I would like to open a broad discussion on what changes could be introduced in HoTS to deal with deathballs in general. Please also feel free to propose drastic changes that will probably have to wait till LotV. Let's look at them anyway.
The purpose of this thread is to discuss various options and select a few that happen to be the most viable. I'll then make a pool, so that we can vote on the best ideas. Afterwards I can make a post on battle.net and let Blizzard see what TeamLiquid thinks.
Contributions from strong players are especially welcome.
Edit #1: Thanks a lot to everybody for your great contributions! I'm making the pool now and encourage you to continue the discussion.
Here is a compilation of posts that explain some anti-deathball concepts quite well:
On October 05 2012 15:07 Alex1Sun wrote: A simple solution to break death balls is to give all races huge AOE (the whole screen), high range, no friendly fire units with stackable low damage that would be cost- and supply-inefficient against harass or small task forces, but would force the opponent's army to be spread over more than one screen or split into several far-away groups for multi-pronged action.
Additional damage vs massive would also likely be necessary to break high hp death balls consisting of colossi or thros. Lowered damage to workers might also be required.
Stronger existing units with AOE attack/abilities + Show Spoiler +
On October 05 2012 16:27 Stow.Wif wrote: Good AOE for each race, no need to make them too huge. If you look a it, there is not much deahtball effect in the matchups where the 2 races have efficient AOE againt each other :
TvT : tanks are good, not much deathball (lot of small moves around the map). TvZ : tanks/hellions are good, fungal and banes are good againt marines, not much death ball except againt mech (banes and fungal not as effective) and in the late game (broods forcing tanks to unsiege). TvP : tanks and hellions are bad, so toss is encouraged to make a deathball, to which terran responds with a bio deathball. Note that emp cannot stop a group of unit by itself. PvZ : banes/fungal are not good enough dps -> same effect as above PvP : this one is tricky, but i believe AOE are not efficient enough in toss vs toss, there is no possibility to defend a position with 2 templar or 2 colossus. ZvZ : when it comes to roach, banes/fungals are not good enough : deathballs of roaches
Of course, AOE is not the only factor to the deathball effect. Also come in mind the possibility of using efficiently a small squad of unit to achieve a goal, and this point is tied to races but also to maps.
Some idea : buff storm against toss (adding an extra effect to shields ?), buff tanks (maybe the hellion buff is enough) with a drawback, make bane drop more efficient againt deathballs.
Stronger positional units for better space control + Show Spoiler +
On October 05 2012 17:28 ledarsi wrote: In order to remove the deathball, it is necessary to add tools to each race that make non-deathball play drastically more effective than using a deathball. This means positional units that are very powerful. It means non-stacking powerful spells like dark swarm. It means board control like zero-supply mines. It means adding tools to each race that make deathballs suboptimal.
These things give the player options, and allow them to split their army up and INCREASE its effectiveness, rather than decrease it. If your army is strictly less effective in smaller groups, then a bigger ball will kill the small groups one at a time with few casualties in each battle. What needs to happen is a small group needs to be more efficient than a larger group. A larger army might beat a smaller group, but will suffer enough casualties that multiple small groups will defeat it.
On October 05 2012 22:35 SC2John wrote: I have been going on and on about space control in many topics over the past week. I'm 100% positive that the main issue with SC2 is the fact that space control takes a lot of units; there is no way to defend an area against a maxed army unless you yourself have a maxed army.
On October 02 2012 12:33 larse wrote: In BW, you fight the interface
In SC2, you fight the deathball
Many of the problem is not caused by smartcasting or depth of the unit design, it's just because of the deathball problem. When all your army clump up instantly when you initiate a single a-move command, it's not helping. The game loses depth because of the deathball, more than anything.
As I pointed out earlier (and have harped on in many many posts throughout TL), the deathball problem is not an issue of units clumping or their power in clumping up, but rather that there is very little ability to control space in SC2. With weak tanks, fragile colossus, and...nothing for zerg, players in SC2 HAVE to control space with armies. The problem with this is that you can't split units very well or risk fighting the enemy's army (to control space) 20 supply down or you will lose horribly.
With better space control units and/or buffs, SC2 becomes much deeper and more interesting with less necessary APM as it becomes based on positioning and using clever little micro tactics instead of getting the "perfect army" and doing perfect lategame maxed army micro.
So, in a roundabout way of saying: I think the game, because of the lackluster design of the units, makes the deathball necessary, which in turn causes it to lose depth.
On October 05 2012 17:28 ledarsi wrote: More units (by reducing supply costs of units) will greatly encourage splitting forces up. Colossi are a 6 supply splash damage dealer. You cannot, and should not, have very many of them. Compare this to a 2 supply siege tank in BW. You can have way, way more of them. The simple fact that you can have more stuff encourages using smaller groups, rather than a single group that is as large as you can make it (right up to the supply limit). Even in SC2, really huge armies have diminishing returns on each additional unit added. It's just that you don't have enough units where those diminishing returns start to kick in. Modifying the units so these diminishing returns kick in sooner would also be good. Two forces of half the size resulting in a net increase in fighting effectiveness, rather than asking to lose, is mandatory.
On October 05 2012 18:33 Zaurus wrote: Why attack separately when you can attack together? To solve deathball, limit control group to 12..... Easy solution. I m just worried for P, Protoss units don't work well in small numbers.
On October 06 2012 04:44 XXXSmOke wrote: The best way to eliminate a death ball is reset the AI to only selecting 12 units per hotkey.
You can change the units all you want, but letting them all ball up and just go 1a is going to keep death balls active.
On October 05 2012 19:53 Roth wrote: I think Blizzard could also do something about the maps.
There was once a thread about smaller bases with just 6 mineral patches and 1 gas. I think this could also help to limit deathballplay because you do not have that many ressources to build up a big deathball. So to get a big army you first have to spread yourself out and take many bases which you also have to defend. The thing with this change is that not every map needs to have smaller bases. You could make a map pool out of ~3 bases with small expansions and ~ 3 with big expansions. So there would be a lot of different play, especially if you would mix them up in a BoX series.
Another point I want to add is to make the maps bigger and the distance betweeen the expansions bigger so you have to stretch your army out to defend multiple locations. In this scenario you could not have a big army together that effective because you would neglect your expansions.
Just some thoughts I had. I think the positive thing about these changes is that no major changes have to be done. It would all be about the creation of maps.
On October 07 2012 03:12 kcdc wrote: You'd have to rebalance the whole game. What you need to do is make attacking with small task forces more rewarding. That means forcing players to spread their defenses more thinly over more bases and having those bases more exposed so they're easier to attack. Currently, all the modern maps are designed so that you can hold 3 bases with forcefields because that's a requirement for game balance in WoL. That layout makes it easy to defend 3 bases with one army without worrying too much about splitting forces or attacks from multiple angles. You could open the maps up more, but Protoss would be underpowered.
I have been going on and on about space control in many topics over the past week. I'm 100% positive that the main issue with SC2 is the fact that space control takes a lot of units
I second this, also I dont know if it has been brought up, but highground advantage is another point which allows few units to hold key positions. E.g. 1-2 Tanks + Mines behind Supply Depots or some Spines, Lurker and a Defiler (or even just the Nydus and 2 Lurker).
On October 05 2012 23:26 AzraelArchontas wrote: A mild high-ground advantage to make defending slightly easier say a -1/2 range to low-ground armies If you want to make this more noticeable Add a +1/2 range to high-ground armies as well
On October 05 2012 23:26 SarcasmMonster wrote: Overkill.
a) With no overkill, every unit deals damage at 100% efficiency. Even in a large deathball, no overkill means every unit is 100% efficient. b) With overkill, damage efficiency drops steadily as the size of the deathball grows. c) Hence overkill slows down the growth of power of a deathball.
ALTERNATIVE EXPLANATION
a) Overkill is a nerf, hence units with overkill can be stronger than their hypothetical counterpart without overkill (to compensate for the overkill nerf). b) Overkill does not affect small groups of units as much as large groups of units. c) Hence balancing around overkill is a buff to small squad attacks and a nerf to deathballs.
On October 05 2012 23:52 Perscienter wrote: On topic: additionally to many other suggestions, an improved targeting AI might help. I can't access replays and videos right now, but had the impression, that colossi are often targeting the nearest, single unit. I assume, that the AI can be programmed to maximize the damage against groups of units, thus aiming at the damage-maximizing centre of a lump.
On October 06 2012 04:31 Doko wrote: In the specific case of tanks a different approach over say buffing damage / splash / fire rate etc to improve territory control / force deathball splits is the following.
A B C X Y Z
-Tank-
If xyz are marines / lings zealots whatever 1 thing is for certain. If target priority is equal for ABCXYZ... the front row (xyz) will always get hit before the back row (abc). For simplicity lets say Y gets hit first. The tank shot will deal full damage to Y, most of the time X B Z (the ones 90 degrees off the point of impact) will take around 50%. A and C (the ones 45 degrees off the point of impact) will take around 25%.
The problem with this is the fact that a huge portion of the siege tank aoe damage is not being utilized AT ALL. units in the front always get hit unless target fired by you, due to having other more important things at the time target firing is not always possible.
What if instead of just buffing damage, fire rate or siege time of tanks you give them a piercing shot that deals full damage in a line to Y and B, 50% to X Z (90 degrees), and 25% to A and B.
You now deal a stupid amount of damage to units trying to advance in narrow terrain or if the opponent doesn't bother to pre-split some units in front to take the first shot while he advances, at the same time vs an opponent that creates a huge concave to attack into you utilizing the fact that you are on open terrain only receives a small penalty.
Obviously this might force you to nerf the damage if it became to strong or promoted extreme turtle games but changing the numbers is not the only way to look at it.
If for example this proved to be too strong in the specific case of a tank they could try applying it to void rays, tempests or whatever unit requires a boost. (those 2 just came to mind cause the effect of an energy beam / gigantic ball of energy piercing stuff would be "cool" and I personally consider voidrays one of the coolest units in the game that failed miserably at being useful outside of cheese).
The thread has a few other posts that compare and discuss these anti-deathball options. Some of these posts are really detailed and well-written, such as the ones in the following spoiler: + Show Spoiler +
On October 06 2012 08:37 ledarsi wrote: All the people suggesting limiting selection size or control group size are being silly. That will increase the mechanical difficulty of utilizing a deathball, but as long as the keeping all your units together in one place is ideal, that is what players will do. Even if we make it more difficult to execute. The only way to solve the deathball problem is to make deathballs suboptimal, such that you gain an advantage by doing something else.
Regarding the diminishing returns point from earlier, Alex1Sun is absolutely right that units with longer ranges are more effective in larger groups. Short range units, and especially melee units, suffer more serious diminishing returns as the localized unit count rises. Note that in Brood War, there were relatively few long range units, and those units had very serious drawbacks. The Siege Tank is immobile when sieged in return for its range and firepower. The Reaver can hardly move at all without a shuttle, and is best used for harassment, not en masse as a group. And the Guardian is relatively weak in a main combat situation. These units don't make for strong deathballs, despite their range. By contrast, units like Colossi and Broodlords are excellent in a main combat situation, and their low unit count (small surface area), high damage, and other features, such as mobility, cliff walk, spawning broodlings, etc. make them powerful and survivable in numbers on a main combat footing, unlike Reavers.
And to address the number of units issue in greater detail, there is a serious problem of fungibility of forces if your army is composed of big units. Higher supply costs means you have fewer options for how you determine your composition, and fewer choices about their distribution over an area. Suppose a zerg is building mutalisks, and the terran goes for thors to respond. Each Thor is a large investment, with a long wait before it is finished. And each Thor functions at 100% capability until its HP reaches zero, at which point its strength is zero. Compare this with a 2 supply goliath. You can build three of them for the same supply cost as one thor. This gives you options for how to distribute your supply that the thor does not. You might choose to build two goliaths and an additional tank (2 supply in BW) rather than go for three goliaths.
Purchase economies like Starcraft where you pay for units up front, and wait for them to complete, are most applicable to small purchases that must be made more frequently. As units become more expensive, the large upfront investment and long wait time becomes increasingly difficult to sustain. Expensive unit designs should be avoided with purchase economies, as they are problematic. If they only make cost, they will never be built due to their greatly reduced efficiency of production compared to constant production of smaller units with the same resources. And if they outperform smaller units for cost by too much, then they obsolete smaller units completely.
As an illustrative example, compare the marine to the battlecruiser. A battlecruiser costs 400 minerals and 300 gas, a large upfront cost. A marine only costs 50 minerals, a small upfront cost. To build a BC you must wait until you have all those resources, spend them, and wait for the production to finish. With the marine, you can start production with only 50 minerals in the bank, and start another marine with 50 more minerals, etc. etc. And you get a return on your investment in more regular increments as each individual marine is produced. For BC's, your return is zero until the longer build time is completely finished. The marine is simply a much more efficient unit to produce under SC2's economic paradigm. This same effect holds true for all small, cheap units compared to large, expensive units. And this is part of the reason why SC2 is having problems with big units like Thors, Colossi, Ultralisks, Broodlords, Motherships, etc.
Furthermore, once you have three units, such as three goliaths instead of the one thor on the board, you can distribute them. You can keep the three goliaths together, or split them up to different areas of the board, such as different areas of your base to deflect mutalisk harassment. There is no way to split up a thor- it is impossible. Even worse, if you lose the one thor, you lose a larger chunk of strength than if you lose one goliath. And it is not possible to split up a thor. So, because each thor represents a larger investment and chunk of your supply which is not negated unless it is totally destroyed, you are incentivized to keep all your thors together so they mutually protect each other. Cheaper, weaker goliaths benefit from this same process too, of course. But when they fight they will suffer more casualties, with a more continuous effectiveness dropoff. Rather than a thor going from full strength to zero instantly, you lose one goliath, then the second, and then the third. Apply this to a large army and this continuous-strength-loss-with-damage factor makes a tremendous difference in battle.
Smaller, cheaper, weaker units (such as marines) when used in groups will sustain casualties in battle, even if they win decisively. This weakens the army, and the units must then be replaced to bring it back up to strength. Larger units means wider variance in casualty figures for any particular battle. A force of thors that has sustained serious damage, but no actual casualties is still basically 100% effective. This becomes a serious issue when these larger units are like Colossi, which have a relatively noncontinuous strength dropoff, more like Thors, and which counter units which do have a more continuous strength dropoff with damage. Imagine a micro-Colossus which costs 2 supply, with suitably less power such that three of them is as strong as an SC2 Colossus. This micro-Colossus would be a vastly more interesting unit just due to the greater numbers, greater fungibility of production, army distribution over space, and casualties sustained during battle.
On October 06 2012 04:42 Cloak wrote: DPS density is the core issue, or written another way, DPS/Surface Area. You either tackle ways of lowering the DPS, lower range, over kill, AoE that kills the DPS indirectly, or you lower the operable surface area, pathing, unit range, or physical space occupancy. Any other changes wouldn't have an effect really unless they lower that ratio down for all 3 races. SC2 is just a lot cleaner and smoother, so you get these unnaturally fluid army dynamics. We've hit the uncanny valley of army simulations, so now we need artificial blemishes to make it more interesting and aesthetic.
On October 07 2012 20:54 FeyFey wrote: I don't think that buffing AoEs or only being able to select one group really would stop deathballs or that space control units would. Not that I mind deathballs after TvT, PvZ is my favorite BW matchup and that revolves around the toss making 1 huge army and then rolling over the Zerg, while the Zerg has no such means and needs other ways to stop it. So one side being able to deathball is awesome. Right now especially the maps are at fault that deathballs are yay. If there is only one position you have to attack, then you don't need to split armies. And well 3 bases + production, can there be a better target. In BW there also was a ton of deathball play. But you could play against it and since one race had the better deathball most of the time, you had to work on beating the deathball in another way. There was a problem for the one going for one giant army in bw though. A deathball army was first of all slow and second of all you had to kill one base after the other, which gave the opponent enough time to attack at different positions and slowly kill off the deathball one by one. In Sc2 if your deathball arrived at one base you are at the doorstep to the production and all the other bases. And especially the toss deathball is freaking fast.
What really prevents deathballs is multiple positions far away from each other being important and the means to defend them, which means passive defenders advantage. So choke points vision advantages and all that stuff. Right now only the main and natural base of a starting location has those advantages, every other base on the map has just the defenders advantages that you build there. In BW as Zerg you didn't wanted to spawn cross on some maps against a Toss, if the Toss spawned North, you wanted to end up East because it meant you could expand on the West side of the map. If the Protoss attacked one location it didn't mattered because you had another equally good location and they exposed their tech and production to your army if they attacked.
If you don't want deathballs, there have to be multiple location on the map both players have to fight for, otherwise deathballs will happen, but thats what free defenders advantage is for. gives you the option to slow down the Deathball with less units. BW is a good example here with the highground mechanic, allowing a zerg to slow down a terran midgame push for quiet some time each highground that lies between the bases. If you hate deathballs with passion though and I have no idea why, look at Dawn of War2 for example, they eliminated deathballs, because you need to be scattered over the whole map or you lose. There are enough examples out there that show how to do it. But there is also another thing that has to be kept in mind, people want to play deathball style, because everything else is harder to play.
And well introducing new maps is a huge problem atm, since its easier if every map plays the same and tournaments testing new maps also gets problematic. Especially since maps often favor a matchup or the other so you need a veto system. New maps normally are a cheese-fest if forced or never get picked.
And even an instant nuke won't prevent deathballs, you will rather see those units protecting the deathball. I mean even Vortex doesn't stop Zerg from going full deathball, it just protects the toss deathball.
In general, I advice everybody to read the first three pages of this thread. They are really good and have a lot if insight.
Now to the pool. It is understood that the best way to reduce the deathball presence might be some combination of the following options. Nevertheless please vote for the one that you think is the most important.
Poll: What is the best change that could help with death balls?
Stronger positional units for better space control (83)
37%
Different unit pathing (52)
23%
New units with huge AOE and low DPS (24)
11%
Highground advantage (14)
6%
Different map pool (13)
6%
Stronger existing units with AOE attack/abilities (12)
5%
Reduced unit supply costs / larger armies (7)
3%
Limited unit selection (7)
3%
More overkill (7)
3%
Other (please describe in the thread) (3)
1%
Improved targeting AI for AOE units (1)
0%
223 total votes
Your vote: What is the best change that could help with death balls?
(Vote): New units with huge AOE and low DPS (Vote): Stronger existing units with AOE attack/abilities (Vote): Stronger positional units for better space control (Vote): Reduced unit supply costs / larger armies (Vote): Limited unit selection (Vote): Different map pool (Vote): Different unit pathing (Vote): Highground advantage (Vote): More overkill (Vote): Improved targeting AI for AOE units (Vote): Other (please describe in the thread)
Edit #2: Thank you all for a wonderful thread! I hoped that I would get a beta key by now, but no luck so far. If any of you want to make a submission related to this topic to battle.net HoTS forums, you have my permission to use this post
Please feel free to continue the discussion! The thread looks great so far!
Good AOE for each race, no need to make them too huge. If you look a it, there is not much deahtball effect in the matchups where the 2 races have efficient AOE againt each other :
TvT : tanks are good, not much deathball (lot of small moves around the map). TvZ : tanks/hellions are good, fungal and banes are good againt marines, not much death ball except againt mech (banes and fungal not as effective) and in the late game (broods forcing tanks to unsiege). TvP : tanks and hellions are bad, so toss is encouraged to make a deathball, to which terran responds with a bio deathball. Note that emp cannot stop a group of unit by itself. PvZ : banes/fungal are not good enough dps -> same effect as above PvP : this one is tricky, but i believe AOE are not efficient enough in toss vs toss, there is no possibility to defend a position with 2 templar or 2 colossus. ZvZ : when it comes to roach, banes/fungals are not good enough : deathballs of roaches
Of course, AOE is not the only factor to the deathball effect. Also come in mind the possibility of using efficiently a small squad of unit to achieve a goal, and this point is tied to races but also to maps.
Some idea : buff storm against toss (adding an extra effect to shields ?), buff tanks (maybe the hellion buff is enough) with a drawback, make bane drop more efficient againt deathballs.
Edit: I should also add that I like the unit pathing of Wol a lot, it adds micro for splitting against AOE
On October 05 2012 16:27 Stow.Wif wrote: TvP : tanks and hellions are bad, so toss is encouraged to make a deathball, to which terran responds with a bio deathball. Note that emp cannot stop a group of unit by itself.
On October 05 2012 16:27 Stow.Wif wrote: PvZ : banes/fungal are not good enough dps -> same effect as above ZvZ : when it comes to roach, banes/fungals are not good enough : deathballs of roaches
On October 05 2012 16:27 Stow.Wif wrote: PvP : this one is tricky, but i believe AOE are not efficient enough in toss vs toss, there is no possibility to defend a position with 2 templar or 2 colossus.
I think this needs to be worked on. Maybe add or change something with the Mothership Core and/or Oracle?
On October 05 2012 16:27 Stow.Wif wrote: TvP : tanks and hellions are bad, so toss is encouraged to make a deathball, to which terran responds with a bio deathball. Note that emp cannot stop a group of unit by itself.
On October 05 2012 16:27 Stow.Wif wrote: PvZ : banes/fungal are not good enough dps -> same effect as above ZvZ : when it comes to roach, banes/fungals are not good enough : deathballs of roaches
Adding AOE does not discourage deathballs. It encourages players to try and find a way to deal with the splash damage, so they can keep using the deathball. The deathball will always exist as long as it is the most effective way to use your army.
In order to remove the deathball, it is necessary to add tools to each race that make non-deathball play drastically more effective than using a deathball. This means positional units that are very powerful. It means non-stacking powerful spells like dark swarm. It means board control like zero-supply mines. It means adding tools to each race that make deathballs suboptimal.
These things give the player options, and allow them to split their army up and INCREASE its effectiveness, rather than decrease it. If your army is strictly less effective in smaller groups, then a bigger ball will kill the small groups one at a time with few casualties in each battle. What needs to happen is a small group needs to be more efficient than a larger group. A larger army might beat a smaller group, but will suffer enough casualties that multiple small groups will defeat it.
Additionally, there needs to be more actual stuff on the board. More units (by reducing supply costs of units) will greatly encourage splitting forces up. Colossi are a 6 supply splash damage dealer. You cannot, and should not, have very many of them. Compare this to a 2 supply siege tank in BW. You can have way, way more of them. The simple fact that you can have more stuff encourages using smaller groups, rather than a single group that is as large as you can make it (right up to the supply limit). Even in SC2, really huge armies have diminishing returns on each additional unit added. It's just that you don't have enough units where those diminishing returns start to kick in. Modifying the units so these diminishing returns kick in sooner would also be good. Two forces of half the size resulting in a net increase in fighting effectiveness, rather than asking to lose, is mandatory.
Not that I think any of this is likely to happen. Blizzard will not rethink their 2 supply zerg units- Roach and Hydra. They will not rethink their 2 supply terran infantry, or their 3 supply tanks, or their Massive 6 supply land units for every race. And they will not rethink warp gate, forcefield, and Colossi. Because they simply do not understand what they are doing wrong.
On October 05 2012 17:07 Stow.Wif wrote: I hope so. I do think protoss would need some buff then.
Preferably to their Stargate units, which are actually meant to counter mech.
I am not sure about the position of stargate in protoss play. Terran will always be able to switch to mass production of viking and take air control against protoss in the long run. But everything encouraging air play for protoss would be great. Maybe the tempest can be this unit, its range could allow it to be protected by stalkers against viking, but its damage vs tanks is not that great at the moment for the investment.
@ledarsi : sure, the tools you describe would help discouraging deathball effect. But, the point of deathball is to maximize damage/surface ratio to some point, and AOE is the precise counter to that since it does more damage to grouped units, so I guess it is another efficient tool against deathball.
On October 05 2012 17:28 ledarsi wrote: Adding AOE does not discourage deathballs. It encourages players to try and find a way to deal with the splash damage, so they can keep using the deathball. The deathball will always exist as long as it is the most effective way to use your army.
In order to remove the deathball, it is necessary to add tools to each race that make non-deathball play drastically more effective than using a deathball. This means positional units that are very powerful. It means non-stacking powerful spells like dark swarm. It means board control like zero-supply mines. It means adding tools to each race that make deathballs suboptimal.
These things give the player options, and allow them to split their army up and INCREASE its effectiveness, rather than decrease it. If your army is strictly less effective in smaller groups, then a bigger ball will kill the small groups one at a time with few casualties in each battle. What needs to happen is a small group needs to be more efficient than a larger group. A larger army might beat a smaller group, but will suffer enough casualties that multiple small groups will defeat it.
Additionally, there needs to be more actual stuff on the board. More units (by reducing supply costs of units) will greatly encourage splitting forces up. Colossi are a 6 supply splash damage dealer. You cannot, and should not, have very many of them. Compare this to a 2 supply siege tank in BW. You can have way, way more of them. The simple fact that you can have more stuff encourages using smaller groups, rather than a single group that is as large as you can make it (right up to the supply limit). Even in SC2, really huge armies have diminishing returns on each additional unit added. It's just that you don't have enough units where those diminishing returns start to kick in. Modifying the units so these diminishing returns kick in sooner would also be good. Two forces of half the size resulting in a net increase in fighting effectiveness, rather than asking to lose, is mandatory.
Not that I think any of this is likely to happen. Blizzard will not rethink their 2 supply zerg units- Roach and Hydra. They will not rethink their 2 supply terran infantry, or their 3 supply tanks, or their Massive 6 supply land units for every race. And they will not rethink warp gate, forcefield, and Colossi. Because they simply do not understand what they are doing wrong.
Thank you for your input, ledarsi.
I agree that strong slow positional play discourages deathballs (I'm definitely adding it to the pool as one of the options): 1. If you clamp together all your BW tanks and mines into a deathball, the opponent with a mobile army can simply destroy your expansions/bases that are left unprotected, and your tanks/mines aren't mobile enough to respond in time. 2. If you redistribute all your BW tanks and mines, so that they cover a few main directions, you no longer have a deathball. In this case however tanks and mines have to be strong enough to destroy opponent's mobile army even if that mobile army has much larger numbers.
In SC2 however there is no unit selection limit and some mobile units are really strong. To compensate either some mobile units have to be weakened or (preferably) made even stronger, but less mobile and more positional (like BW tanks, mines, dark swarm etc.)
I'll also add larger armies (smaller supply costs) to the pool. Why are you however sure that more units will make deathballs less efficient? It seems true only for units with small range. High range units are actually becoming stronger the more you have in your deathball. Or am I wrong here?
p.s. also why do you think that really large but low dps AOE wouldn't work as well? I agree that it encourages players to try and find a way to deal with the splash damage, but what if the best way to deal with it is to split up your army?
p.p.s. Finally, don't get discouraged. If enough pros and community members back us up, some changes may happen, as we are seeing now in HoTS with removal of a warhound, redesign of a MSC, oracle and tempest (all of these changes are based on pro and community feedback, as stated by Blizzard).
On October 05 2012 16:27 Stow.Wif wrote: Good AOE for each race, no need to make them too huge. If you look a it, there is not much deahtball effect in the matchups where the 2 races have efficient AOE againt each other :
TvT : tanks are good, not much deathball (lot of small moves around the map). TvZ : tanks/hellions are good, fungal and banes are good againt marines, not much death ball except againt mech (banes and fungal not as effective) and in the late game (broods forcing tanks to unsiege). TvP : tanks and hellions are bad, so toss is encouraged to make a deathball, to which terran responds with a bio deathball. Note that emp cannot stop a group of unit by itself. PvZ : banes/fungal are not good enough dps -> same effect as above PvP : this one is tricky, but i believe AOE are not efficient enough in toss vs toss, there is no possibility to defend a position with 2 templar or 2 colossus. ZvZ : when it comes to roach, banes/fungals are not good enough : deathballs of roaches
Of course, AOE is not the only factor to the deathball effect. Also come in mind the possibility of using efficiently a small squad of unit to achieve a goal, and this point is tied to races but also to maps.
Some idea : buff storm against toss (adding an extra effect to shields ?), buff tanks (maybe the hellion buff is enough) with a drawback, make bane drop more efficient againt deathballs.
Edit: I should also add that I like the unit pathing of Wol a lot, it adds micro for splitting against AOE
Thanks for your contribution, Stow.Wif. I'll definitely add stronger AOE on current units as an option in the pool.
Also looking forward to stronger, but more positional tanks, with which Blizzard is apparently fiddling around now
Why attack separately when you can attack together? To solve deathball, limit control group to 12..... Easy solution. I m just worried for P, Protoss units don't work well in small numbers.
On October 05 2012 18:33 Zaurus wrote: Why attack separately when you can attack together? To solve deathball, limit control group to 12..... Easy solution. I m just worried for P, Protoss units don't work well in small numbers.
Thanks, I'll add limited unit selection as an option in the pool.
Could you however explain why 12?
Also don't you think that since mechanics in SC2 is easier than in BW, pro players would have enough APM to maintain deathball formations even if unit selection is limited to 12 (or some other small number)? Why attack separately when you can attack more efficiently together, even if it requires a bit more APM with limited selection?
12 would be so fucked up especially in the way dps works in sc2 haha. Control groups of 36 max perhaps, but it wouldn't change that much. Protoss in brood war 'often' moved around the map with a large ball of units as well, control groups wouldn't change anything.
I think Blizzard could also do something about the maps.
There was once a thread about smaller bases with just 6 mineral patches and 1 gas. I think this could also help to limit deathballplay because you do not have that many ressources to build up a big deathball. So to get a big army you first have to spread yourself out and take many bases which you also have to defend. The thing with this change is that not every map needs to have smaller bases. You could make a map pool out of ~3 bases with small expansions and ~ 3 with big expansions. So there would be a lot of different play, especially if you would mix them up in a BoX series.
Another point I want to add is to make the maps bigger and the distance betweeen the expansions bigger so you have to stretch your army out to defend multiple locations. In this scenario you could not have a big army together that effective because you would neglect your expansions.
Just some thoughts I had. I think the positive thing about these changes is that no major changes have to be done. It would all be about the creation of maps.
can't have deathballs if the units don't ball up when you move them around
Thanks a lot for this post Zanno. I'm definitely adding it to the pool. Don't you however think that it would mostly work for low range death balls, while high range death balls would still be a preferable formation and just take more space?
On October 05 2012 21:15 NukeD wrote: Pathing pathing pathing pathing
Could you please elaborate how exactly would you change it? Just reverting strictly to BW doesn't seem feasible. What exact changes would you introduce?
Also since death balls are so effective, don't you think that pros would find a way to clump units manually even if the patching was different?
On October 05 2012 19:53 Roth wrote: I think Blizzard could also do something about the maps.
There was once a thread about smaller bases with just 6 mineral patches and 1 gas. I think this could also help to limit deathballplay because you do not have that many ressources to build up a big deathball. So to get a big army you first have to spread yourself out and take many bases which you also have to defend. The thing with this change is that not every map needs to have smaller bases. You could make a map pool out of ~3 bases with small expansions and ~ 3 with big expansions. So there would be a lot of different play, especially if you would mix them up in a BoX series.
Another point I want to add is to make the maps bigger and the distance betweeen the expansions bigger so you have to stretch your army out to defend multiple locations. In this scenario you could not have a big army together that effective because you would neglect your expansions.
Just some thoughts I had. I think the positive thing about these changes is that no major changes have to be done. It would all be about the creation of maps.
Thanks for your input, Roth. I'll add it to the pool.
A question to everyone: do you think smaller maps with less resources or much bigger maps than what we have today would help better against death balls? Also do you think it would be feasible to balance them for all matchups?
I have been going on and on about space control in many topics over the past week. I'm 100% positive that the main issue with SC2 is the fact that space control takes a lot of units; there is no way to defend an area against a maxed army unless you yourself have a maxed army.
On October 02 2012 12:33 larse wrote: In BW, you fight the interface
In SC2, you fight the deathball
Many of the problem is not caused by smartcasting or depth of the unit design, it's just because of the deathball problem. When all your army clump up instantly when you initiate a single a-move command, it's not helping. The game loses depth because of the deathball, more than anything.
As I pointed out earlier (and have harped on in many many posts throughout TL), the deathball problem is not an issue of units clumping or their power in clumping up, but rather that there is very little ability to control space in SC2. With weak tanks, fragile colossus, and...nothing for zerg, players in SC2 HAVE to control space with armies. The problem with this is that you can't split units very well or risk fighting the enemy's army (to control space) 20 supply down or you will lose horribly.
With better space control units and/or buffs, SC2 becomes much deeper and more interesting with less necessary APM as it becomes based on positioning and using clever little micro tactics instead of getting the "perfect army" and doing perfect lategame maxed army micro.
So, in a roundabout way of saying: I think the game, because of the lackluster design of the units, makes the deathball necessary, which in turn causes it to lose depth.
On October 05 2012 19:53 Roth wrote: I think Blizzard could also do something about the maps.
There was once a thread about smaller bases with just 6 mineral patches and 1 gas. I think this could also help to limit deathballplay because you do not have that many ressources to build up a big deathball. So to get a big army you first have to spread yourself out and take many bases which you also have to defend. The thing with this change is that not every map needs to have smaller bases. You could make a map pool out of ~3 bases with small expansions and ~ 3 with big expansions. So there would be a lot of different play, especially if you would mix them up in a BoX series.
Another point I want to add is to make the maps bigger and the distance betweeen the expansions bigger so you have to stretch your army out to defend multiple locations. In this scenario you could not have a big army together that effective because you would neglect your expansions.
Just some thoughts I had. I think the positive thing about these changes is that no major changes have to be done. It would all be about the creation of maps.
Thanks for your input, Roth. I'll add it to the pool.
A question to everyone: do you think smaller maps with less resources or much bigger maps than what we have today would help better against death balls? Also do you think it would be feasible to balance them for all matchups?
If SC2 can get the space control thing down properly, we would be seeing larger and larger maps. As long as the space control units are slow, the whole defenders advantage and lategame PvT issues become nullified by the fact that you still can defend and attack at the same time.
If we look at the WoL beta, we see that small maps are primarily what caused SC2 to be the weird, funky game that it is. Because of small maps, they had to nerf tanks, make tons of changes to warp gate, fix roaches, etc.... I think SC2 has been headed in the right direction with all the newer maps that have come out this year (Daybreak, Cloud Kingdom, Atlantis Spaceship, etc), but space control NEEDS to be an addressed issue in order for large maps to actually make a difference.
I have been going on and on about space control in many topics over the past week. I'm 100% positive that the main issue with SC2 is the fact that space control takes a lot of units
I second this, also I dont know if it has been brought up, but highground advantage is another point which allows few units to hold key positions. E.g. 1-2 Tanks + Mines behind Supply Depots or some Spines, Lurker and a Defiler (or even just the Nydus and 2 Lurker).
On October 05 2012 21:15 NukeD wrote: Pathing pathing pathing pathing
Could you please elaborate how exactly would you change it? Just reverting strictly to BW doesn't seem feasible. What exact changes would you introduce?
Also since death balls are so effective, don't you think that pros would find a way to clump units manually even if the patching was different?
Terran - Buff siege tank damage and nerf transformation speed - More space control options/Positional benifits
Protoss - Better Aoe (wouldn't mind reaver) - alternative small Aoe on tempest - Defensive specialist from warpgate and/or nerf FF range to 4-6 increase duration by minimally this makes FF not an offensive tool (can't split armies)
Zerg - Additional counter attack options (punish deathballs more directly) - Dark swarm (small armies could more easily hold a position) - New Aoe/positional based zerg unit/ability
General
A mild high-ground advantage to make defending slightly easier say a -1/2 range to low-ground armies If you want to make this more noticeable Add a +1/2 range to high-ground armies as well
I don't think changing pathing is the right option. It seems more effective, to me, to just alter the current unit comps mildly. To prevent just grouping give units more power for slower movement, or give them strange movement styles. So you have to keep watch over your whole army to keep them together just changing pathing would make pros work a bit harder to keep deathballs. Adding new challenges would make raiding parties or sniping units who are out of position more common and allow for cool new strategies ,by just adjusting movement styles. By this I mean unique movement like reapers or blink stalkers but more limited like a unit that can only go down cliffs or a leap mechanic to jump past a wall-in but not over a cliff. Or just making units like the reaver or hightemplar something slow but important that you have to guard but cant make it just straight across the map to allow for counter attacks/sniping ect
If you find a problem or issue with my logic please adress it also I would like alternatives and feedback
a) With no overkill, every unit deals damage at 100% efficiency. Even in a large deathball, no overkill means every unit is 100% efficient. b) With overkill, damage efficiency drops steadily as the size of the deathball grows. c) Hence overkill slows down the growth of power of a deathball.
ALTERNATIVE EXPLANATION
a) Overkill is a nerf, hence units with overkill can be stronger than their hypothetical counterpart without overkill (to compensate for the overkill nerf). b) Overkill does not affect small groups of units as much as large groups of units. c) Hence balancing around overkill is a buff to small squad attacks and a nerf to deathballs.
Siege tank damage was nerfed post launch. Colossi damage was nerfed pre launch. Blizzard is jacking you around.
On topic: additionally to many other suggestions, an improved targeting AI might help. I can't access replays and videos right now, but had the impression, that colossi are often targeting the nearest, single unit. I assume, that the AI can be programmed to maximize the damage against groups of units, thus aiming at the damage-maximizing centre of a lump.
Another high ground mechanic is also required. But this time, it should be deterministic with not random chance involved. +1 range would also be decent.
On October 05 2012 16:27 Stow.Wif wrote: Edit: I should also add that I like the unit pathing of Wol a lot, it adds micro for splitting against AOE
This is a problem and a shifting of micro. In BW you had to micro as the ATTACKER and in SC2 the only one needing to micro is the DEFENDER and that is bad, because it makes the defender weaker instead of making the attackers job harder.
In BW you had to time your Zergling (multiple groups) + Dark Swarm correctly to be effective with your attack; in SC2 you basically rightclick your group of Banelings and watch the defender break his fingers while trying to split the Marines. Personally I HATE this change, but we all know the reasons for it: unlimited unit selection and "perfect" unit movement with "no unit size". It is the "improvement of technology", but I dont think that is the correct POV when it comes to making the game fun. It should be an accomplishment to overcome a thoroughly entrenched siege line as a Zerg and not just "build X+safety overlap Banelings plus some other stuff and rightclick to win".
Sooo ... do you REALLY prefer the SC2 way or would you rather have the attacker requiring more micro?
On October 05 2012 22:35 SC2John wrote: I have been going on and on about space control in many topics over the past week. I'm 100% positive that the main issue with SC2 is the fact that space control takes a lot of units; there is no way to defend an area against a maxed army unless you yourself have a maxed army.
But unit clumping is a huge part of why space control takes such a lot of units in SC2. The more oily-slippery and compact an army is, the narrower the choke has to be for a smaller, entrenched defensive force to enjoy an enduring advantage over a larger, advancing force.
If you watch a BW game and an SC2 game and just look at armies traversing ramps, you'll see an order of magnitude more units flowing up a ramp simultaneously in SC2. That means that instead of a 50 unit force drip-feeding itself to a 10-unit defensive emplacement 5 units at a time, it's just BAM: all 50 units up the ramp and in your face before more than a couple of volleys have been exchanged.
On October 05 2012 22:35 SC2John wrote: I have been going on and on about space control in many topics over the past week. I'm 100% positive that the main issue with SC2 is the fact that space control takes a lot of units; there is no way to defend an area against a maxed army unless you yourself have a maxed army.
But unit clumping is a huge part of why space control takes such a lot of units in SC2. The more oily-slippery and compact an army is, the narrower the choke has to be for a smaller, entrenched defensive force to enjoy an enduring advantage over a larger, advancing force.
If you watch a BW game and an SC2 game and just look at armies traversing ramps, you'll see an order of magnitude more units flowing up a ramp simultaneously in SC2. That means that instead of a 50 unit force drip-feeding itself to a 10-unit defensive emplacement 5 units at a time, it's just BAM: all 50 units up the ramp and in your face before more than a couple of volleys have been exchanged.
Thats exactly why many people have been suggesting changes to the unit movement, the AoE damage (and area), the maximum number of units in a control group and the whole unit reproduction method (no point investing in tanks if your zerg opponent can reproduce any of his units much faster than you can after an "even" battle where both sides lost everything).
Unit clumping is the core reason why space control is impossible in SC2 and once upon a time we had a map called "Steppes of War". This map was tiny, but the Siege Tank was balanced on it. Sadly the current HotS beta maps look only a little bit bigger than Steppes and that doesnt even bode well for the balance of the new units ... which are mostly going to be played on bigger GSL maps I assume.
Tight balls of units also made defensive structures MUCH weaker. Protoss and Zerg dont really have a "space control unit", because there is no Lurker and the Colossus has been nerfed to calm down the deathball junkies who would otherwise cry "OP OP OP". So we come back to the terrible terrible thing of clumping units and the impossible unit movement. If you have seen the dynamic unit movement thread and the video it is clear that it is possible to give the players choice without going back to the clunky BW movements, but Blizzard so far has refrained from listening.
In the specific case of tanks a different approach over say buffing damage / splash / fire rate etc to improve territory control / force deathball splits is the following.
A B C X Y Z
-Tank-
If xyz are marines / lings zealots whatever 1 thing is for certain. If target priority is equal for ABCXYZ... the front row (xyz) will always get hit before the back row (abc). For simplicity lets say Y gets hit first. The tank shot will deal full damage to Y, most of the time X B Z (the ones 90 degrees off the point of impact) will take around 50%. A and C (the ones 45 degrees off the point of impact) will take around 25%.
The problem with this is the fact that a huge portion of the siege tank aoe damage is not being utilized AT ALL. units in the front always get hit unless target fired by you, due to having other more important things at the time target firing is not always possible.
What if instead of just buffing damage, fire rate or siege time of tanks you give them a piercing shot that deals full damage in a line to Y and B, 50% to X Z (90 degrees), and 25% to A and B.
You now deal a stupid amount of damage to units trying to advance in narrow terrain or if the opponent doesn't bother to pre-split some units in front to take the first shot while he advances, at the same time vs an opponent that creates a huge concave to attack into you utilizing the fact that you are on open terrain only receives a small penalty.
Obviously this might force you to nerf the damage if it became to strong or promoted extreme turtle games but changing the numbers is not the only way to look at it.
If for example this proved to be too strong in the specific case of a tank they could try applying it to void rays, tempests or whatever unit requires a boost. (those 2 just came to mind cause the effect of an energy beam / gigantic ball of energy piercing stuff would be "cool" and I personally consider voidrays one of the coolest units in the game that failed miserably at being useful outside of cheese).
DPS density is the core issue, or written another way, DPS/Surface Area. You either tackle ways of lowering the DPS, lower range, over kill, AoE that kills the DPS indirectly, or you lower the operable surface area, pathing, unit range, or physical space occupancy. Any other changes wouldn't have an effect really unless they lower that ratio down for all 3 races. SC2 is just a lot cleaner and smoother, so you get these unnaturally fluid army dynamics. We've hit the uncanny valley of army simulations, so now we need artificial blemishes to make it more interesting and aesthetic.
All the people suggesting limiting selection size or control group size are being silly. That will increase the mechanical difficulty of utilizing a deathball, but as long as the keeping all your units together in one place is ideal, that is what players will do. Even if we make it more difficult to execute. The only way to solve the deathball problem is to make deathballs suboptimal, such that you gain an advantage by doing something else.
Regarding the diminishing returns point from earlier, Alex1Sun is absolutely right that units with longer ranges are more effective in larger groups. Short range units, and especially melee units, suffer more serious diminishing returns as the localized unit count rises. Note that in Brood War, there were relatively few long range units, and those units had very serious drawbacks. The Siege Tank is immobile when sieged in return for its range and firepower. The Reaver can hardly move at all without a shuttle, and is best used for harassment, not en masse as a group. And the Guardian is relatively weak in a main combat situation. These units don't make for strong deathballs, despite their range. By contrast, units like Colossi and Broodlords are excellent in a main combat situation, and their low unit count (small surface area), high damage, and other features, such as mobility, cliff walk, spawning broodlings, etc. make them powerful and survivable in numbers on a main combat footing, unlike Reavers.
And to address the number of units issue in greater detail, there is a serious problem of fungibility of forces if your army is composed of big units. Higher supply costs means you have fewer options for how you determine your composition, and fewer choices about their distribution over an area. Suppose a zerg is building mutalisks, and the terran goes for thors to respond. Each Thor is a large investment, with a long wait before it is finished. And each Thor functions at 100% capability until its HP reaches zero, at which point its strength is zero. Compare this with a 2 supply goliath. You can build three of them for the same supply cost as one thor. This gives you options for how to distribute your supply that the thor does not. You might choose to build two goliaths and an additional tank (2 supply in BW) rather than go for three goliaths.
Purchase economies like Starcraft where you pay for units up front, and wait for them to complete, are most applicable to small purchases that must be made more frequently. As units become more expensive, the large upfront investment and long wait time becomes increasingly difficult to sustain. Expensive unit designs should be avoided with purchase economies, as they are problematic. If they only make cost, they will never be built due to their greatly reduced efficiency of production compared to constant production of smaller units with the same resources. And if they outperform smaller units for cost by too much, then they obsolete smaller units completely.
As an illustrative example, compare the marine to the battlecruiser. A battlecruiser costs 400 minerals and 300 gas, a large upfront cost. A marine only costs 50 minerals, a small upfront cost. To build a BC you must wait until you have all those resources, spend them, and wait for the production to finish. With the marine, you can start production with only 50 minerals in the bank, and start another marine with 50 more minerals, etc. etc. And you get a return on your investment in more regular increments as each individual marine is produced. For BC's, your return is zero until the longer build time is completely finished. The marine is simply a much more efficient unit to produce under SC2's economic paradigm. This same effect holds true for all small, cheap units compared to large, expensive units. And this is part of the reason why SC2 is having problems with big units like Thors, Colossi, Ultralisks, Broodlords, Motherships, etc.
Furthermore, once you have three units, such as three goliaths instead of the one thor on the board, you can distribute them. You can keep the three goliaths together, or split them up to different areas of the board, such as different areas of your base to deflect mutalisk harassment. There is no way to split up a thor- it is impossible. Even worse, if you lose the one thor, you lose a larger chunk of strength than if you lose one goliath. And it is not possible to split up a thor. So, because each thor represents a larger investment and chunk of your supply which is not negated unless it is totally destroyed, you are incentivized to keep all your thors together so they mutually protect each other. Cheaper, weaker goliaths benefit from this same process too, of course. But when they fight they will suffer more casualties, with a more continuous effectiveness dropoff. Rather than a thor going from full strength to zero instantly, you lose one goliath, then the second, and then the third. Apply this to a large army and this continuous-strength-loss-with-damage factor makes a tremendous difference in battle.
Smaller, cheaper, weaker units (such as marines) when used in groups will sustain casualties in battle, even if they win decisively. This weakens the army, and the units must then be replaced to bring it back up to strength. Larger units means wider variance in casualty figures for any particular battle. A force of thors that has sustained serious damage, but no actual casualties is still basically 100% effective. This becomes a serious issue when these larger units are like Colossi, which have a relatively noncontinuous strength dropoff, more like Thors, and which counter units which do have a more continuous strength dropoff with damage. Imagine a micro-Colossus which costs 2 supply, with suitably less power such that three of them is as strong as an SC2 Colossus. This micro-Colossus would be a vastly more interesting unit just due to the greater numbers, greater fungibility of production, army distribution over space, and casualties sustained during battle.
Do you remember all the way back in sc2 beta and alpha when storm, seige tanks, seeker missle and fungal were super powerful?
why did they get nerfed? 1. The pathing system and unlimited unit selection makes your entire army naturally clump up making these spells super effective. 2. Players prefer to play with death balls, as dustin browder stated himself in the mlg interview, this is the easiest way to play.
so naturally aoe spells were super nerfed since probably everyone in their testing had all their units in a ball, but now we have the problem that its super boring to watch as a viewer.
They probably wanted the colossus to be less retarded and let them walk over ground armies and have no collision, making them super micro unintensive. If you refer to Dustin's recent battlenet post or the user "rock", he does not intend to limit unit selection for the pure reason of the game being noob friendly, which is probably why we have units like the collosus too.
On October 05 2012 22:35 SC2John wrote: I have been going on and on about space control in many topics over the past week. I'm 100% positive that the main issue with SC2 is the fact that space control takes a lot of units; there is no way to defend an area against a maxed army unless you yourself have a maxed army.
But unit clumping is a huge part of why space control takes such a lot of units in SC2. The more oily-slippery and compact an army is, the narrower the choke has to be for a smaller, entrenched defensive force to enjoy an enduring advantage over a larger, advancing force.
If you watch a BW game and an SC2 game and just look at armies traversing ramps, you'll see an order of magnitude more units flowing up a ramp simultaneously in SC2. That means that instead of a 50 unit force drip-feeding itself to a 10-unit defensive emplacement 5 units at a time, it's just BAM: all 50 units up the ramp and in your face before more than a couple of volleys have been exchanged.
I actually like this counter argument quite a bit. You have a valid point that everything in SC2 gets to its target too quickly. However, I think I stand by my argument that improved AoE (whether by increasing damage, range, splash damage, or some mix of the 3) deals with this problem well. I don't see unit clumping as a problem, just how the game is designed; I feel like changes can easily be made around it to make the fact that units clump and move through chokes quickly not important.
More effective AoE = more dead units = you have to COMMIT in order to break a defensive area.
I have been going on and on about space control in many topics over the past week. I'm 100% positive that the main issue with SC2 is the fact that space control takes a lot of units
I second this, also I dont know if it has been brought up, but highground advantage is another point which allows few units to hold key positions. E.g. 1-2 Tanks + Mines behind Supply Depots or some Spines, Lurker and a Defiler (or even just the Nydus and 2 Lurker).
Thank you, puissance. Adding to the pool. I think that it's a nice option heavily linked to space control.
On October 05 2012 23:26 SarcasmMonster wrote: Overkill.
a) With no overkill, every unit deals damage at 100% efficiency. Even in a large deathball, no overkill means every unit is 100% efficient. b) With overkill, damage efficiency drops steadily as the size of the deathball grows. c) Hence overkill slows down the growth of power of a deathball.
ALTERNATIVE EXPLANATION
a) Overkill is a nerf, hence units with overkill can be stronger than their hypothetical counterpart without overkill (to compensate for the overkill nerf). b) Overkill does not affect small groups of units as much as large groups of units. c) Hence balancing around overkill is a buff to small squad attacks and a nerf to deathballs.
Thanks! That's actually something I didn't think about at all. I suppose you could potentially introduce overkill for all units. I doubt that Blizzard will follow this path, but I'll add it to the pool
I think a change that has been hinted at in this thread but not fully developed is the importance of positioning.
If positioning drastically changes the course of battles, then it is extremely feasible to engage a deathball with your small army in the right place and win. This would require : -Real highground advantage (i'm advocating +2 range personally, other solutions can work) -Real choke use (And i'd advocate larger unit collision, so that it's harder to go through a choke while sustaining defender fire) -Preventing air units from seeing past sight blockers (trees, smoke) so that they play a role in lategame too.
Those changes would have three positive side effects :
-First, they would allow to make maps more unique by giving more importance to the architecture and map features ;
-Second, they would make comebacks a lot more feasible than what they are now, something i feel the game needs - comebacks are exciting, comebacks are epic, they keep you watching even when a side is down 50 supply because you know something amazing might happen.
-Finally, by making more strategic plays possible, they would make the game more interesting for mechanically deficient players like me or about anyone not high masters or GM and add more skill in the competition between those latter people.
On October 06 2012 08:45 MasterCynical wrote: Do you remember all the way back in sc2 beta and alpha when storm, seige tanks, seeker missle and fungal were super powerful?
No. In early beta, nobody used Infestors or Templar tech. It took a long time to learn. I don't think I saw a single Archon during the entire beta. You may have a point with Siege tanks, but remember that the map pool heavily favored them in those days.
You'd have to rebalance the whole game. What you need to do is make attacking with small task forces more rewarding. That means forcing players to spread their defenses more thinly over more bases and having those bases more exposed so they're easier to attack. Currently, all the modern maps are designed so that you can hold 3 bases with forcefields because that's a requirement for game balance in WoL. That layout makes it easy to defend 3 bases with one army without worrying too much about splitting forces or attacks from multiple angles. You could open the maps up more, but Protoss would be underpowered.
On October 07 2012 03:12 kcdc wrote: You'd have to rebalance the whole game. What you need to do is make attacking with small task forces more rewarding. That means forcing players to spread their defenses more thinly over more bases and having those bases more exposed so they're easier to attack. Currently, all the modern maps are designed so that you can hold 3 bases with forcefields because that's a requirement for game balance in WoL. That layout makes it easy to defend 3 bases with one army without worrying too much about splitting forces or attacks from multiple angles. You could open the maps up more, but Protoss would be underpowered.
Thanks, kcdc. Don't you however think that being bale to hold a choke with a few sentries help reduce deathballs, since you need to leave these sentries out of your main army?
Sadly the poll is useless, because there isnt one solution to solving the problem of deathballs; it has to be tackled from several different sides at the same time. An example: Increasing AoE damage and radius - doesnt matter if it is old or new units - will make an AoE deathball super powerful against a non-AoE deathball and thus discourage that non-AoE deathball. But why should you spread out your AoE units then if you could just be 150% sure of victory instad of 100%? So you will have a deathball made up of AoE units (plus some others to protect them against air) and wont have solved the problem.
So it is quite easy to see that one way wont help you and that Blizzard has to change a whole bunch of things to get rid of it. My "top X" of the list are:
1. Reducing the economy and taking out the production boosts for units. Reasoning: Deathballs are popular and possible due to the easy way to make the units and especially to remake them. With a lower amount of units you wont want to throw them away as easily - because you know you cant just remake them that easily - and are more careful with every unit you have. This would make more expensive units more important and might even increase the importance of Battlecruisers and Carriers. Being unable to reproduce Siege Tanks fast enough is the reason why mech is not viable in many situations, but letting players be able to produce their units even faster is the wrong way to go.
2. Unit movement - unit collision. The perfectly tight and synchrinized unit movement has to go. Reasoning: It is very unrealistic to NOT have units stumble left and right when they are running on an uneven path and thus there should be "holes" in a deathball formation automatically. I am not saying we need the clunky BW movement, but just 10% of it instead of 0%. Being able to stack your units perfectly tight does increase the "damage per square inch" and this is bad, because it makes kills of opposing units and buildings much faster and puts bigger units at a disadvantage. The exception is the Colossus, who can walk among Gateway units without disturbing them in any way.
3. Unit selection limited to 12 units OR 12 supply (maybe 16?). Reasoning: The unlimited unit selection is what makes deathballing very easy. It will be possible to form huge chunks of armies with a limited unit selection (just use "follow" command), but that takes a lot more effort. The reasoning behind using supply instead of units is that a group of units is supposed to be equally strong and to represent that we have supply. This is also how it is done in transport vehicles. The right method (supply or units) and number (12, 16, 24) should be discussed, but you should be able to have all your army in control groups ...
4. Unit movement - Dynamic unit movement. Reasoning: There should be a choice for the player to be able to spread out his units - thus weakening the offensive "damage per square inch" value - to reduce their chance to fall victim to an enemies AoE. Since this is a skill you can use or ignore it will increase the attractiveness of the games.
5. More OFFENSIVE micro for units. Reasoning: The only micro - apart from the general "who gets the better concave?" micro - is required to be used by the defender: Marine split vs Banelings. That is terrible, because it is part of the reason why there is zero defenders advantage in SC2. The attacker should be made to work for his victory instead of the defender for his survival. Nony's Carrier example is perfect in this regard to show what is necessary.
6. AoE damage and radius. Reasoning: With the units able to spread out more automatically it is kinda necessary for the AoE units to keep up with this. Starting with this would be useless (as explained above), but it has to be a part of the whole package.
On October 07 2012 16:00 Rabiator wrote: Sadly the poll is useless, because there isnt one solution to solving the problem of deathballs; it has to be tackled from several different sides at the same time. An example: Increasing AoE damage and radius - doesnt matter if it is old or new units - will make an AoE deathball super powerful against a non-AoE deathball and thus discourage that non-AoE deathball. But why should you spread out your AoE units then if you could just be 150% sure of victory instad of 100%? So you will have a deathball made up of AoE units (plus some others to protect them against air) and wont have solved the problem.
So it is quite easy to see that one way wont help you and that Blizzard has to change a whole bunch of things to get rid of it. My "top X" of the list are:
1. Reducing the economy and taking out the production boosts for units. Reasoning: Deathballs are popular and possible due to the easy way to make the units and especially to remake them. With a lower amount of units you wont want to throw them away as easily - because you know you cant just remake them that easily - and are more careful with every unit you have. This would make more expensive units more important and might even increase the importance of Battlecruisers and Carriers. Being unable to reproduce Siege Tanks fast enough is the reason why mech is not viable in many situations, but letting players be able to produce their units even faster is the wrong way to go.
2. Unit movement - unit collision. The perfectly tight and synchrinized unit movement has to go. Reasoning: It is very unrealistic to NOT have units stumble left and right when they are running on an uneven path and thus there should be "holes" in a deathball formation automatically. I am not saying we need the clunky BW movement, but just 10% of it instead of 0%. Being able to stack your units perfectly tight does increase the "damage per square inch" and this is bad, because it makes kills of opposing units and buildings much faster and puts bigger units at a disadvantage. The exception is the Colossus, who can walk among Gateway units without disturbing them in any way.
3. Unit selection limited to 12 units OR 12 supply (maybe 16?). Reasoning: The unlimited unit selection is what makes deathballing very easy. It will be possible to form huge chunks of armies with a limited unit selection (just use "follow" command), but that takes a lot more effort. The reasoning behind using supply instead of units is that a group of units is supposed to be equally strong and to represent that we have supply. This is also how it is done in transport vehicles. The right method (supply or units) and number (12, 16, 24) should be discussed, but you should be able to have all your army in control groups ...
4. Unit movement - Dynamic unit movement. Reasoning: There should be a choice for the player to be able to spread out his units - thus weakening the offensive "damage per square inch" value - to reduce their chance to fall victim to an enemies AoE. Since this is a skill you can use or ignore it will increase the attractiveness of the games.
5. More OFFENSIVE micro for units. Reasoning: The only micro - apart from the general "who gets the better concave?" micro - is required to be used by the defender: Marine split vs Banelings. That is terrible, because it is part of the reason why there is zero defenders advantage in SC2. The attacker should be made to work for his victory instead of the defender for his survival. Nony's Carrier example is perfect in this regard to show what is necessary.
6. AoE damage and radius. Reasoning: With the units able to spread out more automatically it is kinda necessary for the AoE units to keep up with this. Starting with this would be useless (as explained above), but it has to be a part of the whole package.
Thank you, Rabiator. I mentioned in my post that one change may not be enough, however I still think that this pool if useful to demonstrate what is more important. Which option would you choose if you only had one?
On October 07 2012 16:00 Rabiator wrote: Sadly the poll is useless, because there isnt one solution to solving the problem of deathballs; it has to be tackled from several different sides at the same time. An example: Increasing AoE damage and radius - doesnt matter if it is old or new units - will make an AoE deathball super powerful against a non-AoE deathball and thus discourage that non-AoE deathball. But why should you spread out your AoE units then if you could just be 150% sure of victory instad of 100%? So you will have a deathball made up of AoE units (plus some others to protect them against air) and wont have solved the problem.
So it is quite easy to see that one way wont help you and that Blizzard has to change a whole bunch of things to get rid of it. My "top X" of the list are:
1. Reducing the economy and taking out the production boosts for units. Reasoning: Deathballs are popular and possible due to the easy way to make the units and especially to remake them. With a lower amount of units you wont want to throw them away as easily - because you know you cant just remake them that easily - and are more careful with every unit you have. This would make more expensive units more important and might even increase the importance of Battlecruisers and Carriers. Being unable to reproduce Siege Tanks fast enough is the reason why mech is not viable in many situations, but letting players be able to produce their units even faster is the wrong way to go.
2. Unit movement - unit collision. The perfectly tight and synchrinized unit movement has to go. Reasoning: It is very unrealistic to NOT have units stumble left and right when they are running on an uneven path and thus there should be "holes" in a deathball formation automatically. I am not saying we need the clunky BW movement, but just 10% of it instead of 0%. Being able to stack your units perfectly tight does increase the "damage per square inch" and this is bad, because it makes kills of opposing units and buildings much faster and puts bigger units at a disadvantage. The exception is the Colossus, who can walk among Gateway units without disturbing them in any way.
3. Unit selection limited to 12 units OR 12 supply (maybe 16?). Reasoning: The unlimited unit selection is what makes deathballing very easy. It will be possible to form huge chunks of armies with a limited unit selection (just use "follow" command), but that takes a lot more effort. The reasoning behind using supply instead of units is that a group of units is supposed to be equally strong and to represent that we have supply. This is also how it is done in transport vehicles. The right method (supply or units) and number (12, 16, 24) should be discussed, but you should be able to have all your army in control groups ...
4. Unit movement - Dynamic unit movement. Reasoning: There should be a choice for the player to be able to spread out his units - thus weakening the offensive "damage per square inch" value - to reduce their chance to fall victim to an enemies AoE. Since this is a skill you can use or ignore it will increase the attractiveness of the games.
5. More OFFENSIVE micro for units. Reasoning: The only micro - apart from the general "who gets the better concave?" micro - is required to be used by the defender: Marine split vs Banelings. That is terrible, because it is part of the reason why there is zero defenders advantage in SC2. The attacker should be made to work for his victory instead of the defender for his survival. Nony's Carrier example is perfect in this regard to show what is necessary.
6. AoE damage and radius. Reasoning: With the units able to spread out more automatically it is kinda necessary for the AoE units to keep up with this. Starting with this would be useless (as explained above), but it has to be a part of the whole package.
Thank you, Rabiator. I mentioned in my post that one change may not be enough, however I still think that this pool if useful to demonstrate what is more important. Which option would you choose if you only had one?
Honestly people should learn that "which one if you can take only one" is not a valid choice. Therefore I choose NONE.
I had hoped to make it clear why picking only one doesnt really work, because you need to to work at it from all sides.
On October 07 2012 03:12 kcdc wrote: You'd have to rebalance the whole game. What you need to do is make attacking with small task forces more rewarding. That means forcing players to spread their defenses more thinly over more bases and having those bases more exposed so they're easier to attack. Currently, all the modern maps are designed so that you can hold 3 bases with forcefields because that's a requirement for game balance in WoL. That layout makes it easy to defend 3 bases with one army without worrying too much about splitting forces or attacks from multiple angles. You could open the maps up more, but Protoss would be underpowered.
And maybe this is bad adressed by the actual mscore? I mean, purify is good while you take the natural, but no more for the 3rd base, so mapmapkers in hots will be forced another time at this layout? I believe this is important, because deathball is surely a problem, but the real problem is how many times you see the deathball, actually in wol the psicap is reached sooo fast, sometimes you see @ 12:00 maxout for some characteristic of a race, isnt't this too much?
The problem is deathball per se, or having to see it almost every time? By no fixing this protoss aspect, the maps may remain the same of wol.. how things can change?
The only rule of this post is that I am not going to use the word "overpowered" or imply that a unit is "overpowered". This is only about unit design and nothing else.
What is the Deathball?
The deathball is something of a misnomer - something which I would say is often misused. For example, there is a lot of talk of an "air terran" deathball and a "mech" deathball. I would argue there is only really one example of a "mech" deathball which is thor/Hellion/banshee and that any deathball involving Siege Tanks can be countered with ease provided you do enough economic damage and scout it.
My definition of a deathball is the following:
An organisation of units which when combined allow for a large concentration of firepower into a small area which have a high chance of easily beating an opposing army with the minimum of positional or micro considerations.
A large group of units whose firepower overlaps is not a deathball. There has to be that consideration of it being a low maintainance requirement. This is the A move phenomenon - when an army can literally just click the back of another army of equal size and win without real consideration for positioning or engagement. There will be minimum consideration of spreading and concaves but nothing more than that.
Starcraft 2 Does Not Suck
It is important to note that THIS IS NOT A FUNCTION OF HOW THE GAME WORKS. Starcraft 2 is not designed for deathball play - this becomes very obvious whenever you watch a TvT, a TvZ or a well played early game ZvZ/ZvP. It is a matter of a handful of units causing this problem. It's got nothing to do with AoE being weak (AoE being stronger actually makes the deathballs that exist in the game even better), nothing to do with unit spreading, nothing to do with large groups of units being allowed. All of these reasons are not solving the symptom of the problem. You would still have deathballs even if you allowed maximum of 12 unit control groups. Protoss would still do the following:
The only change would be to turn the game into a mess of who could click 1a 2a 3a 4a 5a faster only now it'd be even harder for, say, a terran to deal with said deathball since they would now have to actively split five control groups, not just one and keep track of them all.
So why then does the deathball exist? Well, to understand this, we need to look at units which are good. What are the properties of a good unit?
- it has obvious exploitable weaknesses - it is strong when used for what it is supposed to be used for - it has a high skill cap for usage - it be used in a variety of situations without completely dominating all opposition in those situations - it has subtle micro which allow it to overcome weaknesses
Examples of really rewarding units are the Marine, the Phoenix, the Mutalisk, the Siege Tank, the Stalker, the Hellion and the zergling. Each of them shares the above in common.
They all have easily exploitable weaknesses, be it to units, positioning or their survivability. How many times do we have to watch 30 Marines die to a fungal before people recognise how weak their survivability actually is. The idea that we consider a 10HP upgrade critical to their survival should be clue enough. This is true of all of the above units - Phoenix can't shoot down without energy, Hellions do incredibly low DPS unless microed, Stalkers do low DPS and require micro to trade evenly against anything, Siege Tanks have minimum range and the zergling can't shoot range at all.
All of them present strong micro management opportunities and are strong both in large and small groups. A single Siege Tank is capable of holding off any number of all ins almost by its mere existence. I am not going to go through each and every unit in detail in order to describe how they fit those criteria - I will just assume that most people can see this.
There are units which also fit this description, but are not necessarily as well balanced as these units. These include the typical blame culprits for the deathball, the roach and the marauder. They tend not to fit the 4th criteria - they are usually weaker than the other units mentioned but tend to be more survivable and thus easier to use. This is fine. By design, they find it hard to fit into a deathball though occasionally through sheer macro we see them used in that way. However, pit them against a prepared army (Marine/Siege Tank, colossi, HTs, fungals) and they quickly melt in a way a deathball simply doesn't.
Why Then Does The Deathball Exist?
This brings us back to our question. It exists because it is the optimum way for certain units in the game to be integrated into an army. It does not exist because of splitting (in fact, most deathballs would be improved by innate splitting) nor does it exist because of control groups. There are just some units that work best in a big ball of death.
These units are actually a lot less common than you think. Common thought on the matter is that most units in the game work best in a deathball. This is not true. The ideal Marine engagement is one long line with the largest surface area possible to engage the largest number of units at once while advancing towards the opponent. The ideal Stalker engagement depends on the opponent's range - opponents with a shorter range are best engaged in depth for blink micro. Longer range engagements are best dealt with up close, where the Stalker's sheer HP bulk can overwhelm them. For reference, see how most pros deal with roaches, colossi and thors respectively. The ideal baneling engagement involves attacks from multiple angles with basic splitting! The way most pros use banelings (a flood of them) is not ideal and indeed usually dies to a basic Marine split or tank split. This is not me theorycrafting. It is just an acknowledgement of basic geometry.
The units that are solely responsible for the deathball effect are the following:
- The Infestor - The Thor - The Colossus
Wait, WTF?
When was the last time you saw a deathball without one of those units in it? How powerful is an ultralisk broodlord deathball without infestors? How many times have you heard the words "he needs more infestors" said in a cast? Or "he's got too many colossi". Or "he could use some thors." What is interesting is how these units, different in design but fundamentally troublesome to use contribute to the same effect.
I'm only going to approach the Colossus in this post as that's all I have time for right now, but I'll cover the Infestor and the Thor later.
The Colossus
The Colossus is a unit which is an enigma. A Colossus, sat on its own in a field is a woeful thing. It's a piece of shit, really. It sits there, it can't micro away from air, it dies to anything short of 5 Marines. It might hold its own against maybe a third of its cost of zealots but even then it's probably going to lose its shields. The Colossus is a fragile thing.
Get five of them together and it's a different story. So why is this?
Firstly, it is mobile. you look at the other siege range units in the game (generally 7+) they share two properties. They are either incredibly immobile or they have obvious weaknesses which can be exploited on both planes that they are on. A Brood Lord is practically defenseless against air and extremely weak to a handful of Marines at its own cost. A Siege Tank holds ground incredibly well on the ground but get inside its range and it is boned. A Colossus suffers from the same problem, but is not immobile.
Think of it this way. If you catch a Colossus in the open with a group of Marines, you basically need to stim to kill it. If the Colossus is vaguely well microed, it backs off, fires, backs off, fires. It's been doing this since range 9. Your Marines take 10 damage from stim alone and 20 every single time it moves. No matter how you split, you're still going to take an incredible amount of damage. However, at the same time, the Colossus is RETREATING. It's moving damn near as fast as your stimmed Marines WHILE FIRING. This is also true of moving forward. There is no way to really outrange a Colossus. They keep coming, keep firing, move closer, keep firing, usually at the same speed as the units around them. The only real way to deal with them is to snipe them from the air, which is generally how you deal with them in the first place or, as Protoss do, Build More Colossi. More importantly, it allows a Colossus ball to keep pace with the army around it. Having a seige range unit with that much mobility is a huge problem.
Secondly and of equal importance is its method of firing.
Nearly all splash damage in this game is cylindrical with the height of the cylinder extending through the three planes through which units can travel, above, base or below. There are only two units in the game for whom this differs - the Hellion and the Colossus. Why is this such a big thing? I think the best way to describe it is to reference a picture (thanks Sennap for this).
Why is the Colossus unique? The optimum engagement angle for almost every unit in the game is a circle, meaning that on average, the best engagement when a complete surround is not possible is a concave. The Colossus firing mode is perpendicular to its direction of travel, meaning that if it is advancing, it is firing perpendicular to the direction it is going and this is similarly true of its retreat. This has important consequences:
1. The Colossus is always firing at the best possible angle to cause maximum damage to any army that is retreating or advancing toward or away from it. 2. It minimises the effectiveness of a Colossus flanking a position. The best possible engagement a Colossus can have is in a concave - exactly the same as a normal ranged unit. 3. Since there is no friendly splash damage, it allows for risk free engagements!
None of these are true for the Siege Tank. The best engagement a Siege Tank can have is not a concave but instead a widely spread carpet where it is acknowledged that some Siege Tanks are likely to die, but they make killing those Tanks extremely cost ineffective. A Siege Tank line has done its job when half of them are dead but every expensive unit in the enemy army died with them. However, it is possible to avoid an engagement with Siege Tanks. This is not true with Colossi, which can happily advance on you while doing a vast amount of damage.
Points 1 and 2 above are the most subtle. Point 1 is responsible for the "micro free" feel of the Colossus - as compared to the Hellion, where in order to take full advantage of its splash damage, you have to get in close. Point 2 is responsible for the deathball effect - with flanks being ineffective, the Colossus is best in a ball. Brood Lords do not suffer from this - a Brood Lord flank, provided they are properly protected, is devastating for the same reason a flank of zerglings is. Point 3 is also responsible for it feeling micro free. There is no cost to using them as there is with the Siege Tank.
How To Fix This?
The fix is more subtle than just "remove the Colossus." Contrary to popular opinion, I actually quite like what the Colossus represents. What I do think however is it needs a few changes. Those changes can come in a number of ways.
1. Change its mobility. The Colossus is a very easy unit to use. It is essentially micro free and over-commitments can't be punished due to the overlap of its splash damage. Cliff walking is a great idea and I like it. However cliff walking could be the main means it gets around, not just an addition to its already impressive array of abilities. One possible approach is to reduce its speed to Battlecruiser speed - 1.8 or less. This would result in it lagging behind the other Protoss units and would mean that engagements would be harder to choreograph. It would also make it much weaker to air units and ground units.
2. Change its firing mode. Instead of firing in an easy to micro line, change its firing method to a radius, an impact cone or a line parallel to its movement with corresponding damage zones. All of these would increase the effectiveness of flanks and decrease the effectiveness of Colossus balls in both TvP and PvP while having minimal effect on the damage output of the Colossus.
3. Add friendly fire. This is probably the hardest of the suggestions to implement without other changes (see above) but it would make Colossus use more risky. However this would probably result in no one using it.
I don't think that buffing AoEs or only being able to select one group really would stop deathballs or that space control units would. Not that I mind deathballs after TvT, PvZ is my favorite BW matchup and that revolves around the toss making 1 huge army and then rolling over the Zerg, while the Zerg has no such means and needs other ways to stop it. So one side being able to deathball is awesome. Right now especially the maps are at fault that deathballs are yay. If there is only one position you have to attack, then you don't need to split armies. And well 3 bases + production, can there be a better target. In BW there also was a ton of deathball play. But you could play against it and since one race had the better deathball most of the time, you had to work on beating the deathball in another way. There was a problem for the one going for one giant army in bw though. A deathball army was first of all slow and second of all you had to kill one base after the other, which gave the opponent enough time to attack at different positions and slowly kill off the deathball one by one. In Sc2 if your deathball arrived at one base you are at the doorstep to the production and all the other bases. And especially the toss deathball is freaking fast.
What really prevents deathballs is multiple positions far away from each other being important and the means to defend them, which means passive defenders advantage. So choke points vision advantages and all that stuff. Right now only the main and natural base of a starting location has those advantages, every other base on the map has just the defenders advantages that you build there. In BW as Zerg you didn't wanted to spawn cross on some maps against a Toss, if the Toss spawned North, you wanted to end up East because it meant you could expand on the West side of the map. If the Protoss attacked one location it didn't mattered because you had another equally good location and they exposed their tech and production to your army if they attacked.
If you don't want deathballs, there have to be multiple location on the map both players have to fight for, otherwise deathballs will happen, but thats what free defenders advantage is for. gives you the option to slow down the Deathball with less units. BW is a good example here with the highground mechanic, allowing a zerg to slow down a terran midgame push for quiet some time each highground that lies between the bases. If you hate deathballs with passion though and I have no idea why, look at Dawn of War2 for example, they eliminated deathballs, because you need to be scattered over the whole map or you lose. There are enough examples out there that show how to do it. But there is also another thing that has to be kept in mind, people want to play deathball style, because everything else is harder to play.
And well introducing new maps is a huge problem atm, since its easier if every map plays the same and tournaments testing new maps also gets problematic. Especially since maps often favor a matchup or the other so you need a veto system. New maps normally are a cheese-fest if forced or never get picked.
And even an instant nuke won't prevent deathballs, you will rather see those units protecting the deathball. I mean even Vortex doesn't stop Zerg from going full deathball, it just protects the toss deathball.
On October 07 2012 20:50 Evangelist wrote: What is the Deathball? My definition of a deathball is the following:
An organisation of units which when combined allow for a large concentration of firepower into a small area which have a high chance of easily beating an opposing army with the minimum of positional or micro considerations.
A large group of units whose firepower overlaps is not a deathball. There has to be that consideration of it being a low maintainance requirement. This is the A move phenomenon - when an army can literally just click the back of another army of equal size and win without real consideration for positioning or engagement. There will be minimum consideration of spreading and concaves but nothing more than that.
Our definitions of "deathball" are quite different and thus I have to disagree with a lot of your post. My definition doesnt include the "ball" part as literally as yours does. This part of the term comes from a bunch of units shaping themselves in a circular form while moving across the terrain. It is totally obvious that this shape shouldnt be kept when the fight starts, because then the "bigger concave" maxim takes over. Thus my definition of a deathball is as follows:
A deathball is a tight formation of units which moves as one in a very tight formation, even though there are different units in it and maximizes the firepower per attack area. Good mobility is an important part.
Thus a terran bio army is a deathball, Zerg units can be deathballs due to the swarming mass of their units (they mostly have ling/ling OR roaches, but rarely a mix).
On October 07 2012 20:50 Evangelist wrote: Starcraft 2 Does Not Suck
It is important to note that THIS IS NOT A FUNCTION OF HOW THE GAME WORKS. Starcraft 2 is not designed for deathball play - this becomes very obvious whenever you watch a TvT, a TvZ or a well played early game ZvZ/ZvP. It is a matter of a handful of units causing this problem. It's got nothing to do with AoE being weak (AoE being stronger actually makes the deathballs that exist in the game even better), nothing to do with unit spreading, nothing to do with large groups of units being allowed. All of these reasons are not solving the symptom of the problem. You would still have deathballs even if you allowed maximum of 12 unit control groups.
I have to diosagree again on the opinion of Starcraft 2 not being designed for deathball play, but that probably comes from our differing definitions of the term. Starcraft 2 is designed for one big army engaging another big army, which was impossible in BW due to the "movement collision" and the generally clunky movement AND the limitation of units per control group.
On October 07 2012 20:50 Evangelist wrote: Why Then Does The Deathball Exist?
This brings us back to our question. It exists because it is the optimum way for certain units in the game to be integrated into an army. It does not exist because of splitting (in fact, most deathballs would be improved by innate splitting) nor does it exist because of control groups. There are just some units that work best in a big ball of death.
These units are actually a lot less common than you think. Common thought on the matter is that most units in the game work best in a deathball. This is not true. The ideal Marine engagement is one long line with the largest surface area possible to engage the largest number of units at once while advancing towards the opponent. The ideal Stalker engagement depends on the opponent's range - opponents with a shorter range are best engaged in depth for blink micro. Longer range engagements are best dealt with up close, where the Stalker's sheer HP bulk can overwhelm them. For reference, see how most pros deal with roaches, colossi and thors respectively. The ideal baneling engagement involves attacks from multiple angles with basic splitting! The way most pros use banelings (a flood of them) is not ideal and indeed usually dies to a basic Marine split or tank split. This is not me theorycrafting. It is just an acknowledgement of basic geometry.
The units that are solely responsible for the deathball effect are the following:
- The Infestor - The Thor - The Colossus
In my opinion the three units you list are sooo totally different in their effect on the deathball: 1. The Thor .... has NOTHING to do with a deathball because it is a slow lumbering and huge unit that doesnt move well in combination with other units. 2. The Colossus ... is a core unit of the Protoss deathball in that it can walk among the Gateway units without disturbing them. Even though it has a slightly different speed (from Stalkers) its cliffwalking ability and range let it be a solid part of it. 3. The Infestor ... is what I call a "multiplier unit" in that it adds a skill which multiplies the damage capabilities of its races other units. Just like the Sentry with its forcefield is the Infestor able to "shape the battleground" by locking down parts of the opponent without any chance to "cure" it. Thus these multiplier units increase the potential of the rest of the army (the real deathball) by a big margin.
I think you have to take a step back and look at unit RTS concepts as a whole...what contributes to a deathball and what hurts it?
Simply put, units that contribute to economies of scale are death-ball units and units that contribute to diseconomies of scale are not.
Range Longer the range, the more apt it is to be a deathball unit. Why? In big deathballs units that have poor range can't fire over their own troops to hit the enemy, so have to waste dps running around the army. Range is ok for some units like siegers...but MUST be balance by an offsetting factor like a lack of mobility.
Unit Size Imagine if marines were as large as ultras but had the same range. They would be vastly inferior because they would crowd each other out of range of the battle ('friendly fire forcefields'). Simple put, larger unit footprints are less likely to be deathball units.
Mobiliity The faster the unit the more apt it is to be a deathball unit. Why? It increases aggregate DPS. The deathball can quickly destroy one army, then another expo, then another expo then other army. If the units were slow (like say siege tanks), the amount of damage you can do over a large area (spanning say three bases) isn't that great. Also fast units minimize positioning. You can have a terrific concave and tank placement, but a fast deathball can just run right through that, your positioning was irrelevant. Now fast units are ok...if nerfed elsewhere (like hp). So phoenix/zergling/reaper ok. Colossi not ok.
HP The more hp the more apt it is to be a deathball unit. Why? Because with lots of hp, it minimizes the ratio of positioning damage done compared to simple back and forth damage. I'm probably not explaining this well, but I know I'm right We don't want Warcraft3 boring back and forth bash-fest. Now units can have hp...but only if they have weaknesses elsewhere. Some units now have way too much HP are are clearly deathball units. Like Immortals/archons/roaches.
Supply cost Not the greatest way to balance deathballs as these can occur before you hit the 200 supply gap, but deathballs can be minimized by giving 'ball units' more supply cost.
Cooldown Longer the cooldown the better. More cooldown encourages unit bounce-micro into and out of the battle field. It also increases upfront damage, which emphasizes positioning over a-moving.
Overkill More overkill encourages prudent use of units. It creates clever strategies like mule/ling/zealot drops against siege tanks for example. It makes a unit less well rounded and vulnerable to t1 units. I would love to see the immortal be transformed into an overkill unit. Dramatically increase its cooldown, lose the hardened shield, decrease it's range and dramatically increase its damage. And you have a 'poor mans' reaver that actually require micro and can't be added to a deathball.
Open Terrain Deathballs like wide open areas so that all their units can fire at once. Deathballs hate to engage while walking through chokes/canyons and other constrictions. A map that looks like the badlands instead of kansas is good against deathballs.
Flying/Sky Walking Deathballs love fliers and 'sky walkers' (colossi) because they can stack and fly as the crow flies. This all increases DPS over a larger area of territory. That we don't see more fliers in deathballs (aside from medivac/viking/corrupter) is because the air-to-air units are so OP.
Economy Because deathballs reward economies of scale, players scramble to worker cheese as much as possible as opposed to doing early game back and forth. Would love to see the SC2 catalyst harshly reexamined (mules/injects/chronoes) to prevent drone cheese/OC cheese/chrone probe cheese. Other fixes exist as well. For example with zerg IMO, macro hatcheries that are built on creep should be constructed much faster than expo hatches off creep to encourage more early military engagements over expansion cheese.
Clumping The more elbow room a unit has the better. Because this will increase the deathball size and minimize ranged damage creating diseconomies of scale.
Acceleration/lateral movement Slow is better. Fast units don't have to worry about their or their enemies positioning as much.
Converging movement vs formation movement In SC2, units naturally ball up because they all try to stack on the same point you target. The more dense the unit group, the more apt it is to be a deathball. On the opposite end, formation moving lets units keep formation while moving together which encourages creative arrangements/lines/concaves while discourages baitballs. Plus, it would be so epic to see players group say marines to say GG and to march them across the map while keeping formation.
Again...some of these rules can be broken (and should be) if balanced by an appropriate weakness. The problem is that too many units in SC2 are too well rounded. The roach/marauder/colossi/immortal/archon/medivac for example and contribute to deathballs. If reexamined using the above principals it would be very easy to ensure that these do not become boring deathball units and become interesting and dynamic instead.
I do not thing AOE is a proper response. It's too simplistic (boom or bust, all or nothing) and players shouldn't be so dependent on it to fend of the deathball.
The new widow mine is an example imo of how to do it fairly well, and a good direction overall:
It has friendly fire and fairly short range, and if you do cause it to misfire you not only take huge damage, you render the unit pointless for another 40 seconds. It can't move and attack, and is difficult to position along with other Terran units in most straightforward army comps.
At the same time, it provides substantial space control for cost. The high burst aoe and cloaking forces the opponent to account for it, not just a single time, but actually get detection or plan around it in some way. And yet, there are countermicro tactics as well--sending a single scout unit first will sac the unit to render the wm pointless for a decent window, allowing runbys or hit and run tactics, but raising the skill ceiling higher on harass vs. a meching T (which is important, since Terran mech is so easy to punish with harassment).
I do think it needs further balancing in its current form, and should perhaps either hit later in the tech tree, lose the ability to hit cloaked, and/or get some kind of damage nerf (although not too much, given its huge cooldown--opponents should have to account for it rather than simply ignoring it)..
But the overall design is exactly what I'm looking for. Space control, rewarding of skill on both sides, encouraging players to put supply all over the map instead of in a single big army.
FWIW, I think the Tempest and the Oracle are both attempts to encourage Toss to break up supply around the map a bit more as well. The Tempests are very strange though and I'm not sure they're fulfilling any map control all that well right now. They seem to be best used to pick off Broodlords, and positioned if not immediately with the deathball, then at least not too far back. I suppose a 2 pronged army with capital ships in the back is somewhat better than literally all army supply being in one big ball, but its still not great. Moreover, while they are unusually shitty without focus fire and therefore a little bit rewarding of skill on the Toss side, outside of executing flanks and runbys to get at the tempests behind the army they don't seem to add much to the micro available to opponents. They're not terrible in breaking up PvZ deathballs a tiny bit in certain situations, but its honestly a fairly minor shift.
The Oracle currently sort of becomes less and less useful the later you go past the mid-game...which is precisely when the deathball becomes a big problem. The "harass spellcaster that can't do much in an army vs. army fight" idea is cool and all, but entomb and this new siphon spell are not gonna make a big impact by the stages of the game where Protoss is likely to be fielding a giant blog of Colossi and Gateway Units.
On October 08 2012 00:32 awesomoecalypse wrote: The new widow mine is an example imo of how to do it fairly well, and a good direction overall:
Two problems: 1. Why is a static and burrowed unit that shoots once every 40 seconds a good thing? 2. Do you really think you can control space with Widow Mines without sacrificing too much? These mines cost supply and are pretty passive units which cant really attack a serious group of units themselves. Walking up to a Protoss deathball and burrowing in 5 range doesnt work. Consequently - if you use a few Widow Mines - the rest of your army will be MUCH weaker compared to the full army of your opponent.
This thread is a nice read. I have one point though about death balls that has not been touched upon yet.
I think the SC2 game speed is too fast
I think, in addition to all the points that have been raised, the game being so fast is another factor. Armies die too fast not just because of AOE damage, the game itself is moving too fast. This adds to the unit clumping and pathing efficiency as well as the overall "game sense" each player has. The current "game sense" is macro as best you can then throw clumps of armies at each other, then micro a bit if there is still available APM.
Managing the effectiveness of an army via positioning is time consuming at the millisecond level. There is just no time to do it or it's not as cost effective to focus on it. Engagements are over to fast. This and the fact the we are not playing in LAN latency.
I think the only "unit-by-unit" micro available to the game is individual stalker blinking. Bad engagements feel like "you were caught off guard and poof" instead of "you should have pulled this and moved that forward while you drop-microed a few of those".
A very good example I think, is the effect of forcefields to a moving army. There is little time to manage armies against FF that's why it's so good. Say you are running units away, a few are trapped, by the time you even think of just letting the trapped ones attack a few times they are dead instead of having that one last hit to kill some red health enemy units.
If the game slows down a bit. Like just 1%-2% slower than the current game speed --managing smaller clumps of units becomes a lot easier. Imagine if you could just about react to seeing a Colossus start it's beam up, pulling at least a few units to the side or forward to avoid the beam, maybe saving half a unit each beam. Right not its hard to even blink away form colossus fire.
This is easily test-able by the way. Try to watch a replay at that normal speed. In engagements, you will see there are a lot of micro opportunities just not being taken, even by pros. These opportunities just come by faster than the typical network latency, no time to exploit them.
Maybe not even slowing the whole game, just adding some animation delays to units or slower projectiles might help.
Increasing the supply cost of units will actually encourage players to keep their armies together even more, due to the greater loss of each individual unit. You cannot afford to send a small amount of supply to operate independently from the main army.
Decreasing the supply cost of units will discourage deathballs by allowing players to usefully use smaller groups of units at different locations. Furthermore, there is less gain to having a huge army of smaller units in one place compared to a smaller army of bigger units. With the small units, in any confrontation, even if you win, you will still suffer casualties that need to be replaced. Bigger units have more HP and more damage, and can crush enemy armies with minimal casualties when they win decisively. Splitting this army up is foolishness. However splitting up the army composed of a large number of smaller units makes tactical sense.
On October 08 2012 01:22 Don.681 wrote: This thread is a nice read. I have one point though about death balls that has not been touched upon yet.
I think the SC2 game speed is too fast
I think, in addition to all the points that have been raised, the game being so fast is another factor. Armies die too fast not just because of AOE damage, the game itself is moving too fast. This adds to the unit clumping and pathing efficiency as well as the overall "game sense" each player has. The current "game sense" is macro as best you can then throw clumps of armies at each other, then micro a bit if there is still available APM.
Managing the effectiveness of an army via positioning is time consuming at the millisecond level. There is just no time to do it or it's not as cost effective to focus on it. Engagements are over to fast. This and the fact the we are not playing in LAN latency.
I think the only "unit-by-unit" micro available to the game is individual stalker blinking. Bad engagements feel like "you were caught off guard and poof" instead of "you should have pulled this and moved that forward while you drop-microed a few of those".
A very good example I think, is the effect of forcefields to a moving army. There is little time to manage armies against FF that's why it's so good. Say you are running units away, a few are trapped, by the time you even think of just letting the trapped ones attack a few times they are dead instead of having that one last hit to kill some red health enemy units.
If the game slows down a bit. Like just 1%-2% slower than the current game speed --managing smaller clumps of units becomes a lot easier. Imagine if you could just about react to seeing a Colossus start it's beam up, pulling at least a few units to the side or forward to avoid the beam, maybe saving half a unit each beam. Right not its hard to even blink away form colossus fire.
This is easily test-able by the way. Try to watch a replay at that normal speed. In engagements, you will see there are a lot of micro opportunities just not being taken, even by pros. These opportunities just come by faster than the typical network latency, no time to exploit them.
Maybe not even slowing the whole game, just adding some animation delays to units or slower projectiles might help.
At first - when SC2 came out - I thought that the game was too fast as well, because too much was happening on the screen, so you couldnt focus on anything (like a shark with a swarm of fish). Now I think the speed of the game doesnt need to be tuned down, because the speed of killing each others armies is so high because all the armies from both sides fit on one screen. With focused fire you eliminate the opposition rather fast, because the "dps per screen" is rather high. In BW you didnt have all your army on one screen, quite the opposite, but if you could have had it the results would be similar.
So the question is: How do you reduce the number of units per screen? That is the essential problem which makes the deathball so stupid and boring ... it is over too fast.
On October 08 2012 00:32 awesomoecalypse wrote: The new widow mine is an example imo of how to do it fairly well, and a good direction overall:
Two problems: 1. Why is a static and burrowed unit that shoots once every 40 seconds a good thing? 2. Do you really think you can control space with Widow Mines without sacrificing too much? These mines cost supply and are pretty passive units which cant really attack a serious group of units themselves. Walking up to a Protoss deathball and burrowing in 5 range doesnt work. Consequently - if you use a few Widow Mines - the rest of your army will be MUCH weaker compared to the full army of your opponent.
Well, the new widow mine seems to be a merge between a spider mine and to some extend a Vulture/Goliath (without range upgrade), since widow mines can regenerate missiles and move themselves (similar to vulture moving and planting several spider mines) and can shoot air (similar to Goliath, but at shorter range). Now I believe the tanks have to be made stronger and less mobile, and Terran will be quite good.
Not completely balanced yet (better than normal SC2, anyway), but it has a lot of what you are looking for. Please note that the OP post on that thread is not completely up to date, as there are fairly frequent updates. Please search for "starbow" on the Arcade. As it is not well known right now, you may meet us in channel starbow to find people to play with.
On October 07 2012 20:50 Evangelist wrote: The only rule of this post is that I am not going to use the word "overpowered" or imply that a unit is "overpowered". This is only about unit design and nothing else.
What is the Deathball?
The deathball is something of a misnomer - something which I would say is often misused. For example, there is a lot of talk of an "air terran" deathball and a "mech" deathball. I would argue there is only really one example of a "mech" deathball which is thor/Hellion/banshee and that any deathball involving Siege Tanks can be countered with ease provided you do enough economic damage and scout it.
An organisation of units which when combined allow for a large concentration of firepower into a small area which have a high chance of easily beating an opposing army with the minimum of positional or micro considerations.
A large group of units whose firepower overlaps is not a deathball. There has to be that consideration of it being a low maintainance requirement. This is the A move phenomenon - when an army can literally just click the back of another army of equal size and win without real consideration for positioning or engagement. There will be minimum consideration of spreading and concaves but nothing more than that.
Starcraft 2 Does Not Suck
It is important to note that THIS IS NOT A FUNCTION OF HOW THE GAME WORKS. Starcraft 2 is not designed for deathball play - this becomes very obvious whenever you watch a TvT, a TvZ or a well played early game ZvZ/ZvP. It is a matter of a handful of units causing this problem. It's got nothing to do with AoE being weak (AoE being stronger actually makes the deathballs that exist in the game even better), nothing to do with unit spreading, nothing to do with large groups of units being allowed. All of these reasons are not solving the symptom of the problem. You would still have deathballs even if you allowed maximum of 12 unit control groups. Protoss would still do the following:
The only change would be to turn the game into a mess of who could click 1a 2a 3a 4a 5a faster only now it'd be even harder for, say, a terran to deal with said deathball since they would now have to actively split five control groups, not just one and keep track of them all.
So why then does the deathball exist? Well, to understand this, we need to look at units which are good. What are the properties of a good unit?
- it has obvious exploitable weaknesses - it is strong when used for what it is supposed to be used for - it has a high skill cap for usage - it be used in a variety of situations without completely dominating all opposition in those situations - it has subtle micro which allow it to overcome weaknesses
Examples of really rewarding units are the Marine, the Phoenix, the Mutalisk, the Siege Tank, the Stalker, the Hellion and the zergling. Each of them shares the above in common.
They all have easily exploitable weaknesses, be it to units, positioning or their survivability. How many times do we have to watch 30 Marines die to a fungal before people recognise how weak their survivability actually is. The idea that we consider a 10HP upgrade critical to their survival should be clue enough. This is true of all of the above units - Phoenix can't shoot down without energy, Hellions do incredibly low DPS unless microed, Stalkers do low DPS and require micro to trade evenly against anything, Siege Tanks have minimum range and the zergling can't shoot range at all.
All of them present strong micro management opportunities and are strong both in large and small groups. A single Siege Tank is capable of holding off any number of all ins almost by its mere existence. I am not going to go through each and every unit in detail in order to describe how they fit those criteria - I will just assume that most people can see this.
There are units which also fit this description, but are not necessarily as well balanced as these units. These include the typical blame culprits for the deathball, the roach and the marauder. They tend not to fit the 4th criteria - they are usually weaker than the other units mentioned but tend to be more survivable and thus easier to use. This is fine. By design, they find it hard to fit into a deathball though occasionally through sheer macro we see them used in that way. However, pit them against a prepared army (Marine/Siege Tank, colossi, HTs, fungals) and they quickly melt in a way a deathball simply doesn't.
Why Then Does The Deathball Exist?
This brings us back to our question. It exists because it is the optimum way for certain units in the game to be integrated into an army. It does not exist because of splitting (in fact, most deathballs would be improved by innate splitting) nor does it exist because of control groups. There are just some units that work best in a big ball of death.
These units are actually a lot less common than you think. Common thought on the matter is that most units in the game work best in a deathball. This is not true. The ideal Marine engagement is one long line with the largest surface area possible to engage the largest number of units at once while advancing towards the opponent. The ideal Stalker engagement depends on the opponent's range - opponents with a shorter range are best engaged in depth for blink micro. Longer range engagements are best dealt with up close, where the Stalker's sheer HP bulk can overwhelm them. For reference, see how most pros deal with roaches, colossi and thors respectively. The ideal baneling engagement involves attacks from multiple angles with basic splitting! The way most pros use banelings (a flood of them) is not ideal and indeed usually dies to a basic Marine split or tank split. This is not me theorycrafting. It is just an acknowledgement of basic geometry.
The units that are solely responsible for the deathball effect are the following:
- The Infestor - The Thor - The Colossus
Wait, WTF?
When was the last time you saw a deathball without one of those units in it? How powerful is an ultralisk broodlord deathball without infestors? How many times have you heard the words "he needs more infestors" said in a cast? Or "he's got too many colossi". Or "he could use some thors." What is interesting is how these units, different in design but fundamentally troublesome to use contribute to the same effect.
I'm only going to approach the Colossus in this post as that's all I have time for right now, but I'll cover the Infestor and the Thor later.
The Colossus
The Colossus is a unit which is an enigma. A Colossus, sat on its own in a field is a woeful thing. It's a piece of shit, really. It sits there, it can't micro away from air, it dies to anything short of 5 Marines. It might hold its own against maybe a third of its cost of zealots but even then it's probably going to lose its shields. The Colossus is a fragile thing.
Get five of them together and it's a different story. So why is this?
Firstly, it is mobile. you look at the other siege range units in the game (generally 7+) they share two properties. They are either incredibly immobile or they have obvious weaknesses which can be exploited on both planes that they are on. A Brood Lord is practically defenseless against air and extremely weak to a handful of Marines at its own cost. A Siege Tank holds ground incredibly well on the ground but get inside its range and it is boned. A Colossus suffers from the same problem, but is not immobile.
Think of it this way. If you catch a Colossus in the open with a group of Marines, you basically need to stim to kill it. If the Colossus is vaguely well microed, it backs off, fires, backs off, fires. It's been doing this since range 9. Your Marines take 10 damage from stim alone and 20 every single time it moves. No matter how you split, you're still going to take an incredible amount of damage. However, at the same time, the Colossus is RETREATING. It's moving damn near as fast as your stimmed Marines WHILE FIRING. This is also true of moving forward. There is no way to really outrange a Colossus. They keep coming, keep firing, move closer, keep firing, usually at the same speed as the units around them. The only real way to deal with them is to snipe them from the air, which is generally how you deal with them in the first place or, as Protoss do, Build More Colossi. More importantly, it allows a Colossus ball to keep pace with the army around it. Having a seige range unit with that much mobility is a huge problem.
Secondly and of equal importance is its method of firing.
Nearly all splash damage in this game is cylindrical with the height of the cylinder extending through the three planes through which units can travel, above, base or below. There are only two units in the game for whom this differs - the Hellion and the Colossus. Why is this such a big thing? I think the best way to describe it is to reference a picture (thanks Sennap for this).
Why is the Colossus unique? The optimum engagement angle for almost every unit in the game is a circle, meaning that on average, the best engagement when a complete surround is not possible is a concave. The Colossus firing mode is perpendicular to its direction of travel, meaning that if it is advancing, it is firing perpendicular to the direction it is going and this is similarly true of its retreat. This has important consequences:
1. The Colossus is always firing at the best possible angle to cause maximum damage to any army that is retreating or advancing toward or away from it. 2. It minimises the effectiveness of a Colossus flanking a position. The best possible engagement a Colossus can have is in a concave - exactly the same as a normal ranged unit. 3. Since there is no friendly splash damage, it allows for risk free engagements!
None of these are true for the Siege Tank. The best engagement a Siege Tank can have is not a concave but instead a widely spread carpet where it is acknowledged that some Siege Tanks are likely to die, but they make killing those Tanks extremely cost ineffective. A Siege Tank line has done its job when half of them are dead but every expensive unit in the enemy army died with them. However, it is possible to avoid an engagement with Siege Tanks. This is not true with Colossi, which can happily advance on you while doing a vast amount of damage.
Points 1 and 2 above are the most subtle. Point 1 is responsible for the "micro free" feel of the Colossus - as compared to the Hellion, where in order to take full advantage of its splash damage, you have to get in close. Point 2 is responsible for the deathball effect - with flanks being ineffective, the Colossus is best in a ball. Brood Lords do not suffer from this - a Brood Lord flank, provided they are properly protected, is devastating for the same reason a flank of zerglings is. Point 3 is also responsible for it feeling micro free. There is no cost to using them as there is with the Siege Tank.
How To Fix This?
The fix is more subtle than just "remove the Colossus." Contrary to popular opinion, I actually quite like what the Colossus represents. What I do think however is it needs a few changes. Those changes can come in a number of ways.
1. Change its mobility. The Colossus is a very easy unit to use. It is essentially micro free and over-commitments can't be punished due to the overlap of its splash damage. Cliff walking is a great idea and I like it. However cliff walking could be the main means it gets around, not just an addition to its already impressive array of abilities. One possible approach is to reduce its speed to Battlecruiser speed - 1.8 or less. This would result in it lagging behind the other Protoss units and would mean that engagements would be harder to choreograph. It would also make it much weaker to air units and ground units.
2. Change its firing mode. Instead of firing in an easy to micro line, change its firing method to a radius, an impact cone or a line parallel to its movement with corresponding damage zones. All of these would increase the effectiveness of flanks and decrease the effectiveness of Colossus balls in both TvP and PvP while having minimal effect on the damage output of the Colossus.
3. Add friendly fire. This is probably the hardest of the suggestions to implement without other changes (see above) but it would make Colossus use more risky. However this would probably result in no one using it.
This i think is one of the few truly Mind = Blown posts i have read. I await your continuation on the Thor and Infestor (Infestor i can easily see but thor..... hmmm)
Not completely balanced yet (better than normal SC2, anyway), but it has a lot of what you are looking for. Please note that the OP post on that thread is not completely up to date, as there are fairly frequent updates. Please search for "starbow" on the Arcade. As it is not well known right now, you may meet us in channel starbow to find people to play with.
Really love the attention brought to this thread, definitely think a better high ground advantage mechanic is necessary. If this happens then hopefully comes units and balances that can take advantage of it (ie tank buff). And finally hopefully opens up the options map makers have, ideally shifting towards the requirement to take more expansions than just 2 or 3 in a single game.
On October 09 2012 05:29 benzcity07 wrote: Really love the attention brought to this thread, definitely think a better high ground advantage mechanic is necessary. If this happens then hopefully comes units and balances that can take advantage of it (ie tank buff). And finally hopefully opens up the options map makers have, ideally shifting towards the requirement to take more expansions than just 2 or 3 in a single game.
benzcity07, I'm just curious, what do you think would be the best way to implement high ground advantage?
The unit pathing suggestion is a bad idea. That's basically asking the game to move your units in an illogical manner, because the units will no longer be trying to move precisely to the point you click, but only to the general area of the destination; I can only see this causing frustration among players about their units not going precisely where they want to go.
If you really want to change the way units path in a predictable manner, then just let the player draw a line with the attack move command that scales the units existing position against the line. This way players can choose between a small or large amount of spread simply by drawing a small or large line. Obviously this reduces the skill gap of spreading your units, but that is no different than the unit pathing suggestion. Also as a reminder you can still get a good spread of units by box selecting small groups of units and attack moving in a shape that mimics this kind of line; though it is obviously less effective and precise, it does require considerably more micro and thought in how your units are going to line up than any unit pathing automation suggestions. Here's a picture of what I mean by all this.
On October 09 2012 14:45 XenoX101 wrote: The unit pathing suggestion is a bad idea. That's basically asking the game to move your units in an illogical manner, because the units will no longer be trying to move precisely to the point you click, but only to the general area of the destination; I can only see this causing frustration among players about their units not going precisely where they want to go.
If you really want to change the way units path in a predictable manner, then just let the player draw a line with the attack move command that scales the units existing position against the line. This way players can choose between a small or large amount of spread simply by drawing a small or large line. Obviously this reduces the skill gap of spreading your units, but that is no different than the unit pathing suggestion. Also as a reminder you can still get a good spread of units by box selecting small groups of units and attack moving in a shape that mimics this kind of line; though it is obviously less effective and precise, it does require considerably more micro and thought in how your units are going to line up than any unit pathing automation suggestions. Here's a picture of what I mean by all this.
that's exactly what the variable in the data editor i posted does
it controls the size of the "magic boxes" which determine if your army is going to converge on one spot or move parallel to each other
apparently the size of the magic boxes are the same from sc1 to sc2, but the thing is when box selecting more than 12 units at once in sc1, the game would do the best it could to pick a chunk of units that all existed within a single magic box
furthermore because of the widescreen, and 3d angle, the game feels a lot more zoomed out. so a 6x6 grid feels a lot smaller even if the game engine considers it the same length of space
so they should really bump the magic boxes up so that they feel proportionately the same to sc1. if you just 1a your army across the map, it will still ball up, but right now as engagements currently go, because of how fast you can hit max in this game, you could easily have all 10 keys bound to a small control group and your units will still be converging
The problem with the magic box is that your units don't move where you want them to, they just remain in their exact formation until they get to the general area of the target. I also don't think having units keep formation by default is a very good idea. By requiring the player to draw a specific line if they want this type of movement, the units would be forced to keep formation within that line, and if you wanted to move them in a clump you would simply click and it would be like regular SC2. It also means that the units could spread out more with a very wide line (drawing on the minimap perhaps), or only slightly by drawing a small line.
As is indicated in the highest thing in the poll, the new widow mine is doing surprisingly well in at least partially fixing the deathball problem. Though once colossus are out it kind of becomes worthless.
Really the best change would just be replacing the colossus with something. Reaver is the obvious answer, but Blizzard has shown they can actually add back the mechanics needed in new ways (i.e., swarm host and the new widow mine are surprisingly dynamic units).
On October 09 2012 14:45 XenoX101 wrote: The unit pathing suggestion is a bad idea. That's basically asking the game to move your units in an illogical manner, because the units will no longer be trying to move precisely to the point you click, but only to the general area of the destination; I can only see this causing frustration among players about their units not going precisely where they want to go.
If you really want to change the way units path in a predictable manner, then just let the player draw a line with the attack move command that scales the units existing position against the line. This way players can choose between a small or large amount of spread simply by drawing a small or large line. Obviously this reduces the skill gap of spreading your units, but that is no different than the unit pathing suggestion. Also as a reminder you can still get a good spread of units by box selecting small groups of units and attack moving in a shape that mimics this kind of line; though it is obviously less effective and precise, it does require considerably more micro and thought in how your units are going to line up than any unit pathing automation suggestions. Here's a picture of what I mean by all this.
It's actually quite intuitive, and you get the capabilities of both bunching and keeping formation in sensible fashions. If you click far away, they move in formation, but within the magic box they bunch up. This actually matches more intuitively of what you want your army to do, while also adding core tactical mechanics to the game.
On October 09 2012 19:43 NATO wrote: As is indicated in the highest thing in the poll, the new widow mine is doing surprisingly well in at least partially fixing the deathball problem. Though once colossus are out it kind of becomes worthless.
Really the best change would just be replacing the colossus with something. Reaver is the obvious answer, but Blizzard has shown they can actually add back the mechanics needed in new ways (i.e., swarm host and the new widow mine are surprisingly dynamic units).
I fully support this notion. Actually I like how colossus looks (it seems to fit protoss lore and style much better than reaver). I dislike how it plays, but there are quite a few ways to make colossus much more interesting and less death-bally unit and still retain its looks and style: for example change their attack to be stronger, slower, semi-dodgable and follow a figure different from the horizontal line.
On October 09 2012 14:45 XenoX101 wrote: The unit pathing suggestion is a bad idea. That's basically asking the game to move your units in an illogical manner, because the units will no longer be trying to move precisely to the point you click, but only to the general area of the destination; I can only see this causing frustration among players about their units not going precisely where they want to go.
If you really want to change the way units path in a predictable manner, then just let the player draw a line with the attack move command that scales the units existing position against the line. This way players can choose between a small or large amount of spread simply by drawing a small or large line. Obviously this reduces the skill gap of spreading your units, but that is no different than the unit pathing suggestion. Also as a reminder you can still get a good spread of units by box selecting small groups of units and attack moving in a shape that mimics this kind of line; though it is obviously less effective and precise, it does require considerably more micro and thought in how your units are going to line up than any unit pathing automation suggestions. Here's a picture of what I mean by all this.
Someone made a custom map where they implemented this a few months ago, just seach modified movement. http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=349968 All that was different was that units tended to move in lines when going through chokes and around corners rather than a blob. This change would require for you to pre-split your ball in order for it to be effective, most players tend to ball their units up on purpose. Although it was a good idea, it turned out to have little impact on the protoss deathball.
I was in the process of creating this topic (death ball problem) for week now. Seems I wasted my time I'll just summarize it here.
More or less I don't think the problem is the deathball itself, rather what forces us to use deathball. Answer being very simple: There is no workaround to deathball in sc2, the only answer to deathball is a bigger deathball or lose the game. Everyone agrees on that.
1.Stronger positional units for better space control: game will become a 1-hour turtlefest. Which will boring be positioning and repositioning.
2. Different unit pathing: Meaning artificially mess up AI, not a good solution. But less clumping would help a bit.
3. New units with huge AOE and low DPS: HT, Infestors, Tank, Ghosts are all AOE, but they all got NERFED! why? because they were op, kill stuff too fast.
4. Stronger existing units with AOE: Make HT, Infestors, Tank, Ghosts op again, no pls.
5. Different map pool: 2,5 years with vast amount of different sets of maps didn't change deathballs. I doubt it'll help ever.
6.Highground advantage: Not sure about this, plus it puts lots restrictions on mapmaking.
7. Reduced unit supply costs / larger armies: Even bigger death ball!!! LOL!
8. Limited unit selection: Again, artificially limiting players capabilites? Lets remove unit ctrl binding that will be fun. NO.
10. More overkill: Change design of attack projectiles and animation timings? This is a bit too extreme.
11. Improved targeting AI for AOE units: this is ambigous. Plus it will make Colossi even more deadly.
Before I throw my theory at you, lets break down deathball. What makes deathball a DEATHBALL? Here are factors: 1. Its invincible, it can't be weakened by anything, except another deathball (which is by far our problem). 2. It doesn't need sustain. Simply put when you get your 200/200 army with 3/3 upgrades you don't care if you have any income. you can walk over entire map and kill everything the enemy has.
In the above listing factor 1 greatly contributes to factor 2. So we can narrow it down to one problem: INVINCIBILITY. Its very simple, once you get some sort of deathball (say 4 colossi+gateway units) you don't take any damage unless opponet throws same amount of units at you. Now imagine this: what if opponent could wear your ball down, with less but frequent attacking army (Everytime he attacks, he kills some gateway units). Obviously your ball weakens and you need too pour some fresh blood in it, therefore you need a healthy economy. What if, the opponent who was wearing down your deathball was dropping in to your base and killing workers same time. You lose. This is pretty much all we need, make balls less invincible and it should require sustain.
So one and only problem is: why balls can't be weakened by constantly attacking forces in todays' sc2??? Because they kill stuff too fast. Everything you throw at the ball gets vaporized in seconds with no damage done. Simply put, balls have too much damage output a.k.a Terrible damage syndrome (the term we used to use back in the days). But seriously when you think of terrible damage output all problems start to make sense: You can't fight enemy ball if you have less supply army, if you do you outright lose the game, because your damage to ball is minimal. Hence you have to keep your army together all the time. And only option is ball to ball fight.
If you look through SC2 patching history damage has always been nerfed, you can see the pattern, but maybe its only tip of the iceberg, did we nerf them enough? All we know is we found some balance between units, but they still do too much damage to each other. Blizzard just left it there.
TL DR My solution is to lessen overall damage of all units, so that: Death balls won't be invincible, and can be weakened with lesser forces. Harassing economy will be more impactful, since deathballs will require sustain. Big fights are microable, and positioning is very much relevant. Breaking up your army and attacking multiple locations will be much better option, since attacking with a single ball could be inefficient, ball will be weakened and slowed down by constant skirmishes.
If the colossus was given greater speed, to be able to fulfill some other function like cliffy harassing & retreating; anything but just being massed & A move at the right time; then reducing it's splash is a potential tradeoff.
What blizzard need to do to change death ball... Its need to become OLD SCHOOL BLIZZARD WC3 SC BW WC2 ....NOT NEW ACTIVISION BLIZZARD (WOW) many macer noob frendly gamer company...:D that is only thing blizzard need to do..
The question remains for what kind of players do you want to avoid the deathball syndrome ?
* If you want to void it for the casual gamer, meaning lowmasters to bronce, just let the camera zoom out more so these people have an easier strategic view. * Increase the sight range and make offensive and defensive scouting easier. * Armies have to have the options to retreat faster from a battle. So you can fait an attack somewhere while attacking with a smaller amount of units somewhere else.
The distance between bases has to increase (in correspondance with the scouting options). Have you ever seen a terran building a forward base meaning production facilities to feinforce his army faster ? No because the distances are to small to even matter.
More supplier, greater distances between bases, lesser chokes and more open ares between the bases and better scouting options would decrease the deathball likelyness in my opinion. If you have a small map where you just need to scroll half a screen or a screnn to the side to be in your second base, that encourages a huge deathball that just sweeps to all your bases. Spacial control is only important if there is really space to beginn with.
On October 16 2012 04:47 Holy_AT wrote: The question remains for what kind of players do you want to avoid the deathball syndrome ?
* If you want to void it for the casual gamer, meaning lowmasters to bronce, just let the camera zoom out more so these people have an easier strategic view. * Increase the sight range and make offensive and defensive scouting easier. * Armies have to have the options to retreat faster from a battle. So you can fait an attack somewhere while attacking with a smaller amount of units somewhere else.
The distance between bases has to increase (in correspondance with the scouting options). Have you ever seen a terran building a forward base meaning production facilities to feinforce his army faster ? No because the distances are to small to even matter.
More supplier, greater distances between bases, lesser chokes and more open ares between the bases and better scouting options would decrease the deathball likelyness in my opinion. If you have a small map where you just need to scroll half a screen or a screnn to the side to be in your second base, that encourages a huge deathball that just sweeps to all your bases. Spacial control is only important if there is really space to beginn with.
Thanks, that's interesting. I didn't think about better scouting before. So this can be easily realized via bigger open maps with more xel-naga towers, right?
On October 15 2012 22:54 bokeevboke wrote: I was in the process of creating this topic (death ball problem) for week now. Seems I wasted my time I'll just summarize it here.
More or less I don't think the problem is the deathball itself, rather what forces us to use deathball. Answer being very simple: There is no workaround to deathball in sc2, the only answer to deathball is a bigger deathball or lose the game. Everyone agrees on that.
1.Stronger positional units for better space control: game will become a 1-hour turtlefest. Which will boring be positioning and repositioning.
2. Different unit pathing: Meaning artificially mess up AI, not a good solution. But less clumping would help a bit.
3. New units with huge AOE and low DPS: HT, Infestors, Tank, Ghosts are all AOE, but they all got NERFED! why? because they were op, kill stuff too fast.
4. Stronger existing units with AOE: Make HT, Infestors, Tank, Ghosts op again, no pls.
5. Different map pool: 2,5 years with vast amount of different sets of maps didn't change deathballs. I doubt it'll help ever.
6.Highground advantage: Not sure about this, plus it puts lots restrictions on mapmaking.
7. Reduced unit supply costs / larger armies: Even bigger death ball!!! LOL!
8. Limited unit selection: Again, artificially limiting players capabilites? Lets remove unit ctrl binding that will be fun. NO.
10. More overkill: Change design of attack projectiles and animation timings? This is a bit too extreme.
11. Improved targeting AI for AOE units: this is ambigous. Plus it will make Colossi even more deadly.
Before I throw my theory at you, lets break down deathball. What makes deathball a DEATHBALL? Here are factors: 1. Its invincible, it can't be weakened by anything, except another deathball (which is by far our problem). 2. It doesn't need sustain. Simply put when you get your 200/200 army with 3/3 upgrades you don't care if you have any income. you can walk over entire map and kill everything the enemy has.
In the above listing factor 1 greatly contributes to factor 2. So we can narrow it down to one problem: INVINCIBILITY. Its very simple, once you get some sort of deathball (say 4 colossi+gateway units) you don't take any damage unless opponet throws same amount of units at you. Now imagine this: what if opponent could wear your ball down, with less but frequent attacking army (Everytime he attacks, he kills some gateway units). Obviously your ball weakens and you need too pour some fresh blood in it, therefore you need a healthy economy. What if, the opponent who was wearing down your deathball was dropping in to your base and killing workers same time. You lose. This is pretty much all we need, make balls less invincible and it should require sustain.
So one and only problem is: why balls can't be weakened by constantly attacking forces in todays' sc2??? Because they kill stuff too fast. Everything you throw at the ball gets vaporized in seconds with no damage done. Simply put, balls have too much damage output a.k.a Terrible damage syndrome (the term we used to use back in the days). But seriously when you think of terrible damage output all problems start to make sense: You can't fight enemy ball if you have less supply army, if you do you outright lose the game, because your damage to ball is minimal. Hence you have to keep your army together all the time. And only option is ball to ball fight.
If you look through SC2 patching history damage has always been nerfed, you can see the pattern, but maybe its only tip of the iceberg, did we nerf them enough? All we know is we found some balance between units, but they still do too much damage to each other. Blizzard just left it there.
TL DR My solution is to lessen overall damage of all units, so that: Death balls won't be invincible, and can be weakened with lesser forces. Harassing economy will be more impactful, since deathballs will require sustain. Big fights are microable, and positioning is very much relevant. Breaking up your army and attacking multiple locations will be much better option, since attacking with a single ball could be inefficient, ball will be weakened and slowed down by constant skirmishes.
I don't see how it would help at all. If damage is decreased for all units, units in a deathball will always be able to kill any smaller groups without losses via a bit more micro (pull damaged units behind your deathball etc). You suggestion increases micro potential, but it also magnifies the death ball problem greatly. With lower damage overall only death balls will be used in this game without any exception.
1.Stronger positional units for better space control: game will become a 1-hour turtlefest. Which will boring be positioning and repositioning.
2. Different unit pathing: Meaning artificially mess up AI, not a good solution. But less clumping would help a bit.
3. New units with huge AOE and low DPS: HT, Infestors, Tank, Ghosts are all AOE, but they all got NERFED! why? because they were op, kill stuff too fast.
4. Stronger existing units with AOE: Make HT, Infestors, Tank, Ghosts op again, no pls.
5. Different map pool: 2,5 years with vast amount of different sets of maps didn't change deathballs. I doubt it'll help ever.
6.Highground advantage: Not sure about this, plus it puts lots restrictions on mapmaking.
7. Reduced unit supply costs / larger armies: Even bigger death ball!!! LOL!
8. Limited unit selection: Again, artificially limiting players capabilites? Lets remove unit ctrl binding that will be fun. NO.
10. More overkill: Change design of attack projectiles and animation timings? This is a bit too extreme.
11. Improved targeting AI for AOE units: this is ambigous. Plus it will make Colossi even more deadly.
I will address 1, 5, and 6, since I'm the guy pushing really hard for better space control.
1) Space control generally doesn't exist until the midgame, meaning that the early-game is fairly unaffected. This means that it's still quite possible to do aggressive openings and punish players who expand early and try to turtle. Better space control results in a more interesting midgame, as players will be able to expand more quickly and safely, and gameplay will be based on strategic positioning rather than having a better composition (meaning that you can still break defenses, even if you have the "inferior army" to your opponent's main army). The lategame becomes more of an issue of economic warfare, rather than preparing for the big maxed versus maxed battle (which, of course, can still happen if both players opt to only protect 1-2 expos). Initially, we'd probably see more turtling, but as the game evolves, players (especially Koreans) will learn to play very aggressively and break open those defenses that seemed easier to hold before, and the game would slowly start to resemble BW again.
5) With better space control and the ability to secure more expansions more quickly, I think we'll see a shift in the way maps are made. I always expect, that in the long run, maps to serve the flow of the game, not dictate them. With the ability to expand more rapidly in the midgame and the eventual buff that would accompany AoE units to provide better space control, we will see larger maps with more expansions (and probably more asymmetrical expansions like Atlantis Spaceship and wider open spaces around those expansions to facilitate multiple attack angles. Certainly the idea of more powerful seige tanks or locusts that spawn every 15 seconds is a scary thought on a map like Daybreak, but would seem almost not important on a map as big as Tal'Darim Altar.
6) How does one deal with upgraded space control used offensively? For example, if terran does a 1-base tank push against a player who has early expanded, how can the expanding player hold? The simple and elegant solution to this is real highground advantage. 2 tanks on the high ground versus 2 tanks on the low ground will always win, whether the implementation is highground range, highground damage, or highground miss chances (BW style). I think it's quite obvious this should be added to the game, but which of the 3 solutions is the best? That's still up for grabs. Right now all highground advantage is taken away with any amount of flyers + scans + obs, effectively making highground vision TOO EASY. In any case, a real highground advantage allows players to take advantage of high ground during engagements, base defense, etc.
For the record, I like adding +1/2 range to units on the high ground. This allows terrans to break seige lines using terrain, allows all-ins to be stopped a little more effectively, while not producing a HUGE difference in large battles.
Hope you like my suggestions! It's all about space control! Only way to have a game reminiscent of chess or BW!
Limited unit selection is a stupid and archaic idea. You can try and physically restrict deathballs all you want, but people are still going to use them because it is the most efficient way to play a lot of the time. You need to incentivise splitting up of the army by doing stuff like designing more powerful AoE, introducing units that are cost efficient in small numbers so that multi pronged aggression is the best way to play. Artificially trying to restrict it by limiting unit selection won't do anything, people will still keep their whole army together; it will just take a few extra actions to move out the army around.
1.Stronger positional units for better space control: game will become a 1-hour turtlefest. Which will boring be positioning and repositioning.
2. Different unit pathing: Meaning artificially mess up AI, not a good solution. But less clumping would help a bit.
3. New units with huge AOE and low DPS: HT, Infestors, Tank, Ghosts are all AOE, but they all got NERFED! why? because they were op, kill stuff too fast.
4. Stronger existing units with AOE: Make HT, Infestors, Tank, Ghosts op again, no pls.
5. Different map pool: 2,5 years with vast amount of different sets of maps didn't change deathballs. I doubt it'll help ever.
6.Highground advantage: Not sure about this, plus it puts lots restrictions on mapmaking.
7. Reduced unit supply costs / larger armies: Even bigger death ball!!! LOL!
8. Limited unit selection: Again, artificially limiting players capabilites? Lets remove unit ctrl binding that will be fun. NO.
10. More overkill: Change design of attack projectiles and animation timings? This is a bit too extreme.
11. Improved targeting AI for AOE units: this is ambigous. Plus it will make Colossi even more deadly.
I will address 1, 5, and 6, since I'm the guy pushing really hard for better space control.
1) Space control generally doesn't exist until the midgame, meaning that the early-game is fairly unaffected. This means that it's still quite possible to do aggressive openings and punish players who expand early and try to turtle. Better space control results in a more interesting midgame, as players will be able to expand more quickly and safely, and gameplay will be based on strategic positioning rather than having a better composition (meaning that you can still break defenses, even if you have the "inferior army" to your opponent's main army). The lategame becomes more of an issue of economic warfare, rather than preparing for the big maxed versus maxed battle (which, of course, can still happen if both players opt to only protect 1-2 expos). Initially, we'd probably see more turtling, but as the game evolves, players (especially Koreans) will learn to play very aggressively and break open those defenses that seemed easier to hold before, and the game would slowly start to resemble BW again.
5) With better space control and the ability to secure more expansions more quickly, I think we'll see a shift in the way maps are made. I always expect, that in the long run, maps to serve the flow of the game, not dictate them. With the ability to expand more rapidly in the midgame and the eventual buff that would accompany AoE units to provide better space control, we will see larger maps with more expansions (and probably more asymmetrical expansions like Atlantis Spaceship and wider open spaces around those expansions to facilitate multiple attack angles. Certainly the idea of more powerful seige tanks or locusts that spawn every 15 seconds is a scary thought on a map like Daybreak, but would seem almost not important on a map as big as Tal'Darim Altar.
6) How does one deal with upgraded space control used offensively? For example, if terran does a 1-base tank push against a player who has early expanded, how can the expanding player hold? The simple and elegant solution to this is real highground advantage. 2 tanks on the high ground versus 2 tanks on the low ground will always win, whether the implementation is highground range, highground damage, or highground miss chances (BW style). I think it's quite obvious this should be added to the game, but which of the 3 solutions is the best? That's still up for grabs. Right now all highground advantage is taken away with any amount of flyers + scans + obs, effectively making highground vision TOO EASY. In any case, a real highground advantage allows players to take advantage of high ground during engagements, base defense, etc.
For the record, I like adding +1/2 range to units on the high ground. This allows terrans to break seige lines using terrain, allows all-ins to be stopped a little more effectively, while not producing a HUGE difference in large battles.
Hope you like my suggestions! It's all about space control! Only way to have a game reminiscent of chess or BW!
I really do like your suggestions! Sounds cool.
I'd just add that space control units have to become not only stronger, but also slower to re-position, so that it does not become a pure chess turtle-fest, and quick dynamics and fast aggressive action is kept past mid-game.
I wouldn't want death-balls gone completely, let them become situationally viable in some cases to diversify gameplay.
On October 15 2012 22:54 bokeevboke wrote: I was in the process of creating this topic (death ball problem) for week now. Seems I wasted my time I'll just summarize it here.
More or less I don't think the problem is the deathball itself, rather what forces us to use deathball. Answer being very simple: There is no workaround to deathball in sc2, the only answer to deathball is a bigger deathball or lose the game. Everyone agrees on that.
1.Stronger positional units for better space control: game will become a 1-hour turtlefest. Which will boring be positioning and repositioning.
2. Different unit pathing: Meaning artificially mess up AI, not a good solution. But less clumping would help a bit.
3. New units with huge AOE and low DPS: HT, Infestors, Tank, Ghosts are all AOE, but they all got NERFED! why? because they were op, kill stuff too fast.
4. Stronger existing units with AOE: Make HT, Infestors, Tank, Ghosts op again, no pls.
5. Different map pool: 2,5 years with vast amount of different sets of maps didn't change deathballs. I doubt it'll help ever.
6.Highground advantage: Not sure about this, plus it puts lots restrictions on mapmaking.
7. Reduced unit supply costs / larger armies: Even bigger death ball!!! LOL!
8. Limited unit selection: Again, artificially limiting players capabilites? Lets remove unit ctrl binding that will be fun. NO.
10. More overkill: Change design of attack projectiles and animation timings? This is a bit too extreme.
11. Improved targeting AI for AOE units: this is ambigous. Plus it will make Colossi even more deadly.
Before I throw my theory at you, lets break down deathball. What makes deathball a DEATHBALL? Here are factors: 1. Its invincible, it can't be weakened by anything, except another deathball (which is by far our problem). 2. It doesn't need sustain. Simply put when you get your 200/200 army with 3/3 upgrades you don't care if you have any income. you can walk over entire map and kill everything the enemy has.
In the above listing factor 1 greatly contributes to factor 2. So we can narrow it down to one problem: INVINCIBILITY. Its very simple, once you get some sort of deathball (say 4 colossi+gateway units) you don't take any damage unless opponet throws same amount of units at you. Now imagine this: what if opponent could wear your ball down, with less but frequent attacking army (Everytime he attacks, he kills some gateway units). Obviously your ball weakens and you need too pour some fresh blood in it, therefore you need a healthy economy. What if, the opponent who was wearing down your deathball was dropping in to your base and killing workers same time. You lose. This is pretty much all we need, make balls less invincible and it should require sustain.
So one and only problem is: why balls can't be weakened by constantly attacking forces in todays' sc2??? Because they kill stuff too fast. Everything you throw at the ball gets vaporized in seconds with no damage done. Simply put, balls have too much damage output a.k.a Terrible damage syndrome (the term we used to use back in the days). But seriously when you think of terrible damage output all problems start to make sense: You can't fight enemy ball if you have less supply army, if you do you outright lose the game, because your damage to ball is minimal. Hence you have to keep your army together all the time. And only option is ball to ball fight.
If you look through SC2 patching history damage has always been nerfed, you can see the pattern, but maybe its only tip of the iceberg, did we nerf them enough? All we know is we found some balance between units, but they still do too much damage to each other. Blizzard just left it there.
TL DR My solution is to lessen overall damage of all units, so that: Death balls won't be invincible, and can be weakened with lesser forces. Harassing economy will be more impactful, since deathballs will require sustain. Big fights are microable, and positioning is very much relevant. Breaking up your army and attacking multiple locations will be much better option, since attacking with a single ball could be inefficient, ball will be weakened and slowed down by constant skirmishes.
I don't see how it would help at all. If damage is decreased for all units, units in a deathball will always be able to kill any smaller groups without losses via a bit more micro (pull damaged units behind your deathball etc). You suggestion increases micro potential, but it also magnifies the death ball problem greatly. With lower damage overall only death balls will be used in this game without any exception.
I think you completely oversee what I'm trying to tell. Suppose this: you have an expansion with couple of spine crawlers and bunch of roach+infestors against bigger colossi/gateway army. And you have some mutas for harassing purposes, which are killing probes at enemy base. In high dps scenario (today's scenario), enemy will roll over your expansion, then pull back or proceed to attack rest of your base. Your production cycle won't be enough since his army will barely notice them (killing too fast). Now think if damage was reduced. Your initial spine crawler and bunch of roaches/infestor will buy enough time for your mutas to comeback and hold the enemy, which will let you have more production cycle to reach a sufficient supply to retaliate the attack. Resulting in: he lost probes, you didn't. Army-wise you're equal. But you are in economy lead now.
I know this is too much theory.I'll try to find a way to prove that with less dps you have more chance to scratch a deathball. But I think its pretty simple to understand. With high dps they're gonna one shot everything. For example: Roaches can't get close enough to shoot (0 damage), with low dps they can reach their targets and do some damage. This is pretty simple but it adds up.
On October 15 2012 22:54 bokeevboke wrote: I was in the process of creating this topic (death ball problem) for week now. Seems I wasted my time I'll just summarize it here.
More or less I don't think the problem is the deathball itself, rather what forces us to use deathball. Answer being very simple: There is no workaround to deathball in sc2, the only answer to deathball is a bigger deathball or lose the game. Everyone agrees on that.
1.Stronger positional units for better space control: game will become a 1-hour turtlefest. Which will boring be positioning and repositioning.
2. Different unit pathing: Meaning artificially mess up AI, not a good solution. But less clumping would help a bit.
3. New units with huge AOE and low DPS: HT, Infestors, Tank, Ghosts are all AOE, but they all got NERFED! why? because they were op, kill stuff too fast.
4. Stronger existing units with AOE: Make HT, Infestors, Tank, Ghosts op again, no pls.
5. Different map pool: 2,5 years with vast amount of different sets of maps didn't change deathballs. I doubt it'll help ever.
6.Highground advantage: Not sure about this, plus it puts lots restrictions on mapmaking.
7. Reduced unit supply costs / larger armies: Even bigger death ball!!! LOL!
8. Limited unit selection: Again, artificially limiting players capabilites? Lets remove unit ctrl binding that will be fun. NO.
10. More overkill: Change design of attack projectiles and animation timings? This is a bit too extreme.
11. Improved targeting AI for AOE units: this is ambigous. Plus it will make Colossi even more deadly.
Before I throw my theory at you, lets break down deathball. What makes deathball a DEATHBALL? Here are factors: 1. Its invincible, it can't be weakened by anything, except another deathball (which is by far our problem). 2. It doesn't need sustain. Simply put when you get your 200/200 army with 3/3 upgrades you don't care if you have any income. you can walk over entire map and kill everything the enemy has.
In the above listing factor 1 greatly contributes to factor 2. So we can narrow it down to one problem: INVINCIBILITY. Its very simple, once you get some sort of deathball (say 4 colossi+gateway units) you don't take any damage unless opponet throws same amount of units at you. Now imagine this: what if opponent could wear your ball down, with less but frequent attacking army (Everytime he attacks, he kills some gateway units). Obviously your ball weakens and you need too pour some fresh blood in it, therefore you need a healthy economy. What if, the opponent who was wearing down your deathball was dropping in to your base and killing workers same time. You lose. This is pretty much all we need, make balls less invincible and it should require sustain.
So one and only problem is: why balls can't be weakened by constantly attacking forces in todays' sc2??? Because they kill stuff too fast. Everything you throw at the ball gets vaporized in seconds with no damage done. Simply put, balls have too much damage output a.k.a Terrible damage syndrome (the term we used to use back in the days). But seriously when you think of terrible damage output all problems start to make sense: You can't fight enemy ball if you have less supply army, if you do you outright lose the game, because your damage to ball is minimal. Hence you have to keep your army together all the time. And only option is ball to ball fight.
If you look through SC2 patching history damage has always been nerfed, you can see the pattern, but maybe its only tip of the iceberg, did we nerf them enough? All we know is we found some balance between units, but they still do too much damage to each other. Blizzard just left it there.
TL DR My solution is to lessen overall damage of all units, so that: Death balls won't be invincible, and can be weakened with lesser forces. Harassing economy will be more impactful, since deathballs will require sustain. Big fights are microable, and positioning is very much relevant. Breaking up your army and attacking multiple locations will be much better option, since attacking with a single ball could be inefficient, ball will be weakened and slowed down by constant skirmishes.
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.
Linking the video so everyone sees. Much better unit movement if the game setting "Formation Diameter" is set to 50.
Yes! This is not a mod, just one setting in the game! Easily put in one patch and just as easily reverted. Might not even need a patch download!
If you like it, +1 and request for sticky this Bnet Thread.
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 15 2012 22:54 bokeevboke wrote: I was in the process of creating this topic (death ball problem) for week now. Seems I wasted my time I'll just summarize it here.
More or less I don't think the problem is the deathball itself, rather what forces us to use deathball. Answer being very simple: There is no workaround to deathball in sc2, the only answer to deathball is a bigger deathball or lose the game. Everyone agrees on that.
1.Stronger positional units for better space control: game will become a 1-hour turtlefest. Which will boring be positioning and repositioning.
2. Different unit pathing: Meaning artificially mess up AI, not a good solution. But less clumping would help a bit.
3. New units with huge AOE and low DPS: HT, Infestors, Tank, Ghosts are all AOE, but they all got NERFED! why? because they were op, kill stuff too fast.
4. Stronger existing units with AOE: Make HT, Infestors, Tank, Ghosts op again, no pls.
5. Different map pool: 2,5 years with vast amount of different sets of maps didn't change deathballs. I doubt it'll help ever.
6.Highground advantage: Not sure about this, plus it puts lots restrictions on mapmaking.
7. Reduced unit supply costs / larger armies: Even bigger death ball!!! LOL!
8. Limited unit selection: Again, artificially limiting players capabilites? Lets remove unit ctrl binding that will be fun. NO.
10. More overkill: Change design of attack projectiles and animation timings? This is a bit too extreme.
11. Improved targeting AI for AOE units: this is ambigous. Plus it will make Colossi even more deadly.
Before I throw my theory at you, lets break down deathball. What makes deathball a DEATHBALL? Here are factors: 1. Its invincible, it can't be weakened by anything, except another deathball (which is by far our problem). 2. It doesn't need sustain. Simply put when you get your 200/200 army with 3/3 upgrades you don't care if you have any income. you can walk over entire map and kill everything the enemy has.
In the above listing factor 1 greatly contributes to factor 2. So we can narrow it down to one problem: INVINCIBILITY. Its very simple, once you get some sort of deathball (say 4 colossi+gateway units) you don't take any damage unless opponet throws same amount of units at you. Now imagine this: what if opponent could wear your ball down, with less but frequent attacking army (Everytime he attacks, he kills some gateway units). Obviously your ball weakens and you need too pour some fresh blood in it, therefore you need a healthy economy. What if, the opponent who was wearing down your deathball was dropping in to your base and killing workers same time. You lose. This is pretty much all we need, make balls less invincible and it should require sustain.
So one and only problem is: why balls can't be weakened by constantly attacking forces in todays' sc2??? Because they kill stuff too fast. Everything you throw at the ball gets vaporized in seconds with no damage done. Simply put, balls have too much damage output a.k.a Terrible damage syndrome (the term we used to use back in the days). But seriously when you think of terrible damage output all problems start to make sense: You can't fight enemy ball if you have less supply army, if you do you outright lose the game, because your damage to ball is minimal. Hence you have to keep your army together all the time. And only option is ball to ball fight.
If you look through SC2 patching history damage has always been nerfed, you can see the pattern, but maybe its only tip of the iceberg, did we nerf them enough? All we know is we found some balance between units, but they still do too much damage to each other. Blizzard just left it there.
TL DR My solution is to lessen overall damage of all units, so that: Death balls won't be invincible, and can be weakened with lesser forces. Harassing economy will be more impactful, since deathballs will require sustain. Big fights are microable, and positioning is very much relevant. Breaking up your army and attacking multiple locations will be much better option, since attacking with a single ball could be inefficient, ball will be weakened and slowed down by constant skirmishes.
I don't see how it would help at all. If damage is decreased for all units, units in a deathball will always be able to kill any smaller groups without losses via a bit more micro (pull damaged units behind your deathball etc). You suggestion increases micro potential, but it also magnifies the death ball problem greatly. With lower damage overall only death balls will be used in this game without any exception.
I think you completely oversee what I'm trying to tell. Suppose this: you have an expansion with couple of spine crawlers and bunch of roach+infestors against bigger colossi/gateway army. And you have some mutas for harassing purposes, which are killing probes at enemy base. In high dps scenario (today's scenario), enemy will roll over your expansion, then pull back or proceed to attack rest of your base. Your production cycle won't be enough since his army will barely notice them (killing too fast). Now think if damage was reduced. Your initial spine crawler and bunch of roaches/infestor will buy enough time for your mutas to comeback and hold the enemy, which will let you have more production cycle to reach a sufficient supply to retaliate the attack. Resulting in: he lost probes, you didn't. Army-wise you're equal. But you are in economy lead now.
I know this is too much theory.I'll try to find a way to prove that with less dps you have more chance to scratch a deathball. But I think its pretty simple to understand. With high dps they're gonna one shot everything. For example: Roaches can't get close enough to shoot (0 damage), with low dps they can reach their targets and do some damage. This is pretty simple but it adds up.
Thank for your input, bokeevboke. You might be right, but it still seems limited to very few specific cases. Even in your example, a protoss deathball with decreased overall damage might not be able to kill the defences, but it will be able to soften them to the point when returning mutas might not be enough to hold. On the other hand, a protoss deathball in this example would not be softened almost at all, since with decreased damage a protoss player would be able to return most damaged units to the back of his deathball (provided that he is careful with infesters) and allow them to regenerate shields. So overall the economic damage made by mutas may be not worth it even with decreased damage for all units.
It is all pure speculation as well, but I don't see why reduced overall damage definitely makes deathballing less optimal. It might do it in one or two cases (and in some other cases make deathballs even stronger), but I doubt it would help in general.
More important concept seems to be not the damage itself, but rather the damage density:
On October 06 2012 04:42 Cloak wrote: DPS density is the core issue, or written another way, DPS/Surface Area. You either tackle ways of lowering the DPS, lower range, over kill, AoE that kills the DPS indirectly, or you lower the operable surface area, pathing, unit range, or physical space occupancy. Any other changes wouldn't have an effect really unless they lower that ratio down for all 3 races. SC2 is just a lot cleaner and smoother, so you get these unnaturally fluid army dynamics. We've hit the uncanny valley of army simulations, so now we need artificial blemishes to make it more interesting and aesthetic.
On October 15 2012 22:54 bokeevboke wrote: I was in the process of creating this topic (death ball problem) for week now. Seems I wasted my time I'll just summarize it here.
More or less I don't think the problem is the deathball itself, rather what forces us to use deathball. Answer being very simple: There is no workaround to deathball in sc2, the only answer to deathball is a bigger deathball or lose the game. Everyone agrees on that.
1.Stronger positional units for better space control: game will become a 1-hour turtlefest. Which will boring be positioning and repositioning.
2. Different unit pathing: Meaning artificially mess up AI, not a good solution. But less clumping would help a bit.
3. New units with huge AOE and low DPS: HT, Infestors, Tank, Ghosts are all AOE, but they all got NERFED! why? because they were op, kill stuff too fast.
4. Stronger existing units with AOE: Make HT, Infestors, Tank, Ghosts op again, no pls.
5. Different map pool: 2,5 years with vast amount of different sets of maps didn't change deathballs. I doubt it'll help ever.
6.Highground advantage: Not sure about this, plus it puts lots restrictions on mapmaking.
7. Reduced unit supply costs / larger armies: Even bigger death ball!!! LOL!
8. Limited unit selection: Again, artificially limiting players capabilites? Lets remove unit ctrl binding that will be fun. NO.
10. More overkill: Change design of attack projectiles and animation timings? This is a bit too extreme.
11. Improved targeting AI for AOE units: this is ambigous. Plus it will make Colossi even more deadly.
Before I throw my theory at you, lets break down deathball. What makes deathball a DEATHBALL? Here are factors: 1. Its invincible, it can't be weakened by anything, except another deathball (which is by far our problem). 2. It doesn't need sustain. Simply put when you get your 200/200 army with 3/3 upgrades you don't care if you have any income. you can walk over entire map and kill everything the enemy has.
In the above listing factor 1 greatly contributes to factor 2. So we can narrow it down to one problem: INVINCIBILITY. Its very simple, once you get some sort of deathball (say 4 colossi+gateway units) you don't take any damage unless opponet throws same amount of units at you. Now imagine this: what if opponent could wear your ball down, with less but frequent attacking army (Everytime he attacks, he kills some gateway units). Obviously your ball weakens and you need too pour some fresh blood in it, therefore you need a healthy economy. What if, the opponent who was wearing down your deathball was dropping in to your base and killing workers same time. You lose. This is pretty much all we need, make balls less invincible and it should require sustain.
So one and only problem is: why balls can't be weakened by constantly attacking forces in todays' sc2??? Because they kill stuff too fast. Everything you throw at the ball gets vaporized in seconds with no damage done. Simply put, balls have too much damage output a.k.a Terrible damage syndrome (the term we used to use back in the days). But seriously when you think of terrible damage output all problems start to make sense: You can't fight enemy ball if you have less supply army, if you do you outright lose the game, because your damage to ball is minimal. Hence you have to keep your army together all the time. And only option is ball to ball fight.
If you look through SC2 patching history damage has always been nerfed, you can see the pattern, but maybe its only tip of the iceberg, did we nerf them enough? All we know is we found some balance between units, but they still do too much damage to each other. Blizzard just left it there.
TL DR My solution is to lessen overall damage of all units, so that: Death balls won't be invincible, and can be weakened with lesser forces. Harassing economy will be more impactful, since deathballs will require sustain. Big fights are microable, and positioning is very much relevant. Breaking up your army and attacking multiple locations will be much better option, since attacking with a single ball could be inefficient, ball will be weakened and slowed down by constant skirmishes.
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.
Linking the video so everyone sees. Much better unit movement if the game setting "Formation Diameter" is set to 50.
Yes! This is not a mod, just one setting in the game! Easily put in one patch and just as easily reverted. Might not even need a patch download!
If you like it, +1 and request for sticky this Bnet Thread.
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.
Sounds relevant. Do you however think it might lead to problems with ramps and the need to totally rebalance all AOE and ranged units? Also isn't larger radius sort of equivalent to smaller range for ranged units?
On October 15 2012 22:54 bokeevboke wrote: I was in the process of creating this topic (death ball problem) for week now. Seems I wasted my time I'll just summarize it here.
More or less I don't think the problem is the deathball itself, rather what forces us to use deathball. Answer being very simple: There is no workaround to deathball in sc2, the only answer to deathball is a bigger deathball or lose the game. Everyone agrees on that.
1.Stronger positional units for better space control: game will become a 1-hour turtlefest. Which will boring be positioning and repositioning.
2. Different unit pathing: Meaning artificially mess up AI, not a good solution. But less clumping would help a bit.
3. New units with huge AOE and low DPS: HT, Infestors, Tank, Ghosts are all AOE, but they all got NERFED! why? because they were op, kill stuff too fast.
4. Stronger existing units with AOE: Make HT, Infestors, Tank, Ghosts op again, no pls.
5. Different map pool: 2,5 years with vast amount of different sets of maps didn't change deathballs. I doubt it'll help ever.
6.Highground advantage: Not sure about this, plus it puts lots restrictions on mapmaking.
7. Reduced unit supply costs / larger armies: Even bigger death ball!!! LOL!
8. Limited unit selection: Again, artificially limiting players capabilites? Lets remove unit ctrl binding that will be fun. NO.
10. More overkill: Change design of attack projectiles and animation timings? This is a bit too extreme.
11. Improved targeting AI for AOE units: this is ambigous. Plus it will make Colossi even more deadly.
Before I throw my theory at you, lets break down deathball. What makes deathball a DEATHBALL? Here are factors: 1. Its invincible, it can't be weakened by anything, except another deathball (which is by far our problem). 2. It doesn't need sustain. Simply put when you get your 200/200 army with 3/3 upgrades you don't care if you have any income. you can walk over entire map and kill everything the enemy has.
In the above listing factor 1 greatly contributes to factor 2. So we can narrow it down to one problem: INVINCIBILITY. Its very simple, once you get some sort of deathball (say 4 colossi+gateway units) you don't take any damage unless opponet throws same amount of units at you. Now imagine this: what if opponent could wear your ball down, with less but frequent attacking army (Everytime he attacks, he kills some gateway units). Obviously your ball weakens and you need too pour some fresh blood in it, therefore you need a healthy economy. What if, the opponent who was wearing down your deathball was dropping in to your base and killing workers same time. You lose. This is pretty much all we need, make balls less invincible and it should require sustain.
So one and only problem is: why balls can't be weakened by constantly attacking forces in todays' sc2??? Because they kill stuff too fast. Everything you throw at the ball gets vaporized in seconds with no damage done. Simply put, balls have too much damage output a.k.a Terrible damage syndrome (the term we used to use back in the days). But seriously when you think of terrible damage output all problems start to make sense: You can't fight enemy ball if you have less supply army, if you do you outright lose the game, because your damage to ball is minimal. Hence you have to keep your army together all the time. And only option is ball to ball fight.
If you look through SC2 patching history damage has always been nerfed, you can see the pattern, but maybe its only tip of the iceberg, did we nerf them enough? All we know is we found some balance between units, but they still do too much damage to each other. Blizzard just left it there.
TL DR My solution is to lessen overall damage of all units, so that: Death balls won't be invincible, and can be weakened with lesser forces. Harassing economy will be more impactful, since deathballs will require sustain. Big fights are microable, and positioning is very much relevant. Breaking up your army and attacking multiple locations will be much better option, since attacking with a single ball could be inefficient, ball will be weakened and slowed down by constant skirmishes.
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.
Linking the video so everyone sees. Much better unit movement if the game setting "Formation Diameter" is set to 50.
Yes! This is not a mod, just one setting in the game! Easily put in one patch and just as easily reverted. Might not even need a patch download!
If you like it, +1 and request for sticky this Bnet Thread.
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.
Sounds relevant. Do you however think it might lead to problems with ramps and the need to totally rebalance all AOE and ranged units? Also isn't larger radius sort of equivalent to smaller range for ranged units?
Yes, ramps and AOE would need to be looked at. And yes larger collision radius does equate to shorter range for ranged units. However, it depends on the situation, bigger radius would almost act as a nerf to ranged units but is dependant on how big the army is. If you think about it 1 unit against 1 unit range isn't changed at all. So for smaller armies, the "range nerf" is almost negligible, but as the army grows the "range nerf" has more of an impact. This is exactly what we need to nerf the ball. It means that the bigger the ball the more range is nerfed. So players who are able to split up their army well and attack or defend in favourable positions/formations with the smaller armies will have the advantage. We need the advantage to be not the deathball, that is how we will see its demise in higher level play.
Obviously this will change the games dynamics considerably and a lot of balancing would need to be done. But it seems pretty obvious too that only a drastic change will stop deathballing at this stage. A few better positional units is not going to cut it, nor are AOE spells which just lead to momentary splitting. Blizzard is attempting to stop the deathball with AOE and positional units, but I feel it won't be enough. Fungal, storm, blinding cloud, etc haven't seemed to dissuade players from deathballing. And as I said before positional units seem to only add to the deathball in certain situations. I really feel that this change, although somewhat drastic, is what is needed to stop the deathball.
Lastly, if you look at BW, armies took up more surface area per supply than in WOL for a few reasons. The weak pathing system, the larger unit counts (due to lower supply units) and possibly that unit collision radius was larger most of the time (not so sure if this is totally true). The reason there was no deathball in BW seems to be largely due to the fact that it just wasn't possible and wouldn't have been optimal. Changing this one simple value for most WOL units would make things look and work a little more like BW.
What do you think all? Are there other issues that I'm overlooking? Would this be too drastic a change? Does my logic seem sound? I'm keen to discuss this as I think it is a viable option.
On October 15 2012 22:54 bokeevboke wrote: I was in the process of creating this topic (death ball problem) for week now. Seems I wasted my time I'll just summarize it here.
More or less I don't think the problem is the deathball itself, rather what forces us to use deathball. Answer being very simple: There is no workaround to deathball in sc2, the only answer to deathball is a bigger deathball or lose the game. Everyone agrees on that.
1.Stronger positional units for better space control: game will become a 1-hour turtlefest. Which will boring be positioning and repositioning.
2. Different unit pathing: Meaning artificially mess up AI, not a good solution. But less clumping would help a bit.
3. New units with huge AOE and low DPS: HT, Infestors, Tank, Ghosts are all AOE, but they all got NERFED! why? because they were op, kill stuff too fast.
4. Stronger existing units with AOE: Make HT, Infestors, Tank, Ghosts op again, no pls.
5. Different map pool: 2,5 years with vast amount of different sets of maps didn't change deathballs. I doubt it'll help ever.
6.Highground advantage: Not sure about this, plus it puts lots restrictions on mapmaking.
7. Reduced unit supply costs / larger armies: Even bigger death ball!!! LOL!
8. Limited unit selection: Again, artificially limiting players capabilites? Lets remove unit ctrl binding that will be fun. NO.
10. More overkill: Change design of attack projectiles and animation timings? This is a bit too extreme.
11. Improved targeting AI for AOE units: this is ambigous. Plus it will make Colossi even more deadly.
Before I throw my theory at you, lets break down deathball. What makes deathball a DEATHBALL? Here are factors: 1. Its invincible, it can't be weakened by anything, except another deathball (which is by far our problem). 2. It doesn't need sustain. Simply put when you get your 200/200 army with 3/3 upgrades you don't care if you have any income. you can walk over entire map and kill everything the enemy has.
In the above listing factor 1 greatly contributes to factor 2. So we can narrow it down to one problem: INVINCIBILITY. Its very simple, once you get some sort of deathball (say 4 colossi+gateway units) you don't take any damage unless opponet throws same amount of units at you. Now imagine this: what if opponent could wear your ball down, with less but frequent attacking army (Everytime he attacks, he kills some gateway units). Obviously your ball weakens and you need too pour some fresh blood in it, therefore you need a healthy economy. What if, the opponent who was wearing down your deathball was dropping in to your base and killing workers same time. You lose. This is pretty much all we need, make balls less invincible and it should require sustain.
So one and only problem is: why balls can't be weakened by constantly attacking forces in todays' sc2??? Because they kill stuff too fast. Everything you throw at the ball gets vaporized in seconds with no damage done. Simply put, balls have too much damage output a.k.a Terrible damage syndrome (the term we used to use back in the days). But seriously when you think of terrible damage output all problems start to make sense: You can't fight enemy ball if you have less supply army, if you do you outright lose the game, because your damage to ball is minimal. Hence you have to keep your army together all the time. And only option is ball to ball fight.
If you look through SC2 patching history damage has always been nerfed, you can see the pattern, but maybe its only tip of the iceberg, did we nerf them enough? All we know is we found some balance between units, but they still do too much damage to each other. Blizzard just left it there.
TL DR My solution is to lessen overall damage of all units, so that: Death balls won't be invincible, and can be weakened with lesser forces. Harassing economy will be more impactful, since deathballs will require sustain. Big fights are microable, and positioning is very much relevant. Breaking up your army and attacking multiple locations will be much better option, since attacking with a single ball could be inefficient, ball will be weakened and slowed down by constant skirmishes.
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.
Linking the video so everyone sees. Much better unit movement if the game setting "Formation Diameter" is set to 50.
Yes! This is not a mod, just one setting in the game! Easily put in one patch and just as easily reverted. Might not even need a patch download!
If you like it, +1 and request for sticky this Bnet Thread.
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.
Sounds relevant. Do you however think it might lead to problems with ramps and the need to totally rebalance all AOE and ranged units? Also isn't larger radius sort of equivalent to smaller range for ranged units?
Yes, ramps and AOE would need to be looked at. And yes larger collision radius does equate to shorter range for ranged units. However, it depends on the situation, bigger radius would almost act as a nerf to ranged units but is dependant on how big the army is. If you think about it 1 unit against 1 unit range isn't changed at all. So for smaller armies, the "range nerf" is almost negligible, but as the army grows the "range nerf" has more of an impact. This is exactly what we need to nerf the ball. It means that the bigger the ball the more range is nerfed. So players who are able to split up their army well and attack or defend in favourable positions/formations with the smaller armies will have the advantage. We need the advantage to be not the deathball, that is how we will see its demise in higher level play.
Obviously this will change the games dynamics considerably and a lot of balancing would need to be done. But it seems pretty obvious too that only a drastic change will stop deathballing at this stage. A few better positional units is not going to cut it, nor are AOE spells which just lead to momentary splitting. Blizzard is attempting to stop the deathball with AOE and positional units, but I feel it won't be enough. Fungal, storm, blinding cloud, etc haven't seemed to dissuade players from deathballing. And as I said before positional units seem to only add to the deathball in certain situations. I really feel that this change, although somewhat drastic, is what is needed to stop the deathball.
Lastly, if you look at BW, armies took up more surface area per supply than in WOL for a few reasons. The weak pathing system, the larger unit counts (due to lower supply units) and possibly that unit collision radius was larger most of the time (not so sure if this is totally true). The reason there was no deathball in BW seems to be largely due to the fact that it just wasn't possible and wouldn't have been optimal. Changing this one simple value for most WOL units would make things look and work a little more like BW.
What do you think all? Are there other issues that I'm overlooking? Would this be too drastic a change? Does my logic seem sound? I'm keen to discuss this as I think it is a viable option.
Actually I like your logic. It wouldn't change much for units with really big range, such as colossi or brood-lords (in fact it doesn't help vs air deathballs at all, but we are seeing many air deathballs anyway). Other than that it seems to be a good change.
I apologise if this has already been mentioned, but I for one would like to see small tweaks to create more divergence in the speed units move. I mean, the Protoss ball bar Templars moves at a pretty consistent rate, especially after charge is researched as well. For example, if Collosus move a good bit slower than they currently do, it would require constant re-positioning for a start.
This would be a small step in, at the very least making deathball positioning and control harder, without touching pathing and the spacing of units. While these and other fundamental issues also need addressed, this small change could have a surprisingly large impact in and of itself. Not to mention it can really easily be done and tested.
The main problem is the natural spacing/path-finding of the units. The fact that units in SC2 can stand shoulder-to-shoulder so close together creates so many problems...
it's so advantageous to keep units clumped up into a deathball where they can produce the most dps, whereas in sc:bw the units were always kind of separated, and so clumping them up was impossible. This made it silly to keep your units all in one army all the time. If only so many units can shoot at once in one area anyway, might as well spread them out across the map, right?
The problem is, if you could only fit 20 marines into the same area where you can fit like 50 or 80 marines now, the bio ball wouldn't play nearly the same way.... splash from colossus and templar and fungal wouldn't play nearly the same way... banelings wouldn't have the same effect... in other words, all of the key units of each race would have to be redesigned (which IMO would be the best thing Blizzard could do for their game right now).
So yeah, that's my 2 cents. Wish they would implement this for HOTS, but I'm probably not going to see that come to fruition.
Making stalkers able to fire and move almost instantly or atleast to the point that you could replicate dragoons in BW would be a subtle buff that would greatly increase the worthwhileness of using the stalker in smaller groups with a lot of active attention.
I think, by concept, deathball with right composition should be strongest. It should ,however, be punish on the mobility side. Two max army fighting, deathball with right composition and micro win. There is nothing wrong with it. The thing is that max death ball army should be really slow. Something like max terran army from sc bw. Player can choose to have super strong army with very slow mobility or few less powerful armys with better movement speed. As of now all deathball can cross the map in 30 sec which is way too fast in my opinion.
Colossi should do damage or kill friendly units that it "steps on." Just like war elephants in real life had some "friendly fire."
I like the idea of changing the unit grouping/pathing to limit deathball density. Perhaps, the grouping could be dense when the units are stationary but if in motion, they spread out? Like when cars in stopped traffic are allowed to move. The front ones pull ahead and their is some space between the cars before the ones in the back can move.
So it would be the whole strength or mobility give and take. Also, it wouldn't totally make things like banelings useless (or have to be redesigned,) as tight groups would still exist.
Ooooh I just thought of this, maybe limit the rate of fire of units firing from behind/through friendly units. Like in real life, a marine behind 5 rows of other marines, wouldn't be able to fire as freely as one in the front row. Both his field of fire and rate of fire would be reduced.
So some sort of algorithm, that would better balance the advantage of having units in front to 'tank' damage and act as shields, with the disadvantage of blocking ones own fire. Furthermore, unit size/height (plus I guess whether the target is on same level, high ground or in air) can be taken into effect. For example, a Stalker can shoot over the head of a zealot, and a Roach over a zergling, and maybe Marauder over a marine. But then, if one extrapolates out, one could argue that ranged units should have trouble hitting enemy units that are already being engaged by melee units (the melee units getting in the way.)
But I think i have the kernel of an idea there. But I don't know how difficult it would be to implement nor a great grasp on all of the ramifications.
Finally a ZERG thread in HOTS! I feel sick about all the Protoss and Terran threads in HOTS, whining about this and that, while ZERG is getting literally nothing except gimmick units (viperlol and swarlolmhost) that are sure to be nerfed or will be the clowns of the game when HOST is released.
While everyone looks to Protoss for the best Deathball because Colossus and HT paired with sentry stalker archon is probably the super Deadball. It is beaten by Infestor Corruptor Broodlord. I am bot sure what Blizzard could put in to help breaking that up. With the introduction of Vipers that deathball is only stronger. Using tempests doesn't help fight that deathball it only provokes them to attack you. Even with the Bonus to massive upgrade Tempest still do not deal decent damage vs Broodlords and they cut down on your stalker/archon count.
What about Terran They only really have vikings, or Marines but for Mech they don't have a decent Anti-Air unit Thors are aren't even a shadow of what Goliaths were to air in Broodwar. Maybe bringing back a warhound with anti-air and making Thors more siege line breaking without anti-air and shorting ground range with more HP
More splash damage is exactly the opposite of what the game needs.
Everyone is talking about the "deathball", but that is mostly a cosmetic issue. The real problem is:
1) Things have too much DPS, meaning armies die instantly
2) Abilities like force field and fungal essentially make engagements boil down to 2 seconds of spell casting. Everything after that is irrelevant
3) Gateways makes it so that winning one engagement = winning the game since as soon as you get an advantage all you need is to reinforce and it snowballs
The result is that you have those silly games where both players macro for 10 minutes then there's one engagement that lasts for seconds and the game is over. A major difference is that in BW things happened a lot slower.
To answer the question, I think units like the Swarm Host, Viper, Tempest and Mothership Core can be part of the solution, but it's not enough. As long as the deathball style is possible and so strong, people will chose that because it's the easiest and most solid way to play the game. Things need to be nerfed (the rooting ability of Fungal - and I'm a Zerg player btw; the gateway mechanic needs some limitation, same thing for the Collossus and the sentry although that last one will be hard to change) so that other ways to play get more viable.
On October 22 2012 17:09 SigmaoctanusIV wrote: While everyone looks to Protoss for the best Deathball because Colossus and HT paired with sentry stalker archon is probably the super Deadball. It is beaten by Infestor Corruptor Broodlord. I am bot sure what Blizzard could put in to help breaking that up. With the introduction of Vipers that deathball is only stronger. Using tempests doesn't help fight that deathball it only provokes them to attack you. Even with the Bonus to massive upgrade Tempest still do not deal decent damage vs Broodlords and they cut down on your stalker/archon count.
What about Terran They only really have vikings, or Marines but for Mech they don't have a decent Anti-Air unit Thors are aren't even a shadow of what Goliaths were to air in Broodwar. Maybe bringing back a warhound with anti-air and making Thors more siege line breaking without anti-air and shorting ground range with more HP
Tweaking Fungal could go a long ways to fixing the Infestor+Broodlord deathball. The combination of being both a damage-dealing and immobilizing spell shuts down a lot of counters to the Corruptors and Brood Lords. Hopefully, they'll be a rework of Fungal when the developers start making their rounds of changes to the existing WoL units in the HotS beta.
I'm okay with Terran anti-air right now, actually. To me, Vikings are the real spiritual successors to Goliaths while Thors are kinda more akin to Valkyries for their anti-air roles, which I'm fine with. Maybe bringing back the old Blizzcon version of the Warhound could be interesting since the Thor is pretty unwieldy.
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 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.
so true, we basically return to the same argument over and over... return to brood war standards.
every feature brood war had was perfect, why change it to worse ?
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.
I think you are right, and that it will also mean multiple other things. 'Deathballs' will be spread far enough however that there is plenty of room for micro, plenty of room for movement, plenty of room for retreating and making strategic decisions. Because of this, you can actually retreat, without having to lose at least half or 75% of your army which leads to you immediatly losing the game if you went ahead with a deathball vs deathball battle, and lost. (which is the case with the current sc2 deathball vs deathball scenario). However, it changes even more. Because units are more spread out, the damage per second at the moment the armies clash is far less. This is why there is more room for micro, movement and decisions. Another effect, is that smaller armies will be usefull again! Instead of being instantly annihilated by the blob, the army size that is smaller can actually do some damage to the larger army, because not all of the dps of the larger army is at the front of the battle. Smaller armies could still exchange unfavorably, but some units (Like tanks), have more firing time because they will launch a couple of shots, annihilate the first couple of units and be reloaded by the time the rest of the opponents army is near them. In the current situation, tanks fire once or twice, but since all the units are at the front they get overwhelmed within seconds. Because smaller armies are not almost inherently mean a waste of money, it is not useless for a player to attack multiple fronts. this means that the defending player can do two things: 1. Keep his army as a deathball and try to kill each group one by one. This will ofcourse work, and will kill the other army with somewhat of an advantage, but the other small groups still damage his economy. Since the player with the smaller armies all over the map wouldnt gain an immense disadvantage with engaging with smaller forces, he would have an ecomonic lead, still some forces, and could likely win the game. 2. Split up his forces to defend, counter attack, secure ground (yes, securing ground would be a lot more usefull and doable again). Attention of the two players would be needed everywhere, everywhere would need to be micro'd. Even with the new Hearth of the Swarm this would be great, since the new widow mine could secure ground against the smaller forces invading it.
However, this would mean some rebalancing of protoss. If you look at Broodwar, Protoss does not really have any way to hold ground easily, except for psistorm. However, psistorm is a shadow of what it was, and would in no way be able to server the same purpose. Ofcourse you had reavers but.. you don't have those in SC2, and collosi would not serve the same purpose. Also, marines were less strong (not only stat wise +15 hp, but were less fast, didn't turn so damn fast and had a longer back swing (which is basicly a charge up time before attacking), which all came back to less rediculously strong stutter step micro). Lurkers provided zerg with decent aoe ground holding abilities. The Swarm Host however wont serve the same purpose, but can to some extent. If charged at with a big army however, the Swarm Host will not come close to holding ground cost effectively.
My point is that overall, a lot of things were balanced differently, and I've come to realize that while the Pathing would solve a lot, it would also not be the only change needed. Storm would need to be reworked, as would serveral other units. If these things would be changed, it would be a Neil Armstrong kind of step.
What about gamespeed? Why isn't this an option. One of the main reasons people make deathballs and have 1 control group only, and spend like only 20% of the game actually controlling their units - is because of the speed of the game. Only GM + top masters have the mechanics and apm/map awareness to control several groups of units. Its just much easier to not play this way. Its sad but despite the fact that harrassing, microing and splitting up units is harder to do - if your macro slips at all you have to do tonnes of damage or else you will lose.
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.
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 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.
Are you suggesting bioballs aren't balls? I'm pretty sure clumped mmm do better except under aoe, which holds similarly for the other two balls.
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 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.
err. i thought the thread was called "What changes could help with death balls?", not "better balls"
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.
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 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.
I said earlier that Colossus creates a problem alongside clumping because it can walk over other units. I suppose though that if unit spacing was increased sufficiently the Colossus might not be such a problem. I do also like how it looks..
Warpgates are the cause of toss deathballs... Since everything is reinforced straight into the army sooo there's never a point where the army units are split up... Zerg death balls are currently caused by infestors whose spells allow z to defend until they get blords, and plus the 12 infestors they already made. These things are further amplified by every map being easy 3 base. I mean you can max out on two bases if you wanted.
Get rid of fungal and warpgates, (keep warp prism though) and I think lots of death to death ball engagements with decrease. Hopefully in HOTS the 200 army will be a hard point to reach
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).
Clumping is a big problem but infinite control groups contribute as well. Even with spacing the deathball will still exist if infinite control groups are kept in.
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).
Well, they gave stronger positional units such as widow mines and swarm hosts. That's a good change. Pathing more like BW/WC3 however is still lacking. Other redesigns (like making colossi more positional-oriented and making tanks slower to transform but stronger) are also appreciated.
On October 23 2012 09:03 My_Fake_Plastic_Luv wrote: Warpgates are the cause of toss deathballs... Since everything is reinforced straight into the army sooo there's never a point where the army units are split up... Zerg death balls are currently caused by infestors whose spells allow z to defend until they get blords, and plus the 12 infestors they already made. These things are further amplified by every map being easy 3 base. I mean you can max out on two bases if you wanted.
Get rid of fungal and warpgates, (keep warp prism though) and I think lots of death to death ball engagements with decrease. Hopefully in HOTS the 200 army will be a hard point to reach
What about the bioball? I disagree. There are a lot of reasons why the balling up is the strongest way to play most of the time for all races, not just one. Do you think that if you only took warpgates away Protoss would not make the powerful deathball?
I like the idea of that change to pathing. However, the potential still remains for players to still create the ball, as it says in the ball. Therefore good players will still create the ball any way they can, with a few more clicks, if it is the optimal way to play. Therefore by itself, I do not think it will stop deathball play at the high level. Maybe just for noobs!? This is why I think a slight unit collision radius increase to certain/most units is also necessary.
On October 23 2012 11:07 adacan wrote: Clumping is a big problem but infinite control groups contribute as well. Even with spacing the deathball will still exist if infinite control groups are kept in.
How so, do you think that high level players/pros will be unable to make a ball with small control groups? I doubt it..
Hahaha Fact... he is biggest problem in SC2 now.. :D
I'm not sure. Dustin is not the only one making the decisions in Blizzard, and in Blizzard they do listen to pros. Get enough pro support, and the change might go through. It worked with removing a Warhound after pros contacted Blizzard and explained why this unit does not fit SC2.
On October 23 2012 11:07 adacan wrote: Clumping is a big problem but infinite control groups contribute as well. Even with spacing the deathball will still exist if infinite control groups are kept in.
How so, do you think that high level players/pros will be unable to make a ball with small control groups? I doubt it..
I dont think they will, at least not as easily. Think of moving around a group of 120 lings as a ball. No way even a pro could move it back and forth like they can now. Then you add on macro and moving around other units it becomes that much more difficult.
To go a little more in depth on moving 120 lings as a ball. With infinite control groups u can acomplish this with one click. With 12 group limit it takes 10 clicks. Unless the clicks are perfectly timed, the lings will move more like a line, or 12 small balls. Also it is extremely difficult to make 10 control groups of just lings, so more likely people will just be boxing lings to move them, making it that much more difficult to move as a ball.
So what does this do? It makes aoe indirectly stronger. If 12 lings are coming at a time through a choke its a lot easier for a tank to deal with them then it is for the tank to deal with 120 coming at a time.
Control groups limits aren't a popular idea on tl, but I wish people would consider it a bit more. Remember reading somewhere that control groups were put in specifically as a design choice in warcraft 2, not because of technological limits. In my opinion the designers were on to something.
Giving more AoE to races other than toss would work, but that would keep armies too small. I would say nerf AoE, so that death ball armies act as larger normal armies, but do not get that death-ball stopping power. Nerf collossus, nerf fungal, nerf tank damage a bit. So even if armies get big, they behave as they should. Buffing AoE for everything will cause everything to just be smaller. It would also encourage timing/all in play instead of macro, while nerfing AoE doesn't.
I actually think Protoss is currently heading in a somewhat better direction in this regard. Neither Oracles nor Tempests are units you want hotkeyed with your main army--Tempests are best left somewhat behind so they can take advantage of their superior tange, and Oracles are so fast and fragile that if you keep them hotkeyed with your army they'll fly out ahead and get killed basically instantly by any enemy army of halfway decent sized.
If they are balanced properly (and I think they're getting closer, but aren't quite there yet) such that you want like 3-5 Oracles and 3-6 Tempests, thats about 20-40 supply that will not generally be clumped with your main army--you'll want Oracles popping in for a moment for a Timewarp or two, but otherwise out harassing all over the map, and Tempests should form a second line in the back with a bit of space from the main army. If you consider that factoring out workers most "200/200" armies are actually closer to 130 supply, taking out about 20-30% of that and putting it in other places on the map isn't a bad thing.
Simultaneously, they also help break up deathball play on the other side: Oracles are fast and destroy buildings very well, and static defense isn't great against them--but since they can't hit units, there is a strong incentive for player to actually use up supply to help defend expansions rather than relying on static defense and keeping all their supply in the deathball. And Tempests can force engagements with the Infestor-BL deathball before it hits crazy critical mass.
Like I said I'm not sure all the specific stats are completely correct right now, but I think the impulse to create anti-deathball units, and units that incentivize splitting up supply in more control groups and in more places, is very much a good one.
Hahaha Fact... he is biggest problem in SC2 now.. :D
I'm not sure. Dustin is not the only one making the decisions in Blizzard, and in Blizzard they do listen to pros. Get enough pro support, and the change might go through. It worked with removing a Warhound after pros contacted Blizzard and explained why this unit does not fit SC2.
The thing is that you need an OBJECTIVE look at the game and for people who are "too involved" in it that can be hard. Progamers are looking at it from their own race most likely and that is the same view that Blizzard has. The sad part is that it is the general mechanics (tight formations and unlimited unit selection) which are the real culprits. No one is looking at that or trying to change it ... as was seen by the rather depressing remarks from Blizzard about the modified movement.
So - for a truly objective view - you sometimes need people who are from the OUTSIDE, i.e. not playing, but with a good knowledge of the game and its problems ... ex.-players who hopefully know BW to be able to compare to another game.
On October 29 2012 16:10 winsonsonho wrote: Time warp looks like it might help in breaking up balls ;-) You definitely don't want your whole ball in a time warp at once...
Time Warp is VERY problematic, because you can easily negate the advantage of a choke point with it; just cast it in front of your opponents army to "push him back" and then move through the choke. It is super useful due to the duration and its size.
On October 29 2012 16:14 Sissors wrote: But you do want small chunks in the time warp so the protoss can easily mop up your army one group at a time?
Nope, wasn't saying it was not op, just saying it is more destructive to a larger ball. It takes more energy to use it a few times on smaller squads all over the map than a few times on one big ball..!? I'm sure Blizzard has just made it strong for testing and it'll be nerfed somewhat. Maybe it won't even make it through. I still think it's interesting and better used against a big ball as opposed to a few smaller ones..
Hahaha Fact... he is biggest problem in SC2 now.. :D
I'm not sure. Dustin is not the only one making the decisions in Blizzard, and in Blizzard they do listen to pros. Get enough pro support, and the change might go through. It worked with removing a Warhound after pros contacted Blizzard and explained why this unit does not fit SC2.
The thing is that you need an OBJECTIVE look at the game and for people who are "too involved" in it that can be hard. Progamers are looking at it from their own race most likely and that is the same view that Blizzard has. The sad part is that it is the general mechanics (tight formations and unlimited unit selection) which are the real culprits. No one is looking at that or trying to change it ... as was seen by the rather depressing remarks from Blizzard about the modified movement.
So - for a truly objective view - you sometimes need people who are from the OUTSIDE, i.e. not playing, but with a good knowledge of the game and its problems ... ex.-players who hopefully know BW to be able to compare to another game.
On October 29 2012 16:10 winsonsonho wrote: Time warp looks like it might help in breaking up balls ;-) You definitely don't want your whole ball in a time warp at once...
Time Warp is VERY problematic, because you can easily negate the advantage of a choke point with it; just cast it in front of your opponents army to "push him back" and then move through the choke. It is super useful due to the duration and its size.
Everyone has a bias, non-players still have favourite races and people who know BW might be biased to BW mechanics.. And you seem to be biased against Blizzard. Just chill, nothing is perfect, but I'm sure they're working on it.
On October 29 2012 21:49 Prodigal wrote: Keeping it simple, yet not even considering the simplest solution?
Reduce the range of all ranged units and turrents by 1.
That reduces the size of critical mass of units, and maximum dps of death balls in a fight significantly.
Edit: oh, did I mention this change buffs mid/late game battle hellions, early gateway units and medivacs?
A good idea.. That does simplify things :-) I still don't really like the way some units look squished together in a ball though. But I'm starting to think these kind of changes are too hectic for Blizzard to implement :-/
Death balls have never been visually appealing to anyone with a sense of strategy. In some games like civ, it looks nasty. But I've seen hundreds of anti death ball ideas, ranging from increased AOE, formations, pathing, number buffs/nerfs... But I've NEVER seen anything that would hint to messing with range.
The range idea actually might help, but it would mostly buff melee units and the force deathballs and clumps of units to move in closer to each other. Not sure if that is really good.
Which in turn buffs AOE... Though with smaller groups of units, we can start to change map conventions and make starting areas more wide and diverse.
All of Ps death balls clash at melee, hellbats will clash at near melee, everything except late game Z will clash at melee. Forcing death balls even closer gives opportunity for additional strategy in a death ball type scenario. Players will be forced to use additional space because not all of their units can attack at once in a death ball scenario. We'll see more flanks, AOE, air units (because they can stack)...
Don't forget that the strength of forcefield is dependent on the maps it's played on..
A much easier fix would be to have only 1 geyser per base. This limits tech. At the moment you can have Banelings into infestors, Colossi into Archons, Cloaked Banshees into Marine Tank. Less gas would force players to make careful decisions about what tech they are going in. Also slower tech = more vulnerable to turtle and tech up and max out. This would drag out the early/midgame and have more skirmishes.
Even just having variation in gas distribution would be an improvement. Why not have some maps have mains with one gas, others with two? What about having mains with 6 mineral patches, or 10? What about having a main with 8 patches and one gas, and an expansion with 12 patches and no gas, or 6 patches and two geysers?
I do think that rethinking the mining system so fewer workers are effective per base is a good idea, as it would make map control more important. However that would require a reconstruction of the entire unit roster from the ground up, as the game right now is very much about "the composition of your one army" rather than spreading them out over an area. Especially all the units new to SC2 are pitiful, boring fighters that work as part of a single army. Blame Browder- he worked on C&C Red Alert 2 and Generals, and both of those games had this exact problem.
On October 30 2012 07:04 GARcher wrote: A much easier fix would be to have only 1 geyser per base. This limits tech. At the moment you can have Banelings into infestors, Colossi into Archons, Cloaked Banshees into Marine Tank. Less gas would force players to make careful decisions about what tech they are going in. Also slower tech = more vulnerable to turtle and tech up and max out. This would drag out the early/midgame and have more skirmishes.
Easier? You'd have to rebuild the entire meta because both t and p won't be able to compete with Z economically.
My solution only effects engagements, which effects mid/late game compositions. Early game is untouched and fine
I would also like to see expansions that are more varied and more interesting/somewhat realistic maps. The current maps are too arcade-like (:-!).
Nerfing range I think would promote positional play at the highest levels.. When half your ball can't attack, it is a waste keeping them in the back, you'd prefer to flank. Also, you can at least damage a larger ball with a smaller one.
I also hate that collosus and toss' dependency on it. It feel it'll promote positional play too with toss if the colossus were slower. The ball would be less mobile.. I also hate its attack, I like the idea of giving it slight delay so it can be somewhat microed against and changing its aoe shape. It would probably then need a buff, I would hope that it could thus be made un-attackable by air-air(happiness).
I'm fairly sure it's for 90 percent completely related to pathing. If units acted like in bw (and the necessary aoe changes etc were made accordingly) you wouldn't have a deathball syndrome. But I'm pretty sure the collussus, broodlord/infestor and stuff like mutalisk (stacking/moving shot in general) would have to be changed as well.
With the collussus I mean, not being able to walk over other units and infestor fungal root changed (removed?).
Meh I don't really buy that people ACTUALLY don't want deathballs, I just think its a trendy excuse when they lose while attempting to do the exact same thing. The one matchup which is least built on building a huge army and a-moving with it is TvT, and the epitome of positional play in that matchup is tank v tank battles, which based on my experiences on ladder is a lot of people's least favorite thing to do (explaining why 1 base all-ins TvT are so common). Any pro TvT game inevitably has hordes of people calling it dull and boring. Chances are if any deathball reduction strategies were implemented, the moment players starte to realize that they needed to pay constant attention to unit positioning they'd QQ.
Ultimately people just wan to win, preferably without expending too much effort. All this "I hate deathballs" is just their way of trying to act superior because their deathball strat didn't work.
Meh I don't really buy that people ACTUALLY don't want deathballs, I just think its a trendy excuse when they lose while attempting to do the exact same thing. The one matchup which is least built on building a huge army and a-moving with it is TvT, and the epitome of positional play in that matchup is tank v tank battles, which based on my experiences on ladder is a lot of people's least favorite thing to do (explaining why 1 base all-ins TvT are so common). Any pro TvT game inevitably has hordes of people calling it dull and boring. Chances are if any deathball reduction strategies were implemented, the moment players starte to realize that they needed to pay constant attention to unit positioning they'd QQ.
Ultimately people just wan to win, preferably without expending too much effort. All this "I hate deathballs" is just their way of trying to act superior because their deathball strat didn't work.
On October 31 2012 02:36 YumYumGranola wrote: Meh I don't really buy that people ACTUALLY don't want deathballs, I just think its a trendy excuse when they lose while attempting to do the exact same thing. The one matchup which is least built on building a huge army and a-moving with it is TvT, and the epitome of positional play in that matchup is tank v tank battles, which based on my experiences on ladder is a lot of people's least favorite thing to do (explaining why 1 base all-ins TvT are so common). Any pro TvT game inevitably has hordes of people calling it dull and boring. Chances are if any deathball reduction strategies were implemented, the moment players starte to realize that they needed to pay constant attention to unit positioning they'd QQ.
Ultimately people just wan to win, preferably without expending too much effort. All this "I hate deathballs" is just their way of trying to act superior because their deathball strat didn't work.
I think you're missing an important point. At the highest level it's boring watching ball v ball play every game. Positional based play is more dynamic and hence more interesting and exciting to spectate. It takes more multi tasking, so obviously deathballs will still be used sub-pro level. But the point is that at the top level it allows players to show off their ability better. We surly want to see dynamic high level games and have the option to play a strong positional game? No?
Wouldn't lowering the amount of resources at each base really help in creating more small scale battles? Since you will have to expand more quickly I feel like it would speed up the gameplay and make the game better overall. But then again I haven't tried it so...
I hate Deathballs. I like smaller, more frequent, spread out engagements. Definetely 12-unit selection cap will help. It won’t be easy to play with the cap, but it will be much more interesting to watch pro plays.
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?
12-unit selection cap is ready solution which can be implemented very easily.
In BW we didn’t have deathballs. Blizzard just need to do things which worked in BW. But I’m afraid their pride will not allow them to do this.
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.
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.
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.
The problem with this, as many people have said before me is insufficient siege level splash damage for protoss. I think this can be solved by giving the tempest a huge AtG phystorm level attack, but make it so that the tempest needs to root (not move) in a pylon field for 5 to 10 seconds, also once it moves it needs to reroot before firing again. this way it cant really add to the classical deathball.
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.
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.
The problem is that with Tanks being made more efficient you would be kinda making any tight clump of infantry units pretty much useless.
The problem is that the positional units have no chance to survive against the tight formations of infantry. Sure they take a shot or two, but that wont kill the whole bunch and once the infantry is close to the Siege tanks the infantry can deal damage and the other Siege Tanks will kill them as well through the friendly fire splash damage. So the real problem is balancing the damage output of the Siege Tanks with the potential damage received by them. The current damage of the tanks would be ok, if the infantry couldnt get close as fast and especially in those HUGE numbers as it is the case in SC2 right now. Broodwar had the right ratio between both. Giving tanks more hit points/armor doesnt work at all, because that would make them "invincible" in any small encounter. So the best solution is to go back to an "infantry density" which is more like that from BW, because then the sneaky Viper abduct ability would have its use apart from fancy stuff and lobbing Infested Terrans to take shots would also be a requirement to break a tank position.
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.
A supply based cap - the idea of having a certain amount of room like in a dropship - doesnt work because of Zerglings. 24 Zerglings and especially Banelings would be too much clumping. The limited unit selection is the less important "fix" compared to changing the movement behaviour of the units, because 12 tightly packed Marauders can still demolish a lot rather quickly ... so they have to be "thinned out" through the basic movement to give any defender an advantage.
12 units is a nice compromise compared to basing the selection on supply, because moving your Siege Tanks to through the battle in groups of four is too tedious.
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.
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.
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.
In that case in late game we will always be watching Deathball against Deathball fight(If watching at all).
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.
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?
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)
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)!
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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!
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.
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
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".
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.
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 :-!
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.
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.
I think limited selection cap won’t alienate as many low skilled players as many in this thread think. Bronze-platinum players will just use more often tier 3 units (thors, battlecruisers, archons, broodlords, etc) thus having only one or two groups of unit selected.
And this thing that Dustin Browder suggests «I am of the opinion that pro players can and should spread out their units more by hand. The benefits are enormous.» is disguised limited selection cap. So why disguise it? Why not make limited selection cap?
One question when everybody is talking about "deathballs" what are you thinking of?
Because I can only think of the protoss ball and maybe of a terran mech "ball" in tvz. Teran bio works pretty well ins maller groups, same goes for most zerg compositions.
Ok broodlords/infestor/corruptor is pretty clumped as well but thats mostly because the infestors have to cover and give AA cover.
For protoss major reasons to stay clumped are the need to use forcefields and cover a maximum area and the fact that tightly grouped ranged units become extremely strong vs shortranged units.
I think the same is true for like thor heavy mech armies, if spread out they can lose much more easily vs lings and roaches.
In general longer ranged units will benefit from clumping vs short ranged units maximising the damage dealt before they can close in.
I say buffing the siegedamage and maybe the AoE in exchange for longer mode switching time is the way to go for terran. This will not break the game. It will make it like BW, terrans will have to leapfrog their tanks to be effective but if they do they are strong. It will also discourage clumped armies from attacking, but you can still attack if you lead with small groups of units to absorb the first shots or use infested terrans or immortals to soak up the first shots. This would increase the options for micro while making mech better.
For toss I think removing forcefields will have to be thought about at some point. And IMO a collossus nerf. If instead gateway units were more useful in smaller groups that would help.
Zerg is not clumping that much anyway, mostly due to their low range units.
That rendition doesn't even accomplish exactly what it set out to do. Lowering the mineral patches per base but keeping the mining rate the same accomplishes nothing. What you actually want to do is a combination of:
a. Lowering income rate. b. Implementing a harsher saturation curve.
That rendition doesn't even accomplish exactly what it set out to do. Lowering the mineral patches per base but keeping the mining rate the same accomplishes nothing. What you actually want to do is a combination of:
a. Lowering income rate. b. Implementing a harsher saturation curve.
Lowering the income rate is only one side of the fence that is needed. You also need to get rid of the production speed boosts for the races, because ...
1. the economic boosts are connected with the production boosts, 2. the production boosts are asymmetric and this provides a certain imbalance between the races (making mech harder to use because Siege Tanks cant be mass-produced) AND 3. because the production boosts are the real reason why there are masses of units on the field.
It's about 3 things: 1-AOE abilities 2-Ablity to move in formation to control AOE 3-Amount of resources available
1- To punish deathballs, aoe abilities should be on par with those in BW. In BW aoe abilities dealt more damage, had larger radius and well there were MUCH more of them available, whether the damage dealing AOEs or other control or defensive AOEs. This will reduce the appeal of "death balls" or "grab all your army and hit all his army" because increasing the number will only increase your losses. It'll be more about distraction and little "high priority" target engagement while maybe pressuring the opponent to use his abilities and eventually run out of them.
2- To be able to play against such aoe, you should be able to move in formation, the way units move in SCII make it much harder to reduce or control aoe. Simply changing aoe in sc2 won't do.
3-Resources should be more scarce. Whether it's the collection rate or simply the amount availabe per expansion, reducing these will make you opt for a more "efficient" army, and more efficient engagement rather than simply a bigger one. Moreover, since less resources collection rate means slower army building, waiting until you have a much bigger army will simply be out of the question. Moreover spending money on low tier units will put you in a disadvantage somehow.
On November 12 2012 21:36 Freeborn wrote: One question when everybody is talking about "deathballs" what are you thinking of?
Because I can only think of the protoss ball and maybe of a terran mech "ball" in tvz. Teran bio works pretty well ins maller groups, same goes for most zerg compositions.
Ok broodlords/infestor/corruptor is pretty clumped as well but thats mostly because the infestors have to cover and give AA cover.
For protoss major reasons to stay clumped are the need to use forcefields and cover a maximum area and the fact that tightly grouped ranged units become extremely strong vs shortranged units.
I think the same is true for like thor heavy mech armies, if spread out they can lose much more easily vs lings and roaches.
In general longer ranged units will benefit from clumping vs short ranged units maximising the damage dealt before they can close in.
I say buffing the siegedamage and maybe the AoE in exchange for longer mode switching time is the way to go for terran. This will not break the game. It will make it like BW, terrans will have to leapfrog their tanks to be effective but if they do they are strong. It will also discourage clumped armies from attacking, but you can still attack if you lead with small groups of units to absorb the first shots or use infested terrans or immortals to soak up the first shots. This would increase the options for micro while making mech better.
For toss I think removing forcefields will have to be thought about at some point. And IMO a collossus nerf. If instead gateway units were more useful in smaller groups that would help.
Zerg is not clumping that much anyway, mostly due to their low range units.
It was a bit confusing when the term "deathball" was first used a couple of years ago widely, but after reading more threads it was clear that a lot of people were referring "deathball" as a playstyle even though they were trying to explain it as a unit composition.
If 'deathball' was just a really powerful big ball of units that you make and then attack with, then there would be a HUGE number of deathballs in the game.
What people actually mean, or at least what i think they mean is 'deathball oriented play' where the entire game is oriented around turtling up to get one unstoppable unit composition. Playstyles such as standard zerg play where your entire play is aimed at getting optimal defense and turtling towards your Broodlord Infestor deathball. Or how some Protoss players just sit on a few bases waiting to get a 200/200 colossus based deathball, but we see this somewhat less now.
It results in boring games which most of the game doesn't have any action and ends in one or two big battles.
People just want games that are saturated with medium sized battles which are highly back and forth like how it was in BW.
That rendition doesn't even accomplish exactly what it set out to do. Lowering the mineral patches per base but keeping the mining rate the same accomplishes nothing. What you actually want to do is a combination of:
a. Lowering income rate. b. Implementing a harsher saturation curve.
Lowering the income rate is only one side of the fence that is needed. You also need to get rid of the production speed boosts for the races, because ...
1. the economic boosts are connected with the production boosts, 2. the production boosts are asymmetric and this provides a certain imbalance between the races (making mech harder to use because Siege Tanks cant be mass-produced) AND 3. because the production boosts are the real reason why there are masses of units on the field.
That is true. Well said. But such things can be adjusted, just like income rate. I like things which are mechanically demanding, but they should not have such an influence on the game...
On November 12 2012 23:25 twiiistch wrote: I don't understand why they do not add flags of the nationality of players while playing in competition. It adds information about the player.
User was warned for this post
Lol I didn't understand why you were warned but then I went through your post history and saw you had posted the same thing 4 times in a row.
Deathball: Quoting myself from another thread because yeah - there are plenty and now a new one:
I think one of the problems with deathball is, that there are so many units unable to function WITHOUT a deathball. Imagine a single colossus. Great right? It get sniped by a couple Maurauders, lings, Zealots.. There is no way this unit can be on its own. The same with A brood lord, or A tank. In BW the dmgoutput of a tank was massive.
Imagine the following: Dmg per "area" of units. If you have a deathball - you have the maximum dps per area. Why would you break it up? If you break it up the enemys damage per area will kill you because the same area with units outdps your smaller area of units split up. Just imagine a circle and a looooong line of units. The circle will kill the line without taking massive dmg.
Now imagine - just IMAGINE!!! for the sole purpose of demonstration a tank that make 200 splashdmg. Would you need 20 tanks to kill the enemy? No! You would maybe have like 2-3. Now what are you doing with the 17-18 tanks? You spread them over the map - getting control because the area the tank needs is able to dps evenly with an enemy deathball. Same with an HT who makes a 200 instastorm or instanuke for ghosts. You can spread it and have control because there is no REASON to keep them in you army. You are able to kill the enemy with fewer units because of SOME op units. This is how brood war was balanced.
Now if you wanna say: Aight dog, but that aint balanced na'mean? I say: You are right my rapper friend!
But its only a reason of numbers. Imagine a tank that makes enough dps per area that it would be bad to just blindly go in - 80 damage, maybe 60 - same with storm. Make storm + 50dmg against massive. Now let us enjoy the broodlord stacks and 1-2 storms killing them. They will NEED to spread BUT the damage per area will get lower and lower... suddenly... omg... the broodlord is not that tough anymore because you need to create a line. What are you going to to with it? You built fewer BL. Now you have more supply again. Nydusplay - maybe ultra as tanks. Multiprong attacks - etc etc. Do you think on daybreak you are not willing to attack the enemy army because of the 20 spines 23 bl and 10 infestor? No its the whole package - A psychological thread: The dps per area is MASSIVE! But if the Zerg would only have 19 bl, 9 infestors and 20 spines... you are just as fine as before. There is no mental change ala "Oh 2 BL less - lets head in, because the DPS per Area is still way bigger then everything you have. But now you have more supply to do damage on another point. Thats the problem with most "top zergs" who are not realizing the overcommitment of the "OP army" and why Life and stephano are so good. Stephano never overcommits on good units in the mid game (EXCEPT the "op" late game Brood/festor/spine). His zvt builds are bases around a splash of infestor to help his army - not to overwhelm. (As seen in LoneStarClash) and we all now his Roach timings where none of the "OP" units are needed to finish an enemy.
tl;dr
It took me time and and brainwork to write it - do the same.
Limited selection cap will fix many actual problems of sc2. Since units will clump up less Infestors and Colossus will become less effective. There will be more frequent, spread out engagements and microing of units during battles will become more important.
I just finished watching a long TvZ of Illusion vs Losira. Not a deathball in sight... constant back and forth action. Illusions macro and splits are amazing. Highly recommended if you want to see what SC2 could be in the future once strategies mature (without any changes for the supposed 'deathball' problem).
We need stronger positional units. It used to be that one could defend a base if a few lurkers/Tanks/Reaver. Try doing that in SC2. Mass units simply roll anysort of positional unit.
Heck WOL TvT is pretty much a game of Mass Marines.
On November 17 2012 04:55 GinDo wrote: We need stronger positional units. It used to be that one could defend a base if a few lurkers/Tanks/Reaver. Try doing that in SC2. Mass units simply roll anysort of positional unit.
Heck WOL TvT is pretty much a game of Mass Marines.
TvT is IMO the best MU because siege tanks just obliterate the mass marines when sieged (that is, unless you are playing a pure bio composition, then it's ridiculous that marauders just obliterate a tank line)... it's insane to just see the back and forth as both players calculate where to go and how best to intercept unsieged tanks etc.
On November 17 2012 04:55 GinDo wrote: We need stronger positional units. It used to be that one could defend a base if a few lurkers/Tanks/Reaver. Try doing that in SC2. Mass units simply roll anysort of positional unit.
Heck WOL TvT is pretty much a game of Mass Marines.
You obviously don't know how to play TvT past silver league.
Well they pretty much destroyed positional play for a big part by removing the lurker, dark swarm and the reaver. The lurker, might I add, is one of the most original, unique and interesting unit ive ever seen in an RTS. I understand they dont want sc2 to be brood war, but why out of all units did they have to remove the units that gave bigger advantages to people who used a lot of positional play. If they had removed it and replaced it with something similar, I would have been glad. But removing it and not giving anything in its place is a damn shame. The changed highground mechanic partially touches this problem aswell. As long as sc2 becomes more entertaining to watch, ill be glad. Starting with a 'fix' for the deathball would be a nice start imo. Thanks for the thread, its nice to see a lot of ideas gathered here.
On November 17 2012 07:52 []Phase[] wrote: Well they pretty much destroyed positional play for a big part by removing the lurker, dark swarm and the reaver. The lurker, might I add, is one of the most original, unique and interesting unit ive ever seen in an RTS. I understand they dont want sc2 to be brood war, but why out of all units did they have to remove the units that gave bigger advantages to people who used a lot of positional play. If they had removed it and replaced it with something similar, I would have been glad. But removing it and not giving anything in its place is a damn shame. The changed highground mechanic partially touches this problem aswell. As long as sc2 becomes more entertaining to watch, ill be glad. Starting with a 'fix' for the deathball would be a nice start imo. Thanks for the thread, its nice to see a lot of ideas gathered here.
Blizzard said they want to remove positional play.
Deathballs is not a "playstyle", its when you can make an giant army that will move around in a small space. Sc2 makes it so that since units naturally get too close to each other, and as they move they get even closer, to render this very possible. The other day I tuned into a broodwwar stream, and i saw sooo much units, then looked at supply and I was amazed it was around 130. The army was so spread out it was several screens long. It had to do with unit movement as well, as the armies would not flow violently forward unless there was some degree of freedom. In briodwar people realized that clumping units was imba as fk, and that's why muta stacking was so popular. You could not stack, or place very closely, ground units. Deathballimg is a natural state that will occur in sc2 because of clumping units on the pathfinding algorithm, where they are actually getting closer as you move the armies. This is the problem, this is what should be changed. Imo units should have a "comfort area" in addition to a collision area. This comfort area is basically the amount of spacing a unit wants to have upon arrival to a destination. Units would separate once they have arrived, as well as separate while on the move. Spamming move would squeeze them up to the collision area, but once idle, units would try to push each other again to their comfort zones. This would help by not restricting the pathfinding per se debut adding a simple ai behavior on top of the current system. I think this should be played with, and maybe mix it up with unit sizes.
On November 17 2012 08:18 iPAndi wrote: Deathballs is not a "playstyle", its when you can make an giant army that will move around in a small space. Sc2 makes it so that since units naturally get too close to each other, and as they move they get even closer, to render this very possible. The other day I tuned into a broodwwar stream, and i saw sooo much units, then looked at supply and I was amazed it was around 130. The army was so spread out it was several screens long. It had to do with unit movement as well, as the armies would not flow violently forward unless there was some degree of freedom. In briodwar people realized that clumping units was imba as fk, and that's why muta stacking was so popular. You could not stack, or place very closely, ground units. Deathballimg is a natural state that will occur in sc2 because of clumping units on the pathfinding algorithm, where they are actually getting closer as you move the armies. This is the problem, this is what should be changed. Imo units should have a "comfort area" in addition to a collision area. This comfort area is basically the amount of spacing a unit wants to have upon arrival to a destination. Units would separate once they have arrived, as well as separate while on the move. Spamming move would squeeze them up to the collision area, but once idle, units would try to push each other again to their comfort zones. This would help by not restricting the pathfinding per se debut adding a simple ai behavior on top of the current system. I think this should be played with, and maybe mix it up with unit sizes.
PD: writing from phone, excuse grammar!
The clumping is the result of trying to stop this sort of crap from happening.
On November 17 2012 08:18 iPAndi wrote: Deathballs is not a "playstyle", its when you can make an giant army that will move around in a small space. Sc2 makes it so that since units naturally get too close to each other, and as they move they get even closer, to render this very possible. The other day I tuned into a broodwwar stream, and i saw sooo much units, then looked at supply and I was amazed it was around 130. The army was so spread out it was several screens long. It had to do with unit movement as well, as the armies would not flow violently forward unless there was some degree of freedom. In briodwar people realized that clumping units was imba as fk, and that's why muta stacking was so popular. You could not stack, or place very closely, ground units. Deathballimg is a natural state that will occur in sc2 because of clumping units on the pathfinding algorithm, where they are actually getting closer as you move the armies. This is the problem, this is what should be changed. Imo units should have a "comfort area" in addition to a collision area. This comfort area is basically the amount of spacing a unit wants to have upon arrival to a destination. Units would separate once they have arrived, as well as separate while on the move. Spamming move would squeeze them up to the collision area, but once idle, units would try to push each other again to their comfort zones. This would help by not restricting the pathfinding per se debut adding a simple ai behavior on top of the current system. I think this should be played with, and maybe mix it up with unit sizes.
PD: writing from phone, excuse grammar!
The clumping is the result of trying to stop this sort of crap from happening.
I know what pathfinding is, is that what you thought upon reading my post? Please try a bit harder to understand d what people actually take time writing, and not just throw a video because you didnt actually pay attention. I stated NOT to change pathfinding, but instead add an additional ai comfort layer that will suggest units to move further from each other as they move and stay still.
On November 17 2012 08:18 iPAndi wrote: Deathballs is not a "playstyle", its when you can make an giant army that will move around in a small space. Sc2 makes it so that since units naturally get too close to each other, and as they move they get even closer, to render this very possible. The other day I tuned into a broodwwar stream, and i saw sooo much units, then looked at supply and I was amazed it was around 130. The army was so spread out it was several screens long. It had to do with unit movement as well, as the armies would not flow violently forward unless there was some degree of freedom. In briodwar people realized that clumping units was imba as fk, and that's why muta stacking was so popular. You could not stack, or place very closely, ground units. Deathballimg is a natural state that will occur in sc2 because of clumping units on the pathfinding algorithm, where they are actually getting closer as you move the armies. This is the problem, this is what should be changed. Imo units should have a "comfort area" in addition to a collision area. This comfort area is basically the amount of spacing a unit wants to have upon arrival to a destination. Units would separate once they have arrived, as well as separate while on the move. Spamming move would squeeze them up to the collision area, but once idle, units would try to push each other again to their comfort zones. This would help by not restricting the pathfinding per se debut adding a simple ai behavior on top of the current system. I think this should be played with, and maybe mix it up with unit sizes.
PD: writing from phone, excuse grammar!
The clumping is the result of trying to stop this sort of crap from happening.
You apparently didnt watch the video, because "fixing worker pathing" does not equate to "clumping up fighting units" and 90% of the video was about workers with less than perfect pathing. No one denies that this is "funny" at best and "bad" at a normal judgement level, but the clumped units are terrible and there can be a middle ground between the two options with taking the best of each. A lot of the pathing issues were most likely the result of mineral patches and buildings being implemented badly in combination with the simpler pathing system.
Personally I wouldnt think BW is as terrible as the "tight clumps of units crap" which SC2 has, because you can do something against many of the issues shown in the video (like smarter building placement next game) AND they looked like randomly (=NOT always) happening accidents, but you cant do anything to prevent your units from clumping up ALWAYS in SC2. Personally I would choose the "occasional nuisance" over the "permanent nuisance" all the time.
Clumping is a design choice in SC2 and it is a terrible choice ... kinda like "bad sequels for movies" which think that bigger explosions and more deaths equal a better film with more revenue. That is a false logic most of the time and it also applies to SC2 ...
On November 17 2012 08:18 iPAndi wrote: Deathballs is not a "playstyle", its when you can make an giant army that will move around in a small space. Sc2 makes it so that since units naturally get too close to each other, and as they move they get even closer, to render this very possible. The other day I tuned into a broodwwar stream, and i saw sooo much units, then looked at supply and I was amazed it was around 130. The army was so spread out it was several screens long. It had to do with unit movement as well, as the armies would not flow violently forward unless there was some degree of freedom. In briodwar people realized that clumping units was imba as fk, and that's why muta stacking was so popular. You could not stack, or place very closely, ground units. Deathballimg is a natural state that will occur in sc2 because of clumping units on the pathfinding algorithm, where they are actually getting closer as you move the armies. This is the problem, this is what should be changed. Imo units should have a "comfort area" in addition to a collision area. This comfort area is basically the amount of spacing a unit wants to have upon arrival to a destination. Units would separate once they have arrived, as well as separate while on the move. Spamming move would squeeze them up to the collision area, but once idle, units would try to push each other again to their comfort zones. This would help by not restricting the pathfinding per se debut adding a simple ai behavior on top of the current system. I think this should be played with, and maybe mix it up with unit sizes.
PD: writing from phone, excuse grammar!
The clumping is the result of trying to stop this sort of crap from happening.
You apparently didnt watch the video, because "fixing worker pathing" does not equate to "clumping up fighting units" and 90% of the video was about workers with less than perfect pathing. No one denies that this is "funny" at best and "bad" at a normal judgement level, but the clumped units are terrible and there can be a middle ground between the two options with taking the best of each. A lot of the pathing issues were most likely the result of mineral patches and buildings being implemented badly in combination with the simpler pathing system.
Personally I wouldnt think BW is as terrible as the "tight clumps of units crap" which SC2 has, because you can do something against many of the issues shown in the video (like smarter building placement next game) AND they looked like randomly (=NOT always) happening accidents, but you cant do anything to prevent your units from clumping up ALWAYS in SC2. Personally I would choose the "occasional nuisance" over the "permanent nuisance" all the time.
Clumping is a design choice in SC2 and it is a terrible choice ... kinda like "bad sequels for movies" which think that bigger explosions and more deaths equal a better film with more revenue. That is a false logic most of the time and it also applies to SC2 ...
Less is more!
Wow! That's really funny video. I however agree that patching can be fixed without adding clumping. Have a look at WC3 for example
On November 17 2012 08:18 iPAndi wrote: Deathballs is not a "playstyle", its when you can make an giant army that will move around in a small space. Sc2 makes it so that since units naturally get too close to each other, and as they move they get even closer, to render this very possible. The other day I tuned into a broodwwar stream, and i saw sooo much units, then looked at supply and I was amazed it was around 130. The army was so spread out it was several screens long. It had to do with unit movement as well, as the armies would not flow violently forward unless there was some degree of freedom. In briodwar people realized that clumping units was imba as fk, and that's why muta stacking was so popular. You could not stack, or place very closely, ground units. Deathballimg is a natural state that will occur in sc2 because of clumping units on the pathfinding algorithm, where they are actually getting closer as you move the armies. This is the problem, this is what should be changed. Imo units should have a "comfort area" in addition to a collision area. This comfort area is basically the amount of spacing a unit wants to have upon arrival to a destination. Units would separate once they have arrived, as well as separate while on the move. Spamming move would squeeze them up to the collision area, but once idle, units would try to push each other again to their comfort zones. This would help by not restricting the pathfinding per se debut adding a simple ai behavior on top of the current system. I think this should be played with, and maybe mix it up with unit sizes.
PD: writing from phone, excuse grammar!
The clumping is the result of trying to stop this sort of crap from happening.
Clumping is a design choice in SC2 and it is a terrible choice ... kinda like "bad sequels for movies" which think that bigger explosions and more deaths equal a better film with more revenue. That is a false logic most of the time and it also applies to SC2 ...
On November 17 2012 07:52 []Phase[] wrote: Well they pretty much destroyed positional play for a big part by removing the lurker, dark swarm and the reaver. The lurker, might I add, is one of the most original, unique and interesting unit ive ever seen in an RTS. I understand they dont want sc2 to be brood war, but why out of all units did they have to remove the units that gave bigger advantages to people who used a lot of positional play. If they had removed it and replaced it with something similar, I would have been glad. But removing it and not giving anything in its place is a damn shame. The changed highground mechanic partially touches this problem aswell. As long as sc2 becomes more entertaining to watch, ill be glad. Starting with a 'fix' for the deathball would be a nice start imo. Thanks for the thread, its nice to see a lot of ideas gathered here.
Blizzard said they want to remove positional play.
When did they say it by the way?
My opinion is that diverse game-play with multiple possible choices is better. I didn't like purely positional TvT in BW, and I really enjoy TvT in SC2. The problem is that TvT is IMHO the only really good match-up in SC2 at the moment. Most other match-ups include too much death-balling and desperately need more game-play diversity.
On November 17 2012 07:52 []Phase[] wrote: Well they pretty much destroyed positional play for a big part by removing the lurker, dark swarm and the reaver. The lurker, might I add, is one of the most original, unique and interesting unit ive ever seen in an RTS. I understand they dont want sc2 to be brood war, but why out of all units did they have to remove the units that gave bigger advantages to people who used a lot of positional play. If they had removed it and replaced it with something similar, I would have been glad. But removing it and not giving anything in its place is a damn shame. The changed highground mechanic partially touches this problem aswell. As long as sc2 becomes more entertaining to watch, ill be glad. Starting with a 'fix' for the deathball would be a nice start imo. Thanks for the thread, its nice to see a lot of ideas gathered here.
Blizzard said they want to remove positional play.
When did they say it by the way?
My opinion is that diverse game-play with multiple possible choices is better. I didn't like purely positional TvT in BW, and I really enjoy TvT in SC2. The problem is that TvT is IMHO the only really good match-up in SC2 at the moment. Most other match-ups include too much death-balling and desperately need more game-play diversity.
On November 17 2012 07:52 []Phase[] wrote: Well they pretty much destroyed positional play for a big part by removing the lurker, dark swarm and the reaver. The lurker, might I add, is one of the most original, unique and interesting unit ive ever seen in an RTS. I understand they dont want sc2 to be brood war, but why out of all units did they have to remove the units that gave bigger advantages to people who used a lot of positional play. If they had removed it and replaced it with something similar, I would have been glad. But removing it and not giving anything in its place is a damn shame. The changed highground mechanic partially touches this problem aswell. As long as sc2 becomes more entertaining to watch, ill be glad. Starting with a 'fix' for the deathball would be a nice start imo. Thanks for the thread, its nice to see a lot of ideas gathered here.
Blizzard said they want to remove positional play.
When did they say it by the way?
My opinion is that diverse game-play with multiple possible choices is better. I didn't like purely positional TvT in BW, and I really enjoy TvT in SC2. The problem is that TvT is IMHO the only really good match-up in SC2 at the moment. Most other match-ups include too much death-balling and desperately need more game-play diversity.
Well, they mentioned specifically that they wanted warhounds to be stronger than siege tanks on wide-open ground or with flanks, but they still wanted tanks to be stronger than warhounds in chokes. I am fine with such design. Anyway they ended up scraping warhounds to reduce death-balling.
I am starting to think that Terran is actually looking really good in SC2:HoTS regarding death-balling. What is really lacking is either viability for mech in TvP or strong options for Protoss to play without death-balls. Zerg endgame can also be improved somewhat further.
I think the question isn't "which of these will work" - because any one of these solutions could in fact break up death balls - the question is which is best for gameplay and spectating? Screen filling aoe, larger armies, improved aoe ai, etc do not really cut it in this regard. Positional units and bwesque troop movement are far and away the best suggestions because they actually make the game look and feel more exciting and tactical. Less clumpy armies make for better spectating, and longer battles. Better positional control units will make for more spread out, small scale engagements as players vie for key positions on the map using only chunks of their army. This already exists in sc2, but not nearly to the degree it existed in sc1, which was a more tactical and positional game in general.
Maybe huge aoe units or larger, low supply armies could achieve this as well but I think we all know how inelegant, clunky and boring-to-watch a solution that would be. Give me my hastily constructed, strategically placed minefields and slow moving, glass cannon reavers that are helpless without support and a shuttle. Give me my 2 lurkers under a swarm zoning out a much larger Terran force while the zerg main army cuts towards a now defenseless expo.
Best idea would be to have what BW had - reasons to not want to clump up. PvZ - Zerg wants to dance hydralisks away with micro because of high templar storm being really fucking strong. PvT - Terran tanks suck when they are clumped, they fire on the same unit resulting in overkill and leaves them open to their minimum range of fire being exploited. Also, mines would kill clumped units very quickly. PvP - Reaver. TvZ - Dark swarm on your clumped units = gg. TvT - Siege tanks - never a death ball scenario. ZvZ - Nature of the matchup never really allowed for a deathball unless you count a flock of mutalisks.
On November 23 2012 23:23 Salv wrote: Best idea would be to have what BW had - reasons to not want to clump up. PvZ - Zerg wants to dance hydralisks away with micro because of high templar storm being really fucking strong. PvT - Terran tanks suck when they are clumped, they fire on the same unit resulting in overkill and leaves them open to their minimum range of fire being exploited. Also, mines would kill clumped units very quickly. PvP - Reaver. TvZ - Dark swarm on your clumped units = gg. TvT - Siege tanks - never a death ball scenario. ZvZ - Nature of the matchup never really allowed for a deathball unless you count a flock of mutalisks.
I guess this is quite true. Aside from tank overkill and minimum range all these examples are simply strong AOE. I wonder why are so many people opposed to strong AOE in this thread...
I am trying to figure out what unit or composition of units allows Protoss to play positionally? Terran have tanks and now mines, Zerg now have swarm hosts. What do Protoss have that allow them to spread units across the map while still being able to hold position when somewhat outnumbered at that position? What am I missing?
Realistically neither tanks nor swarm hosts are strong enough to be spread. They become exponentially stronger when used in increasingly large groups, but are not individually powerful enough to be efficient alone or in small groups. So protoss is not alone in lacking strong positional units.
On November 28 2012 06:02 ledarsi wrote: Realistically neither tanks nor swarm hosts are strong enough to be spread. They become exponentially stronger when used in increasingly large groups, but are not individually powerful enough to be efficient alone or in small groups. So protoss is not alone in lacking strong positional units.
I can remember one TvP where the Terran built a WIIIIIIIDDDEEE and DEEEP siege ring around the Protoss base and it took a while for the Protoss to nibble at this. Eventually the Protoss won through a clever use of the Arbiter and Recall into the Terran base.
The point is that the Protoss could not really break out of the contain because his units didnt move in the tight clumped form they do in SC2. Blink and that perfectly tight movement AND unlimited unit selection make sure that spread out siege tanks are inefficient, BUT that was something which could be done in BW. So unless there are several changes to the movement mechanic (including Blink) and the unit selection you are totally right in that tanks in small groups will never be efficient enough.
Stronger AoE damage, with maybe a tad more fragility, and less mobility, mixed with more expansions that are of lower value. You want a situation where delaying or sacrificing an expansion isn't as big of a deal, so it makes sense to kill and establish multiple expansions at a time. At the same time, you can't bring your slow AoE units with you to fight off every front, but use them to control critical paths of attack and dissuade a full on assault.
Well I have an idea. Since we haven’t been seeing lately many burrowed banelings maybe damage and splash distance of banelings while they are burrowed should be increased? It will help against clumped up marines, hydras and it will not be easy to perform since it requires a lot of skills (burrow in right place, have excellent map awareness, hit x just in time). It would be strong AoE and positional unit with speed 0 and zero effectiveness in attack so it wouldn’t be overpowered.
And the most important thing is that spectators and commentators really like to watch when burrowed banelings explode under marines (imho it’s almost as exciting like reavers).
On November 28 2012 20:03 aksfjh wrote: Stronger AoE damage, with maybe a tad more fragility, and less mobility, mixed with more expansions that are of lower value. You want a situation where delaying or sacrificing an expansion isn't as big of a deal, so it makes sense to kill and establish multiple expansions at a time. At the same time, you can't bring your slow AoE units with you to fight off every front, but use them to control critical paths of attack and dissuade a full on assault.
I agree.
By the way do you guys think that just more lower value expansions with long and narrow chokes would help? (long and narrow chokes would allow smaller forces positioned correctly to hold larger deathballs). It can be implemented purely by new maps.
Ignoring pathing, aoe and collision radius for a moment.. I'd like to consider how positional units might break up the deathball. Blizzard have said that the two new positional units they created, mine and host, will be buffed. I feel that if designed correctly the mine (mine is fine early imo but should get an upgrade mid/late game) and tank together could be great positional units for Terran. Swarm hosts, if buffed correctly too, could become the positional units they were intended to be (I feel locusts should have more HP but lower attack damage and last longer on creep but be slower).
Now what about Protoss? There doesn't even seem to be any intention of giving Protoss a positional unit T_T. Maybe blizzard like the Protoss deathball!? I for one find it terrible for the game... In terms of mobility, I think the colossus should be slower, unattackable by air, and have a vertical attack path such as described in "The Collosus:..." thread (buffs and nerfs..). This would make it more of a positional unit rather than a deathball one (Cannot keep up with the deathball).
Another option I have thought of for protoss which could either be used alongside or separately from the colossus change above is a change to the sentry's Gaurdian Shield ability described below.
Gaurdian Shield changes: 1. Shield range reduced to 3 2. Shield is now a channelled ability and can be cast up to a range of 2.5 (Therefore sentry is always within Shield) 3. The shield does one of 2 things(reduces damage by more than 2 (4 maybe!?)/increases shields by a certain percentage (20% maybe!?). 4. There is a delay of 2 sec to start-up the shield and also a 2 sec delay for switching it off. 5. All units within the shield have their collision radii increased by 10-20%.
OK, sounds a little crazy maybe, but let me explain my reasoning. If the shield is a channelled ability which has a delay to turn on and off, it would not be great for using with the deathball as it would be highly immobile. It also increases the size of units within the shield and would therefore lower DPS density. However, it could be used defensively/positionally with smaller armies on hold position as it is stronger than before and would greatly increase survivability. The Protoss army could then be spread out accross the map at strategic positions under multiple guardian shields. It would make it a very Protessy kind of positioning technique as its positional strength would come from survivability rather than high DPS/range/free units.
Any thoughts?
The reason imo that blizzard do not want to have high AOE damage, less clumpy unit pathing and more variable unit mobility is that it would make the game way to hectic for the low level leagues. I know it would make the game better to watch and play for top level players and pros, but lower league players would find it very difficult to deal with. All the leagues are important to blizzard if they want to make a lot of money, which I'm sure is what they want.
I think ideas like changing maps to have long and narrow chokes that would not affect lower leagues are the better ideas for anti-deathball SC2. Also other bases should probably not be as near to your main as they currently are, it is too easy to defending 3/4/5 bases with 1 deathball.
I really wouldn't want to be part of Blizzard right now, they have to try and make as many people happy as they can by adding cool new units that are balanced and fix all of WOLs problems. They also have to try and make positional play viable for high level players while keeping the game relatively easy for noobs. They are like the politician of the country 'SC2'; we think they should do better a job and make us all happy, while they sit their trying to figure out how the hell they can make anyone happy. I do not want to be any kind of politician... I'm happy giving random ideas, and discussing other peoples ideas and thoughts while waiting for the next balance update :D.
On November 29 2012 16:17 winsonsonho wrote: Another option I have thought of for protoss which could either be used alongside or separately from the colossus change above is a change to the sentry's Gaurdian Shield ability described below.
Gaurdian Shield changes: 1. Shield range reduced to 3 2. Shield is now a channelled ability and can be cast up to a range of 2.5 (Therefore sentry is always within Shield) 3. The shield does one of 2 things(reduces damage by more than 2 (4 maybe!?)/increases shields by a certain percentage (20% maybe!?). 4. There is a delay of 2 sec to start-up the shield and also a 2 sec delay for switching it off. 5. All units within the shield have their collision radii increased by 10-20%.
OK, sounds a little crazy maybe, but let me explain my reasoning. If the shield is a channelled ability which has a delay to turn on and off, it would not be great for using with the deathball as it would be highly immobile. It also increases the size of units within the shield and would therefore lower DPS density. However, it could be used defensively/positionally with smaller armies on hold position as it is stronger than before and would greatly increase survivability. The Protoss army could then be spread out accross the map at strategic positions under multiple guardian shields. It would make it a very Protessy kind of positioning technique as its positional strength would come from survivability rather than high DPS/range/free units.
Any thoughts?
I kinda like the idea, but instead of buffing the shield by a percentage you could have the Guardian Shield give some form of shield recharging ... even in combat. The immobile channeling nature is a great idea to keep the mobile Colossus while giving Protoss a reason to try and fight at some spot. I feel that it will be more useful for offense than defense though (except for base defense at the choke).
On November 29 2012 16:17 winsonsonho wrote: The reason imo that blizzard do not want to have high AOE damage, less clumpy unit pathing and more variable unit mobility is that it would make the game way to hectic for the low level leagues. I know it would make the game better to watch and play for top level players and pros, but lower league players would find it very difficult to deal with. All the leagues are important to blizzard if they want to make a lot of money, which I'm sure is what they want.
Making the game less hectic for lower league players involves one big thing: FEWER units ... at one spot AND on the battlefield itself. It would be kinda silly to still have the super-boosted production while force-spreading the units. This would mean getting rid of ...
Warp Gate - something which got "nerfed" for lower levels already -,
Chronoboost - which is the second "soft production boost" for Protoss -,
Inject Larva - which lower levels probably have a hard time to keep up with later on -,
the Reactor - which will make mech kinda more viable since the slow Siege Tank production isnt overshadowed by the speed production for everything else - and finally
the MULE - which people have complained about for some time AND which is the reason why we dont have any gold minerals on maps anymore.
If your units are spread out more AND you can only have 12 in one group you simply dont need that high of a production anymore to fight your battles ... as Broodwar showed. Its still going to be easier than Broodwar to manage since multiple-building-selection can be kept, but cutting those things out will also have eliminated all the economic boosts, so production cant be that high anyways.
Less dense units on the battlefield also SLOW DOWN the "rate of death", so it will become less hectic and not more as you claim.
I think the solution to breaking up deathball is more overpowered AoE with slow units, at higher techs. Basically, my theory is that if you give the player a choice between mobility\harass and deathball, the player with mobility should have the edge when it comes to denying expands\economy. Protosses who enters the lategame with even economy against a quick broodlord army will know how efficient it is to harass zerg on multiple prongs. Even Terran's midgame bio-aggro against zerg is highly efficient because you force the zerg to engage in smaller numbers where the advantages are leveraged in your favour.
The dynamics of lategame TvP is actually really good, as the armies become substantially weaker when they move outside their static defenses and on the offensive. Zerg operates a bit different because 1) they can bring spines, 2) they can spawn 'static' defenses via. broodlords\swarm hosts\infested terrans basically. I really don't like the amount of free units that zerg gets, it makes their army too cost-efficient, especially in a base-race situation. Colossus should be nerfed in terms of speed, HT is alright, BL\Infestor should maybe have higher dps, but nerfed in terms of units they spawn. Terrans should also lose some of their mobility, but balancing terran is difficult as their composition is so fragile.
On November 29 2012 21:27 TokO wrote: I think the solution to breaking up deathball is more overpowered AoE with slow units, at higher techs. Basically, my theory is that if you give the player a choice between mobility\harass and deathball, the player with mobility should have the edge when it comes to denying expands\economy. Protosses who enters the lategame with even economy against a quick broodlord army will know how efficient it is to harass zerg on multiple prongs. Even Terran's midgame bio-aggro against zerg is highly efficient because you force the zerg to engage in smaller numbers where the advantages are leveraged in your favour.
The dynamics of lategame TvP is actually really good, as the armies become substantially weaker when they move outside their static defenses and on the offensive. Zerg operates a bit different because 1) they can bring spines, 2) they can spawn 'static' defenses via. broodlords\swarm hosts\infested terrans basically. I really don't like the amount of free units that zerg gets, it makes their army too cost-efficient, especially in a base-race situation. Colossus should be nerfed in terms of speed, HT is alright, BL\Infestor should maybe have higher dps, but nerfed in terms of units they spawn. Terrans should also lose some of their mobility, but balancing terran is difficult as their composition is so fragile.
"Overpowered AoE" sounds like a simple enough solution, but does it really solve the problem or does it create another one in the process?
Lets say the damage for the Siege Tank gets upped to 85 damage against everything. That is pretty strong and you can two-shot Stalkers and Zealots. What would happen if you rush out two Tanks and then start to siege a Protoss base? The Protoss dies because he cant honestly fight this. Sure you dont have to buff the tank that high, but all that does is increase the numbers needed slightly to get a working Tank-rush-tactic from it. Right now you need FOUR hits from a Siege Tank to kill a Stalker, but reducing that to three or even two hits will make the Tank overpowered ... especially in any pre-Blink situation and without a lot of Forcefields. So the solution has to be found elsewhere and NOT with unit stats.
The Siege Tank could use a little more damage, but too much will make it OP. One way to give tanks a more late-game buff would be to change the attack upgrades from "linear" to "exponential", i.e. first upgrade is +2, second is +4 and third is +8 damage (instead of +3 for each upgrade) for a total of +2/+6/+14 damage. This would keep the rushing in check while making them really dangerous to deathballs with full upgrades. Obviously this is a rather complex solution and it might be better to keep it simple, but then you have to change the general mechanics which allow the deathball to be easy to use and automatically formed.
The solution would be blizzard actually doing something other than DB saying "herp derp we arent gonna try to do anything but take food outside the deathball" which would just mean that people wont be making those units since they will be making a deathball.
On November 30 2012 01:27 phodacbiet wrote: The solution would be blizzard actually doing something other than DB saying "herp derp we arent gonna try to do anything but take food outside the deathball" which would just mean that people wont be making those units since they will be making a deathball.
Surely that's the fault of the players?
What if map makers made maps that had so many chokes that deathballing would be a terrible thing to do as half of your army would always be rendered unusable at the back? Could that work?
Your fighting units will always be stronger when together than apart. If your opponent has his full army and you have 1/2 of yours, you'll likely lose, assuming you're both on equal footing. Most people seem to object to the tightly packed nature of large control groups in SCII. That is what it is and actually promotes micro in some instances, since AOE spells are less effective if you manually split, which is difficult because of pathing. But that it's difficult is a good thing, no? I don't understand why the BW sentamentalists object to this feature. Clumping makes the game more difficult, not less, once AOE is out. .
I think people seem to object to the fact that WOL has been designed to give players incentives never to turtle and to never break up their main armies. That criticism makes a little more sense although in most MUs at the highest levels there is usually action all over the place -- any terran MU will usually feature lots of drops, unless the player goes mech, in which case hellion and banshee harass will go on all game long. Protoss because of warp prisms has the ability to cause small skirmishes all over the map. Players like Rain and Squirtle are extremely effective at this. Perhaps PvP is a problem though (although I really know nothing about the match up -- so I won't say anything). Zergs like Life and Leenock are starting to show how small infestor and ling-based attacks are extremely effective while a player builds up to blord infestor. ZvP and ZvZ are probably the most death bally. However, ZvZ early game and mid game can feature a lot of multiprong attacks. Watch how Soulkey or Life plays the match up and I think you can see non-deathbally zvz (prior to the late game) at its best.
In any event, I'm not saying things can't be improved, but I don't think it's the huge issue most make it out to be.
If you want to encourage less death ball play, then I agree empowering positional play (a la with siege tanks and in HoTS widow mines and SHs) is important. Another way to deal with the death ball is to lessen the risks associated with harassing. You can do this by giving units speed (e.g., mutas and lings), cloak (burrowed infestors and dts) or the ability to fly and leave (marines and medivacs). HoTS has addressed this issue with the MSC, giving Protoss the abilityi to wage extremely annoying low risk attacks because of the ability to recall.
The problem with uber AoE is that most AoE radii are smaller than 10-12 unit balls. So, an uber-Psi Storm would still work on a Medivac drop and a full deathball with almost equal efficacy. Are we supposed to have 10-20x 5 units balls to deal with that? If you increase the radius of AoE by a massive amount and decreasing the DPS, you're more selectively harming large balls, but I still think it's an ineffective solution, mostly because you can still have an AoE deathball, one that can do AoE faster than the other can do AoE, superceding any advantage one would get by spreading out their units because there's only so many angles to engage, akin to Colossus wars in PvP.
Cloak, you are thinking along the right lines, but you are making the same mistake that Blizzard is making.
Having a single massive "uber psi-storm" would counteract deathballs. However, the unit that uses the ability itself tends to create deathballs because it is a single unit with a great deal of power. You can't split that unit into multiple places. Rather than having an uber psi storm, it would be better to have more psi storms which can be cast multiple times. If there are fewer enemy units, you only cast it once or twice. If there are a lot, you cast it a lot of times. However the units that cast it can be split into multiple areas, limiting its use by how many of that unit you have constructed, and by where you have positioned them on the map.
This is quite analogous to many other units and mechanics in SC2, such as recall, forcefield, EMP, fungal, etc. Having a Mothership that can cast a single "mass recall" is inferior to having a smaller Arbiter that casts a smaller Recall. If you wanted the same effect as a "mass" recall, you spend more on arbiters and click more to make it happen. Furthermore, a Mothership can only ever be in one place, where multiple arbiters allows for splitting them across a map. Bigger, fewer units and bigger abilities are stupid design that plagues SC2 right now, and is the main cause of deathballs. Followed in close second by the addition of boorish combat units like Marauders, Roaches, Immortals, and Colossi, and the removal of finesse units like lurkers and reavers. And by the nonexistence or pitiful weakness of force multiplers like Defilers (PDD, guardian shield, etc. are really not nearly strong enough to create local advantage to significantly smaller armies), that have been replaced by direct damage dealers.
It is not necessarily true that your units are stronger together than apart. While it is true that their absolute strength will always increase as a single large group, the game can easily be designed to encourage splitting your army so that in multiple separate engagements your total utility is greater if those units are used apart. Lurkers under dark swarm are a prime example- the absolute strength of having 24 lurkers in one place is greater than having only 4. However if you have dark swarm, 24 in one place is very heavy play, and massive overkill for one ramp in almost all situations. You would be much better served splitting them up to cover multiple locations, where just a few is enough to hold each position.
I am currently leaning towards map-based solutions. Indeed, widely-spaced expansions with less resources at each expansion and some ground-advantage zones on the maps for easier space control seem like plausible ways to deal with death-balls. More importantly, for map-based approach no Blizzard consensus is needed.
If you want to break P death ball you have to change several things: Death ball is a response to several things: In PvZ: speedlings make your gate way unit very expo if not used has a ball for ff and gardian shield. speed ling can rip off so much stalker when you think of army cost you just cry. The issue here in early and mid game is speedling and sentries. If you remouve sentries : PvT will be a pain in the ass and if you remouve speedling Z have no chance to pass the 12 min. Solving the death ball is not a simple thing to deal with, the game is design such that there is not other way to play P as a death ball. I though recall in hots will have change that i little but not really. I think it is just a way P is played and that it. If people think it is borring to play it is because player make it boring you always can go for arrassment or something else.
The biggest change to deathball play will come when blizzard acknowledges that it's an issue.Rather than believing than believing, that by doing so, they will make pathing "worse" which is a really stupid statement for so many reasons.
Honestly I think the biggest change to break up deathballs would be revamping mineral income. The 1st SCV on a mineral patch should harvest more, the 2nd and 3rd SCV should harvest less.
The BW economy was highly inefficient. The difference in income between 30 and 40 workers is much smaller than the difference between 10 and 20 workers. For this reason, at some point it becomes more cost-effective to build units and harass, instead of building exponentially more workers.
In addition, 40 drones on 4 bases was DRAMATICALLY more income than 40 drones on 3 bases or 40 drones on 2 bases. This encouraged expanding before full saturation (actually, there was no such thing as full saturation in BW) and therefore made much more positional play - BW players were encouraged to spread themselves thin, so controlling and occupying space was a big part of the game.
========= SC2's economy is too efficient. The difference in income from 50 to 60 workers is just as big as 30 to 40 workers or 10 to 20 workers. Every mineral you spend in combat units greatly weakens the exponential ramp-up of your economy to 200/200. As a result, it is much more difficult to use small harassing attacks. Even if you spend 500 minerals on Hellions and kill 600 minerals of units, your opponent is probably still ahead because he climbed on to the exponential economy curve. Attacks have to do TERRIBLE TERRIBLE DAMAGE or your economy falls far behind. As a result there are way too many all-ins or semi-all-ins and much fewer BW style harasses.
Worse yet, there is no benefit to building multiple under-saturated bases. Therefore there is less incentive to make wide-spread, poorly-defended bases and therefore less importance on space control and positional play.
A simple change to SCV mining mechanics would greatly decrease Deathball Syndrome, even if nothing is changed with regards to pathing, AoE, etc.
On January 30 2013 08:57 Piousflea wrote: Honestly I think the biggest change to break up deathballs would be revamping mineral income. The 1st SCV on a mineral patch should harvest more, the 2nd and 3rd SCV should harvest less.
The BW economy was highly inefficient. The difference in income between 30 and 40 workers is much smaller than the difference between 10 and 20 workers. For this reason, at some point it becomes more cost-effective to build units and harass, instead of building exponentially more workers.
In addition, 40 drones on 4 bases was DRAMATICALLY more income than 40 drones on 3 bases or 40 drones on 2 bases. This encouraged expanding before full saturation (actually, there was no such thing as full saturation in BW) and therefore made much more positional play - BW players were encouraged to spread themselves thin, so controlling and occupying space was a big part of the game.
========= SC2's economy is too efficient. The difference in income from 50 to 60 workers is just as big as 30 to 40 workers or 10 to 20 workers. Every mineral you spend in combat units greatly weakens the exponential ramp-up of your economy to 200/200. As a result, it is much more difficult to use small harassing attacks. Even if you spend 500 minerals on Hellions and kill 600 minerals of units, your opponent is probably still ahead because he climbed on to the exponential economy curve. Attacks have to do TERRIBLE TERRIBLE DAMAGE or your economy falls far behind. As a result there are way too many all-ins or semi-all-ins and much fewer BW style harasses.
Worse yet, there is no benefit to building multiple under-saturated bases. Therefore there is less incentive to make wide-spread, poorly-defended bases and therefore less importance on space control and positional play.
A simple change to SCV mining mechanics would greatly decrease Deathball Syndrome, even if nothing is changed with regards to pathing, AoE, etc.
This is a very, very good start to fixing the deathball problems. However it still doesn't change the fact that army strength scales too linearly with increasing size. Army efficiency/strength PER UNIT should drop off as more and more units are added. This does not happen for way too long.
I've said it before and I'll say it again. New units and more splash and all that stuff won't get rid of the deathball feel SC2 has. SC2 by default FORCES your units to clump up. Unless you specifically separate units individually you will always end up with balls because that's what the game will do automatically. Nobody is going to micro all the time and even when you do you're just going to separate groups of units up, and that will result in smaller balls but still balls. This is a big problem because even if you say "Oh splitting should be a skill", okay fine, but what about 99 percent of the game where people aren't splitting. That whole time you'll just see Blob balls. I'd prefer to see it as, splitting when you need to split is as skill and so should balling up when you want to be balled up. Freedom.
So basically the first problem is that when you have units selected and you right click, units ball up immediately. Units will not stay in formation at all. There is an easy way to modify this in the map editor so that this does not happen, it's a simple number change. What it does is it keeps units in formation when you move them. You can still ball them up when you want them to, but it's a choice. You can even put your marines in a heart formation and they'll stay that way while avoiding obstacles. You want to have your units close a lot of the times to get the most dps, but you don't want to be balled up all the time due to splash. So it's still a choice, banelings and such are still relevant, and if splash needs to be buffed because of it, then that's fine. Decision and control is good. Being forced to ball up when trying to move isn't good. I think Blizz tried this out and said that it didn't change the game much because players wanted to ball up in many situations anyways, but that's fine, the idea here is that they aren't forced to ball up but that it's a conscious decision. BW pathing was pretty bad but there were decisions. Spreading units out was good to deal
After that there's another problem which is the tendency to wait till maxed and then have a maxed battle. This is due to more complex things such as income rates/mining efficiency. Things like extra bases not being necessary due to many factors so at one point there's no real need to expand. This is something I don't know the details of really, but there is a problem there and many threads that try to explain what's up.
Another small factor that I think might be related is the lack of a real high ground advantage. Sure a high ground advantage may make it easier to turtle, but it also makes it easier to take risks. You could focus on a sneaky build to try and drop on your opponent, but then your enemy comes with a superior army at your ramp. Without a real high ground advantage, you're probably screwed because the fight is more or less even and your enemy has superior numbers. You invested in harassment but your enemy just went with some more units and won. But if there is a real high ground advantage, then you have a much better chance of surviving the attack despite having less forces, plus you are harassing the enemy base. Without that safety, I would argue that players are more scared to try anything early on and would rather just focus on having more units to survive, which ends up leading to just maxing out. This is why the whole "taking food out of the deathball" idea wont work. It's too big of a risk.
So, IMO, the game forcing you to ball up whenever you move + the game encouraging maxed out play is what gets you these problems. Also no high ground advantage might cause players to not try anything early besides all-ins which might further push the game towards a max vs max battle. Sure, more position control units is cool but that wont solve anything. Of course, if you think the game is fine this way then that's your opinion and it's one that Blizzard currently shares.
Adding my observation from the air deathball thread:
Just throwing this out there as my recent observation...I've been playing BW the past couple of weeks, taking a break from SC2, and I noticed something really interesting. In BW, it really doesn't help to stack your air units, especially in large engagements (aside from obviously mutas, wraiths, and corsairs, I'll get to that). The main reason is 1) no smartcast, so mass spellcasting is pretty much impossible, 2) AoE (STORM, valkyrie) is way powerful, and, most importantly, 3) having overkill makes units way less efficient clumped up.
With the design of SC2 giving all units a smart-target AI that avoids overkill as well as giving a lot of air units fairly fast attacks, there's just not a downside to stacking your air units for maximum efficiency damage except perhaps getting stormed or seeker missile'd. Even then, you don't need to spread units TOO far, and the air ball can work at a fairly high efficiency rate.
Overkill doesn't affect small groups of air units in BW because you would generally get only enough of those units to snipe things (5-6 mutas will always one-shot a marine, about 5 wraiths will snipe a dropship, etc). In large air battles, it's much stronger to set up as large of a wall as possible rather than clump.
EPT![[image loading]](http://i50.tinypic.com/of279d.png)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/mvtY7.png)
![[image loading]](http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft/images2/thumb/b/bb/Colossus.png/159px-Colossus.png)
![[image loading]](http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft/images2/thumb/9/91/Splash_damage.jpg/400px-Splash_damage.jpg)
We don't want Warcraft3 boring back and forth bash-fest. Now units can have hp...but only if they have weaknesses elsewhere. Some units now have way too much HP are are clearly deathball units. Like Immortals/archons/roaches.![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/CB49Y.png)
I'll just summarize it here.
I h8 protoss in SC2 i love protoss in SCBW i only play protoss ...![[image loading]](http://imgur.com/pPJsClN)
