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Everybody agrees that Deathballs should be broken up and removed from the game. I feel like most people, including Blizzard, are going about breaking up the deathball completely backwards. The current opinion is to make units that function well enough on their own that they can don't fit into the deathball very well. Units like the Oracle, Tempest and Swarm Host are all ideas designed to breakup the Deathball.
Every new unit that shouldn't be deathballed, and design tweaks on the old ones is currently designed to be effective offensively. This I feel is completely the wrong approach. Players are not going to pull stuff out of their deathball for an offensive reason because... a stronger deathball is always going to be better offensively.
Tweaking the game to promote defensive positioning might just be the cure to all this turtle nonsense that we're looking for. Players currently turtle to get the strongest possible deathball army. Bringing in units and tweaking older units to be much better defensively might just be what we're looking for.
Imagine if you could effectively defend an army 3x the size of your defenders until reinforcements got there. You'd start to pull tanks off your main army, with some marines and good bunker positioning to defend that expansion. If this was applied across all three races you'd start to see a lot more skirmishing of smaller armies all across the map.
Map control and scouting becomes extremely important. If you can get to your opponents third base before he has a chance to establish a strong defensive position there you'd be in great shape. Players would be able to move their armies out on the map much earlier to battle over key positions on the map etc.
Encouraging players to use small squads of units to defend expansions and key points on the map would be pretty awesome, at least from my perspective. I'd love to see a few swarm hosts with some hydra's and maybe an infestor or two easily repel a much larger protoss army because they had a solid entrenched position. Forcing a player to make a decision to break one of these points while taking heavy losses would be a cool interaction. This I feel is much better than the current situation of a small force getting steamrolled while the attacker doesn't even lose a unit.
Changing the game in this way would probably require a complete redesign of the entire Protoss force, but I think most would agree that would be a good thing. Terran and Zerg could probably be tweaked to achieve this style of play and would not need a complete overhaul.
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I don't understand how this would work? These defensive units would be 3x tougher than attacking forces.. How? Building placement?
Would they not be 3x stronger than enemy forces when used offensively?
I'm a little confused o.O
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We need a real high ground mechanic in Starcraft 2. I think that's a bigger deal than force fields, warpgates, and most of the other problems people base the issues of this game on. It's a way to make defensive positioning matter, and can allow all units to be naturally stronger defensively than offensively. I think that could be a huge proponent of breaking up clusters of units. You could control more space effectively, being able to control more space means you need to spread out units, etc.
Of course it goes without being said that it would also revitalize the state of mapmaking that people are complaining about lately.
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I don't think that would work, purely because if something is very good defensively, why would they bother being offensive when it makes turtling easier...
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rather than buffing units, buff static defense. But I don't think that's the right way to go either because then it's simply too easy to defend and we don't want that.
I've always thought the best method was simply changing the mining rate AND the amount of resources per base. However, the game is currently balanced around the current mining rate and # of resources per base. There were problems in 7m and 6m maps because the mining rate ratio for mins/gas was off base and needed actual changes from blizzard to make it solid.
People were hoping blizzard might address the # of resources per base in HotS, so maybe someone should go over to their forums and remind them.
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Hey filter
I agree with your points but you don't really provide any suggestions so it's hard to comment or discuss!
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i think a small change like ranged units on low ground have -1 range shooting up would help. Make high ground positionally stronger while not making it obscenely broken. This way units would cluster a bit more before getting in to attacking range, making a defended position harder to break with a ball of units.
i don't like miss percentage as its random and this isn't warcraft 3
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On the topic of defense
across the field how would you win with a small army if a defensive force a third the size of your own
you would need more siege and offensive specialists to break a turtle and focusing on your own offense would set you behind you would be looking at longer games as players tried to trade well offensively
You could go the other way though more damage means that a few high damage aoe units could punish large masses of units
but again then you have issues with it either needing to deploy ie buff siege tanks concept
I feel the best way is to create new unit types such as raiding instead of harass a raiding unit would specialize at killing buildings allowing for tech sniping destroying production ie raiding their base not their econ
that would at least force people to rethink mine and burn bases or leaving their base undefended because raiding units would allow for favorable base trading even against a larger force meaning you can have an army at base defending against a deathball while you wreck their base but it would lose out in larger engagements but in small unit to unit brawls they would shine with higher front on damage or unique abilities
For zerg
Concept would be fast stealthy
A move while burrow unit that burrows and unburrows almost instantly and can move while burrowed unique ability to leap from below the ground similar to blink but not up cliffs just over units buildings void areas ect
It would mean you have to spread out your forces or lose outer bases, tech or production
For protoss
Concept would be either fast high damage or durable juggernaut style
Think dark templar's big mean olderbrother
Or and elite zealot style unit
DTsOlderbrother
Would be fast have and ability to use void shroud cloaking allied units in a small area akin to storm but it would dissipate faster with more units under its effects this unit would make small harass style attacks much more effective and as a unit it would have high damage to structures so it would tear up base defenses forcing a reaction
Elite zealot
High shields unit akin to archon but with 2 shields armor and bonus damage to structures again slow high damage attacks and instead of charge its shields would recharge faster after battle making it better at hit and run but with most of its health in shields you would have to make sure you pulled out early and it wouldn't be good against something that could chase it or out ranged it
Terran
A real Gunship meant to support mech and take out structures works well with banshee and any mech comp witch tend to be immobile it would have high health and trade well against small groups of GtA but poorly against typical AtA but you allow for more mid map control and forcing the enemy to keep some AA patrolling their bases
Edit: Of coarse this wouldn't fix everything but I think this and other unit types could help make the game more dynamic and good offensive options benefit not just staying in base since you can do real noticeable damage to your turtleing opponent
A player focusing on defensive structures would lose out to raids a player focusing on unit defense would lose out to a direct push so you have to balance both against your opponent.
Feedback it Appreciated Thanks :D and remember these are just examples 
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maybe if units on higher ground were 66% harder to hit.
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I've been convinced we need an innate defenders advantage, so what about a static 30% damage reduction on damage taken by units being hit from below. No need for the 66% harder to hit or the random miss chance - just a normal reduction.
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There's been some mention of a highground mechanic... I think the random-chance of a miss is lame, and reduced damage just doesn't fit. What about a range difference? Force low-ground units attacking high-ground units to move a bit closer, thus
A) taking more damage before attacking and
B) having fewer units simultaneously attacking than the high-ground player?
Just a thought.
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I disagree with your situation analysis. A lot of the new units are designed to simply not work in a straight up combat.
-) Tempest has too little dps for straight up combat application (outside of countering massive)
-) MSC and oracle have hardly any combat applications
-) Widow Mine is meant to be setup before combats, in a way that you can avoid it
-) Swarm Hosts are not really good in straight up fighting, if your opponent has a strong army himself, because then he can just use the window between the spawns to win
-) Viper; well blinding cloud is a straight up combat application, but one that is not that useful outside of breaking static positions, or holding ground, but surely adds a little to the deathball
-) Hellbat is also a combat unit and adds to the deathball
But I agree, additionally there should be better global area control mechanics. High ground advantage is just one form of them, but I also think that there could be interesting mechanics with sight blockers (one way sight blocker; sight blocker that also block sight from air, right now this gets denied too easily; range/damage reduction if you attack through blockers) or other new Terrain features.
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If ever there will be a high ground mechanic, it should be as simple as possible. Yes, a 30% reduction seems about right.
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Just make siege units ridiculously powerful so you can use them to defend.
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Blizzard is very bad at designing defensive units that can't also be used for offense.
See Widow mine and Mothership core.
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I suggest a new kind of ability, like "Oracle increase the armor of 6 (and 6 only) surrounded units by 1".This will impose a "Critical Mass" value, where if you add units to that squad you will get no (or near none) benefit.
Notice that above is only a example.
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I think this idea is not bad.
Seems to go with HotS, we already got the widow mine for additional defense and the swarmhost and tempest as siege breakers.
I am absolutely voting for a siegetank damage and aoe buff and a siegetime nerf, so it becomes more immobile but stronger in offense.
Now if photon overcharge is changed to work without MSC and is strengthened a bit it would also help with deffending or add something like the shield batteries from SC1.
Zerg already has queens for defense but maybe there could be an option to mutate spine crawlers into a more powerful version that can't move any more.
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Why does so many solutions to deathballs involve better defensive positioning? I really dont get it, we already have a matchup functioning that way -> mech TvT. Now it might just be me, but i really dont consider that particular matchup all that fun to watch or play. If you buff defensive positioning you will get more defensive positioning. Its actually pretty simple, but defensive positioning isn't really what anybody want is it?
Personally what I want to see is more harass. Currently hellions, oracles, banshees, terran bio drops and infestors does this well, in my opinion. Most of these units share the same weakness in that they too fragile to be used in real combat so they rely on hit and run tactics to do the damage they need. That, if you ask me, is the key to breaking up death balls; making units that are good enough to warrant use, but are too fragile to be used in deathballs. Its not actually about breaking up deathballs by demotivating the use of deathballs, but rather about motivating the use of units that just plain dont fit into deathballs. Most of the new units fit reasonably well into this scheme. You can always argue whether we have enough of these new units, but we are definately (in my opinion) moving in the right direction.
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It should not be dictated whether a unit be used defensively and offensively. A good unit can be used in BOTH situations effectively, precisely because it is designed well...
I really don't think deathballs will ever cease to exist in this game. We will only see players getting better at managing them to the point that they become nonexistant...
I'm not really sure what to think. I am disappointed with the lack of a lurker, but more than that I am angry at the damage system in SCII, which really doesn't make sense and makes units which SHOULD be strong (tanks) die easily to + damage to armored T1.5 units. The thing most people aren't getting here is that you CANNOT add all these things to the game. They may be good ideas...but the core of SC and these types of RTS games is SIMPLICITY. That is key. To have developed something simple from which many different situations can be derived (a unit which is effective in offense and defense) is brilliant.
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not sure if you had such a great defenders advantage, they would want to attack
to encourage more aggression you may have to actually lessen the defender's advantage, but that could also just turn every game into base trades or games that end quickly
otherwise if the def adv is great, then both players who are lazy or just have lower APM won't find the incentive to attack a bunch, cus it's probably not going to do much, while he too can defend a lot easily
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On November 12 2012 23:08 Qwyn wrote:
It should not be dictated whether a unit be used defensively and offensively. A good unit can be used in BOTH situations effectively, precisely because it is designed well...
I really don't think deathballs will ever cease to exist in this game. We will only see players getting better at managing them to the point that they become nonexistant...
I'm not really sure what to think. I am disappointed with the lack of a lurker, but more than that I am angry at the damage system in SCII, which really doesn't make sense and makes units which SHOULD be strong (tanks) die easily to + damage to armored T1.5 units. The thing most people aren't getting here is that you CANNOT add all these things to the game. They may be good ideas...but the core of SC and these types of RTS games is SIMPLICITY. That is key. To have developed something simple from which many different situations can be derived (a unit which is effective in offense and defense) is brilliant.
99% of the time you want your units in a giant deathball. There's never going to be a point in time in which they're non existant unless blizzard does something about it. It's better to have a higher dps density and die faster compared to having a lower dps density and dying slower. Every fight in sc2 is a dps war. Who can kill the other army faster, and you do that faster by having your stuff in a tighter ball.
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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.
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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.
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On November 12 2012 23:22 Vegro wrote:
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.
Wow this is a really nice post. Maybe you should post this on Bnet.
Back before WoL beta, (or during early...?) psy storm and such were nerfed a lot.
Even now EMP was nerfed.
They are balancing things to allow the deathball to happen... even tanks were nerfed.
I think this is the way to break up the deathball, by making spells more powerful. Then there would be a lot more tension/risk in going into a major fight. There would be more incentive to go for the safer, more harass style (but the game design needs to be sure to allow this with good harass units and ways to defend but not ways to defend 100% without being super rich or such).
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Super defensive units dont work for the simple reason: What happens if you get one of those units to the front of your enemys base? What happens if a Siege Tank with 5.000 hit points sieges an opponent? The same problem arises when you increase the damage output of units. So the solution CANT BE THE COMBAT VALUES (or any gimmicky spells, because you would need attention to use them and you dont have that all the time and everywhere and these spells could be used offensively as well).
The problem of the deathball is that it maximizes the damage output for a clump of infantry and this is not good, because it means that units die too fast and only young kids who train a lot can react properly in such situations.
The solution to breaking up the deathball [= any super tight infantry formation that is not necessarily round] is to loosen up the tight formation and to decrease the "dps per area for your own units". In other words: FORCED SPREADING of units instead of FORCED CLUMPING. A limit to the number of units in a control group AND a removal of economic/production speed boosts will help keeping the numbers of units low as well.
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I wonder if we made maps larger, like the 3 expos near the start area, but other expos far from both opponents, with a larger area to skirmish over, if this might not help? Essentially, it would reward players who have small contingents spread out at key positions, while hurting the slow deathball player, making him bounce back and forth to defend or simply go for the base trade, hopefully favoring the non-deathball player in the trade...
Idk, just a thought.
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Actually it can be combat values. They just need to go the other way. Less damage and more health across the board. Now your full death ball - while it still beats my 3/4 death ball - takes long enough to do so that my 1/4 raiding force can achieve something and still get back to the fight before it's over.
Proof of this is in MLG dallas finals, game 4. Roach vs roach is high health and low DPS, making it possible to have rolling battles with reinforcements and multi pronged aggression.
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I think its mostly the maps, they are really badly designed. They are arcadey and over simplified.
Things like tight chokes, high ground, more complex bases, attack routes with advantages and disadvantages, can all make splitting up your units, forced or just more effective.
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United States7483 Posts
On October 13 2012 10:37 emc wrote:
rather than buffing units, buff static defense. But I don't think that's the right way to go either because then it's simply too easy to defend and we don't want that.
I've always thought the best method was simply changing the mining rate AND the amount of resources per base. However, the game is currently balanced around the current mining rate and # of resources per base. There were problems in 7m and 6m maps because the mining rate ratio for mins/gas was off base and needed actual changes from blizzard to make it solid.
People were hoping blizzard might address the # of resources per base in HotS, so maybe someone should go over to their forums and remind them.
You can't buff cannons because of the cannon rush, you can't buff bunkers because of the 2 rax bunker rush, and spines are already the strongest static defense because they can move and typically are used to form entire walls that slow push with the army.
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On October 13 2012 08:54 BoX wrote:
I don't understand how this would work? These defensive units would be 3x tougher than attacking forces.. How? Building placement?
Would they not be 3x stronger than enemy forces when used offensively?
I'm a little confused o.O
BW tanks could be put on walled chokes and it would take rediculous amounts of dragoons and zealots to break 2-3 tanks and mines.
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There was an interesting mechanic in SC1. You cannot see up cliffs, but if an enemy attacks you from the high ground, then it becomes visible to you. If you attack it, you have a 30% chance to miss it as well. Just wanted to share sC1's mechanic. Anyway!
To take out the randomness, make it so units on the low ground deal 20% less damage to units on the high ground, per height map difference, rounded down. For example:
Stalker would deal 14 damage to a marauder on the high ground. 20% of 14 is 2.8, rounded down the marauder would take 12 damage. Stalker with +3 deals 17 damage, 20% is 3.4 down to 3, so the marauder would take 14 damage.
Immortal deals 65 damage per shot @ +3 to a tank, tank dies in 3 hits. Tank on high ground takes 65 - 13 = 52 damage. Tank dies in 4 hits (160hp).
We can scale the damage reduction so that maybe units like colossus don't suffer this penalty (makes more sense imo) and increase or decrease the % until we find a good balance. I do feel like 20% would be a great start.
Anyway, have a great day TL
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There weren't "Deathballs" in BW because you could only hotkey 12 units. The only ways to get rid of this type of unit control is to make splash units deal friendly fire or to reduce control group sizes (which would essentially render protoss and zerg impotent since its something they haven't had to worry about - barring storm & lol, imagine banelings with friendly fire). Changing the "clumpy" pathing won't do very much but modify the size of the deathball and changing unit damage values for better or worse won't do a damn thing either. Personally, I don't think deathball type armies are a bad thing. If your deathball can only be in one place then I only have to avoid it and kill your buildings.
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OP is right. Though, it's not "we". But blizzard who are doing things backwards. It's still better than nothing, but they are not fixing fundemental problems.
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I think this is quite easy to solve.
The only way to achieve stronger defense is to have something that is immobile and has splash damage.
Of the 3 races, Terran has it best.
-Planetary Fortrress
-Tanks
-Widow Mines.
The splash damage ensures that a small group of defending units can take on a much larger crowd.
I'm actually kind of sad that neither Terrans or Zergs have these reliable options.
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Even with a change like that, Immortals would still simply roll over Siege Tanks. Fixing the deathball is not 'just' doing this or that.
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its not about units being better defensely. its about units that deal huge splash damage and can deal a lot of damage even when unsupported - this is what breaks up deathballs
we need more units that deal burst splash damage and instantly deal a lot of damage, like high templars or seeker missiles
we do not need more units that deal splash damage continusly over a longer period, because those get stronger when massed, like colossi
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On November 12 2012 23:22 Vegro wrote:
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.
This is a really good post. I think the general "nerf everything" attitude that plagues SC2 since the beginning has a lot to do with how the game developed into it's current state. The weaker a single unit is, the more does it rely on being in a big ball of units, because otherwise it won't do shit. (obvious I know)
And if there are no individually very strong units, there's no way a smaller army can handle a bigger one. Instead the smaller army will just get steamrolled with minimal damage dealt to the bigger one.
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Actually, the reason why people turtle in this game is that 3 base mining is WAY enough for any production.. more than that is just:
1. more chances of getting dropped
2. more supply for workers, so less for units
Less income per base, and less worker/max supply (whatever the way), is the way to go. That alone will not break the deathball, but it will make up for a way more dynamic early to late-midgame.
I played the 6m1g mod a few months ago, and while the game is not balanced for this kind of gameplay, it rendered OBSOLETE any kind of non-cheesy 1 base play (1-1-1, 4gate, etc..). It also made the game way more dynamic: with less units, we tried harassing the numerous bases in order to gain an advantage in the long run.
This is the main thing that has to be changed. The income per base right now is way too high: there is absolutely no reason why I should be going for a 4th base as a protoss... in pvt for example, it would only make me vulnerable to drops.
Edit: I'd also like to add that the gas should be a limited ressource. Mass High Templar or Infestor play should not be available (without seriously affecting the whole army's composition) until a 5th base. You want to reward macro? do that. Right now, we don't really have macro.. we have sitting on 3 bases and waiting to be maxed. Very rarely did players get maxed in BW, because contains were common, and so were harassments.
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On November 13 2012 04:51 Patate wrote:
Actually, the reason why people turtle in this game is that 3 base mining is WAY enough for any production.. more than that is just:
1. more chances of getting dropped
2. more supply for workers, so less for units
Less income per base, and less worker/max supply (whatever the way), is the way to go. That alone will not break the deathball, but it will make up for a way more dynamic early to late-midgame.
I played the 6m1g mod a few months ago, and while the game is not balanced for this kind of gameplay, it rendered OBSOLETE any kind of non-cheesy 1 base play (1-1-1, 4gate, etc..). It also made the game way more dynamic: with less units, we tried harassing the numerous bases in order to gain an advantage in the long run.
This is the main thing that has to be changed. The income per base right now is way too high: there is absolutely no reason why I should be going for a 4th base as a protoss... in pvt for example, it would only make me vulnerable to drops.
Edit: I'd also like to add that the gas should be a limited ressource. Mass High Templar or Infestor play should not be available (without seriously affecting the whole army's composition) until a 5th base. You want to reward macro? do that. Right now, we don't really have macro.. we have sitting on 3 bases and waiting to be maxed. Very rarely did players get maxed in BW, because contains were common, and so were harassments.
i would love to see maps get bigger, have more bases, and decrease the amount of mineral patches
however, instead of only having one gas, i would make gas mining slower. i like the strategic option of when to build your 1st and 2nd gas, adds depth to the game
also, it would help to raise the supply cap a little or make certain units cost less supply
hell, i ll even throw a crazy idea in there without thinking it through: what if workers only cost 1/2 supply each?
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On November 13 2012 04:55 summerloud wrote:Show nested quote +On November 13 2012 04:51 Patate wrote:
Actually, the reason why people turtle in this game is that 3 base mining is WAY enough for any production.. more than that is just:
1. more chances of getting dropped
2. more supply for workers, so less for units
Less income per base, and less worker/max supply (whatever the way), is the way to go. That alone will not break the deathball, but it will make up for a way more dynamic early to late-midgame.
I played the 6m1g mod a few months ago, and while the game is not balanced for this kind of gameplay, it rendered OBSOLETE any kind of non-cheesy 1 base play (1-1-1, 4gate, etc..). It also made the game way more dynamic: with less units, we tried harassing the numerous bases in order to gain an advantage in the long run.
This is the main thing that has to be changed. The income per base right now is way too high: there is absolutely no reason why I should be going for a 4th base as a protoss... in pvt for example, it would only make me vulnerable to drops.
Edit: I'd also like to add that the gas should be a limited ressource. Mass High Templar or Infestor play should not be available (without seriously affecting the whole army's composition) until a 5th base. You want to reward macro? do that. Right now, we don't really have macro.. we have sitting on 3 bases and waiting to be maxed. Very rarely did players get maxed in BW, because contains were common, and so were harassments.
i would love to see maps get bigger, have more bases, and decrease the amount of mineral patches however, instead of only having one gas, i would make gas mining slower. i like the strategic option of when to build your 1st and 2nd gas, adds depth to the game also, it would help to raise the supply cap a little or make certain units cost less supply hell, i ll even throw a crazy idea in there without thinking it through: what if workers only cost 1/2 supply each?
I thought of it.. it would totally break the very early game balance.. not sure it is a good thing.
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On November 13 2012 04:57 Patate wrote:Show nested quote +On November 13 2012 04:55 summerloud wrote:On November 13 2012 04:51 Patate wrote:
Actually, the reason why people turtle in this game is that 3 base mining is WAY enough for any production.. more than that is just:
1. more chances of getting dropped
2. more supply for workers, so less for units
Less income per base, and less worker/max supply (whatever the way), is the way to go. That alone will not break the deathball, but it will make up for a way more dynamic early to late-midgame.
I played the 6m1g mod a few months ago, and while the game is not balanced for this kind of gameplay, it rendered OBSOLETE any kind of non-cheesy 1 base play (1-1-1, 4gate, etc..). It also made the game way more dynamic: with less units, we tried harassing the numerous bases in order to gain an advantage in the long run.
This is the main thing that has to be changed. The income per base right now is way too high: there is absolutely no reason why I should be going for a 4th base as a protoss... in pvt for example, it would only make me vulnerable to drops.
Edit: I'd also like to add that the gas should be a limited ressource. Mass High Templar or Infestor play should not be available (without seriously affecting the whole army's composition) until a 5th base. You want to reward macro? do that. Right now, we don't really have macro.. we have sitting on 3 bases and waiting to be maxed. Very rarely did players get maxed in BW, because contains were common, and so were harassments.
i would love to see maps get bigger, have more bases, and decrease the amount of mineral patches however, instead of only having one gas, i would make gas mining slower. i like the strategic option of when to build your 1st and 2nd gas, adds depth to the game also, it would help to raise the supply cap a little or make certain units cost less supply hell, i ll even throw a crazy idea in there without thinking it through: what if workers only cost 1/2 supply each? I thought of it.. it would totally break the very early game balance.. not sure it is a good thing.
Hmm... We would be able to saturate our mineral line before making the first supply granting structure/overlord... Yeah, Idk about that.
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On November 13 2012 05:35 DuncanIdaho wrote:Show nested quote +On November 13 2012 04:57 Patate wrote:On November 13 2012 04:55 summerloud wrote:On November 13 2012 04:51 Patate wrote:
Actually, the reason why people turtle in this game is that 3 base mining is WAY enough for any production.. more than that is just:
1. more chances of getting dropped
2. more supply for workers, so less for units
Less income per base, and less worker/max supply (whatever the way), is the way to go. That alone will not break the deathball, but it will make up for a way more dynamic early to late-midgame.
I played the 6m1g mod a few months ago, and while the game is not balanced for this kind of gameplay, it rendered OBSOLETE any kind of non-cheesy 1 base play (1-1-1, 4gate, etc..). It also made the game way more dynamic: with less units, we tried harassing the numerous bases in order to gain an advantage in the long run.
This is the main thing that has to be changed. The income per base right now is way too high: there is absolutely no reason why I should be going for a 4th base as a protoss... in pvt for example, it would only make me vulnerable to drops.
Edit: I'd also like to add that the gas should be a limited ressource. Mass High Templar or Infestor play should not be available (without seriously affecting the whole army's composition) until a 5th base. You want to reward macro? do that. Right now, we don't really have macro.. we have sitting on 3 bases and waiting to be maxed. Very rarely did players get maxed in BW, because contains were common, and so were harassments.
i would love to see maps get bigger, have more bases, and decrease the amount of mineral patches however, instead of only having one gas, i would make gas mining slower. i like the strategic option of when to build your 1st and 2nd gas, adds depth to the game also, it would help to raise the supply cap a little or make certain units cost less supply hell, i ll even throw a crazy idea in there without thinking it through: what if workers only cost 1/2 supply each? I thought of it.. it would totally break the very early game balance.. not sure it is a good thing. Hmm... We would be able to saturate our mineral line before making the first supply granting structure/overlord... Yeah, Idk about that.
Not sure that's the best solution. Deathballs would just get even bigger and not less effective. Of course it would take longer to build up, and players would be more spread out, but I don't believe that it would necessarily lead to better gameplay. Longer buildup, but maybe more harassment.
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Lurker lurker lurker. Stronger siege tanks. High ground advantage. No brood lords. Plague instead of fungal.
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On November 13 2012 06:06 neptunusfisk wrote:
Lurker lurker lurker. Stronger siege tanks. High ground advantage. No brood lords. Plague instead of fungal.
I disagree with the BL part. It is a very interesting unit (way more than the guardian). Of course lurker vs swarm host is a no brainer: the swarm host is simply stupid and it's not original (its a burrowed Brood Lord).
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On November 13 2012 05:59 Ameisenmann wrote:Show nested quote +On November 13 2012 05:35 DuncanIdaho wrote:On November 13 2012 04:57 Patate wrote:On November 13 2012 04:55 summerloud wrote:On November 13 2012 04:51 Patate wrote:
Actually, the reason why people turtle in this game is that 3 base mining is WAY enough for any production.. more than that is just:
1. more chances of getting dropped
2. more supply for workers, so less for units
Less income per base, and less worker/max supply (whatever the way), is the way to go. That alone will not break the deathball, but it will make up for a way more dynamic early to late-midgame.
I played the 6m1g mod a few months ago, and while the game is not balanced for this kind of gameplay, it rendered OBSOLETE any kind of non-cheesy 1 base play (1-1-1, 4gate, etc..). It also made the game way more dynamic: with less units, we tried harassing the numerous bases in order to gain an advantage in the long run.
This is the main thing that has to be changed. The income per base right now is way too high: there is absolutely no reason why I should be going for a 4th base as a protoss... in pvt for example, it would only make me vulnerable to drops.
Edit: I'd also like to add that the gas should be a limited ressource. Mass High Templar or Infestor play should not be available (without seriously affecting the whole army's composition) until a 5th base. You want to reward macro? do that. Right now, we don't really have macro.. we have sitting on 3 bases and waiting to be maxed. Very rarely did players get maxed in BW, because contains were common, and so were harassments.
i would love to see maps get bigger, have more bases, and decrease the amount of mineral patches however, instead of only having one gas, i would make gas mining slower. i like the strategic option of when to build your 1st and 2nd gas, adds depth to the game also, it would help to raise the supply cap a little or make certain units cost less supply hell, i ll even throw a crazy idea in there without thinking it through: what if workers only cost 1/2 supply each? I thought of it.. it would totally break the very early game balance.. not sure it is a good thing. Hmm... We would be able to saturate our mineral line before making the first supply granting structure/overlord... Yeah, Idk about that. Not sure that's the best solution. Deathballs would just get even bigger and not less effective. Of course it would take longer to build up, and players would be more spread out, but I don't believe that it would necessarily lead to better gameplay. Longer buildup, but maybe more harassment.
Don't you think you contradict yourself?
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On November 13 2012 06:33 Patate wrote:Show nested quote +On November 13 2012 06:06 neptunusfisk wrote:
Lurker lurker lurker. Stronger siege tanks. High ground advantage. No brood lords. Plague instead of fungal. I disagree with the BL part. It is a very interesting unit (way more than the guardian). Of course lurker vs swarm host is a no brainer: the swarm host is simply stupid and it's not original (its a burrowed Brood Lord).
The Broodlord is not "interesting", it is "unfair", because it spawns free units which screen it from ground units that might be able to attack it otherwise. This is the reason why the BL is the only "capital ship" that can work in SC2 and it is a poor reason.
Any ability which makes a unit "invulnerable" to attacks of the opponents army is bad. Thus the Broodlords free units (and the Swarm Host as well, though to a lesser extent since their locusts arent spawned in machinegun rapidity as for the BL), Forcefield and Fungal Growth are pretty unfair or outright overpowered. It is the design concept that makes it so and not the implementation (a Forcefield of 2 second duration would be useless for example) and they usually are either useless or overpowered. Just because people have learned to deal with them doesnt make them less bad concepts.
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On November 13 2012 06:44 Rabiator wrote:Show nested quote +On November 13 2012 06:33 Patate wrote:On November 13 2012 06:06 neptunusfisk wrote:
Lurker lurker lurker. Stronger siege tanks. High ground advantage. No brood lords. Plague instead of fungal. I disagree with the BL part. It is a very interesting unit (way more than the guardian). Of course lurker vs swarm host is a no brainer: the swarm host is simply stupid and it's not original (its a burrowed Brood Lord). The Broodlord is not "interesting", it is "unfair", because it spawns free units which screen it from ground units that might be able to attack it otherwise. This is the reason why the BL is the only "capital ship" that can work in SC2 and it is a poor reason. Any ability which makes a unit "invulnerable" to attacks of the opponents army is bad. Thus the Broodlords free units (and the Swarm Host as well, though to a lesser extent since their locusts arent spawned in machinegun rapidity as for the BL), Forcefield and Fungal Growth are pretty unfair or outright overpowered. It is the design concept that makes it so and not the implementation (a Forcefield of 2 second duration would be useless for example) and they usually are either useless or overpowered. Just because people have learned to deal with them doesnt make them less bad concepts.
Oh yeah well the reasons why SC2 has been unpopular as of late (or less popular), was those frustrating design things. I can't remember how many times I've heard casters desperately trying to make a game exciting: "SICK FORCEFIELDS" "SICK FUNGLES" . How are they any good? any mid masters can pull those off, it's simply not impressing.
I want to go back to my comment concerning the bases with less income. Right now, a good zerg can get maxed at the 11 minutes mark. That leaves absolutely no time for any kinds of harassment or pressure (other than all-ins or designated pressure builds that land before 11 min). So in a way, you cannot really react fast enough to anything, which really makes , along with FF-FG-Vortex-Concussive (etc..) playing SC2 a pretty annoying experience at time.
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I have no problems with deathballs existing. It would be ridiculous to think that people should never fight with all of their forces in one place. Everything is on the shoulders of the players. If you don't want to run around the map with a deathball, then don't do it! Multitask more. Spread your army more. Don't put it on one control group.
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On November 13 2012 07:11 ineversmile wrote:
I have no problems with deathballs existing. It would be ridiculous to think that people should never fight with all of their forces in one place. Everything is on the shoulders of the players. If you don't want to run around the map with a deathball, then don't do it! Multitask more. Spread your army more. Don't put it on one control group.
Problem is that the Deathball has been proven too good. Very rarely will you see pros splitting their armies (other than for slight harassment, which is a minimal force). The problem with the deathball is how easy it is to move it and to control it. It makes up for very boring games, which is why BW was more popular than SC2 will probably ever be in Korea.
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i think it would be quite helpful to look at deathball issues in other games, what causes them, and what issues various games have taken to address them.
I used to play wc3 ladder alot, and got quite high even. From what I remember there was a strong tendency for players to have one main army, and few if any side armies; and in team games it was generally very important to have your armies together so they don't get taken out by the other side's armies; I don't recall people complaining about 'deathball' back then, though i didn't follow the forums so much; it does seem like there was the same trend towards highly focused forces; why would it seem less deathbally then? the emphasis on micro? the ability of high leveled heroes to take out armies well?
Heroes of might and magic 3 certainly had doomstacks. There were clear factors there; a) the more troops (of one type) in a stack, the tougher it was, there wasn't any penalty or disadvantage to stacking. b) high mobility; various movement tricks led to high mobility, so keeping yoru army together to defend a large area was quite feasible; especially once a hero got to the very high levels and picked up things like master level town portal or dimension door; then they coudl defend all their towns quite easily.
c) hero advantage; heroes gave boosts to the troops, so troops under your best hero were a lot toughter than troops under other heroes.
The later homm games did try to reduce doomstacking, though it was still pretty prominent; mostly they nerfed the uber mobility sources.
i'm sure there's a lot more to say about what other games have doomstacking issues and which don't; thoughts?
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On November 13 2012 07:16 zlefin wrote:
i think it would be quite helpful to look at deathball issues in other games, what causes them, and what issues various games have taken to address them.
I used to play wc3 ladder alot, and got quite high even. From what I remember there was a strong tendency for players to have one main army, and few if any side armies; and in team games it was generally very important to have your armies together so they don't get taken out by the other side's armies; I don't recall people complaining about 'deathball' back then, though i didn't follow the forums so much; it does seem like there was the same trend towards highly focused forces; why would it seem less deathbally then? the emphasis on micro? the ability of high leveled heroes to take out armies well?
Heroes of might and magic 3 certainly had doomstacks. There were clear factors there; a) the more troops (of one type) in a stack, the tougher it was, there wasn't any penalty or disadvantage to stacking. b) high mobility; various movement tricks led to high mobility, so keeping yoru army together to defend a large area was quite feasible; especially once a hero got to the very high levels and picked up things like master level town portal or dimension door; then they coudl defend all their towns quite easily.
c) hero advantage; heroes gave boosts to the troops, so troops under your best hero were a lot toughter than troops under other heroes.
The later homm games did try to reduce doomstacking, though it was still pretty prominent; mostly they nerfed the uber mobility sources.
i'm sure there's a lot more to say about what other games have doomstacking issues and which don't; thoughts?
You're comparing apples and oranges. Both of these games are really RPGs. WC3 is hardly a RTS like BroodWar.. it does control like it, but it's very different. The main part of the game is the big fight and the micro in it. WC3 games most of hte times finished on 1 base anyway, this is not macro.
I think you would be better off just comparing SC2 to BW. I do not see many more games that you could use to compare. Maybe Company of heroes ( which has no deathball whatsoever, but it is not as full-scale than Starcraft.) Deathballs were not really used in BW because the bad pathing and unit behavior (as well as the control group limit) made it easy for a way smaller defending army to hold, or at least give a decent trade, vs the attacking army.
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This would be imbalanced, especially for terran as we can lift our cc's and land them anywhere and consider it a base.
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United States4883 Posts
I've been arguing this for quite awhile. I honestly think the best thing that can happen to SC2 is a deeper look into space control and being able to zone out areas. Obviously this is quite a huge area, but we really should be looking into ways to make defense way stronger than offense; this allows for a balance not in your army composition or your micro but for balance in positioning and strategic thinking.
I agree that one of the specific things that needs to be addressed is a real highground advantage. It's far too easy to get highground vision in SC2 (in addition to the fact that things aren't as spread out); this makes things like tank wars fit on one screen and really be dependent on air advantage rather than highground advantage. Some suggestions have been a miss percentage on the low ground, a +1/2 range buff to highground units (my favourite), or a damage nerf to lowground units.
I wrote an article on this a while back, check it out if you have time: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=377941
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On November 13 2012 06:33 Patate wrote:Show nested quote +On November 13 2012 05:59 Ameisenmann wrote:On November 13 2012 05:35 DuncanIdaho wrote:On November 13 2012 04:57 Patate wrote:On November 13 2012 04:55 summerloud wrote:On November 13 2012 04:51 Patate wrote:
Actually, the reason why people turtle in this game is that 3 base mining is WAY enough for any production.. more than that is just:
1. more chances of getting dropped
2. more supply for workers, so less for units
Less income per base, and less worker/max supply (whatever the way), is the way to go. That alone will not break the deathball, but it will make up for a way more dynamic early to late-midgame.
I played the 6m1g mod a few months ago, and while the game is not balanced for this kind of gameplay, it rendered OBSOLETE any kind of non-cheesy 1 base play (1-1-1, 4gate, etc..). It also made the game way more dynamic: with less units, we tried harassing the numerous bases in order to gain an advantage in the long run.
This is the main thing that has to be changed. The income per base right now is way too high: there is absolutely no reason why I should be going for a 4th base as a protoss... in pvt for example, it would only make me vulnerable to drops.
Edit: I'd also like to add that the gas should be a limited ressource. Mass High Templar or Infestor play should not be available (without seriously affecting the whole army's composition) until a 5th base. You want to reward macro? do that. Right now, we don't really have macro.. we have sitting on 3 bases and waiting to be maxed. Very rarely did players get maxed in BW, because contains were common, and so were harassments.
i would love to see maps get bigger, have more bases, and decrease the amount of mineral patches however, instead of only having one gas, i would make gas mining slower. i like the strategic option of when to build your 1st and 2nd gas, adds depth to the game also, it would help to raise the supply cap a little or make certain units cost less supply hell, i ll even throw a crazy idea in there without thinking it through: what if workers only cost 1/2 supply each? I thought of it.. it would totally break the very early game balance.. not sure it is a good thing. Hmm... We would be able to saturate our mineral line before making the first supply granting structure/overlord... Yeah, Idk about that. Not sure that's the best solution. Deathballs would just get even bigger and not less effective. Of course it would take longer to build up, and players would be more spread out, but I don't believe that it would necessarily lead to better gameplay. Longer buildup, but maybe more harassment. Don't you think you contradict yourself?
Not really, why? Maybe it's just my english. I didn't say it would have no effect, just that it doesn't change how the armies work, and that there's no reason to split your army other than doing drops.
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What if you changed the size of units? One of the reasons deathballs are so good is because its easyto get a lot of units clumped up very close together. Marines are a very good deathball unit exactly because of this. They are actually quite fragile but they are among the smallest units in the game. Imagine that the size of the marine was increased to that of the... Thor (exaggeration to prove a point). It would be a terrible deathball unit because if you had more than 20 only half of them would be able to attack. The strength of a single marine would be completely untouched, but clumped in deathballs marines would be awful.
A nice examples of this mechanic in the game already is a brood lord vs ultralisk comparison. Looking at raw stats there is almost no reason whatsoever to get brood lords. They do single target damage as opposed to splash, they are slow as fuck and have both less armor and hp. However being an air unit they dont have a size and can be clumped together as tight as you want them to be. Ultralisk's on the other hand are massive (pun intended) and frequently stop each other from attacking, thus making them bad in large numbers. If we scaled the Ultralisk's size down to say that of a zergling i am sure it would be one of the best units in the game if not the best unit. 5 ultras or 5 brood lords? 20 ultras or 20 brood lords?
The point of all this should be quite clear. The size of the unit greatly affects a units ability to perform in deathball situations and really only that, so maybe this ought to be looked at.
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On November 13 2012 08:34 bananafone wrote:
What if you changed the size of units? One of the reasons deathballs are so good is because its easyto get a lot of units clumped up very close together. Marines are a very good deathball unit exactly because of this. They are actually quite fragile but they are among the smallest units in the game. Imagine that the size of the marine was increased to that of the... Thor (exaggeration to prove a point). It would be a terrible deathball unit because if you had more than 20 only half of them would be able to attack. The strength of a single marine would be completely untouched, but clumped in deathballs marines would be awful.
A nice examples of this mechanic in the game already is a brood lord vs ultralisk comparison. Looking at raw stats there is almost no reason whatsoever to get brood lords. They do single target damage as opposed to splash, they are slow as fuck and have both less armor and hp. However being an air unit they dont have a size and can be clumped together as tight as you want them to be. Ultralisk's on the other hand are massive (pun intended) and frequently stop each other from attacking, thus making them bad in large numbers. If we scaled the Ultralisk's size down to say that of a zergling i am sure it would be one of the best units in the game if not the best unit. 5 ultras or 5 brood lords? 20 ultras or 20 brood lords?
The point of all this should be quite clear. The size of the unit greatly affects a units ability to perform in deathball situations and really only that, so maybe this ought to be looked at.
hmm... so we could make literally every unit the size of a thor and... problem solved! But seriously, the reason we have deathballs is because of pathing and better AI.
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On November 13 2012 12:10 Inquisitor1323 wrote:Show nested quote +On November 13 2012 08:34 bananafone wrote:
What if you changed the size of units? One of the reasons deathballs are so good is because its easyto get a lot of units clumped up very close together. Marines are a very good deathball unit exactly because of this. They are actually quite fragile but they are among the smallest units in the game. Imagine that the size of the marine was increased to that of the... Thor (exaggeration to prove a point). It would be a terrible deathball unit because if you had more than 20 only half of them would be able to attack. The strength of a single marine would be completely untouched, but clumped in deathballs marines would be awful.
A nice examples of this mechanic in the game already is a brood lord vs ultralisk comparison. Looking at raw stats there is almost no reason whatsoever to get brood lords. They do single target damage as opposed to splash, they are slow as fuck and have both less armor and hp. However being an air unit they dont have a size and can be clumped together as tight as you want them to be. Ultralisk's on the other hand are massive (pun intended) and frequently stop each other from attacking, thus making them bad in large numbers. If we scaled the Ultralisk's size down to say that of a zergling i am sure it would be one of the best units in the game if not the best unit. 5 ultras or 5 brood lords? 20 ultras or 20 brood lords?
The point of all this should be quite clear. The size of the unit greatly affects a units ability to perform in deathball situations and really only that, so maybe this ought to be looked at. hmm... so we could make literally every unit the size of a thor and... problem solved! But seriously, the reason we have deathballs is because of pathing and better AI.
Yes, but if units had more collision (take more space), the whole deathball would take more time to be able to have its maximum dps output. Right now if you take a stimmed bioball and send it to melee range with a building or whatever, it literally takes it less than a second from the first unit to be in firing range to the last unit of the deathball.. therefore the defender (the building in that case) has almost no advantage from standing there. Deathballs move too perfectly, and units clump up way too much.
1a (or 1a2a3a4a5a6a7a8a9a, in that case) an army in BW, and watch it move on the minimap.. it literally becomes a line. Therefore, a well placed defender could hold with half the supply, while this doesn't happen in SC2 (unless it is a hard counter situation). So if you feel like you're well defended, you can split your army and you will still do well.
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On October 13 2012 08:54 BoX wrote:
I don't understand how this would work? These defensive units would be 3x tougher than attacking forces.. How? Building placement?
Would they not be 3x stronger than enemy forces when used offensively?
I'm a little confused o.O
How about spider mines, lurkers, (2 supply, 70dmg) tanks, dark swarm, defensive reavers, stronger splash, high ground advantage...
The reason sc2 games are so passive until players max has a lot to do with map design. It's way too easy to get 3 bases saturated and you dont need more than 3 for a near optimal economy. Unfortunately, it lacks the positional units to deviate from the current designs. More open maps or maps with harder to take bases will favour only certain races because they are too hard to lock down presently.
Maps and units have to be changed simultaneously for this to work. Clumping/AI would have to be changed as well so that its harder to create high dps density on the move and while moving through chokes. I'm playing both bw and sc2 these days and can tell for sure it's these three things that are the difference between deathballs and skirmishes. A selection cap wouldn't have much of an impact for good players.
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On November 13 2012 12:10 Inquisitor1323 wrote:Show nested quote +On November 13 2012 08:34 bananafone wrote:
What if you changed the size of units? One of the reasons deathballs are so good is because its easyto get a lot of units clumped up very close together. Marines are a very good deathball unit exactly because of this. They are actually quite fragile but they are among the smallest units in the game. Imagine that the size of the marine was increased to that of the... Thor (exaggeration to prove a point). It would be a terrible deathball unit because if you had more than 20 only half of them would be able to attack. The strength of a single marine would be completely untouched, but clumped in deathballs marines would be awful.
A nice examples of this mechanic in the game already is a brood lord vs ultralisk comparison. Looking at raw stats there is almost no reason whatsoever to get brood lords. They do single target damage as opposed to splash, they are slow as fuck and have both less armor and hp. However being an air unit they dont have a size and can be clumped together as tight as you want them to be. Ultralisk's on the other hand are massive (pun intended) and frequently stop each other from attacking, thus making them bad in large numbers. If we scaled the Ultralisk's size down to say that of a zergling i am sure it would be one of the best units in the game if not the best unit. 5 ultras or 5 brood lords? 20 ultras or 20 brood lords?
The point of all this should be quite clear. The size of the unit greatly affects a units ability to perform in deathball situations and really only that, so maybe this ought to be looked at. hmm... so we could make literally every unit the size of a thor and... problem solved! But seriously, the reason we have deathballs is because of pathing and better AI.
Did you miss the part where @bananafone wrote (exaggeration....) He just meant that if the marine for instance had a slightly larger collision radius/size the dps density of a deathball of marines would decrease. Hence, the effectiveness of a marine deathball vs groups of marine balls would be lower. You failed to actually give a real reason why you thought his reasoning was incorrect. Furthermore, there isn't only one reason we have deathballs (pathing and AI). Other reasons for the deathball include; map design (size and locations of naturals and thirds), deathball movement speeds, high deathball dps (due to clumping), hard-counter units (an army of one unit type is too easily countered in sc2), and some others that I probably haven't thought of.
I agree with @banafone.. Unit size/unit collision radius needs to be increased for the marine. The issue with the Protoss deathball is that even though collision radius is somewhat high for most of their units, the major dps dealer, the Collosus, has such a long range and can also walk on top of Zealots and the like. Collision radius thus makes very little difference to the Protoss when the Collosus is incorporated. This is one of the main reason why Protoss rely the Collosus; for its way superior dps and range. Moving on to Zerg, there is no rouch deathball because it isn't as effective due to the low range and their relatively high collision radius. However, the infestor/Lord deathball is so effective because of the Broodlords high dps and the infestor's ability to make up for all of the Broodlords' weaknesses (slow speed, inability to attack air).
I rate that the collosus' attack path needs to be changed (idea from another thread) so that it travels away from the collosus rather than sweep radially. This would allow it to keep its strength vs deathball, but lower its effectiveness slightly vs smaller groups or concaved armies. Secondly, I think the infestor needs to be a little less of the best unit in the game. I would like to see the infestor become less strong and the hydra made stronger.
I do not think that only one or two changes such as the ideas above will fix the deathball issue. Obviously the deathball technique will still be easier and more effective to use for lower level players. But for the top players to use positional play more, I think two more issues also need to be adressed. Firstly, moment speed of units like maurader, collosus, and infestor need to be somewhat reduced so that each of the deathballs are less mobile as a unit. Secondly, the naturals and thirds should not be as close as they are to the main base. This would make it harder to defend all of your bases with one army.
Lastly, I do agree that changing pathing and AI would help too, but Blizzard and a number of players have already tested it and deemed it ineffective at reducing the dsathballs' effectiveness. Blizzard have said already that they won't change pathing. To be honest, it makes sense that blizzard want the deathball to be easy to maintain and useful, so that the game is easier for lower level players. However they do seem to want to make positional play more effective for use by top players. I think Blizzard are on the right track, but need to make some changes to some underlying issues with the game rather than only adding new units and abilities that do not seem to be breaking up the deathball.
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United States7483 Posts
The reason we have deathballs is because of the design philosophy from the beginning (Terrible terrible damage). Blizzard's goal with the game was to have attacking on a regular basis be the main goal and main behavior, and to have constant battles. They wanted to avoid defensive games and eco focused games when they made it, and the stats of units and maps were made with that in mind. Over time they slowly realized this was really dumb, and made small changes a little at a time to units and the maps. This helped, but the core design of unit mechanics is still there. That's why deathballs exist, because units were designed with damage in mind, not function.
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On November 13 2012 07:04 Patate wrote:Show nested quote +On November 13 2012 06:44 Rabiator wrote:On November 13 2012 06:33 Patate wrote:On November 13 2012 06:06 neptunusfisk wrote:
Lurker lurker lurker. Stronger siege tanks. High ground advantage. No brood lords. Plague instead of fungal. I disagree with the BL part. It is a very interesting unit (way more than the guardian). Of course lurker vs swarm host is a no brainer: the swarm host is simply stupid and it's not original (its a burrowed Brood Lord). The Broodlord is not "interesting", it is "unfair", because it spawns free units which screen it from ground units that might be able to attack it otherwise. This is the reason why the BL is the only "capital ship" that can work in SC2 and it is a poor reason. Any ability which makes a unit "invulnerable" to attacks of the opponents army is bad. Thus the Broodlords free units (and the Swarm Host as well, though to a lesser extent since their locusts arent spawned in machinegun rapidity as for the BL), Forcefield and Fungal Growth are pretty unfair or outright overpowered. It is the design concept that makes it so and not the implementation (a Forcefield of 2 second duration would be useless for example) and they usually are either useless or overpowered. Just because people have learned to deal with them doesnt make them less bad concepts. Oh yeah well the reasons why SC2 has been unpopular as of late (or less popular), was those frustrating design things. I can't remember how many times I've heard casters desperately trying to make a game exciting: "SICK FORCEFIELDS" "SICK FUNGLES" . How are they any good? any mid masters can pull those off, it's simply not impressing. I want to go back to my comment concerning the bases with less income. Right now, a good zerg can get maxed at the 11 minutes mark. That leaves absolutely no time for any kinds of harassment or pressure (other than all-ins or designated pressure builds that land before 11 min). So in a way, you cannot really react fast enough to anything, which really makes , along with FF-FG-Vortex-Concussive (etc..) playing SC2 a pretty annoying experience at time.
"Fewer resources per base" only favors Zerg, since they have the most mobile army that can defend multiple bases through map awareness (creep spread) and pretty good defensive structures. Its the wrong way!
Tackle the problem from the other side by removing the boosts for unit production and economy. Broodwar had none of that and worked fine. Adjusting a "general mechanic" is the much more reliable way than relying on mapmakers to "not screw up". Maps can and should only do so much.
On November 13 2012 15:00 Whitewing wrote:
The reason we have deathballs is because of the design philosophy from the beginning (Terrible terrible damage). Blizzard's goal with the game was to have attacking on a regular basis be the main goal and main behavior, and to have constant battles. They wanted to avoid defensive games and eco focused games when they made it, and the stats of units and maps were made with that in mind. Over time they slowly realized this was really dumb, and made small changes a little at a time to units and the maps. This helped, but the core design of unit mechanics is still there. That's why deathballs exist, because units were designed with damage in mind, not function.
They clearly failed in the "constant battles" part of the concept since it is much better to wait until maxed and attack then. The asymmetric production speed boosts are yet another reason why "constant battles" are not happening, because race A can get more forces early on, so race B will try to keep safe to get its own boost to kick in later on and get the advantage then. Terrible concept actually and its depressing the guys at Blizzard dont see it.
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United States7483 Posts
On November 13 2012 16:32 Rabiator wrote:Show nested quote +On November 13 2012 07:04 Patate wrote:On November 13 2012 06:44 Rabiator wrote:On November 13 2012 06:33 Patate wrote:On November 13 2012 06:06 neptunusfisk wrote:
Lurker lurker lurker. Stronger siege tanks. High ground advantage. No brood lords. Plague instead of fungal. I disagree with the BL part. It is a very interesting unit (way more than the guardian). Of course lurker vs swarm host is a no brainer: the swarm host is simply stupid and it's not original (its a burrowed Brood Lord). The Broodlord is not "interesting", it is "unfair", because it spawns free units which screen it from ground units that might be able to attack it otherwise. This is the reason why the BL is the only "capital ship" that can work in SC2 and it is a poor reason. Any ability which makes a unit "invulnerable" to attacks of the opponents army is bad. Thus the Broodlords free units (and the Swarm Host as well, though to a lesser extent since their locusts arent spawned in machinegun rapidity as for the BL), Forcefield and Fungal Growth are pretty unfair or outright overpowered. It is the design concept that makes it so and not the implementation (a Forcefield of 2 second duration would be useless for example) and they usually are either useless or overpowered. Just because people have learned to deal with them doesnt make them less bad concepts. Oh yeah well the reasons why SC2 has been unpopular as of late (or less popular), was those frustrating design things. I can't remember how many times I've heard casters desperately trying to make a game exciting: "SICK FORCEFIELDS" "SICK FUNGLES" . How are they any good? any mid masters can pull those off, it's simply not impressing. I want to go back to my comment concerning the bases with less income. Right now, a good zerg can get maxed at the 11 minutes mark. That leaves absolutely no time for any kinds of harassment or pressure (other than all-ins or designated pressure builds that land before 11 min). So in a way, you cannot really react fast enough to anything, which really makes , along with FF-FG-Vortex-Concussive (etc..) playing SC2 a pretty annoying experience at time. "Fewer resources per base" only favors Zerg, since they have the most mobile army that can defend multiple bases through map awareness (creep spread) and pretty good defensive structures. Its the wrong way! Tackle the problem from the other side by removing the boosts for unit production and economy. Broodwar had none of that and worked fine. Adjusting a "general mechanic" is the much more reliable way than relying on mapmakers to "not screw up". Maps can and should only do so much. Show nested quote +On November 13 2012 15:00 Whitewing wrote:
The reason we have deathballs is because of the design philosophy from the beginning (Terrible terrible damage). Blizzard's goal with the game was to have attacking on a regular basis be the main goal and main behavior, and to have constant battles. They wanted to avoid defensive games and eco focused games when they made it, and the stats of units and maps were made with that in mind. Over time they slowly realized this was really dumb, and made small changes a little at a time to units and the maps. This helped, but the core design of unit mechanics is still there. That's why deathballs exist, because units were designed with damage in mind, not function. They clearly failed in the "constant battles" part of the concept since it is much better to wait until maxed and attack then. The asymmetric production speed boosts are yet another reason why "constant battles" are not happening, because race A can get more forces early on, so race B will try to keep safe to get its own boost to kick in later on and get the advantage then. Terrible concept actually and its depressing the guys at Blizzard dont see it.
Remember that the design was based on super small maps too, where rushing was very powerful, so the correct strategy was generally to rush, and then if it failed, your opponent was supposed to counter attack right then, so the game went back and forth with attacks until one person won (usually the first attack was good enough). Metalopolis was the biggest map in the map pool back then.
General unit design stayed the same while maps got bigger.
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On November 13 2012 16:39 Whitewing wrote:Show nested quote +On November 13 2012 16:32 Rabiator wrote:On November 13 2012 07:04 Patate wrote:On November 13 2012 06:44 Rabiator wrote:On November 13 2012 06:33 Patate wrote:On November 13 2012 06:06 neptunusfisk wrote:
Lurker lurker lurker. Stronger siege tanks. High ground advantage. No brood lords. Plague instead of fungal. I disagree with the BL part. It is a very interesting unit (way more than the guardian). Of course lurker vs swarm host is a no brainer: the swarm host is simply stupid and it's not original (its a burrowed Brood Lord). The Broodlord is not "interesting", it is "unfair", because it spawns free units which screen it from ground units that might be able to attack it otherwise. This is the reason why the BL is the only "capital ship" that can work in SC2 and it is a poor reason. Any ability which makes a unit "invulnerable" to attacks of the opponents army is bad. Thus the Broodlords free units (and the Swarm Host as well, though to a lesser extent since their locusts arent spawned in machinegun rapidity as for the BL), Forcefield and Fungal Growth are pretty unfair or outright overpowered. It is the design concept that makes it so and not the implementation (a Forcefield of 2 second duration would be useless for example) and they usually are either useless or overpowered. Just because people have learned to deal with them doesnt make them less bad concepts. Oh yeah well the reasons why SC2 has been unpopular as of late (or less popular), was those frustrating design things. I can't remember how many times I've heard casters desperately trying to make a game exciting: "SICK FORCEFIELDS" "SICK FUNGLES" . How are they any good? any mid masters can pull those off, it's simply not impressing. I want to go back to my comment concerning the bases with less income. Right now, a good zerg can get maxed at the 11 minutes mark. That leaves absolutely no time for any kinds of harassment or pressure (other than all-ins or designated pressure builds that land before 11 min). So in a way, you cannot really react fast enough to anything, which really makes , along with FF-FG-Vortex-Concussive (etc..) playing SC2 a pretty annoying experience at time. "Fewer resources per base" only favors Zerg, since they have the most mobile army that can defend multiple bases through map awareness (creep spread) and pretty good defensive structures. Its the wrong way! Tackle the problem from the other side by removing the boosts for unit production and economy. Broodwar had none of that and worked fine. Adjusting a "general mechanic" is the much more reliable way than relying on mapmakers to "not screw up". Maps can and should only do so much. On November 13 2012 15:00 Whitewing wrote:
The reason we have deathballs is because of the design philosophy from the beginning (Terrible terrible damage). Blizzard's goal with the game was to have attacking on a regular basis be the main goal and main behavior, and to have constant battles. They wanted to avoid defensive games and eco focused games when they made it, and the stats of units and maps were made with that in mind. Over time they slowly realized this was really dumb, and made small changes a little at a time to units and the maps. This helped, but the core design of unit mechanics is still there. That's why deathballs exist, because units were designed with damage in mind, not function. They clearly failed in the "constant battles" part of the concept since it is much better to wait until maxed and attack then. The asymmetric production speed boosts are yet another reason why "constant battles" are not happening, because race A can get more forces early on, so race B will try to keep safe to get its own boost to kick in later on and get the advantage then. Terrible concept actually and its depressing the guys at Blizzard dont see it. Remember that the design was based on super small maps too, where rushing was very powerful, so the correct strategy was generally to rush, and then if it failed, your opponent was supposed to counter attack right then, so the game went back and forth with attacks until one person won (usually the first attack was good enough). Metalopolis was the biggest map in the map pool back then. General unit design stayed the same while maps got bigger.
Maps got bigger and gameplay revolves less around "chance" or "overpowered units" (at an early timing) ... thus it improved and the game stayed terrible at its core design.
Starcraft 2 has one big fallacy in its core design and this is that SPEED is BETTER for GAMEPLAY. It isnt, because an increased speed has less margin for error and thus requires more precise balancing. This is terrible for viewers (things are over too quickly) and units (Siege Tanks get off one shot before being overrun by the swarm of Zerglings).
Sadly the "lets balance it on small maps" stupidity continues with HotS and its rather smallish Blizzard-made maps and only after the community pointed that out did they start to add in the bigger maps to the beta. Any in-house-testing was done on the stupid junk stuff they made and this shows how incompetent they truly are. Mechanically they are as good as it gets when implementing it, but the strategic planning on how to go about designing it is where they really need to improve more, MUCH more.
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United States7483 Posts
On November 13 2012 16:57 Rabiator wrote:Show nested quote +On November 13 2012 16:39 Whitewing wrote:On November 13 2012 16:32 Rabiator wrote:On November 13 2012 07:04 Patate wrote:On November 13 2012 06:44 Rabiator wrote:On November 13 2012 06:33 Patate wrote:On November 13 2012 06:06 neptunusfisk wrote:
Lurker lurker lurker. Stronger siege tanks. High ground advantage. No brood lords. Plague instead of fungal. I disagree with the BL part. It is a very interesting unit (way more than the guardian). Of course lurker vs swarm host is a no brainer: the swarm host is simply stupid and it's not original (its a burrowed Brood Lord). The Broodlord is not "interesting", it is "unfair", because it spawns free units which screen it from ground units that might be able to attack it otherwise. This is the reason why the BL is the only "capital ship" that can work in SC2 and it is a poor reason. Any ability which makes a unit "invulnerable" to attacks of the opponents army is bad. Thus the Broodlords free units (and the Swarm Host as well, though to a lesser extent since their locusts arent spawned in machinegun rapidity as for the BL), Forcefield and Fungal Growth are pretty unfair or outright overpowered. It is the design concept that makes it so and not the implementation (a Forcefield of 2 second duration would be useless for example) and they usually are either useless or overpowered. Just because people have learned to deal with them doesnt make them less bad concepts. Oh yeah well the reasons why SC2 has been unpopular as of late (or less popular), was those frustrating design things. I can't remember how many times I've heard casters desperately trying to make a game exciting: "SICK FORCEFIELDS" "SICK FUNGLES" . How are they any good? any mid masters can pull those off, it's simply not impressing. I want to go back to my comment concerning the bases with less income. Right now, a good zerg can get maxed at the 11 minutes mark. That leaves absolutely no time for any kinds of harassment or pressure (other than all-ins or designated pressure builds that land before 11 min). So in a way, you cannot really react fast enough to anything, which really makes , along with FF-FG-Vortex-Concussive (etc..) playing SC2 a pretty annoying experience at time. "Fewer resources per base" only favors Zerg, since they have the most mobile army that can defend multiple bases through map awareness (creep spread) and pretty good defensive structures. Its the wrong way! Tackle the problem from the other side by removing the boosts for unit production and economy. Broodwar had none of that and worked fine. Adjusting a "general mechanic" is the much more reliable way than relying on mapmakers to "not screw up". Maps can and should only do so much. On November 13 2012 15:00 Whitewing wrote:
The reason we have deathballs is because of the design philosophy from the beginning (Terrible terrible damage). Blizzard's goal with the game was to have attacking on a regular basis be the main goal and main behavior, and to have constant battles. They wanted to avoid defensive games and eco focused games when they made it, and the stats of units and maps were made with that in mind. Over time they slowly realized this was really dumb, and made small changes a little at a time to units and the maps. This helped, but the core design of unit mechanics is still there. That's why deathballs exist, because units were designed with damage in mind, not function. They clearly failed in the "constant battles" part of the concept since it is much better to wait until maxed and attack then. The asymmetric production speed boosts are yet another reason why "constant battles" are not happening, because race A can get more forces early on, so race B will try to keep safe to get its own boost to kick in later on and get the advantage then. Terrible concept actually and its depressing the guys at Blizzard dont see it. Remember that the design was based on super small maps too, where rushing was very powerful, so the correct strategy was generally to rush, and then if it failed, your opponent was supposed to counter attack right then, so the game went back and forth with attacks until one person won (usually the first attack was good enough). Metalopolis was the biggest map in the map pool back then. General unit design stayed the same while maps got bigger. Maps got bigger and gameplay revolves less around "chance" or "overpowered units" (at an early timing) ... thus it improved and the game stayed terrible at its core design. Starcraft 2 has one big fallacy in its core design and this is that SPEED is BETTER for GAMEPLAY. It isnt, because an increased speed has less margin for error and thus requires more precise balancing. This is terrible for viewers (things are over too quickly) and units (Siege Tanks get off one shot before being overrun by the swarm of Zerglings). Sadly the "lets balance it on small maps" stupidity continues with HotS and its rather smallish Blizzard-made maps and only after the community pointed that out did they start to add in the bigger maps to the beta. Any in-house-testing was done on the stupid junk stuff they made and this shows how incompetent they truly are. Mechanically they are as good as it gets when implementing it, but the strategic planning on how to go about designing it is where they really need to improve more, MUCH more.
More or less, but the issue with the HOTS maps wasn't that they were too small, some of them were outright huge. It was just lousy map design in general that made those maps terrible. Howling Peaks, for example, has way too many attack paths and a huge natural, which makes it very hard to take for Protoss.
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On November 13 2012 17:06 Whitewing wrote:Show nested quote +On November 13 2012 16:57 Rabiator wrote:On November 13 2012 16:39 Whitewing wrote:On November 13 2012 16:32 Rabiator wrote:On November 13 2012 07:04 Patate wrote:On November 13 2012 06:44 Rabiator wrote:On November 13 2012 06:33 Patate wrote:On November 13 2012 06:06 neptunusfisk wrote:
Lurker lurker lurker. Stronger siege tanks. High ground advantage. No brood lords. Plague instead of fungal. I disagree with the BL part. It is a very interesting unit (way more than the guardian). Of course lurker vs swarm host is a no brainer: the swarm host is simply stupid and it's not original (its a burrowed Brood Lord). The Broodlord is not "interesting", it is "unfair", because it spawns free units which screen it from ground units that might be able to attack it otherwise. This is the reason why the BL is the only "capital ship" that can work in SC2 and it is a poor reason. Any ability which makes a unit "invulnerable" to attacks of the opponents army is bad. Thus the Broodlords free units (and the Swarm Host as well, though to a lesser extent since their locusts arent spawned in machinegun rapidity as for the BL), Forcefield and Fungal Growth are pretty unfair or outright overpowered. It is the design concept that makes it so and not the implementation (a Forcefield of 2 second duration would be useless for example) and they usually are either useless or overpowered. Just because people have learned to deal with them doesnt make them less bad concepts. Oh yeah well the reasons why SC2 has been unpopular as of late (or less popular), was those frustrating design things. I can't remember how many times I've heard casters desperately trying to make a game exciting: "SICK FORCEFIELDS" "SICK FUNGLES" . How are they any good? any mid masters can pull those off, it's simply not impressing. I want to go back to my comment concerning the bases with less income. Right now, a good zerg can get maxed at the 11 minutes mark. That leaves absolutely no time for any kinds of harassment or pressure (other than all-ins or designated pressure builds that land before 11 min). So in a way, you cannot really react fast enough to anything, which really makes , along with FF-FG-Vortex-Concussive (etc..) playing SC2 a pretty annoying experience at time. "Fewer resources per base" only favors Zerg, since they have the most mobile army that can defend multiple bases through map awareness (creep spread) and pretty good defensive structures. Its the wrong way! Tackle the problem from the other side by removing the boosts for unit production and economy. Broodwar had none of that and worked fine. Adjusting a "general mechanic" is the much more reliable way than relying on mapmakers to "not screw up". Maps can and should only do so much. On November 13 2012 15:00 Whitewing wrote:
The reason we have deathballs is because of the design philosophy from the beginning (Terrible terrible damage). Blizzard's goal with the game was to have attacking on a regular basis be the main goal and main behavior, and to have constant battles. They wanted to avoid defensive games and eco focused games when they made it, and the stats of units and maps were made with that in mind. Over time they slowly realized this was really dumb, and made small changes a little at a time to units and the maps. This helped, but the core design of unit mechanics is still there. That's why deathballs exist, because units were designed with damage in mind, not function. They clearly failed in the "constant battles" part of the concept since it is much better to wait until maxed and attack then. The asymmetric production speed boosts are yet another reason why "constant battles" are not happening, because race A can get more forces early on, so race B will try to keep safe to get its own boost to kick in later on and get the advantage then. Terrible concept actually and its depressing the guys at Blizzard dont see it. Remember that the design was based on super small maps too, where rushing was very powerful, so the correct strategy was generally to rush, and then if it failed, your opponent was supposed to counter attack right then, so the game went back and forth with attacks until one person won (usually the first attack was good enough). Metalopolis was the biggest map in the map pool back then. General unit design stayed the same while maps got bigger. Maps got bigger and gameplay revolves less around "chance" or "overpowered units" (at an early timing) ... thus it improved and the game stayed terrible at its core design. Starcraft 2 has one big fallacy in its core design and this is that SPEED is BETTER for GAMEPLAY. It isnt, because an increased speed has less margin for error and thus requires more precise balancing. This is terrible for viewers (things are over too quickly) and units (Siege Tanks get off one shot before being overrun by the swarm of Zerglings). Sadly the "lets balance it on small maps" stupidity continues with HotS and its rather smallish Blizzard-made maps and only after the community pointed that out did they start to add in the bigger maps to the beta. Any in-house-testing was done on the stupid junk stuff they made and this shows how incompetent they truly are. Mechanically they are as good as it gets when implementing it, but the strategic planning on how to go about designing it is where they really need to improve more, MUCH more. More or less, but the issue with the HOTS maps wasn't that they were too small, some of them were outright huge. It was just lousy map design in general that made those maps terrible. Howling Peaks, for example, has way too many attack paths and a huge natural, which makes it very hard to take for Protoss.
Personally I consider Photon Cannons to be a very underused building in Protoss gameplay and this is in part the fault of people like Day[9] who always say stuff like "thats a cannon he didnt want to build" or "he built A Spine Crawler, so he is safe now" while the truth of the matter is that ONE defensive structure doesnt help at all against any half-hearted attack or harrass, but several or lots will help a lot more. How many times have people been ruined by drops in their natural? And why did it succeed? Because they were too greedy to build precautionary turrets.
If you want to make a point, why dont you make it so that no one misses it? Build 5 cannons in your natural so the opponent needs more than a single medivac of marines to do significant damage. It doesnt cost the world and just slows you down a bit, but "attack timings" are a bad concept for a game as well as the deathball.
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The way to defeat deathballs is to attack them directly by punishing players for forming them. Broodwar did so in part by having such a clunky interface and such poor pathing that deathballs were nigh-impossible, because it was so damn hard to actually get the damn thing together and get it moving properly, and partly because of how heavily they punished deathball play with their units. To show how, I'll use the example of air units.
In Broodwar, air units lacked the horrible pathing of ground units (because they never had to path at all), so the deathball could be formed just as well if not better than in SC2 thanks to the help of the stacking trick (include a very slow or immobile unit in your control group, and your units won't unstack). Anyone who cares to try will quickly discover that giant stacks of Battlecruisers or Carriers will roll over any number of AIs, and we all know about the legendary Broodwar Muta stacks (which were essentially deathballs in miniature, limited only by unit selection and my next topic of discussion). So why were Battlecruisers nigh-unusable in multiplayer, why were Carriers limited to an answer for Mech, and why did mass Muta never take over Broodwar? The answer is in the units that countered that kind of unit clumping. Carriers and Battlecruisers could not be used against Zerg, because Plague would ravage them and leave them easy prey for Scourge, Hydralisks, or Devourers. They were unusable against Protoss because of Psionic Storm, which they were far too slow to move out of, and the power and mobility of the Dragoon and the Scout, of all things. Carriers were only good against Terran, who had no good anti-air splash, even though the Goliath was easily superior to the Dragoon in its anti-air capacity and the Wraith could match the Scout. Battlecruisers were weak to Terran, though, because they lacked sufficient range to avoid being slaughtered by Goliaths and left no easy way to defend against the sheer horror that is Vulture drops. Mutalisks were excellent in all three matchups, but became quickly outdated in ZvT because of Irradiate/Valkyries, ZvP because of Corsairs/Storm/Archons, and ZvZ if the game ever got far enough to progress to Queens and Ensnare (I know of exactly one game where this happened, and it was GLORIOUS).
The connecting principle is that these units always stop being usable when strong AOE comes online. This is the secret of breaking the deathballs in SC2 as well. Give each race access to some AOE strong enough that clumps of units are crushed, and deathballs will instantly go out of date. Players will only move around with packs of units small enough that obliteration due to AOE is not crippling, and make sure they have some of that AOE themselves. It will be possible to hold ground with small numbers of units and good positioning, and the game will focus more on the whole map rather than big clumps of units.
Fortunately, HotS is already going this way. The Viper, Oracle, and Widow Mine all punish this type of play. It's a step in the right direction. I have high hopes for HotS, and if things aren't quite there yet, then with LotV as well.
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On November 13 2012 17:27 Rabiator wrote:Show nested quote +On November 13 2012 17:06 Whitewing wrote:On November 13 2012 16:57 Rabiator wrote:On November 13 2012 16:39 Whitewing wrote:On November 13 2012 16:32 Rabiator wrote:On November 13 2012 07:04 Patate wrote:On November 13 2012 06:44 Rabiator wrote:On November 13 2012 06:33 Patate wrote:On November 13 2012 06:06 neptunusfisk wrote:
Lurker lurker lurker. Stronger siege tanks. High ground advantage. No brood lords. Plague instead of fungal. I disagree with the BL part. It is a very interesting unit (way more than the guardian). Of course lurker vs swarm host is a no brainer: the swarm host is simply stupid and it's not original (its a burrowed Brood Lord). The Broodlord is not "interesting", it is "unfair", because it spawns free units which screen it from ground units that might be able to attack it otherwise. This is the reason why the BL is the only "capital ship" that can work in SC2 and it is a poor reason. Any ability which makes a unit "invulnerable" to attacks of the opponents army is bad. Thus the Broodlords free units (and the Swarm Host as well, though to a lesser extent since their locusts arent spawned in machinegun rapidity as for the BL), Forcefield and Fungal Growth are pretty unfair or outright overpowered. It is the design concept that makes it so and not the implementation (a Forcefield of 2 second duration would be useless for example) and they usually are either useless or overpowered. Just because people have learned to deal with them doesnt make them less bad concepts. Oh yeah well the reasons why SC2 has been unpopular as of late (or less popular), was those frustrating design things. I can't remember how many times I've heard casters desperately trying to make a game exciting: "SICK FORCEFIELDS" "SICK FUNGLES" . How are they any good? any mid masters can pull those off, it's simply not impressing. I want to go back to my comment concerning the bases with less income. Right now, a good zerg can get maxed at the 11 minutes mark. That leaves absolutely no time for any kinds of harassment or pressure (other than all-ins or designated pressure builds that land before 11 min). So in a way, you cannot really react fast enough to anything, which really makes , along with FF-FG-Vortex-Concussive (etc..) playing SC2 a pretty annoying experience at time. "Fewer resources per base" only favors Zerg, since they have the most mobile army that can defend multiple bases through map awareness (creep spread) and pretty good defensive structures. Its the wrong way! Tackle the problem from the other side by removing the boosts for unit production and economy. Broodwar had none of that and worked fine. Adjusting a "general mechanic" is the much more reliable way than relying on mapmakers to "not screw up". Maps can and should only do so much. On November 13 2012 15:00 Whitewing wrote:
The reason we have deathballs is because of the design philosophy from the beginning (Terrible terrible damage). Blizzard's goal with the game was to have attacking on a regular basis be the main goal and main behavior, and to have constant battles. They wanted to avoid defensive games and eco focused games when they made it, and the stats of units and maps were made with that in mind. Over time they slowly realized this was really dumb, and made small changes a little at a time to units and the maps. This helped, but the core design of unit mechanics is still there. That's why deathballs exist, because units were designed with damage in mind, not function. They clearly failed in the "constant battles" part of the concept since it is much better to wait until maxed and attack then. The asymmetric production speed boosts are yet another reason why "constant battles" are not happening, because race A can get more forces early on, so race B will try to keep safe to get its own boost to kick in later on and get the advantage then. Terrible concept actually and its depressing the guys at Blizzard dont see it. Remember that the design was based on super small maps too, where rushing was very powerful, so the correct strategy was generally to rush, and then if it failed, your opponent was supposed to counter attack right then, so the game went back and forth with attacks until one person won (usually the first attack was good enough). Metalopolis was the biggest map in the map pool back then. General unit design stayed the same while maps got bigger. Maps got bigger and gameplay revolves less around "chance" or "overpowered units" (at an early timing) ... thus it improved and the game stayed terrible at its core design. Starcraft 2 has one big fallacy in its core design and this is that SPEED is BETTER for GAMEPLAY. It isnt, because an increased speed has less margin for error and thus requires more precise balancing. This is terrible for viewers (things are over too quickly) and units (Siege Tanks get off one shot before being overrun by the swarm of Zerglings). Sadly the "lets balance it on small maps" stupidity continues with HotS and its rather smallish Blizzard-made maps and only after the community pointed that out did they start to add in the bigger maps to the beta. Any in-house-testing was done on the stupid junk stuff they made and this shows how incompetent they truly are. Mechanically they are as good as it gets when implementing it, but the strategic planning on how to go about designing it is where they really need to improve more, MUCH more. More or less, but the issue with the HOTS maps wasn't that they were too small, some of them were outright huge. It was just lousy map design in general that made those maps terrible. Howling Peaks, for example, has way too many attack paths and a huge natural, which makes it very hard to take for Protoss. Personally I consider Photon Cannons to be a very underused building in Protoss gameplay and this is in part the fault of people like Day[9] who always say stuff like "thats a cannon he didnt want to build" or "he built A Spine Crawler, so he is safe now" while the truth of the matter is that ONE defensive structure doesnt help at all against any half-hearted attack or harrass, but several or lots will help a lot more. How many times have people been ruined by drops in their natural? And why did it succeed? Because they were too greedy to build precautionary turrets. If you want to make a point, why dont you make it so that no one misses it? Build 5 cannons in your natural so the opponent needs more than a single medivac of marines to do significant damage. It doesnt cost the world and just slows you down a bit, but "attack timings" are a bad concept for a game as well as the deathball.
The problem with that mentality is that if you aren't VERY careful, you're going to end up weakening your main army so much that your opponent says "okay" and groups up his army and sweeps the floor with you. I find that the acceptable level is to build no more than one Cannon when you're mining off of one base, no more than four on two bases, as many as three per base on three bases, and then infinite cannons on four bases. The big issue is that one Cannon=one Gateway, so if you try to plant any too early you're going to find your infrastructure to be unbearably bad. Once you've got your requisite 8-10 Gateways down, it starts getting much more valuable to protect that infrastructure and your mining operations than to set more up. So I'd say that planting five Cannons in your nat is completely overkill, but putting two Cannons in the flight path into your main and third is perfectly reasonable.
Note: all this gets thrown out the window if someone's all-inning you. Then again, so does everything else, like "avoid drafting workers into your infantry".
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On November 13 2012 14:24 winsonsonho wrote:Show nested quote +On November 13 2012 12:10 Inquisitor1323 wrote:On November 13 2012 08:34 bananafone wrote:
What if you changed the size of units? One of the reasons deathballs are so good is because its easyto get a lot of units clumped up very close together. Marines are a very good deathball unit exactly because of this. They are actually quite fragile but they are among the smallest units in the game. Imagine that the size of the marine was increased to that of the... Thor (exaggeration to prove a point). It would be a terrible deathball unit because if you had more than 20 only half of them would be able to attack. The strength of a single marine would be completely untouched, but clumped in deathballs marines would be awful.
A nice examples of this mechanic in the game already is a brood lord vs ultralisk comparison. Looking at raw stats there is almost no reason whatsoever to get brood lords. They do single target damage as opposed to splash, they are slow as fuck and have both less armor and hp. However being an air unit they dont have a size and can be clumped together as tight as you want them to be. Ultralisk's on the other hand are massive (pun intended) and frequently stop each other from attacking, thus making them bad in large numbers. If we scaled the Ultralisk's size down to say that of a zergling i am sure it would be one of the best units in the game if not the best unit. 5 ultras or 5 brood lords? 20 ultras or 20 brood lords?
The point of all this should be quite clear. The size of the unit greatly affects a units ability to perform in deathball situations and really only that, so maybe this ought to be looked at. hmm... so we could make literally every unit the size of a thor and... problem solved! But seriously, the reason we have deathballs is because of pathing and better AI. Did you miss the part where @bananafone wrote (exaggeration....) He just meant that if the marine for instance had a slightly larger collision radius/size the dps density of a deathball of marines would decrease. Hence, the effectiveness of a marine deathball vs groups of marine balls would be lower. You failed to actually give a real reason why you thought his reasoning was incorrect. Furthermore, there isn't only one reason we have deathballs (pathing and AI). Other reasons for the deathball include; map design (size and locations of naturals and thirds), deathball movement speeds, high deathball dps (due to clumping), hard-counter units (an army of one unit type is too easily countered in sc2), and some others that I probably haven't thought of. I agree with @banafone.. Unit size/unit collision radius needs to be increased for the marine. The issue with the Protoss deathball is that even though collision radius is somewhat high for most of their units, the major dps dealer, the Collosus, has such a long range and can also walk on top of Zealots and the like. Collision radius thus makes very little difference to the Protoss when the Collosus is incorporated. This is one of the main reason why Protoss rely the Collosus; for its way superior dps and range. Moving on to Zerg, there is no rouch deathball because it isn't as effective due to the low range and their relatively high collision radius. However, the infestor/Lord deathball is so effective because of the Broodlords high dps and the infestor's ability to make up for all of the Broodlords' weaknesses (slow speed, inability to attack air). I rate that the collosus' attack path needs to be changed (idea from another thread) so that it travels away from the collosus rather than sweep radially. This would allow it to keep its strength vs deathball, but lower its effectiveness slightly vs smaller groups or concaved armies. Secondly, I think the infestor needs to be a little less of the best unit in the game. I would like to see the infestor become less strong and the hydra made stronger. I do not think that only one or two changes such as the ideas above will fix the deathball issue. Obviously the deathball technique will still be easier and more effective to use for lower level players. But for the top players to use positional play more, I think two more issues also need to be adressed. Firstly, moment speed of units like maurader, collosus, and infestor need to be somewhat reduced so that each of the deathballs are less mobile as a unit. Secondly, the naturals and thirds should not be as close as they are to the main base. This would make it harder to defend all of your bases with one army. Lastly, I do agree that changing pathing and AI would help too, but Blizzard and a number of players have already tested it and deemed it ineffective at reducing the dsathballs' effectiveness. Blizzard have said already that they won't change pathing. To be honest, it makes sense that blizzard want the deathball to be easy to maintain and useful, so that the game is easier for lower level players. However they do seem to want to make positional play more effective for use by top players. I think Blizzard are on the right track, but need to make some changes to some underlying issues with the game rather than only adding new units and abilities that do not seem to be breaking up the deathball.
Did you miss the part where I was kidding? The marine doesn't need a size or radius increase. Its size is a double-edged sword so to speak, it may increase DPS but also makes it more vulnerable to AOE. In addition, the marine is the only unit that you consistently see being split. To top that off, a few well-placed Seige Tanks, Infestors, or HTs can shut down large amounts of marines relatively well.
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I honestly think that the SC2 Deathball works because you can select so many units and hotkey them under a tab, or even select army units with one button. And the fact that units tend to clump up, because if you clump up ranged units, they are more effective than just sending in packs of 5-10 of them at a time at an opponent's defenses or deathball.
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I think its just a mix of many different problems
Static defense hurts your econonmy too much, and starts sucking big time once your opponent gets upgrades
The innitial base advantage, terran bunkers / buildings, protoss warpins / msc and zerg Queens / creep, all lose importance and strenght at a 200 / 200, or when ten 3/3 marines enter and stim your base to shreds.
I would give protoss a similar upgrade to the 2 armor, maybe (durable defense, +100 life and -0.X fire rate on cannons). Also let the mothership cast a stronger purify on the nexus. Costs are 50/50 at the dark shrine?
Zerg, When in range of a lair/hive one Queen (changes to the next if she dies), gets infused with the power of the swarm. Gains 2/3 armor, life regeneration, and +3/4 attack.
Terran, well, they have better lategame defense anyway.
Then again this migh just shut down small raiding parties even more!
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On November 13 2012 21:37 Inquisitor1323 wrote:Show nested quote +On November 13 2012 14:24 winsonsonho wrote:On November 13 2012 12:10 Inquisitor1323 wrote:On November 13 2012 08:34 bananafone wrote:
What if you changed the size of units? One of the reasons deathballs are so good is because its easyto get a lot of units clumped up very close together. Marines are a very good deathball unit exactly because of this. They are actually quite fragile but they are among the smallest units in the game. Imagine that the size of the marine was increased to that of the... Thor (exaggeration to prove a point). It would be a terrible deathball unit because if you had more than 20 only half of them would be able to attack. The strength of a single marine would be completely untouched, but clumped in deathballs marines would be awful.
A nice examples of this mechanic in the game already is a brood lord vs ultralisk comparison. Looking at raw stats there is almost no reason whatsoever to get brood lords. They do single target damage as opposed to splash, they are slow as fuck and have both less armor and hp. However being an air unit they dont have a size and can be clumped together as tight as you want them to be. Ultralisk's on the other hand are massive (pun intended) and frequently stop each other from attacking, thus making them bad in large numbers. If we scaled the Ultralisk's size down to say that of a zergling i am sure it would be one of the best units in the game if not the best unit. 5 ultras or 5 brood lords? 20 ultras or 20 brood lords?
The point of all this should be quite clear. The size of the unit greatly affects a units ability to perform in deathball situations and really only that, so maybe this ought to be looked at. hmm... so we could make literally every unit the size of a thor and... problem solved! But seriously, the reason we have deathballs is because of pathing and better AI. Did you miss the part where @bananafone wrote (exaggeration....) He just meant that if the marine for instance had a slightly larger collision radius/size the dps density of a deathball of marines would decrease. Hence, the effectiveness of a marine deathball vs groups of marine balls would be lower. You failed to actually give a real reason why you thought his reasoning was incorrect. Furthermore, there isn't only one reason we have deathballs (pathing and AI). Other reasons for the deathball include; map design (size and locations of naturals and thirds), deathball movement speeds, high deathball dps (due to clumping), hard-counter units (an army of one unit type is too easily countered in sc2), and some others that I probably haven't thought of. I agree with @banafone.. Unit size/unit collision radius needs to be increased for the marine. The issue with the Protoss deathball is that even though collision radius is somewhat high for most of their units, the major dps dealer, the Collosus, has such a long range and can also walk on top of Zealots and the like. Collision radius thus makes very little difference to the Protoss when the Collosus is incorporated. This is one of the main reason why Protoss rely the Collosus; for its way superior dps and range. Moving on to Zerg, there is no rouch deathball because it isn't as effective due to the low range and their relatively high collision radius. However, the infestor/Lord deathball is so effective because of the Broodlords high dps and the infestor's ability to make up for all of the Broodlords' weaknesses (slow speed, inability to attack air). I rate that the collosus' attack path needs to be changed (idea from another thread) so that it travels away from the collosus rather than sweep radially. This would allow it to keep its strength vs deathball, but lower its effectiveness slightly vs smaller groups or concaved armies. Secondly, I think the infestor needs to be a little less of the best unit in the game. I would like to see the infestor become less strong and the hydra made stronger. I do not think that only one or two changes such as the ideas above will fix the deathball issue. Obviously the deathball technique will still be easier and more effective to use for lower level players. But for the top players to use positional play more, I think two more issues also need to be adressed. Firstly, moment speed of units like maurader, collosus, and infestor need to be somewhat reduced so that each of the deathballs are less mobile as a unit. Secondly, the naturals and thirds should not be as close as they are to the main base. This would make it harder to defend all of your bases with one army. Lastly, I do agree that changing pathing and AI would help too, but Blizzard and a number of players have already tested it and deemed it ineffective at reducing the dsathballs' effectiveness. Blizzard have said already that they won't change pathing. To be honest, it makes sense that blizzard want the deathball to be easy to maintain and useful, so that the game is easier for lower level players. However they do seem to want to make positional play more effective for use by top players. I think Blizzard are on the right track, but need to make some changes to some underlying issues with the game rather than only adding new units and abilities that do not seem to be breaking up the deathball. Did you miss the part where I was kidding? The marine doesn't need a size or radius increase. Its size is a double-edged sword so to speak, it may increase DPS but also makes it more vulnerable to AOE. In addition, the marine is the only unit that you consistently see being split. To top that off, a few well-placed Seige Tanks, Infestors, or HTs can shut down large amounts of marines relatively well.
I did miss that, because I took it as sarcasm, which is not the same as kidding.. You obviously meant to undermine the idea of collision radius being increased. I agree that size is a double-edged sword. However, I'd rather see AOE be less devastating to marines and see marines be less devastating themselves.
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United States7483 Posts
On November 14 2012 01:14 winsonsonho wrote:Show nested quote +On November 13 2012 21:37 Inquisitor1323 wrote:On November 13 2012 14:24 winsonsonho wrote:On November 13 2012 12:10 Inquisitor1323 wrote:On November 13 2012 08:34 bananafone wrote:
What if you changed the size of units? One of the reasons deathballs are so good is because its easyto get a lot of units clumped up very close together. Marines are a very good deathball unit exactly because of this. They are actually quite fragile but they are among the smallest units in the game. Imagine that the size of the marine was increased to that of the... Thor (exaggeration to prove a point). It would be a terrible deathball unit because if you had more than 20 only half of them would be able to attack. The strength of a single marine would be completely untouched, but clumped in deathballs marines would be awful.
A nice examples of this mechanic in the game already is a brood lord vs ultralisk comparison. Looking at raw stats there is almost no reason whatsoever to get brood lords. They do single target damage as opposed to splash, they are slow as fuck and have both less armor and hp. However being an air unit they dont have a size and can be clumped together as tight as you want them to be. Ultralisk's on the other hand are massive (pun intended) and frequently stop each other from attacking, thus making them bad in large numbers. If we scaled the Ultralisk's size down to say that of a zergling i am sure it would be one of the best units in the game if not the best unit. 5 ultras or 5 brood lords? 20 ultras or 20 brood lords?
The point of all this should be quite clear. The size of the unit greatly affects a units ability to perform in deathball situations and really only that, so maybe this ought to be looked at. hmm... so we could make literally every unit the size of a thor and... problem solved! But seriously, the reason we have deathballs is because of pathing and better AI. Did you miss the part where @bananafone wrote (exaggeration....) He just meant that if the marine for instance had a slightly larger collision radius/size the dps density of a deathball of marines would decrease. Hence, the effectiveness of a marine deathball vs groups of marine balls would be lower. You failed to actually give a real reason why you thought his reasoning was incorrect. Furthermore, there isn't only one reason we have deathballs (pathing and AI). Other reasons for the deathball include; map design (size and locations of naturals and thirds), deathball movement speeds, high deathball dps (due to clumping), hard-counter units (an army of one unit type is too easily countered in sc2), and some others that I probably haven't thought of. I agree with @banafone.. Unit size/unit collision radius needs to be increased for the marine. The issue with the Protoss deathball is that even though collision radius is somewhat high for most of their units, the major dps dealer, the Collosus, has such a long range and can also walk on top of Zealots and the like. Collision radius thus makes very little difference to the Protoss when the Collosus is incorporated. This is one of the main reason why Protoss rely the Collosus; for its way superior dps and range. Moving on to Zerg, there is no rouch deathball because it isn't as effective due to the low range and their relatively high collision radius. However, the infestor/Lord deathball is so effective because of the Broodlords high dps and the infestor's ability to make up for all of the Broodlords' weaknesses (slow speed, inability to attack air). I rate that the collosus' attack path needs to be changed (idea from another thread) so that it travels away from the collosus rather than sweep radially. This would allow it to keep its strength vs deathball, but lower its effectiveness slightly vs smaller groups or concaved armies. Secondly, I think the infestor needs to be a little less of the best unit in the game. I would like to see the infestor become less strong and the hydra made stronger. I do not think that only one or two changes such as the ideas above will fix the deathball issue. Obviously the deathball technique will still be easier and more effective to use for lower level players. But for the top players to use positional play more, I think two more issues also need to be adressed. Firstly, moment speed of units like maurader, collosus, and infestor need to be somewhat reduced so that each of the deathballs are less mobile as a unit. Secondly, the naturals and thirds should not be as close as they are to the main base. This would make it harder to defend all of your bases with one army. Lastly, I do agree that changing pathing and AI would help too, but Blizzard and a number of players have already tested it and deemed it ineffective at reducing the dsathballs' effectiveness. Blizzard have said already that they won't change pathing. To be honest, it makes sense that blizzard want the deathball to be easy to maintain and useful, so that the game is easier for lower level players. However they do seem to want to make positional play more effective for use by top players. I think Blizzard are on the right track, but need to make some changes to some underlying issues with the game rather than only adding new units and abilities that do not seem to be breaking up the deathball. Did you miss the part where I was kidding? The marine doesn't need a size or radius increase. Its size is a double-edged sword so to speak, it may increase DPS but also makes it more vulnerable to AOE. In addition, the marine is the only unit that you consistently see being split. To top that off, a few well-placed Seige Tanks, Infestors, or HTs can shut down large amounts of marines relatively well. I did miss that, because I took it as sarcasm, which is not the same as kidding.. You obviously meant to undermine the idea of collision radius being increased. I agree that size is a double-edged sword. However, I'd rather see AOE be less devastating to marines and see marines be less devastating themselves.
You're assuming that it would scale proportionally in both directions, but I don't think it would. With proper positioning and a concave, marines would be just as strong as they are now, but would suffer less damage from AoE, which would result in a flat out buff. In end-game it might be a bit more proportional with sheer numbers, but until max armies it would likely be an indirect marine buff. Blizzard has nerfed AoE instead of going this direction, which I think works out okay.
That said, there are other solutions.
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On November 12 2012 23:08 bananafone wrote:
Why does so many solutions to deathballs involve better defensive positioning? I really dont get it, we already have a matchup functioning that way -> mech TvT. Now it might just be me, but i really dont consider that particular matchup all that fun to watch or play. If you buff defensive positioning you will get more defensive positioning. Its actually pretty simple, but defensive positioning isn't really what anybody want is it?
Personally what I want to see is more harass. Currently hellions, oracles, banshees, terran bio drops and infestors does this well, in my opinion. Most of these units share the same weakness in that they too fragile to be used in real combat so they rely on hit and run tactics to do the damage they need. That, if you ask me, is the key to breaking up death balls; making units that are good enough to warrant use, but are too fragile to be used in deathballs. Its not actually about breaking up deathballs by demotivating the use of deathballs, but rather about motivating the use of units that just plain dont fit into deathballs. Most of the new units fit reasonably well into this scheme. You can always argue whether we have enough of these new units, but we are definately (in my opinion) moving in the right direction.
I've the thread backwards, but I did want to respond to the TvT point. I respect that you might not enjoy that particular matchup, however you can't really deny that TvT has the most variety in how it's played out with any number of viable openings, midgame and lategame compositions all perfectly viable. There are also 0 hard counter units in the matchup, everything single units serves multiple purposes and while mixture of units is very important it is not the most important part of the matchup.
Here's an example, when playing Bio vs. Mech marauders are really helpful to both pickoff tanks as well as soak damage from hellions and tanks. That being said you have plenty of time to start mixing them into your main composition after you figure out your opponent is going mech and you don't even have to actually make them. Marines/Medivacs are perfectly capable of taking down a mech army IF you have a significant advantage in the engagement by skillfully catching your opponent offguard or at a bad angle. At the same time you can't simply a-move a perfect mixture of marauder/marine/medivac over a well positioned mech army, you'll lose that fight extremely badly. The game then evolves from being about what units people are making into how they are using the units they have, and that is what makes this game exciting.
Cloak Banshee's make for a great TvT opener, they perform good scouting and excellent harass early on. At the same time even unprepared your opponent probably won't be crippled by your banshee play unless he plays it out very poorly. As the game transitions into the midgame and the lategame the money you spent very early on cloak can turn to a huge advantage as you make a few cloaked banshee's to take out your opponents mech army after wrestling air dominance from him. This kind of short term->long term use of a unit simply doesn't happen in other matchups, and the roles of other units in the other mu's doesn't really change.
TvT is also very unique in that it allows for huge comebacks, you can be down 50 or 60 supply from a bad fight and still comeback to win. You won't be pulling that off very often in TvZ or TvP, ZvZ, ZvP and PvP. TvT is about how you use your units to your advantage, more so than actually just having the units.
The difference between how a top tier Terran handles his army and positioning and a masters player is extremely evident and you regularly see great plays made by the top Terrans. I can't say the same for the difference in infestor or colossus usage between top tier players and their lesser counterparts, I can't tell the difference between any zerg's infestor control only how they get to their armies, I can tell the difference between MKP's army and MMA's though, and they're both amazing micro and control players. MKP will be right in your face microing the shit out of a small skirmish while MMA will be dropping 2 places at once without losing a unit.
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On November 13 2012 20:42 Acritter wrote:
The way to defeat deathballs is to attack them directly by punishing players for forming them. Broodwar did so in part by having such a clunky interface and such poor pathing that deathballs were nigh-impossible, because it was so damn hard to actually get the damn thing together and get it moving properly, and partly because of how heavily they punished deathball play with their units. To show how, I'll use the example of air units.
In Broodwar, air units lacked the horrible pathing of ground units (because they never had to path at all), so the deathball could be formed just as well if not better than in SC2 thanks to the help of the stacking trick (include a very slow or immobile unit in your control group, and your units won't unstack). Anyone who cares to try will quickly discover that giant stacks of Battlecruisers or Carriers will roll over any number of AIs, and we all know about the legendary Broodwar Muta stacks (which were essentially deathballs in miniature, limited only by unit selection and my next topic of discussion). So why were Battlecruisers nigh-unusable in multiplayer, why were Carriers limited to an answer for Mech, and why did mass Muta never take over Broodwar? The answer is in the units that countered that kind of unit clumping. Carriers and Battlecruisers could not be used against Zerg, because Plague would ravage them and leave them easy prey for Scourge, Hydralisks, or Devourers. They were unusable against Protoss because of Psionic Storm, which they were far too slow to move out of, and the power and mobility of the Dragoon and the Scout, of all things. Carriers were only good against Terran, who had no good anti-air splash, even though the Goliath was easily superior to the Dragoon in its anti-air capacity and the Wraith could match the Scout. Battlecruisers were weak to Terran, though, because they lacked sufficient range to avoid being slaughtered by Goliaths and left no easy way to defend against the sheer horror that is Vulture drops. Mutalisks were excellent in all three matchups, but became quickly outdated in ZvT because of Irradiate/Valkyries, ZvP because of Corsairs/Storm/Archons, and ZvZ if the game ever got far enough to progress to Queens and Ensnare (I know of exactly one game where this happened, and it was GLORIOUS).
The connecting principle is that these units always stop being usable when strong AOE comes online. This is the secret of breaking the deathballs in SC2 as well. Give each race access to some AOE strong enough that clumps of units are crushed, and deathballs will instantly go out of date. Players will only move around with packs of units small enough that obliteration due to AOE is not crippling, and make sure they have some of that AOE themselves. It will be possible to hold ground with small numbers of units and good positioning, and the game will focus more on the whole map rather than big clumps of units.
Fortunately, HotS is already going this way. The Viper, Oracle, and Widow Mine all punish this type of play. It's a step in the right direction. I have high hopes for HotS, and if things aren't quite there yet, then with LotV as well.
I am glad another has concluded the same. It's so simple, why would it be so hard to break up a death ball? AOE by nature discourages clumping, especially if it does lots of damage, like AOE was in BW. If the goal is to please spectators by making battles go more "back and fourth' or just last longer in general ( as people say like BW ), then AOE additions might be what's needed. Unfortunately though I personally believe that when comparing the evolution of BW vs SC2 it's obvious that blizzard's constant patching has interfered at least somewhat with the matchups' evolving, BW was rarely patched leaving the strategy evolving all up to the players where as SC2 has been heavily patched when problems arise in matchups, making quick fixes that end up with negative unintended consequences. The constant patching possibly has prevented SC2 to reach an equilibrium at which the battles become more numerous.
Also I like the new additions in HOTS as well and believe that HOTS strategies will be very different, or at least I pretend to haha ^^.
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On November 17 2012 12:41 ZaeYeL wrote:Show nested quote +On November 13 2012 20:42 Acritter wrote:
The way to defeat deathballs is to attack them directly by punishing players for forming them. Broodwar did so in part by having such a clunky interface and such poor pathing that deathballs were nigh-impossible, because it was so damn hard to actually get the damn thing together and get it moving properly, and partly because of how heavily they punished deathball play with their units. To show how, I'll use the example of air units.
In Broodwar, air units lacked the horrible pathing of ground units (because they never had to path at all), so the deathball could be formed just as well if not better than in SC2 thanks to the help of the stacking trick (include a very slow or immobile unit in your control group, and your units won't unstack). Anyone who cares to try will quickly discover that giant stacks of Battlecruisers or Carriers will roll over any number of AIs, and we all know about the legendary Broodwar Muta stacks (which were essentially deathballs in miniature, limited only by unit selection and my next topic of discussion). So why were Battlecruisers nigh-unusable in multiplayer, why were Carriers limited to an answer for Mech, and why did mass Muta never take over Broodwar? The answer is in the units that countered that kind of unit clumping. Carriers and Battlecruisers could not be used against Zerg, because Plague would ravage them and leave them easy prey for Scourge, Hydralisks, or Devourers. They were unusable against Protoss because of Psionic Storm, which they were far too slow to move out of, and the power and mobility of the Dragoon and the Scout, of all things. Carriers were only good against Terran, who had no good anti-air splash, even though the Goliath was easily superior to the Dragoon in its anti-air capacity and the Wraith could match the Scout. Battlecruisers were weak to Terran, though, because they lacked sufficient range to avoid being slaughtered by Goliaths and left no easy way to defend against the sheer horror that is Vulture drops. Mutalisks were excellent in all three matchups, but became quickly outdated in ZvT because of Irradiate/Valkyries, ZvP because of Corsairs/Storm/Archons, and ZvZ if the game ever got far enough to progress to Queens and Ensnare (I know of exactly one game where this happened, and it was GLORIOUS).
The connecting principle is that these units always stop being usable when strong AOE comes online. This is the secret of breaking the deathballs in SC2 as well. Give each race access to some AOE strong enough that clumps of units are crushed, and deathballs will instantly go out of date. Players will only move around with packs of units small enough that obliteration due to AOE is not crippling, and make sure they have some of that AOE themselves. It will be possible to hold ground with small numbers of units and good positioning, and the game will focus more on the whole map rather than big clumps of units.
Fortunately, HotS is already going this way. The Viper, Oracle, and Widow Mine all punish this type of play. It's a step in the right direction. I have high hopes for HotS, and if things aren't quite there yet, then with LotV as well. I am glad another has concluded the same. It's so simple, why would it be so hard to break up a death ball? AOE by nature discourages clumping, especially if it does lots of damage, like AOE was in BW. If the goal is to please spectators by making battles go more "back and fourth' or just last longer in general ( as people say like BW ), then AOE additions might be what's needed. Unfortunately though I personally believe that when comparing the evolution of BW vs SC2 it's obvious that blizzard's constant patching has interfered at least somewhat with the matchups' evolving, BW was rarely patched leaving the strategy evolving all up to the players where as SC2 has been heavily patched when problems arise in matchups, making quick fixes that end up with negative unintended consequences. The constant patching possibly has prevented SC2 to reach an equilibrium at which the battles become more numerous. Also I like the new additions in HOTS as well and believe that HOTS strategies will be very different, or at least I pretend to haha ^^.
Lets take the Siege Tank from SC2 and turn it into a Siege Tank from BW with 70 damage instead of a meager 35 (+15 vs armored). What will happen? Once you get a sufficient number of Tanks - or even a single one early - you will outdamage EVERYTHING and kill the AUTOMATICALLY TIGHT formations of your opponent. That is a terrible idea and increasing the AoE damage is NOT a good way to get rid of tight formations if there is no change made to the pathing that you can choose NOT to have your units clump up.
"Overpowered" or rather "very strong" AoE only works if it is not automatically destroying a huge clump of your army and to prevent that we would need "forced spreading of units with micro allowing for tight positioning" as it was the case in BW.
Even then the increased productivity and economy of SC2 will allow for Siege Tanks coming out too fast for their damage output. Fixing the Tank for this increased power by increasing the production time wont be exactly good, because it makes anyone going mech weak for the start and change the style too much in the direction of the Widow Mine ... a direction it is already pushed too much in.
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Back in the days when I was learning to make simple programs for the computer - which was about 20 years ago - there was the "party planer program", which is simply a matrix which has units "like and dislike" all other units. The movement AI should/could be changed to implement something like this so "that bunch of Zealots" try to push their way through all the Stalkers and Sentries in front of them in an attempt to get to the enemy. Marines might automatically run from a bunch of Banelings until there are too many other Marines or bigger units behind them which basically say "stand and fight and possibly die you coward".
This is what an "advanced pathing" could be like, but not the "everything acts as if they had magnets on their outside" kind of pathing. Random movement among a bunch of units of a single type is soooooo needed in SC2 to spread out the units ...
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This deathball behaviour is mostly a problem involving matchups with protoss, TvT, ZvT and ZvZ are quite fine in this respect already and quite close in quality to their BW counterpart I think (ZvZ even is much better in sc2).
The P deathball is just a result of it most times being the best option. Not being able to retreat along with bad harass options forces the 'defending until critical mass' sort of play. Protoss strength is just in timing attacks and big fights because their options support that: the sentry is MUCH better for supporting a tight group of units then supporting a spread out army.
Protoss hardly get's punished either for clumped up armies because the aoe against them is rather limited. Fungal is a limited damage spell and splitting hardly helps as they will get their damage off anyway, exactly the same with EMP. The concentrated firepower of being clumped and having your colossi over your army is often nearly as good as nicely spreading your army to avoid AoE, considering how difficult splitting is P tends to focus on other things before and during fights.
Spreading your army as P is just virtually irrelevant compared to using your spells correctly, warping in during the fight and focussing key units. Only thing you really care about for spreading are colossi battles in PvP and your HT in PvT.
Just slightly incentivizing spreading by making it more important to have your units spread and actually making it easier to spread (formation movement for example) will go a long way already. The fact that units look like one big clump while moving over the field probably won't ever be changed.
Also deathball play and lack of back and forth action are related but different subjects. The lack of back and forth action in sc2 in general is just the difficulty of retreating.
In BW and almost any other RTS one or even both armies in a matchup can retreat without much losses, typically the faster army. The setup is then usually that the faster army is weaker straight up but the player get's map control in return which can be used for harassing or gaining an economic advantage, the slower player tries to force the fight or uses some harass units to do economic damage. In sc2 however most matchups have a weird setup where neither player can retreat from a fight often because certain spells and abilities disable this. Forcefield, fungal, concussive shell + stim, blink etc are all abilities that punish retreating too heavily. Sometimes they enable retreating but they generally tend to do this worse. This just leads to both players having to commit to the fight or lose too much on the retreat with the natural result of the game resorting to timing attacks and turtling. Afterall what would you do if you knew you will lose a fight and can't avoid it either if you move out? You defend and wait till you can win that one fight with a timing, which is exactly what protoss does almost every game.
Promoting back and forth play needs to be done by actually being able to retreat and/or having good harass options. Protoss has neither, zerg has few, terran is the only one with plenty. Right now blizzard is only looking at the harass option though and making a half-assed job out of it, even worse they give terran an anti-harass unit.
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On November 18 2012 02:55 Rabiator wrote:
Lets take the Siege Tank from SC2 and turn it into a Siege Tank from BW with 70 damage instead of a meager 35 (+15 vs armored). What will happen? Once you get a sufficient number of Tanks - or even a single one early - you will outdamage EVERYTHING and kill the AUTOMATICALLY TIGHT formations of your opponent. That is a terrible idea and increasing the AoE damage is NOT a good way to get rid of tight formations if there is no change made to the pathing that you can choose NOT to have your units clump up.
"Overpowered" or rather "very strong" AoE only works if it is not automatically destroying a huge clump of your army and to prevent that we would need "forced spreading of units with micro allowing for tight positioning" as it was the case in BW.
Even then the increased productivity and economy of SC2 will allow for Siege Tanks coming out too fast for their damage output. Fixing the Tank for this increased power by increasing the production time wont be exactly good, because it makes anyone going mech weak for the start and change the style too much in the direction of the Widow Mine ... a direction it is already pushed too much in.
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Back in the days when I was learning to make simple programs for the computer - which was about 20 years ago - there was the "party planer program", which is simply a matrix which has units "like and dislike" all other units. The movement AI should/could be changed to implement something like this so "that bunch of Zealots" try to push their way through all the Stalkers and Sentries in front of them in an attempt to get to the enemy. Marines might automatically run from a bunch of Banelings until there are too many other Marines or bigger units behind them which basically say "stand and fight and possibly die you coward".
This is what an "advanced pathing" could be like, but not the "everything acts as if they had magnets on their outside" kind of pathing. Random movement among a bunch of units of a single type is soooooo needed in SC2 to spread out the units ...[/QUOTE]
I was not advocating specifically for the tank, just the principle behind increasing AOE options in the game. I completely disagree about the clumping of units creating such a problem with AOE. Clumping forces a player to constantly spread / micro their army, which starts to make for some pretty massive / sick battles because of the intricate positioning...like BW but SC2 is known for deathball so I guess that's why you're thinking the way you are.
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On October 13 2012 08:45 Filter wrote:
Tweaking the game to promote defensive positioning might just be the cure to all this turtle nonsense that we're looking for.
Lol? Promoting defensive positioning = more people defending (since you have a higher chance of winning if you're defending) = more people turtling (in order to have a higher win rate)
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On November 18 2012 12:00 Freezd wrote:Show nested quote +On October 13 2012 08:45 Filter wrote:
Tweaking the game to promote defensive positioning might just be the cure to all this turtle nonsense that we're looking for.
Lol? Promoting defensive positioning = more people defending (since you have a higher chance of winning if you're defending) = more people turtling (in order to have a higher win rate)
*Sigh*!
Turtling isnt viable as a way to win atm; the only thing you can hope to achieve is stalling your opponent for some time until he has got enough economy and production to trade inefficiently and finally crush you. This is very true for Terrans due to the amount of building space they need for production compared to the other two races. Turtling simply makes you give up any form of map presence.
The game is dominated by the "lets grab every unit we have and attack at one spot" deathball tactic with maybe some drop play to "pull strings". It wouldnt be so terrible to have other viable strategies available to the player apart from this one.
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The issue is, AoE is too weak. If you make AoE stronger then you have to split up your big death army or it's just gonna get mauled by the first high templar or bunch of tanks that comes along.
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A easy fix for the "death-ball problem" would be to limit control groups to XX supply. This would make the actual control of them harder to pull off, thus making them weaker. This would probably fix allot of the core game design problems of sc2.
The problem here being that it would virtually mean that they would have to start from scratch again with balancing the game, so it is not going to happen. Of course you have to limit on supply and not units to not heavily favor for instance Protoss over Zerg etc. larger units over smaller units.
Lets say that a maxed army -workers would require 4 control groups, making it at a 30~35 supply cap per group. This would both making splitting your armies up in several locations viable and doing more multi pronged an positional play stronger, but also weaken the death-ball overall.
I know they are not going to do it, but they could at least test it out at a "balance test map" or something like that. 35 supply limit on control groups Go!Go!
edit:
Actually I do don't know which is best supply limited control groups or unit limited control groups. But it would be easy to test, and easy to implement. I feel that they should at least try it out in internal testing and with a few pro's to see the effect, play with the numbers and see what works out etc.
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On November 18 2012 22:24 Zrana wrote:
The issue is, AoE is too weak. If you make AoE stronger then you have to split up your big death army or it's just gonna get mauled by the first high templar or bunch of tanks that comes along.
Making AoE stronger doesnt really solve the problem, because the game is "dumbed down" due to this autoclumping mechanic and will take lots of work to keep the units spread apart. Only Korean kids will be capable of doing that while every casual will get steamrolled by AoE units. Making AoE stronger will only turn Browders statement of "players WANT TO CLUMP THEIR UNITS" to be false, but the movement mechanic will still suck. [INTERVIEW]
The only real solution is a movement mechanic which keeps units spread out like in BW plus limiting the number of units per control group. Limiting it by supply is a terrible idea because of Zerglings and Banelings - which basically require that the number isnt high - and having 6 supply units in the game as well ... which then means you need AGES to get any units to the battle. 12 units is a decent limit ...
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Death balls are a fairly odd thing. There are measures to prevent masses of units from being so effective, and yet they still are because most of these death balls have support units that make them immune to such tactics. Between two deathballs of exact units, positioning is key, and the outcome may be swayed heavily even with tiny mistakes.
In ZvP, in particular, sentry/stalker/immortal/warp prism death balls are annoying, as well as the templar/archon/mass stalker/immortal/collosus/mothership death ball. Unless the opponents army has been crushed, or is out of expansions, the Protoss player will be able to remass his army and go for a final push.
This is fine for the Protoss. It is nice that the player should have a second chance. The zerg player on the other hand, if he fails to counter the attack, is dead no matter what. This is largely due to the fact that Colossi and Immortals stay alive in battle because they can sit in the back and have high HP, and gateway units can be warped in with a Prism to immediately reinforce.
Zerg can remass their army quite quickly, but they can't do it in front of their opponents base.
This problem I think can be countered by limiting the number of warp gates a player can have, or units built with a warp gate have a longer production time (in this case they delay to warp in another unit is longer than the actual build time).
Whatever Blizzard decides to do about this, if anything at all, it is hard to draw a line as to how much a player should do to win the game. You don't want to make it too much of a task to win a game. It is much better to have a series of seven matches, rather than one really long game where is it more back and forth, not because of some comeback, but because players can easily defend and remass their army. Could you imagine if the supply was limited to 100? Games would go on for much longer because 50 supply armies would have a very hard time breaking through even a small amount of defensive structures. So that line has to be drawn between volatility of a game, and how long you want it to last. The game cannot be so volatile however, that player skill is irrelevant. So far I think Blizzard has done a great job.
Deathballs of any race have a way of being managed. Of course there are no direct counters. Its not like you can build a massive amount of lings to counter mass stalker. You have to micro and position yourself quite well. So, end game deathballs are quite even between races, and they might be more volatile since defensive structures become increasingly irrelevant at that stage in the game. The question up to this point is, does any race have to micro better/harder than another to come out with that victory?
My own opinion is that Protoss have it the easiest, with mothership colossus templar, followed by broodlord infestor, and lastly Terrans have it the hardest, with Ghost Raven mech BC.
It comes down to end game armies and how hard they are to micro, and does any one race have an easier time getting that final army over another race.
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On November 18 2012 23:07 Rabiator wrote:Show nested quote +On November 18 2012 22:24 Zrana wrote:
The issue is, AoE is too weak. If you make AoE stronger then you have to split up your big death army or it's just gonna get mauled by the first high templar or bunch of tanks that comes along. Making AoE stronger doesnt really solve the problem, because the game is "dumbed down" due to this autoclumping mechanic and will take lots of work to keep the units spread apart. Only Korean kids will be capable of doing that while every casual will get steamrolled by AoE units. Making AoE stronger will only turn Browders statement of "players WANT TO CLUMP THEIR UNITS" to be false, but the movement mechanic will still suck. [ INTERVIEW] The only real solution is a movement mechanic which keeps units spread out like in BW plus limiting the number of units per control group. Limiting it by supply is a terrible idea because of Zerglings and Banelings - which basically require that the number isnt high - and having 6 supply units in the game as well ... which then means you need AGES to get any units to the battle. 12 units is a decent limit ...
I don't think anyone can really know that without throughout testing it out. I don't think the 12 unit limit would work, since the game is design around "no limits" and you probably can not make that drastic a change without screwing all the mechanics of the game completely up and making it an entirely new game. It might work, it might not.
But either way I feel that limiting the number of units in your control groups will give a small nicely scaling disadvantage to massing up of units. The mechanic is really beautiful since you can overcome it with great control. Also this will give the "defenders advantage" quite a boots since it will be easier to pre position your army. Also positioning in attacking becomes much more important.
Overall I can see lots of benefits, and only one major disadvantage (which is the redesigning of the entire balance of the game).
So it is not going to happen, but it would so much fix most of the problems for sc2.
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On November 18 2012 23:25 sebvolc wrote:Show nested quote +On November 18 2012 23:07 Rabiator wrote:On November 18 2012 22:24 Zrana wrote:
The issue is, AoE is too weak. If you make AoE stronger then you have to split up your big death army or it's just gonna get mauled by the first high templar or bunch of tanks that comes along. Making AoE stronger doesnt really solve the problem, because the game is "dumbed down" due to this autoclumping mechanic and will take lots of work to keep the units spread apart. Only Korean kids will be capable of doing that while every casual will get steamrolled by AoE units. Making AoE stronger will only turn Browders statement of "players WANT TO CLUMP THEIR UNITS" to be false, but the movement mechanic will still suck. [ INTERVIEW] The only real solution is a movement mechanic which keeps units spread out like in BW plus limiting the number of units per control group. Limiting it by supply is a terrible idea because of Zerglings and Banelings - which basically require that the number isnt high - and having 6 supply units in the game as well ... which then means you need AGES to get any units to the battle. 12 units is a decent limit ... I don't think anyone can really know that without throughout testing it out. I don't think the 12 unit limit would work, since the game is design around "no limits" and you probably can not make that drastic a change without screwing all the mechanics of the game completely up and making it an entirely new game. It might work, it might not. But either way I feel that limiting the number of units in your control groups will give a small nicely scaling disadvantage to massing up of units. The mechanic is really beautiful since you can overcome it with great control. Also this will give the "defenders advantage" quite a boots since it will be easier to pre position your army. Also positioning in attacking becomes much more important. Overall I can see lots of benefits, and only one major disadvantage (which is the redesigning of the entire balance of the game). So it is not going to happen, but it would so much fix most of the problems for sc2.
We really need someone with math skills and good articulate skills and connections to Blizzard (in short: someone like Day[9]) to explain things to Dustin Browder and make him understand the problem that the deathball creates. He really seems ignorant of the purely mathematical side of it.
2 Marines vs 1 Zealot compared to 20 Marines vs 10 Zealots compared to 60 Marines vs 30 Zealots ... the balance shifts.
As an ex-casual (I played BW casually, but gave up on SC2 really fast) I can only add that the unlimited unit selection does make things harder to control for people who have not the ability to react as fast as a progamer. Thus forcing people to split their armies into task forces would help a lot and reducing the number of units on the battlefield - by removing the production and economy boosts - would help even more. I think it has been fairly agreed upon that the large amount of casual players attracted by the interesting campaign and the easy and fun multiplayer are what gave BW its cult status, so a lot should be done to make the game casual friendly. You dont make it casual friendly by turning it into a "blob vs blob" game, because there is too much at stake in an "all-in battle". Scouting is at best poor at low levels and thus it is easy to overrun your defenseless opponent (because he took all his troops to the middle of the map).
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Reducing the number of units on the battlefield will not solve the deathball problem. In fact, it will exaggerate it as players spend more time turtling to get to that maxed out unbeatable army because it is simply the strongest and most utility-maximizing thing to do.
The only way to fix the deathball is to make deathballs sub-optimal compared to splitting your army into smaller groups. One effective way to do this is to INCREASE the number of units on the field at once, as very large groups of units do not play well together. Improved pathing makes more units able to work together effectively, but there are still limits with regards to unit size and range. If a player could make 500 marines, it would be sub-optimal to do so instead of having a few smaller groups. I'm not sure exactly what size task force players would settle on in this case, but I imagine five armies of 100 is about right.
Now, I am not suggesting increasing the supply limit to 500. But reducing the supply costs of units will go a long way. The 3 supply tank, 2 supply roach and hydra, 6 supply colossus, etc. etc. has created a situation where you have so few actual units that it makes sense to keep them all in one place. Your "stack" of units isn't actually full even when you are maxed. You haven't started to get diminishing returns yet from adding more units.
Another way to disincentivize deathballs is to simply have powerful abilities and weapons that cannot be mitigated, but which do not stack. I'm talking BW siege tank shots, or dark swarm type hardware. Abilities that make a lower cost and lower supply army able to defeat a larger army in a localized area. Major candidates for this function are PDD and Swarm Hosts, but they presently don't do the job worth a damn, and require massive buffs to be actual anti-deathball functions.
Yet another way to do this is to have units be more expendable. More expensive units hurt more to lose them, so you protect them by having them move about in numbers. Cheaper units can be moved about in smaller groups with less risk. They don't need to do as much damage to be justified, and the absolute loss of being cornered by a huge army and losing the whole group is much less. Having expensive units greatly encourages deathballing.
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On November 13 2012 04:51 Patate wrote:
Actually, the reason why people turtle in this game is that 3 base mining is WAY enough for any production.. more than that is just:
1. more chances of getting dropped
2. more supply for workers, so less for units
Less income per base, and less worker/max supply (whatever the way), is the way to go. That alone will not break the deathball, but it will make up for a way more dynamic early to late-midgame.
I played the 6m1g mod a few months ago, and while the game is not balanced for this kind of gameplay, it rendered OBSOLETE any kind of non-cheesy 1 base play (1-1-1, 4gate, etc..). It also made the game way more dynamic: with less units, we tried harassing the numerous bases in order to gain an advantage in the long run.
This is the main thing that has to be changed. The income per base right now is way too high: there is absolutely no reason why I should be going for a 4th base as a protoss... in pvt for example, it would only make me vulnerable to drops.
Edit: I'd also like to add that the gas should be a limited ressource. Mass High Templar or Infestor play should not be available (without seriously affecting the whole army's composition) until a 5th base. You want to reward macro? do that. Right now, we don't really have macro.. we have sitting on 3 bases and waiting to be maxed. Very rarely did players get maxed in BW, because contains were common, and so were harassments.
This is really it, IMO. In SC2, it's a race to 3base saturation -> endgame deathball. For Zergs, this means 3 bases and an extra base for gas. Hell, even 2 bases is enough if you're going for a simpler and cheaper composition (going mass roach or roach/hydra as zerg for example). The game really gets more interesting and more complex as you have to get more bases, look at BW replays from 1-2 years ago, people exand all over the map and try to defend everything while harassing to keep their opponent back. It becoms like Go where the players try to cut of territories and split the map, and then start to work for that big lategame army, but they are still forced to be active constantly because delaying another base from your opponent makes a big difference. In Sc2, it simply doesn't, because said opponent doesn't actually NEED a 4th base, he's already on the way to the deathball.
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On November 20 2012 15:48 ledarsi wrote:
Reducing the number of units on the battlefield will not solve the deathball problem. In fact, it will exaggerate it as players spend more time turtling to get to that maxed out unbeatable army because it is simply the strongest and most utility-maximizing thing to do.
The only way to fix the deathball is to make deathballs sub-optimal compared to splitting your army into smaller groups. One effective way to do this is to INCREASE the number of units on the field at once, as very large groups of units do not play well together. Improved pathing makes more units able to work together effectively, but there are still limits with regards to unit size and range. If a player could make 500 marines, it would be sub-optimal to do so instead of having a few smaller groups. I'm not sure exactly what size task force players would settle on in this case, but I imagine five armies of 100 is about right.
Now, I am not suggesting increasing the supply limit to 500. But reducing the supply costs of units will go a long way. The 3 supply tank, 2 supply roach and hydra, 6 supply colossus, etc. etc. has created a situation where you have so few actual units that it makes sense to keep them all in one place. Your "stack" of units isn't actually full even when you are maxed. You haven't started to get diminishing returns yet from adding more units.
Another way to disincentivize deathballs is to simply have powerful abilities and weapons that cannot be mitigated, but which do not stack. I'm talking BW siege tank shots, or dark swarm type hardware. Abilities that make a lower cost and lower supply army able to defeat a larger army in a localized area. Major candidates for this function are PDD and Swarm Hosts, but they presently don't do the job worth a damn, and require massive buffs to be actual anti-deathball functions.
Yet another way to do this is to have units be more expendable. More expensive units hurt more to lose them, so you protect them by having them move about in numbers. Cheaper units can be moved about in smaller groups with less risk. They don't need to do as much damage to be justified, and the absolute loss of being cornered by a huge army and losing the whole group is much less. Having expensive units greatly encourages deathballing.
More units on the battlefield
I call this the "shark and the swarm of fish problem", because more units will make the screen clustered up with more stuff and make it even more impossible for a viewer to focus on some part of the action. It also DOESNT solve the problem, because that is basically a deathball ... LOTS OF UNITS in a small area.
In your thoughts you are overlooking certain parts of the equasion when you say that "fewer units will make people turtle more":
1. Fewer units on the battlefield is exactly what we had in BW and there was no deathball in that game, because ...
2. fewer units on the battlefield is only ONE of the things needed to be changed. Limited unit selection, forced spreading of units and a slight rebalancing of AoE attacks are equally necessary. Only one of these methods doesnt work!
The point with "fewer units" is basically to put the punch and excitement back into units like the Siege Tank and the Reaver-successor (the Colossus) by NOT making them face off against 40 Zerglings which easily overrun them alone or in the company of only a few infantry.
More expendable units
Bad idea, because this will force the inequality of the production speed boosts between the races even more. Being careful with your expensive units IS an important part of the game. Cheaper units are also less effective and the game *should have* a decent useage for tier 3 units. Expensive units only encourage deathballing because the infantry can be "stacked" so tightly that they are easily overrun. Even then it doesnt matter that there are a lot of Siege Tanks in one area, because they are still overrun quite easily by the least expensive unit in the game ... the Zergling.
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On the topic of "large armies"
Large armies sounds nice, because bigger is better, right? Or is it? The huge and very concentrated armies in SC2 are more or less preventing micro like we only get to see very rarely and very early in games, when the supply is less than 100. If you ever see a BW pro with his 2 Zerglings kill the 2 Zerglings of his opponent without losing one of them you will know you have seen micro. Marine splitting is seriously lame compared to that!
So the question becomes:
Do you prefer the game to have more emphasis on micro or on macro (which you would need to support your larger army)?
For me it is clear that the focus should be on micro, because that forces creativity with your units AND it enables a better player to come back after making a mistake. Slower battles with fewer units are simply easier to follow compared to those giant ones which we have in SC2 right now. The focus shouldnt be on any clever plan (buld) to outmacro the opponent and then crush him with clearly superior numbers, but rather on being able to use your units well without having to resort to wave after wave of cheap suicide troops.
Broodwar worked, so why does SC2 have to follow a different economic and production speed? "More explosions, more deaths = better sequel" hasnt really worked for movies which tried to rely on that principle, so why should it work for a game like Starcraft?
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There are a few critical features of SC2 that appear to be glossed over in this discussion that "fewer" units will create more micro. The first is that SC2 actually has far lower ceiling for number of units (combat units) than Brood War. You need considerably more workers per base in SC2 than in Brood War, and your fighting units cost much more supply. Consequently you actually do have a smaller army in terms of number of pieces in the board in SC2. These pieces are larger and have bigger numbers, but there are fewer of them. There are countless examples of this, from 2 supply marauders to 6 supply thors to 6 supply ultralisks and colossi, 4 supply immortals, etc. etc. The units in SC2 across the board cost much more supply than units in Brood War. This makes it quicker and cheaper to max out, and encourages doing so if you believe you will have the advantage in a large army battle.
Deathballs and Acceleration/Diminishing Returns + Show Spoiler +
Now, speaking generally, as the size of your army increases past a certain point, additional units begin to give diminishing returns. This is especially true for units with short ranges (particularly melee units). However it also has a significant effect on powerful units and positional units. Adding another unit to the big force yields less utility than putting that unit somewhere else.
SC2 is firmly stuck in accelerating-returns-land due to the small numbers of expensive units. Colossi are a paradigmatic case. Two colossi is MUCH more than twice as strong as just one colossus. Against units that the colossus can actually attack (discounting units like vikings, corruptors, void rays for the moment) they actually never stop having this kind of wildly accelerating returns. Twenty colossi is 120 supply- ridiculously impractical for a real game- and they STILL will never be less effective than multiple smaller groups of colossi. It's only twenty actual units with twenty distinct chunks of HP, and each one is so expensive you can't afford to send it off alone. Sending a colossus out to fight by itself is a waste of resources. Not so for smaller, cheaper units.
Marines (often considered a deathball-y unit in SC2) are actually quite different. They are 1 supply, and an expendable 50 minerals. You can actually send, say, eight, or sixteen marines out on their own (usually by dropship for mobility) and you gain strength by doing so. Splitting the marines in a strategic sense across the map makes marines more effective. However a big army will kill such a small group with zero casualties. So in order to fight a big group and actually win, you have to ball up yourself. Herein lies the reason deathballs are dominant- one player is incentivized to use them, and forces the other to do the same (Prisoner's Dilemma). If they don't, their small forces get destroyed for free, or with minimal damage to the deathball.
Small Units Discourage Deathballs + Show Spoiler +
However, suppose the units are smaller and cheaper, which allows the tiny squads to meaningfully engage a deathball, and do damage without being destroyed for free. They still lose of course, but they inflict *casualties*. This happens when small units are used by both sides. Not with marines fighting colossi or thors or anything huge and expensive, but with marines fighting BW hydralisks. A big army of 1 supply hydralisks vs a small force of marines will win, and sustain casualties. The marines are fighting efficiently by splitting up. Colossi and Broodlords win, and sustain no casualties primarily because of their size and cost, and also because of their mechanics.
There is no compelling gameplay reason apart from "coolness" or gimmick-factor why bigger units would be desirable. Thors, for example, are not a better unit for being stronger and more expensive. It only reduces the number of options a player has for building and controlling that unit. One thor versus three goliaths, for example. What if I only want one goliath, and don't build the other two? Or three goliaths can be in three different places, controlled separately.
More relevant to deathballs, smaller units die more often. A large army of goliaths will suffer casualties for less damage taken than the same army of thors. Each goliath is easier to kill. A smaller enemy army can inflict meaningful, lasting damage that requires resources and production time to recover.
A big army of thors is strong only by relying on its weight. There is no finesse there, only the brute force of HP and DPS. And the enemy is going to need a big enough hammer in order to actually do any lasting damage, and kill even a single thor. You need to do at least 400 damage to even kill one. Whereas if that army was composed of 125 HP goliaths, then a much smaller force becomes much more effective, and can chip away at the goliath army much more easily.
Positional Play Discourages Deathballs + Show Spoiler +
Blizzard seems to like armies clashing, and dislikes positional play as it seems "boring." However the very idea of having a "big battle" presupposes an intent to incentivize deathball play. They focus on units' counter relationships and how compositions interact rather than on how fairly bland units fight one another in uneven distribution.
Suppose for the sake of argument that there is only one type of unit in the entire game. Obviously this unit's properties will have a massive impact on how the game plays.
Zerglings? Mad aggressive attacks to try and end the game immediately. Lots of zergling-on-zergling battles in the middle of the map. It plays fast, and perhaps is exciting, but ultimately there's not a lot more to be said.
Marines are much the same story. Whoever has more in one particular location will win locally. And marines have much stronger accelerating returns than zerglings due to their ranged attack, high dps, and low HP. The game will snowball quickly in favor of the player with more surviving marines early. The long and the short of it is that direct combat units, or "A-move units" are really quite boring if they're all you've got. They kill stuff provided you brought enough hardware, and they lose if you didn't.
Positional units don't follow this rule. An objectively weaker force can defeat a stronger force when well positioned. Unfortunately this dynamic is basically gone from SC2 (except the neutered tank). But in BW there were lurkers, dark swarm, reavers, arbiters, and other ways to get a local advantage for cheap. Put a few lurkers under a dark swarm, and they can bring the entire Russian Army up that ramp and it's not going to matter.
So if we do our one-unit thought experiment with a unit like a Lurker (assuming detection is available somehow) then we actually have a dynamic game. Where players put their lurkers matters. Covering one ramp might leave another ramp exposed. Sending a big force of lurkers forward into just a few lurkers already in position can be a big mistake (not so for marines).
Varying degrees of local advantage, the presence of strong positional units like lurkers, and the presence of force multiplier abilities and effects like dark swarm all act to make big armies acting in concert less effective. They can actually get stalled, or even defeated, by smaller armies used excellently.
Small Units Encourage Micro + Show Spoiler +
Furthermore, micro depends on a player's ability to control their units. The most obvious way to encourage micro is to simply give a player more units to control. Positioning becomes more relevant when there are more pieces on the board, as the main consideration is pieces' positions relative to each other.
Increasing the siege tank's supply cost to 3 is the biggest single nerf to the siege tank that Blizzard has made. A maxed army of siege tanks is now 33% smaller than a Brood War equivalent. Its damage was nerfed considerably, but if the tank were still 2 supply it might be feasible to use the tank in numbers.
This is especially important for a positional unit like the siege tank. At 3 supply you need every single tank you can possible build to be involved in a single fight simultaneously in order to even be effective. If you have a strong economy of about 80 workers, that leaves you only enough room for (at most) 40 tanks if you build literally nothing but scv's and tanks. If tanks were 2 supply, with the same worker count you would max out at 60 tanks. That is a tremendous difference in absolute army strength, resource cost notwithstanding.
With 60 tanks you can put 60 guns in 60 different places, rather than just 40. Mechanically, sieging and unsieging more tanks and controlling their positioning well is a greater challenge. Building that many tanks requires more economy, more production facilities, more time, and better macro, but yields a stronger army as a product of that additional macro skill. And the army is larger and more difficult to precisely manage, and much stronger when correctly micromanaged.
In summary, Blizzard should make big changes to resource and supply costs. They won't, but they should.
Making units bigger only reduces the number of pieces on the board. Their strength is only important relative to each other. Thor vs Thor is the same ballgame as Marine vs Marine, but with fewer pieces. Units should be SMALL to discourage deathballs. Having more pieces on the board makes splitting forces more efficient, less risky when units are destroyed, and causes small armies damage bigger armies as they are defeated. It also creates more opportunity for micro as there are simply more pieces to position, and more groups of units in different locations.
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EPT
