic becomes much less prevalent - getting caught without vikings/corruptors won't just lose you a game.
Instead, it'll be all about positioning/micro - and that's fucking starcraft. Why do you think it is a good solution to try and fix it through adjusting each unit? Thats stupid, because you have to change every unit and look at how it affects every other unit. Too much work. "Passive effects" should stay in MOBA games and have no reason to exist in an RTS. Just name one that already exists and if you cant then it is clear that the devs would have to implement totally new variables and checks into the programming, which would make the whole effort much more complicated. Keep it simple!
There's no fucking way it would be very difficult to code - there's already area detection because of unit targetting and spells like fungal/storm lol. Anything that could happen in the WC3 engine (drow aura could) can happen in the SC2 engine.
There's like one unit for each race that leads to 'deathballing' - not particularly hard to adjust. Colossus can be fixed in that quite straight-forward way, broodlord/infestor is being addressed via time warp/tempest (it isn't much of a deathball in TvZ, actually dynamic/interesting composition) and terran deathballs are already fine because of the way siege tanks function/bio must be micro'd.
Most of the changes here are way too drastic/convoluted IMO. The problem stems from unit design much more so than game design, and is already being remedied in the same way.
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On November 10 2012 15:48 Jehct wrote:
Simple answer - make current deathball-ey units (I'm looking at you, colossus) have a 'much stronger when alone' passive (think Drow in Dota2, if you know it), then make them ~20-30% weaker when balled. Suddenly positioning becomes incredibly important (flanking with colossus to keep the buff? Lone colossi at chokes?) and the 'hard counter it or bust' dynamic becomes much less prevalent - getting caught without vikings/corruptors won't just lose you a game.
Instead, it'll be all about positioning/micro - and that's fucking starcraft.
How would you define "alone"?
Just one colossus on its own? What about support units? What would be the minimum distance 2 colossus can be from each other for both to count as alone?
There are just too many complicated rules to this in SC2, it works in dota since there are only a few units, but theres potentially hundreds in sc2
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On November 10 2012 16:39 MasterCynical wrote:Show nested quote +On November 10 2012 15:48 Jehct wrote:
Simple answer - make current deathball-ey units (I'm looking at you, colossus) have a 'much stronger when alone' passive (think Drow in Dota2, if you know it), then make them ~20-30% weaker when balled. Suddenly positioning becomes incredibly important (flanking with colossus to keep the buff? Lone colossi at chokes?) and the 'hard counter it or bust' dynamic becomes much less prevalent - getting caught without vikings/corruptors won't just lose you a game.
Instead, it'll be all about positioning/micro - and that's fucking starcraft. How would you define "alone"? Just one colossus on its own? What about support units? What would be the minimum distance 2 colossus can be from each other for both to count as alone? There are just too many complicated rules to this in SC2, it works in dota since there are only a few units, but theres potentially hundreds in sc2
? that's just tuning stuff, no rule you listed there was complicated. The whole idea is to keep them away from support units (thus de-deathballing). I'd define alone as fucking alone, no friendly units nearby that can attack (warp prism & oracle excluded to allow for super cool plays). Give the passive say a 5-7 range aoe and make it a really potent unit. Suddenly it's the 'reaver-like' unit that was envisioned.
The tooltip could simply be "Receives a colossal boost in power when alone. 40% greater damage when no friendly unit with the 'attack' command is in 7 range".
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On November 10 2012 16:43 Jehct wrote:Show nested quote +On November 10 2012 16:39 MasterCynical wrote:On November 10 2012 15:48 Jehct wrote:
Simple answer - make current deathball-ey units (I'm looking at you, colossus) have a 'much stronger when alone' passive (think Drow in Dota2, if you know it), then make them ~20-30% weaker when balled. Suddenly positioning becomes incredibly important (flanking with colossus to keep the buff? Lone colossi at chokes?) and the 'hard counter it or bust' dynamic becomes much less prevalent - getting caught without vikings/corruptors won't just lose you a game.
Instead, it'll be all about positioning/micro - and that's fucking starcraft. How would you define "alone"? Just one colossus on its own? What about support units? What would be the minimum distance 2 colossus can be from each other for both to count as alone? There are just too many complicated rules to this in SC2, it works in dota since there are only a few units, but theres potentially hundreds in sc2 ? that's just tuning stuff, no rule you listed there was complicated. The whole idea is to keep them away from support units (thus de-deathballing). I'd define alone as fucking alone, no friendly units nearby that can attack (warp prism & oracle excluded to allow for super cool plays). Give the passive say a 5-7 range aoe and make it a really potent unit. Suddenly it's the 'reaver-like' unit that was envisioned. The tooltip could simply be "Receives a colossal boost in power when alone. 40% greater damage when no friendly unit with the 'attack' command is in 7 range".
You may not think that's not complicated, but it is. One of the goals of SC2 is easy to learn but hard to master. Attacking units will have 2 separate sets of stats with this feature, both sets of stats has to be tuned and balanced, thats not an easy job. Your can already see how much difficulty blizzard is having to balance one set of stats, the syngergy between the different unit profiles also need to be balanced. It will be a balancing nightmare. Its almost like if suddenly had several new units in the game, except these new units come in the form on a single unit that can transform like the battle hellion.
Players will also have to learn every combination of stats that one could put together and how to counter them, adding even more complexity.
New interactions such as a zealot 2shoting a ling with +1 will need to be memorized for all these new interactions that this system will create. How many of X unit can hold against this new combination? Im all for adding depth, but this will just be too much depth to the point that even most master players will have trouble.
The 2 stat sets also are not independent from each other. Imagine you have multiple attacking units. Just move them away from each other to gain the bonus, or you can move them back together to get dps over a dense area and avoiding surround. Different units causing unexpected combinations will be endless.
A simple change such as this is alot more deeper and complex than it seems on the surface.
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On November 10 2012 15:30 Rabiator wrote:Show nested quote +On November 10 2012 10:15 winsonsonho wrote:On November 10 2012 03:15 Rabiator wrote:On November 10 2012 00:16 BurningRanger wrote:On November 09 2012 23:24 AmericanPsycho wrote:On November 09 2012 20:32 Rabiator wrote:On November 09 2012 20:29 AmericanPsycho wrote:
I feel that the smaller unit groups thing will never be implemented, it will alienate allot of lower league players, due to the huge increase in skill level required to simply move your army. Look at this from a <diamond level, this change will seems stupid to anyone at that level, which is probably more than 50% of players. Thats illogical, because BOTH SIDES will have fewer units coming to a battle and battles with less units are easier to watch over and control since they are slower. If you have 10 Marines shooting a group of targets they die in a much slower speed than if you had 30 Marines. So less units makes it easier for lower league players, because the battles are slowed down. I understand your argument, but I'm just trying to be realistic here, there will be way too much complaining from the "casual" majority, the games will be less fun for them, most people won't appreciate the skill, they will just be frustrated at the "dumbed down" unit control. You are better off thinking of different solutions, that's all I'm saying. This... and caping the unit groups is like suggesting that each player has one hand bound to his back to make battles slower. Capping the mechanics is not the way to go imo. Giving more strategic depth is. So... why do units move in a ball? A reason is, because they move at the same speed. Take Marines and Marauders for example. If marines moved slightly faster and/or Marauders slightly slower, marines would usually end up at the front, where they'd get wiped first, instead of the beefier Marauders taking the damage first. More micro would be needed to position them right. Protoss does have this problem, but only at the start. Stalkers are faster than Zealots, so Zealots have to be microed to the front to tank damage. This gets somewhat compensated with Charge though. Zealots are a lot faster than Stalkers when charging, even though they have to move around the Stalkers, which makes deathball movement a lot easier as soon as Charge is done. And then, if something gets stuck still, just blink Stalkers out of the way. It has been mentioned before, but it can't be said often enough imo. Colossi are too fast! It's way too easy to reposition and move them with the ball for such a high splashdamage siegeunit. Siegetanks and Broodlords have to be positioned correctly before you engage and are risky and/or slow to reposition, which is absolutely right as is. Why not with the Colossus? I think giving more strategic depth to the game makes it a lot more fun to watch, more fun to play and opens another skill branch. Now it's just micro and macro. Positional strategic thinking should be a required skill for a Strategy game, or not? Dont think too much about "ball" when thinking about the deathball. Its NOT necessary to have a round shape to have a deathball and the better definition is "all your fighting units in a tight formation" (no matter which shape). There are two reasons why this is possible from the technical side: 1. Units clump up automatically compared to the "bump into each other and spread out again" mechanic of BW. 2. You can have all your units in one control group. There are two reasons why players use this strategy to their advantage (apart from "its easy to use"): 1. You maximise the damage output from your infantry by getting the maximum amount of infantry in range of your target(s) in the shortest amount of time. 2. There are no really threatening AoE attacks which a defender could use to defend against this. So how do you implement "strategic positional play" into the game then? Option 1: Increase the AoE damage. Sure, lets have Siege Tanks which deal 80 damage (just an example to make it clear). This kills Roaches/Marauders/Zealots in 2 shots, Marines/Banelings/Zerglings in one and Stalkers in three. What would be the consequence? Zerglings are about useless against Siege Tanks and the power of the unit would be HUGE when there are less than a swarm of them; just imagine a "1 Siege Tank rush" against a Zerg with not that many units. Devastating! So this approach doesnt work. Option 2: Increase the health/armor of the Siege Tank. Siege Tanks die left and right due to friendly fire, their minimum range and the absurd amount of infantry which can get close enough to shoot at them. So if you give the tank more health and armor they live longer, right? Sure they will, but the same problem as for option 1: What happens when there are only a few Tanks against relatively few opposing units? The tank is OP. Simple. So with these two possible changes you can clearly see that fixing the Siege Tank wont work if you simply adjust its combat values simply because they get too powerful in a "few vs. equally few" situation. Basically it would come down to battles like THIS ... just with tanks instead of that other underpowered unit [which is underpowered for the same reason: too tight clumps of ground units which are able to shoot it down easily]. So tackling the problem from the Siege Tank side seems pointless or rather impossible, because the basic problem of SC2 remains: How to make AoE "fair" when you can have 1 or 30 units in your targeting area? This is the true problem ... you have too much of a variance in those areas because of the tight formation - which at the high end mean the tank dies quickly. So the best solution IMO is to reduce the number of infantry charging the tanks and there are two ways of doing it: 1. Forcing units to spread out while moving. 2. Making large chunks of infantry harder to use by limiting the number of units in a control group to 12. If you have a better idea then tell me, but please stop rhetoric like "I think giving more strategic depth to the game makes it a lot more fun to watch" [which I fully agree with] while trying to discourage the "limited unit selection solution" by ridiculing it. If you think that limiting the number of units is a bad idea then tell me why; I have given you a reason why an unlimited number is a terrible idea. The gist of it is - for me at least - that reducing the "unit density" drastically will solve several problems: 1. The deathball will not be as viable again. 2. Positional play will be viable more because anyone attacking into a position will have less concentrated firepower. 3. Air units - especially capital ships - will be viable again, because ground based anti-air wont be stacked as tightly and they have at least a chance to run if sh** hits the fan. You're missing an important point on the uniform movement speed dilemma.. If units like the collosus move slower your whole ball moves slower. You could then lose out to positional play and drops if you stay in one ball because its so immobile.. I like the idea of slowing certain units. Its not too difficult for blizzard to rebalance and will help promote positional play. Unit caps aren't going to happen, and nor are changes to unit pathing. Some of the other drastic changes proposed in this thread that I have also promoted are also not going to happen.. Blizzard is already having issues balancing the game (think marine, collosus, infestor), they are not going to change the game so that they have to start over again. New positional units and slight changes to old units are the only viable options for us to talk about and for blizzard to consider. Stop thinking that the problem is limited to Protoss only. Its not! Every time you see a swarm of Zerglings and especially Banelings you are faced with a "too high unit density". So fixing the problem with the unit movement speed of one unit doesnt really change anything. Sure the Colossus has too high mobility, but if he is forced to "spread out" among the other Protoss units while moving the whole problem solves itself somewhat because you are only facing 1-2 Colossi while the rest are moving into position. HINT [and I apparently need to put it in CAPS so people finally understand]: the DEATHBALL is NOT about A BALL, but rather TIGHTLY CLUMPED MASSES OF UNITS. Please dont say things like "Unit caps aren't going to happen, and nor are changes to unit pathing.", because that is simply counterproductive. What I would like you to do is ARGUE with my reasoning and try to find flaws in it. Am I wrong? Then I want to know why ... otherwise I am right and if we repeat this often enough we *might* get lucky and the devs "see the light". Your comment is just like "giving up berfore you started". HINT: The beauty of having less dense armies and smaller groups of units battling each other is that it makes the game slower and thus easier to balance, so if they changed it now they would have no problem designing new units for HotS and the last expansion because they would not have to walk a tightrope for the balancing act.
I'm sorry, but I have almost lost all the hope that dps density is going to changed. In this thread I have argued that unit collision radius should be increased and/or unit attack range should be adjusted. These would definitely lower dps density. I really hate the high dps density in SC2 and would also love to see longer battles with positional placed play. My bad for shooting you down.. It was out of my own irritation with the situation..
I still however feel that there are so many other problems with SC2 that blizzard fail to see or admit to, that they would never think of adjusting this deep underlying error in sc2.. :'( It's great to think about the possibility of a changes like these but I feel blizzard won't take such drastic measures. Maybe sc3..?! :-P :-!
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On November 10 2012 17:04 MasterCynical wrote:Show nested quote +On November 10 2012 16:43 Jehct wrote:On November 10 2012 16:39 MasterCynical wrote:On November 10 2012 15:48 Jehct wrote:
Simple answer - make current deathball-ey units (I'm looking at you, colossus) have a 'much stronger when alone' passive (think Drow in Dota2, if you know it), then make them ~20-30% weaker when balled. Suddenly positioning becomes incredibly important (flanking with colossus to keep the buff? Lone colossi at chokes?) and the 'hard counter it or bust' dynamic becomes much less prevalent - getting caught without vikings/corruptors won't just lose you a game.
Instead, it'll be all about positioning/micro - and that's fucking starcraft. How would you define "alone"? Just one colossus on its own? What about support units? What would be the minimum distance 2 colossus can be from each other for both to count as alone? There are just too many complicated rules to this in SC2, it works in dota since there are only a few units, but theres potentially hundreds in sc2 ? that's just tuning stuff, no rule you listed there was complicated. The whole idea is to keep them away from support units (thus de-deathballing). I'd define alone as fucking alone, no friendly units nearby that can attack (warp prism & oracle excluded to allow for super cool plays). Give the passive say a 5-7 range aoe and make it a really potent unit. Suddenly it's the 'reaver-like' unit that was envisioned. The tooltip could simply be "Receives a colossal boost in power when alone. 40% greater damage when no friendly unit with the 'attack' command is in 7 range". You may not think that's not complicated, but it is. One of the goals of SC2 is easy to learn but hard to master. Attacking units will have 2 separate sets of stats with this feature, both sets of stats has to be tuned and balanced, thats not an easy job. Your can already see how much difficulty blizzard is having to balance one set of stats, the syngergy between the different unit profiles also need to be balanced. It will be a balancing nightmare. Its almost like if suddenly had several new units in the game, except these new units come in the form on a single unit that can transform like the battle hellion. Players will also have to learn every combination of stats that one could put together and how to counter them, adding even more complexity. New interactions such as a zealot 2shoting a ling with +1 will need to be memorized for all these new interactions that this system will create. How many of X unit can hold against this new combination? Im all for adding depth, but this will just be too much depth to the point that even most master players will have trouble. The 2 stat sets also are not independent from each other. Imagine you have multiple attacking units. Just move them away from each other to gain the bonus, or you can move them back together to get dps over a dense area and avoiding surround. Different units causing unexpected combinations will be endless. A simple change such as this is alot more deeper and complex than it seems on the surface.
That's the entire point, and it's for one unit. Not a huge deal at all. The dynamic will probably be something like "+1 solo colossus 1 shots combat shield marines (without armor), 1 shots lings without upgrades, SCV's need +1 but probes/drones don't". As a masters player, I assure you, that's not at all hard to remember. Adding more dynamics like that is a GOOD thing.
The whole concept of microing colossi away (making them vulnerable) is what makes it a fun/interesting idea. Adds depth/strategy/skill to an otherwise dull unit.
And no, it's not really a balancing nightmare. Relative to something like the swarm host, it's cake. It'd make it a strong positional unit and much less a core army unit, which is good, cos colossi deathballs are boring.
And in terms of easy to learn but hard to master, "does more damage when alone" is a pretty simple concept. The actual unit interactions fall under the 'hard to master' part. The idea could definitely be flawed, but you haven't given a legitimate reason why it would be.
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Easy solution:
1. Allow a way for manually-split formations to be maintained during movement.
2. Do an across-the-board buff to all splash damage in order to punish clumped formations.
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EPT
