EPTNo fix to clumpy unit movement - Page 5
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boomudead1
United States186 Posts
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eviltomahawk
United States11135 Posts
On October 24 2012 08:13 BisuDagger wrote: A very true and well written post. I liked when units weren't pushed out of the way by other units. In fact the only time that this fascinated me was when the Archon could be pushed during morph. I think they can leave that part in. But otherwise I agree with what you wrote. Actually, I disagree. I like it when units are slightly nudged out of the way when not on hold-position. If I want some Stalkers to go down a ramp that I carelessly left some Zealots on, I like it when the Stalkers are able able to go down the ramp with no problem by nudging the Zealots out of the way. It would be an inconvenience to manually rearrange my units so that my Stalkers could simply walk down my ramp. Maybe I shouldn't have been so careless as to leave my Zealots on my ramp. Maybe a truly better player would be able to have enough foresight to avoid these pathing inconveniences. Nevertheless, when I look at pathfinding, I at least want my units to be able to go from point A to point B in the quickest, most convenient way possible. SC2's pathfinding at least succeeds in this respect, though clumping is still an issue. A solution to clumping would be great, but only if it's smart and doesn't inconvenience simple movement. | ||
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Belisarius
Australia6233 Posts
All they really need to do is bring back some kind of ground magic box. The simplest fix would surely be to create a cutoff. A move command at a location greater than some (close) distance would cause the centre of the control group to move to that location, rather than each individual unit in the control group. They'd then retain their offsets, at least while entering combat. A move command at a very close location would override the formation and cause each individual unit to move as close to the target as possible. ....I feel like that's really all you need.... | ||
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SarcasmMonster
3136 Posts
Which problem are we trying to solve here? A) Pros can't split their units so esports looks bad. B) Ladder players can't split their units and it should be easier to split your units. If "A" then I would say the problem is solved. They should split their units. Pros who do so will win games, Pros who do not will lose games. Should we make the game easier for Pros? The impression I have gotten from the community and the Pros themselves on this subject is a resounding "No." If "B" then I'm not sure we want to solve this? If it's a game of skill, then you need to learn to split your units. In Broodwar you had to learn to move your units. With a limited unit selection it was difficult to move a large army. Now it is easy to move your army, but harder to use them correctly in a big fight. Sounds like a better experience for a newer user to me? It's certainly what I would want as a player. If I'm going to be challenged I don't want it to be "how can I get my units into the fight." I would rather it be "my units got to the fight, how do I optimize their positions." -Dustin Browder You can easily test this yourself using the editor. I don't think you will find it makes much of a difference. We had multiple groups of people play and we could not tell that anything had actually happened. We were not trying to manipulate the units in any unusual way, we just played normally. Since clumping is beneficial in many situations I don't think this will change the way the game is played unless you are about to fight Banelings, Fungal, Psi Storm, etc. Only then should you split. In that case I don't think we want splitting to be automated. We want avoiding splash to be a skill thing. Right? -Dustin Browder Looks like he's pretty determined with his decision.  For me, it's C C. Improves the watchability of the game. | ||
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rollAdice
Germany32 Posts
i don't think he gets it. Even though he realized that splitting is in most cases not necessary they don't realize that positioning is now easier because the clumped deathball is the best battle formation in most cases and it requires absolutly no skill because the game automatically clumps up units. Splash however should absolutly be a skill thing, of course, more than splitting! | ||
Falling
Canada11603 Posts
On October 24 2012 03:00 Evangelist wrote: Artificial difficulty ie. fighting against the interface is not only counterintuitive to game design but also detrimental to the game in the long term. Yes, BW was an amazing competitive game after 5 or 6 years, but it is not in todays market nor is it competing with todays games. You would have gotten no one playing SC2 if they all thought it was BW2. Thankfully, it isn't. Which is wonderful for players like me who finally got to enjoy a proper multiplayer RTS designed by people who knew what they were doing - not designed by people obsessed with the past. This thread reminds me of the kind of people who see a scientific discovery and decide to just ignore it because "their way is better". Well it ain't. The point of attack move behaviour is to be predictable. At the moment it IS predictable. Your way would ensure it wasn't. In fact, attack moving up a cliff would result in exactly the same behaviour and would make it even easier to hold cliffs that it already is. Then again, we're talking about a community convinced that the problem with the colossus is that it doesn't have a buggy attack that flies around randomly and hits some random unit for infinite damage, not the fact it is basically designed to kill concaves - a point not a single person besides myself brings up. Couldn't auto-clumping be considered fighting against the interface? You want to spread your high templars, but they keep clumping up. So you order them to spread again, and they clump again. Isn't that just as much fighting the interface? Personally I think that the army spreading out in a large column when in long transit would be much better so there is a difference between travelling and actually being in position. (Also makes it easier to harass a reinforcing army.) Then maybe fix magic box so you have a more powerful tool to spread. But any sort of change to current unit movement would be nice. The armies are just so hard to see on screen- especially when all the healthbars are up. | ||
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Robotix
United States51 Posts
Currently, SC2 has what is probably the most optimal movement possible at all levels (if there is a better one, I haven't seen it). It is easy for lower level players to get right into and use the units with SC2's movement and still allows for pros to maximize the effectiveness of unit groups with great micro and precision. Units don't randomly run around as if their head was on fire and move in smooth, predictable paths. Contrary to this was Broodwar's movement system which was VERY bad. In Broodwar, new players would hit a wall as soon as they started playing: the movement system. Just getting units to a fight was ridiculous. Pretty much all army movement was just the player moving 12 units at a time X times until all of the units you wanted to move were finally moving. But of course, some silly Dragoon or Hydralisk would inexplicably end up miles from where you told him to go. Even pros didn't do much with the Broodwar movement aside from more effectively keeping their units together. As for the modified movement mods and ideas: I dislike them. With some of them (such as in Alternative 1), units tend to move in random paths with unpredictable movements which removes skill and adds randomness. With most of them, units are able to spread out and stay that way, which takes away a lot of player skill (such as MarineKing's epic Marine splits against Banelings). This just makes the game less interesting and takes away a lot of those "OH MY GOD! DID YOU SEE THAT EPIC MARINE SPLIT?!?" moments that make us non-pros wish we had skills like that. In short, I agree entirely with Dustin Browder. | ||
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Falling
Canada11603 Posts
There is actually only a limited number of units that would freak out. The dragoon would freak out because it was bigger than the programming had told it. So the dragoon was always try to fit into places it couldn't and than spaz. That's a totally separate issue from more spread out unit pathing. Even pros didn't do much with the Broodwar movement aside from more effectively keeping their units together. And this is just patently false. As for more spread out units, you can always balance spalsh to account for that. In addition, auto-clumping adds just as much randomness to unit movement because they keep pushing and shoving each other to flow around. They don't necessarily stay in a predictable spot except to clump really close. Compare this to magic box movement where the units stay exactly where you had positioned them. Completely predictable because they stay in formation. | ||
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rembrant
62 Posts
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Probe1
United States17920 Posts
Dragoons have character is what I'm trying to say I guess. Your post brought out precisely that to me. As you said, it was a totally different issue but an issue all the same (for a separate discussion- why SC2 units have no personality) | ||
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SarcasmMonster
3136 Posts
 ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/uBzf9.gif) | ||
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Robotix
United States51 Posts
On October 24 2012 10:48 Falling wrote: As for more spread out units, you can always balance spalsh to account for that. In addition, auto-clumping adds just as much randomness to unit movement because they keep pushing and shoving each other to flow around. They don't necessarily stay in a predictable spot except to clump really close. Compare this to magic box movement where the units stay exactly where you had positioned them. Completely predictable because they stay in formation. You really can't balance splash to account for spread out units without redesigning the entire game. This could probably work for Starcraft 3 but not Starcraft 2. And what could be more predictable than all of your units going exactly where you tell them to go? Spread units just takes skill out of the game. :\ | ||
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Falling
Canada11603 Posts
On October 24 2012 11:06 Robotix wrote: You really can't balance splash to account for spread out units without redesigning the entire game. This could probably work for Starcraft 3 but not Starcraft 2. And what could be more predictable than all of your units going exactly where you tell them to go? Spread units just takes skill out of the game. :\ So you want to deliberately keep things harder to force players to micro more. Isn't this the 'fight the interface' that always gets thrown around? But more seriously, this is why I would want to see more spread out on the move and better ground magic box. So they still clump on the battlefield, but you have the tool to separate them without them being auto spread all the time. But even then, I'd like to see more spread between units in general. It's way too clustered to make any sense of the army composition. In addition, what could be more predictable than units going where you tell them go, by not only going where you tell them to go, but how you want them to go. Ordered to spread out, stay spread out on arrival. I don't imagine anyone actually wants their entire army to occupy one space, stacked on top of each other. So if I want them to go to point A, but if I also manually order them to spread out, it would be nice if they would also arrive spread out at Point A. (But outside the magic box they'll clump up so it's still a skill. | ||
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MasterCynical
505 Posts
I played several games on the MM movement map a few months ago and it made almost no difference. The only thing I noticed was that units tended to move around corners in a line rather than a blob. This issue wont be solved by simply altering the magic box, there needs to be huge modifications done to the AI. Not as extreme maverick's mod but something like that and alternative 1. | ||
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SarcasmMonster
3136 Posts
You guys are okay with the clumping | ||
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Aetherial
Australia917 Posts
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boomudead1
United States186 Posts
for toss. if unit doesnt clump up that mean less dps. blizz can always work with aoe. they just dont wanna do all those work over | ||
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Probe1
United States17920 Posts
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NewSunshine
United States5938 Posts
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winsonsonho
Korea (South)143 Posts
However, the issue still remains that players CAN still ball up, which looks and feels ridiculous. Should 200/200 supply be able to fit into such a tight space? I think not. In BW this was not possible mainly because of retarded unit pathing. But whatever pathing system is used in SC2, players have the potential to make their units have mass orgies. In a war I don't think you would ever put your whole army in one small area. In war you cover strategic positions with seperate parts of your army. Imagine D-Day invasion with the Allied army clumped up and running towards the bunkers. They'd obviously have gotten slaughtered.. It should be the same in SC2, a big fat ball should be less than optimal in almost every situation. What I think is needed along with slight unit pathing changes is an increase to unit collision radius. No more fat unit orgies. Yes there would need to be rebalance and buffs to aoe and possibly slightly wider ramps, etc. But drastic times call for drastic measures  Increasing unit collision radius essentially nerfs ranged units the larger the ball of units get. Small squads of units have negligible 'range nerf', whereas a big ball of units has a larger 'nerf' to range. This might promote positional play. Death to the Deathball! | ||
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