On October 26 2012 12:44 AnachronisticAnarchy wrote: I never quite got why everyone hates clumping so much. I've never noticed how it's supposedly painful to look at or anything like that.
When an army is spread out, it looks alot bigger and overwhelming than when its clumped up imo. I also think it's more aesthetically appealing for some reason.
It's also harder to tell what's going on when everything is so clumped together. Especially when the healthbars are up for tourneys. All you can see is healthbars. Partly a problem of healthbars being above instead of below so when units overlap, the healthbar covers everything behind it... which is the unit. A clumped army just looks like a stack of healthbars.
As far as I am concerned, tourneys should not have health bars always on... anything less is a major error in production. Can flash them on when battles are nearly over or if lots of damage just happened to show it. I believe there is also an option to show health bars on selected only. Maybe you can couple selected + flash health bars occasionally for groups of damaged units?
As for the "The base race, building sniping, deathball, base trade game we know today is directly a result of this sort of pathing, which pushes the units around and turns the game into each team trying to create 1 giant eraser.", I agree the game is more dynamic. But when I see series like Flash vs Soo MLG invitational I like it. Or Flash vs Ryung recent GSL up and downs. There are still games fighting for space and expect them more and more.
On October 26 2012 12:44 AnachronisticAnarchy wrote: I never quite got why everyone hates clumping so much. I've never noticed how it's supposedly painful to look at or anything like that.
When an army is spread out, it looks alot bigger and overwhelming than when its clumped up imo. I also think it's more aesthetically appealing for some reason.
It's better to look at because it doesn't look ridiculous when it's spread out. It also is easier to see.
I really do not get why they just don't change a ladder map or 2 on beta and let us test it...
I think it looks a lot better and it might fix a couple of problems with some AoE spells... Fungalling 20 vikings in 1 fungal is absolutely ridiculous and this might change the power of fungal and it might even need to get buffed.
Atm, as a zerg player, I think fungal is broken at the lower leagues,(I am plat). Almost nobody is good enough to split their units, but it is easy to fungal a group of marines
This should help lower league players to play against fungal (and other AoE-spells), I don't really know about pro-level play tho, at least it would look a lot better from a spectators point of view.
I really hope Blizzard will review their stance on this change and at least will let us test it.
Im wondering why people complain about this and then complain the game is too easy. Just split your units. Auto spreading would actually help the death ball since theyd start closer to getting the concave they need
On October 26 2012 15:04 raf3776 wrote: Im wondering why people complain about this and then complain the game is too easy. Just split your units. Auto spreading would actually help the death ball since theyd start closer to getting the concave they need
If you use your brain a bit you might see that pathing change would actually increase micro.
On October 26 2012 15:04 raf3776 wrote: Im wondering why people complain about this and then complain the game is too easy. Just split your units. Auto spreading would actually help the death ball since theyd start closer to getting the concave they need
If you use your brain a bit you might see that pathing change would actually increase micro.
well then please inform me how auto spreading would increase micro
On October 26 2012 15:04 raf3776 wrote: Im wondering why people complain about this and then complain the game is too easy. Just split your units. Auto spreading would actually help the death ball since theyd start closer to getting the concave they need
If you use your brain a bit you might see that pathing change would actually increase micro.
well then please inform me how auto spreading would increase micro
Well first of all its not "auto" anything. Its just different pathing rules. Units dont push eachother out of the way when they move so they look for a way around the unit resulting in a spread (but not necesarilly) that is natural and predictable. If you wanted to clump your units up, you would still have that option, you'd just have to take more consideration on map layout and obstacles while moving your deathball around.
Then there is an obvious argument that splash damage overall would recieve a huge nerf. Yeah, thats true, thats why you dont just implement this change and call it a day. This would require a considerable amount of rebalancing and buffing every aoe skill/spell/attack in the game and would, when buffed, further increase the micro requirement of playing the game.
How this increases micro? Well, there are A LOT of quality posts in various threads and blogs that break that issue down and explain how it would indeed ecourage micro. Because it is a lot of work to find the right posts ive read over the past two years, I have just included a few posts that give you the overall idea why this is a good change.
Unfortunatelly I havent been able to find the post that i felt was most important to the issue but it went along the lines of: when units are not clumped up, you dont have a ball of tightly packed marines that have a huge dps over a small surface area. In the case of protoss its basically the whole army firing their dps at the same time at the target because they are so packed. When on the other hand they are not as packed, you could have a battle beetwen say a 70 food army and a 15 food army; right now in SC2 the 70 food army would absolutely demolish the 15 food one in less than 3 seconds, BUT if that 70 food army is spread out more, you would only have an interaction only beetween a part of that 70 food ( lets say 20 food) and the whole 15 food on the other side. 20 food to 15 is a fair fight and there is a lot of potential for stalling the deathball with your small army doing various micro untill your reinforcements arrive. This is just the most basic line of the thought layout in the post I was trying to find and i didnt go in depth with it, but im sure you get the idea.
If you guys have really good arguments, you should post them in that BNet thread.
Aw dang I didn't realize it was in the HotS beta forum. I was going to post about viewability, opportunity (harass army on the move), and playability (functional tools).
You should post your thoughts here. 23% of the community still needs convincing
If someone would be so kind, they'll repost it for you on the official BNet forums.
On October 26 2012 15:04 raf3776 wrote: Im wondering why people complain about this and then complain the game is too easy. Just split your units. Auto spreading would actually help the death ball since theyd start closer to getting the concave they need
If you use your brain a bit you might see that pathing change would actually increase micro.
well then please inform me how auto spreading would increase micro
Read two posts up, also consider that with this change, there is no auto spread button. Some people are suggesting a "hold formation" button, but I am STRONGLY opposed to that.
I simply want unit micro to be a bit similar to how it was in BW.
Don't get me wrong, i remember fighting my own units in BW, I only want the feature that had units keeping formation relative to how you used a group selection's "magic box".
Please read some of Brood War's liquipedia on Magic Boxes to understand how this will improve micro, and the game as a whole.
On October 26 2012 12:44 AnachronisticAnarchy wrote: I never quite got why everyone hates clumping so much. I've never noticed how it's supposedly painful to look at or anything like that.
than read the damn thread you just posted in, seriously wtf?!
I think Unit clumping is only considered a problem because it leads to deathball vs deathball fights.
I would not change that by making unit pathing dumber but by giving every race at every tier a viable aoe that demands splitting. Maybe increase baneling aoe, give protoss some earlier aoe unit, make tanks stronger again, spidermine etc, all of this would encourage unit splitting, and i think aoe units should be like tank templar baneling etc, that they deal lot of damage but with intervall or only for a certain time because this gives some time to relocate which again encourages unit control from the attacker, he must be certain for example that the slow tank shoot at correct target and from defender splitting his units etc and not like the collosi that deals a steady ammount of aoe damage and is attack move.
So my approach would be to give everyrace more viable aoe units at every tier or improve the ones they already have to encourage splitting(and i dont mean aoe units like collosi but like firebat hellion spidermine baneling templar reaver etc)
The reason the deathball is so jarring and provokes such negative reactions from viewers and players is because deep-down, we know it's completely unrealistic. The greatest flaw of SC2 is that deathballs are effective. Even Dustin Bowder suggests that there are scenarios where deathballs are advantageous. IMO, there should be no scenarios in which a deathball is advantageous. A deathball is obviously vulnerable to AoE, but more importantly, a deathball should actually be the least efficient formation for doing damage. But it's not and the reason is simple: everybody shoots. SC2 does not implement any line-of-sight mechanics so every marine, every roach, and every stalker can shoot through their buddies at anyone in range. Everybody has magic bullets and there's no need to get in position to shoot. Melee units, in constrast need to run around each other to get in contact with the enemy.
Have you ever noticed that nobody complains about Zealot or Zerling "deathballs"? When you think about all the problematic deathballs, they all involve ranged units who can shoot most-efficiently when in a ball.
The everybody-shoots phenomenon affects everything from eliminating defender's advantage to eliminating positional play to encouraging encouraging boring deathball vs. deathball play.
Have you ever noticed that nobody complains about Zealot or Zerling "deathballs"? When you think about all the problematic deathballs, they all involve ranged units who can shoot most-efficiently when in a ball.
Great job noticing that.. simply Protoss high tech race !!! LOre.. have first unite Zealot that is joke and Terrans have Marines the best unite in game !!!! ...
With range reduced to marines and change of pathing Male unites will be also effective and not just range unites like now..
pathing will solve more problems in game not just look of game...
Melee deathballs have the reverse effect; they get stomped so hard by aoe and ranged deathballs in general that they're practically not viable. In bw I could win end game with zerglings partially because one storm couldn't kill 50 of them, same for one collussu.
Have you ever noticed that nobody complains about Zealot or Zerling "deathballs"? When you think about all the problematic deathballs, they all involve ranged units who can shoot most-efficiently when in a ball.
Great job noticing that.. simply Protoss high tech race !!! LOre.. have first unite Zealot that is joke and Terrans have Marines the best unite in game !!!! ...
With range reduced to marines and change of pathing Male unites will be also effective and not just range unites like now..
pathing will solve more problems in game not just look of game...
Have you ever noticed that nobody complains about Zealot or Zerling "deathballs"? When you think about all the problematic deathballs, they all involve ranged units who can shoot most-efficiently when in a ball.
Great job noticing that.. simply Protoss high tech race !!! LOre.. have first unite Zealot that is joke and Terrans have Marines the best unite in game !!!! ...
With range reduced to marines and change of pathing Male unites will be also effective and not just range unites like now..
pathing will solve more problems in game not just look of game...
On October 26 2012 15:04 raf3776 wrote: Im wondering why people complain about this and then complain the game is too easy. Just split your units. Auto spreading would actually help the death ball since theyd start closer to getting the concave they need
it has nothing to do with spreading or splitting
this video is a clear example of why brood war pathing was better. reach is running a very specific formation with his units designed to let the probes deal the first hit so two zealots immediately attack and kill it - meanwhile july's zerglings are moving a formation that they can immediately surround any zealot that gets out of position
micromanagement like this simply isn't possible in sc2 because of the clumping. i've spent weeks trying to put it into words in my head, but i can't do it - this video, on the other hand, explains all the concepts so many people have failed to put into words as to why brood war pathing was just better
most of the dumb unit pathing in bw was a result of chokes on map that large units can't pass through, the rest of it were either too many things trying to get up a ramp, or legit animation glitches like the dragoon bug