Edit: Relevant BNet thread. Browder has responded several times to that thread so post your convincing arguments there if you want the devs to read them.
We tested this internally a week or two ago when we first saw this video (thanks to the author of the video).
It didn't actually change anything. We tried some really extreme values as well to really push it. Since you tend to cluster your units at rally points they tend to move as blobs. Units in this code cluster when the reach their destination the blobbing still occured. Because as a player you rarely make an attack-move action across the entire map, you usually make lots of small atack-moves from place to place the units all blobbed up immediately as you moved around.
We spent several days just trying different versions of this and we never could get something that made a real difference in a live game.
I am of the opinion that pro players can and should spread out their units more by hand. The benefits are enormous. Fortunately we are starting to see this in some games and I expect this trend to continue.
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."
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?
We have already decided it's not useful, that's why we didn't put it in a patch. I'm not going to waste time, energy and resources testing something that doesn't do anything positive for the game. A change like this will require extensive testing and take a lot of effort to make sure it didn't break anything in campaign or anywhere else in the game.
If you don't agree, that is totally cool. Go test it now. You have an editor. I'm not stopping you. =)
Frodan: I also want to follow up on a post you made a while ago. It was on the forums, I'm not sure if you can recall. But you talked about changing maybe the unit pathing AI, maybe tweaking some of the dynamic movement. Can you explain exactly what you guys did, maybe the results, and maybe some of your concerns because you said it wasn't that different.
Browder: We saw some videos that our fans put together, which is awesome. A variable which they were tweaking within the path finder, it would basically cause units to keep their position until they got to their target point, and they would still cluster up again. A lot of our players have felt that the spreading out would be something beneficial for E-sports, that it would cause the armies to look bigger, it would be a little easier to read what's going on in some of the bigger armies. So we tested this variable in our game, we tested it for a couple of days, playing tons and tons of games and it didn't make much of a difference because the reality is the test they were showing on a map was all these units spread out with a single right click across the map so the units will all spread out, so it look great. But nobody plays that way. They click rapidly in very short spaces so the units are always clustered. The other thing too that's typical about this is the fact of the matter that players want their units clustered. They don't want them spread out. It's more cool for E-sports perspective but not if you want to win a game. If you want to win a game, you want to cluster. You especially want to cluster when you are fighting with Marines and Maruaders, say against Zealots. You want to be in a tight ball and murdering them. You do want to split when you want to fight Banelings. So there's sometimes you want to split, and sometimes want to cluster. So it's really about what's the default and for us it felt like the smarter answer is look most of the time, especially for new users, clustering is correct. If the pros want to split up their units, they should split up their units and that's something they can do. We're seeing more and more and more pros who want to win games are spreading out their armies at the appropriate moment and gaining an advantage for it. But at the end of the day, we didn't put that one in beta because it didn't do that much. I wouldn't be ashamed to try something else at some point to see how that feels but that one did not do sort of what we all thought it would. It was actually almost no change to the game at all, so at that point what's the point of introducing all that work on us, all the testing, and all the uncertainty of that if it doesn't actually change much.
If I'm reading this correctly, he's saying that there isn't a unit movement alternative that doesn't have the "clumpyness" of the current algorithm. Clumping has been a big issue with the watchability of WOL. Many have proposed that unit movement is the biggest factor, but Blizz is suggesting otherwise.
Don't want this
Do want something like this (but doesn't have to be this exactly). Taken from Maverick's video.
There have been many proposed changes to unit movement. Are none of these suffice? (Will be adding more videos as I find them. I know they are there, just need to dig a bit) None of them improve at the very least the visual aspect of the game?
Alternative 3: by Maverick See 1:20 where the marines space out when moving. The spacing is VERY little but looks much better.
Alternative 4: by Kabel (Starbow) Kabel's statement
And as a last note, units are less clumped up and do not move in perfect formations anymore... Keeping an eye on your army is ever so important. Death to the deathball!!!
An example can be seen at 18:00 where the units start as a ball and quickly break formation. Watch the entire video for more examples. I asked Kabel what changes he made. "Right now I only manipulate the Formation value diameter in the Gameplay Data field in the data editor." TL thread
Bonus: Broodwar Not a real suggestion. I want to bring this video up because many people are making references to BW so hopefully this video will show how unit movement worked (for small units at least ) for those who never played it.
In my opinion, they improve the experience from a spectators point of view (and probably a player's too). Obviously this will require rebalancing the game (increasing AOE radius, etc), which makes an expansion the oppurtune time.
Poll: How do you feel about the unit movement in WOL?
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73%
Thumbs up (164)
27%
613 total votes
Your vote: How do you feel about the unit movement in WOL?
wouldnt matter anyways. SC2 is balanced around deathballs. Otherwise huge changes will have to occur, either to forcefields or rescaling AoE spells in general
On October 24 2012 01:39 Nightsz wrote: wouldnt matter anyways. SC2 is balanced around deathballs. Otherwise huge changes will have to occur, either to forcefields or rescaling AoE spells in general
Then why not? For the longevity of the game, the need to fix the issues of the game with expansions.
I think that what Mr Browder says here is basically that when you move your army around, you tend to give move commands "within the box" which causes your stuff to clump up even if you have different movement patterns. Just like how you do when you actually want to stack mutas or vikings for example.
The movement clumping is secondary in importance to the ability of the pathing AI to clump at a destination into a tight ball. Sort of what Browder said, except he didn't acknowledge the root of the problem. DPS density is not just easy to achieve, it's automatic. The reasons to spread out your units are outweighed by the effectiveness of superior local DPS density, especially on the time scale of most engagements.
Example: roaches pack in really tight. All they ever want to do is walk up to the enemy so all of them can shoot. Spreading them out to get a better arc is more work and not as effective as just move-command into the enemy. With very high numbers, presplitting into two halves in a pseudo arc is all that's needed, requiring all of one box and right click. If roaches' automatic clumping collision radius was larger (think dragoons' staggered clumping in BW) it'd be much more important to manage pieces of a roach-based army at all points before and during a fight.
That vulture video looks great, but what exact changes were made in it? (it looks a lot better than the second video). One of the things I have yet to see implemented in any of these videos is actually altering how a unit looks for a path. When a unit looks for a path from A to B in SC2, no allied units are considered obstacles unless they are on hold-position. In BW, every allied unit, whether moving or still, is considered an obstacle that you have to walk around. So you send an entire squad of units, and they all take steps around/away from eachother until they have a short path in front of them leading directly to the target position.
Anyways... if I had more time and understood the galaxy editor, I would put that into place. Basically all you have to do is attribute the "hold-position" command to every unit, even while it's moving, so that other units can't simply push it out of the way. (another big part is the fact that units in brood war took discrete steps, unless you gave them only a couple of pixels to move).
It's kind of sad to see blizzard's representatives making posts like that. To a mathematician, it's like hearing someone say, "I spent 5 minutes trying to think of a counterexample, but came up with nothing, so obviously the proposition is true". It's as if they have this idea that in SC2, the ideal is that all micro will be some form of spreading apart units to mitigate splash damage.
It should be up to the player, not the game, to spread their units. Clumping is the most efficient way to attack, and it is a literal translation of the attack command on a point, so the way it is now makes the most sense, with splitting occurring only when and where the player needs it.
It's kind of sad to see blizzard's representatives making posts like that. To a mathematician, it's like hearing someone say, "I spent 5 minutes trying to think of a counterexample, but came up with nothing, so obviously the proposition is true". It's as if they have this idea that in SC2, the ideal is that all micro will be some form of spreading apart units to mitigate splash damage.
this.
after reading that i feel like they just spent 20 minutes fooling around with collision box sizes instead of actually changing unit pathing. kind of sad that they just blew it off like this.
I just wanted to add that the BW pathing contributes a lot to defender advantage and positional play. Attacking requires moving, and moving inherently disorganizes your troops. Not nearly as much the case in SC2.
On October 24 2012 01:53 WinterNightz wrote: Anyways... if I had more time and understood the galaxy editor, I would put that into place. Basically all you have to do is attribute the "hold-position" command to every unit, even while it's moving, so that other units can't simply push it out of the way. (another big part is the fact that units in brood war took discrete steps, unless you gave them only a couple of pixels to move).
If this was in place, it would be a nightmare trying to get a group of units up a ramp or through a choke. Such places would be even more of a bottleneck than they are now.
On October 24 2012 01:53 WinterNightz wrote: Anyways... if I had more time and understood the galaxy editor, I would put that into place. Basically all you have to do is attribute the "hold-position" command to every unit, even while it's moving, so that other units can't simply push it out of the way. (another big part is the fact that units in brood war took discrete steps, unless you gave them only a couple of pixels to move).
If this was in place, it would be a nightmare trying to get a group of units up a ramp or through a choke. Such places would be even more of a bottleneck than they are now.
Have you ever seen BW...???
It might affect the stability of the game though, in terms of how often it checks for pathing and how long that would take. The engine was designed to work a certain way performance-wise and this might be too CPU costly (at least for low-end computers).
If the units stay in formation, well then they stay in formation!
I am of the opinion that pro players can and should spread out their units more by hand. The benefits are enormous. Fortunately we are starting to see this in some games and I expect this trend to continue
well Mr. Fuckbrowder, I'm not a pro. I'm just a masters league dude with 80 apm. Help me by giving me a way that doesn't take 10 actions to spread my 8 marines, or to unclump my vikigns so i dont lose to ONE fungal growth. Or let me watch a game that looks awesome, and not like a big moving pile of i dont know what + Show Spoiler +
Without having to rebalance all the AOE spells there are and such, they can do a small fix to make things better. I don't want it to be like BW where it forces your units apart, but what I would like is for you to be able to split up your units if you want (like you can in WoL), but when you move them forward, they should NOT clump up so fast again. Make them converge slower. This will promote more battles where your army may be split up more when you want it to. For situations where you want to clump up (for more DPS density), that's cool too because then there is the risk of losing a lot of your units to AOE. Then if you want to clump them back together, you click "within a box" so that they gather back together.
This would make splitting up your units easier and take less skill, but I think it would make gameplay better and diversify strategies. In that way, there would be more situations to learn, to compensate for the easier splitting.
There's also the option to simply make the units a little bigger. That way, they'd take longer to move through chokes, they'd take less splash damage, etc.
On October 24 2012 02:00 XenoX101 wrote: It should be up to the player, not the game, to spread their units. Clumping is the most efficient way to attack, and it is a literal translation of the attack command on a point, so the way it is now makes the most sense, with splitting occurring only when and where the player needs it.
Yeah, I'd say it's a fair reasoning and agreeing what Browder is saying.
Blizzard even considering this is big news. Even bigger news than all the new HoTS units imo. It would be a good thing if Blizzard made official map or better yet client build on PTR with these settings so that the community and pros can try it out. Unit movement and clumping isn't something that can be figured out in a couple of days, and with all the work SC2 devs have right now it is understandable they don't have the time to do it by themselves. We have the time. We have the enthusiasm. Let us help !
This is something for the programers not the design team to play with in the editor for a couple of days. If they really want to change unit movement, they can. They apparently do not want to.
On October 24 2012 01:53 WinterNightz wrote: Anyways... if I had more time and understood the galaxy editor, I would put that into place. Basically all you have to do is attribute the "hold-position" command to every unit, even while it's moving, so that other units can't simply push it out of the way. (another big part is the fact that units in brood war took discrete steps, unless you gave them only a couple of pixels to move).
If this was in place, it would be a nightmare trying to get a group of units up a ramp or through a choke. Such places would be even more of a bottleneck than they are now.
Have you ever seen BW...???
Yeah, that's kind of a completely-intended consequence. Ramps and terrain should be more than just a doorway you can go through unimpeded. They should actually be a hurdle that slows down an army, (and giving a stronger defenders advantage).
I want Blizzard to find ways to stop the clumping. As much as I love Psionic Storm, I hate deathballs. Period. We are demanding they do this and we have good reasons why, so I think they should invest more time into finding a good solution than just saying "Sorry, we tried for a week or two and it didn't work out that well. Cheers!"
It's very difficult to keep units spread. I'm not sure whether that's a good thing or a bad thing. I know it'd make gameplay a lot easier if my templar would stay spread after I spread them, but the fact that I can't keep them apart as I move around the map is a key difference between my PvT and, for example, Parting's PvT.
The question here is whether the difficulty of keeping units spread is good difficulty that separates good players from great players or whether it's frustrating difficulty where the units just don't do what you're telling them to do and you lose interest in the game.
On October 24 2012 02:26 kcdc wrote: It's very difficult to keep units spread. I'm not sure whether that's a good thing or a bad thing. I know it'd make gameplay a lot easier if my templar would stay spread after I spread them, but the fact that I can't keep them apart as I move around the map is a key difference between my PvT and, for example, Parting's PvT.
The question here is whether the difficulty of keeping units spread is good difficulty that separates good players from great players or whether it's frustrating difficulty where the units just don't do what you're telling them to do and you lose interest in the game.
Honestly, I think SC2 is actually better in that regard then BW. Because units clump up more it will be the players with insane control that can spread their units properly in the heat of battle. Though for that I do think that AOE spells need to be more powerful.
1. Will this improve watchability if the units clump less? - For me, this is an undeniable yes. This looks awful.
2. Will this improve playability if the units clump less? - This one is more arguable. I would say yes, but others will argue that splitting your ball during the battle is good.
I would say that the biggest problem with units clumping is with air units. Air units clumping so easy + AOE like FG = balance problems. They could at the very least make air units that are engaged in a fight to spread out a bit instead of staking on top of each other.
On October 24 2012 01:53 WinterNightz wrote: Anyways... if I had more time and understood the galaxy editor, I would put that into place. Basically all you have to do is attribute the "hold-position" command to every unit, even while it's moving, so that other units can't simply push it out of the way. (another big part is the fact that units in brood war took discrete steps, unless you gave them only a couple of pixels to move).
If this was in place, it would be a nightmare trying to get a group of units up a ramp or through a choke. Such places would be even more of a bottleneck than they are now.
Have you ever seen BW...???
Yes I have, and moving groups of units up a ramp in that game was frustrating. I wouldn't want to go back to that anymore than I would want to have only 12 units per control group.
On October 24 2012 02:26 kcdc wrote: It's very difficult to keep units spread. I'm not sure whether that's a good thing or a bad thing. I know it'd make gameplay a lot easier if my templar would stay spread after I spread them, but the fact that I can't keep them apart as I move around the map is a key difference between my PvT and, for example, Parting's PvT.
The question here is whether the difficulty of keeping units spread is good difficulty that separates good players from great players or whether it's frustrating difficulty where the units just don't do what you're telling them to do and you lose interest in the game.
Undeniably there are situations where skill-intensive manual unit spreading is a good thing.
On the other hand, in the vast majority of battles, the clumping is a dominating benefit for basic dynamics (local DPS).
If units don't automatically clump, there are a lot more opportunities to affect the course of a battle with good unit control. You might lose a few situations where being able to spread well wins you a lot of value, which shouldn't be ignored, but I think the gain outweighs it.
And it doesn't have to be one way or the other. You could easily just put a slider bar into the options menu that says "1-10 soft collision radius" so a player gets to choose how much their units clump, although I think this would quickly elucidate that clumping is better than not clumping. So from a spectator standpoint the strongest option would be a fixed larger soft collision radius. (You can still clump your units in this situation, and even move them with the current SC2 pathing, but it would require APM and concentration to organize the units into a tighter formation... just like in BW.)
On October 24 2012 02:26 kcdc wrote: It's very difficult to keep units spread. I'm not sure whether that's a good thing or a bad thing. I know it'd make gameplay a lot easier if my templar would stay spread after I spread them, but the fact that I can't keep them apart as I move around the map is a key difference between my PvT and, for example, Parting's PvT.
The question here is whether the difficulty of keeping units spread is good difficulty that separates good players from great players or whether it's frustrating difficulty where the units just don't do what you're telling them to do and you lose interest in the game.
Honestly, I think SC2 is actually better in that regard then BW. Because units clump up more it will be the players with insane control that can spread their units properly in the heat of battle. Though for that I do think that AOE spells need to be more powerful.
All that insane spreading would still exist with these new settings too (nobody would want a siege splash in the face, just like they don't want it now). Only the games would be much easier and enjoyable to watch.
On October 24 2012 01:53 WinterNightz wrote: Anyways... if I had more time and understood the galaxy editor, I would put that into place. Basically all you have to do is attribute the "hold-position" command to every unit, even while it's moving, so that other units can't simply push it out of the way. (another big part is the fact that units in brood war took discrete steps, unless you gave them only a couple of pixels to move).
If this was in place, it would be a nightmare trying to get a group of units up a ramp or through a choke. Such places would be even more of a bottleneck than they are now.
Have you ever seen BW...???
Yes I have, and moving groups of units up a ramp in that game was frustrating. I wouldn't want to go back to that anymore than I would want to have only 12 units per control group.
It also fundamentally changes the nature of terrain and positioning when a small ramp actually affects how long it takes to move troops. Are you saying that apart from the annoyance factor, this doesn't make a better and more interesting game, especially for competition?
On October 24 2012 02:26 kcdc wrote: It's very difficult to keep units spread. I'm not sure whether that's a good thing or a bad thing. I know it'd make gameplay a lot easier if my templar would stay spread after I spread them, but the fact that I can't keep them apart as I move around the map is a key difference between my PvT and, for example, Parting's PvT.
The question here is whether the difficulty of keeping units spread is good difficulty that separates good players from great players or whether it's frustrating difficulty where the units just don't do what you're telling them to do and you lose interest in the game.
Honestly, I think SC2 is actually better in that regard then BW. Because units clump up more it will be the players with insane control that can spread their units properly in the heat of battle. Though for that I do think that AOE spells need to be more powerful.
This isn't true. Read my first page post with the example about roaches.
Yeah I really dont like the whole clumped mess. I have played TVP games where HT/Archon/Zealot pushes where the zealots can clump together and move the forming archons into my base when they push. I'd either like the archons to stay where they are or for zealots to go around or through the archons, not have the zealots bulldoze them in.
So basically they found what every single person with any common sense already knew and figured out it made not a jot of difference.
Of course, you're so obsessed with making this into BW, you don't understand that BW had its pathing/hitboxes precisely because it was poorly coded. Face it. You aren't getting it.
It also fundamentally changes the nature of terrain and positioning when a small ramp actually affects how long it takes to move troops. Are you saying that the apart from the annoyance factor, this doesn't make a better and more interesting game, especially for competition?
It doesn't make a damn bit of difference. It's artificial difficulty.
On October 24 2012 02:43 Evangelist wrote: So basically they found what every single person with any common sense already knew and figured out it made not a jot of difference.
Of course, you're so obsessed with making this into BW, you don't understand that BW had its pathing/hitboxes precisely because it was poorly coded. Face it. You aren't getting it.
It also fundamentally changes the nature of terrain and positioning when a small ramp actually affects how long it takes to move troops. Are you saying that the apart from the annoyance factor, this doesn't make a better and more interesting game, especially for competition?
It doesn't make a damn bit of difference. It's artificial difficulty.
The difficulty of it is not the point of the discussion. It creates vastly different battle dynamics. If you know me at all, you know I support all the UI improvements of SC2. This isn't about whether your units do what you ask them to do, it's about what they are capable of.
On October 24 2012 01:53 WinterNightz wrote: That vulture video looks great, but what exact changes were made in it? (it looks a lot better than the second video). One of the things I have yet to see implemented in any of these videos is actually altering how a unit looks for a path. When a unit looks for a path from A to B in SC2, no allied units are considered obstacles unless they are on hold-position. In BW, every allied unit, whether moving or still, is considered an obstacle that you have to walk around. So you send an entire squad of units, and they all take steps around/away from eachother until they have a short path in front of them leading directly to the target position.
Anyways... if I had more time and understood the galaxy editor, I would put that into place. Basically all you have to do is attribute the "hold-position" command to every unit, even while it's moving, so that other units can't simply push it out of the way. (another big part is the fact that units in brood war took discrete steps, unless you gave them only a couple of pixels to move).
I think overall, the new sc2 movement just does what BW pathfinding and colission wanted to but couldn't. Each move command issued would yield slightly wonky results when combined with other non static objects. Or even static objects in the case of dragoons. Now people want the old, worse, behaviour back. I find that sort of amusing.
One simple fix of course would be to just make a bounding box for each unit that is used for pathing and pathing collision with other units but not for damage calculations with splash or collision with terrain. That bounding box could be much larger than the unit itself and thus there is a minimum distance maintained to other units at all times.
Another would be to make the units currently selected into a group, where each unit is assigned a displacement from the center of the selected group and the selection itself has a location on the map. Then you move the selection with move commands and the selection in turn moves the units, while maintaining the same displacement as long as the path is not obstructed.
Still, I am not sure what this kind of solution would actually do.
This is The Big Thing I've wanted to see change for ages now, and Heart of the Swarm/Legacy of the Void seem like the only real chances to see that change.
On October 24 2012 02:43 Evangelist wrote: So basically they found what every single person with any common sense already knew and figured out it made not a jot of difference.
Of course, you're so obsessed with making this into BW, you don't understand that BW had its pathing/hitboxes precisely because it was poorly coded. Face it. You aren't getting it.
It also fundamentally changes the nature of terrain and positioning when a small ramp actually affects how long it takes to move troops. Are you saying that the apart from the annoyance factor, this doesn't make a better and more interesting game, especially for competition?
It doesn't make a damn bit of difference. It's artificial difficulty.
What's wrong with artificial difficulty ? Great things have come out of this poor coding and bugs in BW, as Falling explains it nicely in his today's blog.
On October 24 2012 01:53 WinterNightz wrote: That vulture video looks great, but what exact changes were made in it? (it looks a lot better than the second video). One of the things I have yet to see implemented in any of these videos is actually altering how a unit looks for a path. When a unit looks for a path from A to B in SC2, no allied units are considered obstacles unless they are on hold-position. In BW, every allied unit, whether moving or still, is considered an obstacle that you have to walk around. So you send an entire squad of units, and they all take steps around/away from eachother until they have a short path in front of them leading directly to the target position.
Anyways... if I had more time and understood the galaxy editor, I would put that into place. Basically all you have to do is attribute the "hold-position" command to every unit, even while it's moving, so that other units can't simply push it out of the way. (another big part is the fact that units in brood war took discrete steps, unless you gave them only a couple of pixels to move).
I think overall, the new sc2 movement just does what BW pathfinding and colission wanted to but couldn't. Each move command issued would yield slightly wonky results when combined with other non static objects. Or even static objects in the case of dragoons. Now people want the old, worse, behaviour back. I find that sort of amusing.
One simple fix of course would be to just make a bounding box for each unit that is used for pathing and pathing collision with other units but not for damage calculations with splash or collision with terrain. That bounding box could be much larger than the unit itself and thus there is a minimum distance maintained to other units at all times.
Another would be to make the units currently selected into a group, where each unit is assigned a displacement from the center of the selected group and the selection itself has a location on the map. Then you move the selection with move commands and the selection in turn moves the units, while maintaining the same displacement as long as the path is not obstructed.
Still, I am not sure what this kind of solution would actually do.
This is the "soft collision radius". Enlarging it (but not the unit -- aka hard collision radius), combined with the pathing style of SC2, would give you basically all the benefits of BW and a lot less of the headache.
automine BW: No SC2: Yes OMG, SC2 too easy, broken game!
autosplit BW: Yes SC2: No OMG, SC2 too difficult, broken game!
Its the same with charge for zealots and burrow charge for ultras. There was a time when everyone cried how stupid autocast on charge is since it makes "micro utterly useless". So we get burrow charge which requires micro and people complain that it is not viable since "you have to click every single time you want to use it". The quotes are real quotes frome TL members.
On October 24 2012 02:57 Grummler wrote: automine BW: No SC2: Yes OMG, SC2 too easy, broken game!
autosplit BW: Yes SC2: No OMG, SC2 soo difficult, broken game!
?? profit
Not really asking for an auto split. We want units to space out more, and probably increase AOE radius and/or damage to compensate. You still have to manually split to minimize splash damage.
On October 24 2012 02:43 Evangelist wrote: So basically they found what every single person with any common sense already knew and figured out it made not a jot of difference.
Of course, you're so obsessed with making this into BW, you don't understand that BW had its pathing/hitboxes precisely because it was poorly coded. Face it. You aren't getting it.
It also fundamentally changes the nature of terrain and positioning when a small ramp actually affects how long it takes to move troops. Are you saying that the apart from the annoyance factor, this doesn't make a better and more interesting game, especially for competition?
It doesn't make a damn bit of difference. It's artificial difficulty.
What's wrong with artificial difficulty ? Great things have come out of this poor coding and bugs in BW, as Falling explains it nicely in his today's blog.
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.
On October 24 2012 02:57 Grummler wrote: automine BW: No SC2: Yes OMG, SC2 too easy, broken game!
autosplit BW: Yes SC2: No OMG, SC2 soo difficult, broken game!
?? profit
Not really asking for an auto split. We want units to space out more, and probably increase AOE radius and/or damage to compensate. You still have to manually split to minimize splash damage.
Call it "We want units to space out more" if it makes you feel better. My point stands. People like whining. I do too. Its fun. QQ
On October 24 2012 02:43 Evangelist wrote: So basically they found what every single person with any common sense already knew and figured out it made not a jot of difference.
Of course, you're so obsessed with making this into BW, you don't understand that BW had its pathing/hitboxes precisely because it was poorly coded. Face it. You aren't getting it.
It also fundamentally changes the nature of terrain and positioning when a small ramp actually affects how long it takes to move troops. Are you saying that the apart from the annoyance factor, this doesn't make a better and more interesting game, especially for competition?
It doesn't make a damn bit of difference. It's artificial difficulty.
What's wrong with artificial difficulty ? Great things have come out of this poor coding and bugs in BW, as Falling explains it nicely in his today's blog.
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.
A-move would work the same way. Should I explain in greater detail or do you just absolutely disagree?
Why can't blizzard find better alternate ways to deal with this? I played high ladder wc3 for quite awhile; and clumping wasn't as bad there. The auto formation control also worked just fine. Are they saying they can't do as good as wc3??
On October 24 2012 03:07 zlefin wrote: Why can't blizzard find better alternate ways to deal with this? I played high ladder wc3 for quite awhile; and clumping wasn't as bad there. The auto formation control also worked just fine. Are they saying they can't do as good as wc3??
On October 24 2012 03:07 zlefin wrote: Why can't blizzard find better alternate ways to deal with this? I played high ladder wc3 for quite awhile; and clumping wasn't as bad there. The auto formation control also worked just fine. Are they saying they can't do as good as wc3??
The first 7 minutes of an average sc2 1v1 will give you more units then you will ever have during an average wc3 1v1. Unit clumping is no issue if you don't have enough units to clump. But i guess you "played high ladder in wc3 for quite a while".
Blizzard actually... tested this? On their own time?
What if we've been underestimating Blizzard this whole time... ?
It is encouraging, no? Sadly their response indicates they didn't quite get the underlying point, although at least they did a cursory empirical investigation.
On October 24 2012 02:43 Evangelist wrote: So basically they found what every single person with any common sense already knew and figured out it made not a jot of difference.
Of course, you're so obsessed with making this into BW, you don't understand that BW had its pathing/hitboxes precisely because it was poorly coded. Face it. You aren't getting it.
It also fundamentally changes the nature of terrain and positioning when a small ramp actually affects how long it takes to move troops. Are you saying that the apart from the annoyance factor, this doesn't make a better and more interesting game, especially for competition?
It doesn't make a damn bit of difference. It's artificial difficulty.
What's wrong with artificial difficulty ? Great things have come out of this poor coding and bugs in BW, as Falling explains it nicely in his today's blog.
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.
My point is that every difficulty in a video game is an artificial one, there are no laws of nature in a virtual world other than the ones we made. How exciting would football be if players could pass through each other? It is the physics making things "artificially difficult" here, just as programing does it in a virtual world.
The better programing, the more exciting the game is. What majority of people here is trying to say that there is a better way of programing the game.
Nobody wants fighting the interface, very few people want BW2.
In a way, Browder's kinda right about the first point. Just tweaking with the magic box values in Galaxy Editor won't do much to fix the clumping problems, which was the method used by Alternative 2 in the OP. Players can still purposefully clump up their armies for maximum DPS, and it becomes easier for players to attack with a spread formation, which might detract from the skill ceiling by removing the "skill" of manually keeping armies spread, although that second point is debatable.
Would this affect probes? And Yes it'd be more like Brood War, but are we really trying to make this Brood war with better graphics? Hey, at least it would make people stop complaining about infestors
On October 24 2012 02:43 Evangelist wrote: So basically they found what every single person with any common sense already knew and figured out it made not a jot of difference.
Of course, you're so obsessed with making this into BW, you don't understand that BW had its pathing/hitboxes precisely because it was poorly coded. Face it. You aren't getting it.
It also fundamentally changes the nature of terrain and positioning when a small ramp actually affects how long it takes to move troops. Are you saying that the apart from the annoyance factor, this doesn't make a better and more interesting game, especially for competition?
It doesn't make a damn bit of difference. It's artificial difficulty.
the only one fighting the interface are gold players like you. lol.
Stop making the world easier (and thus less exciting, less deep,...) so you can accomplish something as well.
On October 24 2012 03:07 zlefin wrote: Why can't blizzard find better alternate ways to deal with this? I played high ladder wc3 for quite awhile; and clumping wasn't as bad there. The auto formation control also worked just fine. Are they saying they can't do as good as wc3??
wc3 didnt not had units causing friendly units to move out of the way/pushing them technology. sc2 and wc3 have really different pathfiding systems.
also formation was really bad in wc3, it forced every unit anywhere on the map to move at the slowest unit speed in command group. no body uses it.
Hm. Not sure if I'm happy they tested it or sad that they tested it and thought it's bad. I can hardly imagine there wouldn't be significant differences if the units clumped less. Just thinking about fungal and all the AOEs etc...
On October 24 2012 03:37 eviltomahawk wrote: <snip> Players can still purposefully clump up their armies for maximum DPS, and it becomes easier for players to attack with a spread formation, which might detract from the skill ceiling by removing the "skill" of manually keeping armies spread, although that second point is debatable.
This.^
Although, I would say it becomes more rewarding for a player who had the forsight to set up a positional battle before the fight. If you ball up and then engage, you still have to be able to box and split, so I really don't see how the skill ceiling goes down. Saying this really just means that everyone really does just want BW2 because we are still really just fighting the interface, it's just a different problem/difficulty of movement. Do we really want to say it takes *less* skill to correctly anticipate an opponents movements and set up the position in just the right way? We don't need the artificial nerf to good decision making that the balling effect brings to movement within a pre-positioned engagement.
On October 24 2012 04:45 PitBoo wrote: Awesome. Someone should send this to browder.
... do you know what this thread is about?
also to someone, of course, everyone underestimates blizzard and thinks they're total idiots
Just because blizzard doesn't explain every single little thing, people get all elitist and proudly believe blizz is just idiots who can't balance or design anything
they've shown they listen, are reasonable, and they even inform us of how things are going and allow us to give feedback
On October 24 2012 04:45 PitBoo wrote: Awesome. Someone should send this to browder.
... do you know what this thread is about?
also to someone, of course, everyone underestimates blizzard and thinks they're total idiots
Just because blizzard doesn't explain every single little thing, people get all elitist and proudly believe blizz is just idiots who can't balance or design anything
they've shown they listen, are reasonable, and they even inform us of how things are going and allow us to give feedback
I hope you aren't referring to me
I think the issue is a huge deal (and obviously disagree with their conclusion) hence I started the thread. I tried to be objective as possible and provide alternatives rather than demanding it must be done one way or the other.
On October 24 2012 04:45 PitBoo wrote: Awesome. Someone should send this to browder.
... do you know what this thread is about?
also to someone, of course, everyone underestimates blizzard and thinks they're total idiots
Just because blizzard doesn't explain every single little thing, people get all elitist and proudly believe blizz is just idiots who can't balance or design anything
they've shown they listen, are reasonable, and they even inform us of how things are going and allow us to give feedback
Im new, i'm not sure how things work here, lol. But i'm not sure if Blizzard devs read TL. I've only seen them taking tips from the Bnet forun.
On October 24 2012 04:45 PitBoo wrote: Awesome. Someone should send this to browder.
... do you know what this thread is about?
also to someone, of course, everyone underestimates blizzard and thinks they're total idiots
Just because blizzard doesn't explain every single little thing, people get all elitist and proudly believe blizz is just idiots who can't balance or design anything
they've shown they listen, are reasonable, and they even inform us of how things are going and allow us to give feedback
Nevertheless, it should be posted on BNet.
Not because Blizz is a bunch of "idiots who can't balance or design anything," but because they haven't explored every option yet. If I'm interpreting what Browder said correctly, they ran some tests on it with different variables, but only with the map in the video. If they try different methods of breaking up deathballs, then they might like it.
Without clumping: - We will never see such epic baneling attacks on marines/zerglings/workers. It's always very exciting in a pro match when the zerg manages to get that one baneling in the middle of all those small units, killing them all instantly. - Zergling surrounds will become a nightmare to execute. The balance for early-game zerg would have to be adjusted. - All maps would have to be adjusted to have wider ramps, since this change would make it harder to melee units to assault terran bases.
The best way to fix the deathballs at this point is to buff anti-deathball AOE units.
On October 24 2012 05:05 anon734912 wrote: Without clumping: - We will never see such epic baneling attacks on marines/zerglings/workers. It's always very exciting in a pro match when the zerg manages to get that one baneling in the middle of all those small units, killing them all instantly. - Zergling surrounds will become a nightmare to execute. The balance for early-game zerg would have to be adjusted. - All maps would have to be adjusted to have wider ramps, since this change would make it harder to melee units to assault terran bases.
The best way to fix the deathballs at this point is to buff anti-deathball AOE units.
I won't jump to that conclusion. If you take at look at Starbow, all that stuff still happens. It depends on the unit movement implementation.
I have difficulty believing Blizzard and especially Dustin Browder will ever actually listen to the community. Sure, they'll respond to overwhelming opinions in beta and PTR forums on their own website. They'll even make small changes to bunkers once a month when the community is screaming for blood because of the palpably and plainly evident superiority of bunkers. It only took them the better part of two years to fix a single structure.
So I expect this issue to be resolved around 3 years after LotV is released. By a private ladder. I have no faith that Blizzard would make such a drastic change on their own or with only moderate requests from the community. I, hands down, would rather play the game shown in the OP than the game I have installed.
On October 24 2012 05:44 Probe1 wrote: I have difficulty believing Blizzard and especially Dustin Browder will ever actually listen to the community. Sure, they'll respond to overwhelming opinions in beta and PTR forums on their own website. They'll even make small changes to bunkers once a month when the community is screaming for blood because of the palpably and plainly evident superiority of bunkers. It only took them the better part of two years to fix a single structure.
So I expect this issue to be resolved around 3 years after LotV is released. By a private ladder. I have no faith that Blizzard would make such a drastic change on their own or with only moderate requests from the community. I, hands down, would rather play the game shown in the OP than the game I have installed.
I feel the same too, fixing SC2 is easy, even some dude can add a fix to everything in one day. but it seems blizzard doesn't want to.
I can almost respect that they want to move beyond and further than Brood War. It's a noble direction and a smart idea. Unfortunately they need to revisit this idea!
people make a bunch of noise about how broodwar's crappy AI meant you had to struggle to control your units and get them where they need to be when they need to be there. now the AI is so good that you have to struggle to spread them out during fights. it's like the reverse problem. i've seen many games where the player who was better at controlling smaller groups of units came out better in large battles - hardly just "A-moving". maybe players dont think it's worth their time to practice this when they could be practicing something else, but until players master this across the board no one has APM to burn.
- We will never see such epic baneling attacks on marines/zerglings/workers. It's always very exciting in a pro match when the zerg manages to get that one baneling in the middle of all those small units, killing them all instantly.
Really? I thought we had LESS of this compared to Brood War. Spider mines were awesome and almost universally loved
Great topic i hope somebody post this on Hots Blizzard forum... Dustin B is answering some stupid qestionsfrom some noob ppl... haha i hope hi would see this Topic if somebody post it on Forums.. !!!...
Pathing is so broken in SC2 from player perspective to E sport spectator point of lucking the game... WC3 SC BW look at that games...
any other RTS dont have this BALL pathing clumping its not Spectator friendly !!!!! need to change it in hots Fast !!!!
agree with them. It is a game, something should actually be done by players. And clumping is easier then unclumping. So the other way round the game would just be easier and they would have to waste time balancing the game around something that will be no issue anymore once people aren't lazy anymore. They should have actually not listened to the qqing about AoEs being to big and we would actually see way more spreading right now. Alot of changes Blizzard did just kept people lazy and made deathballs stronger that way, no reason to blame them as those changes were community driven. Banelings remained unchanged Fungal even buffed and people can do a hell lot of spreading against those. If every situation had those units we wouldn't see anything clumped unless noobs would be playing.
On October 24 2012 06:21 FeyFey wrote: agree with them. It is a game, something should actually be done by players. And clumping is easier then unclumping. So the other way round the game would just be easier and they would have to waste time balancing the game around something that will be no issue anymore once people aren't lazy anymore. They should have actually not listened to the qqing about AoEs being to big and we would actually see way more spreading right now. Alot of changes Blizzard did just kept people lazy and made deathballs stronger that way, no reason to blame them as those changes were community driven. Banelings remained unchanged Fungal even buffed and people can do a hell lot of spreading against those. If every situation had those units we wouldn't see anything clumped unless noobs would be playing.
It's a not a very drastic change but it looks better from a spectator's point of view. You still have to split like a madman to minimize splash. The mod increases the splash damage for everything and you take tons of splash if you are too "lazy" to split.
It Spectating. Clumping looks like utter crap. People reference crap such as Marine Splitting against Banlings, but really who makes Banlings these days against Terran? All Zergs just rush for Infestors.
On October 24 2012 05:44 Probe1 wrote: I have difficulty believing Blizzard and especially Dustin Browder will ever actually listen to the community.
Absurd statement. While he's not perfect, Browder is absolutely listening to the community, interfacing with high level players, etc. Look at the removal of the warhound, changes to MsC, etc.
Everyone on TL thinks they are a game designer with legitimate and applicable balance/design expertise. It's laughable.
You carefully split your units, positioning them perfectly in a spread out arc. Now you move them. What happens? They ball back up again, regardless of what you do to stop it. Ideally, there would be a flexible mechanic that allows units to stay spread out as you move them.
That sounds a lot like the http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft/Magic_Boxes , you say? Yup! In broodwar, you could spread out your units and keep them in that formation through the use of the magic box, allowing skilled players to keep their formations as they move. It also allowed players to cast storms and other spells in a certain formation all at once.
The Magic Box exists in SC2, but it is very small and I dont think Ive ever seen it used on ground units in SC2. I could be wrong though.
2) Deathball is optimal because of its high damage density.
If you don't have a way to spread out your units and keep them spread out with minimal baby sitting (like a good magic box), then AoE has to be weakened because that will be the default way to play (and thus balance the game).
If you make it easier to spread units out, and also let them be able to clump up tightly, you can increase AoE damage slightly because the response to lots of AoE becomes spreading out your units to minimize the damage, which creates a player decision and also increases skill for better players.
3) Bad movement pathing/unclumping units dumbs down the game, we don't want stupid broodwar dragoons!
It does not dumb down the game or affect the unit movement adversely. It's not like broodwar where in some cases, microing a unit along a path was more optimal than letting it find its own route, even on mostly open ground! No we absolutely dont want duur-goons.
Players will still be able to get their units up ramps in SC2. What they wont be able to do is move their entire 200/200 deathball up a ramp effortlessly as if its been slathered in lube like they can now.
This also has the benefit of increasing the value of area control units like the tank and also of the terrain itself: ramps, high ground, chokes, etc.
By making larger armies more difficult to control, you increase the value of area control units. A 200/200 army should not be just as easy to control as a 100 food army. This is the reasoning behind some fanatics' desire for the 12 unit selection cap: it is the right idea but the wrong implementation. Speed, unit movement AI and size of army can all be tweaked to make larger forces more difficult to deploy
Final thoughts: Units need to move in a way that is not stupid but also not too clumped up and effortless.
Blizzard should give players a direct way to influence the "clumpyness" of our units (without relying on automated formations which takes skill away). A proper magic box allows players to separate units while keeping the option to clump them up tightly.
The relationship between AoE and the concentration of an army should be a valid trade off that the player manages.
In terms of movement, units need to not move so perfectly that it is easy to traverse terrain, but not so difficult that I have to spend 2 minutes trying to micro a dragoon up a small ramp. This will allow area control units to shine which will increase the defenders advantage.
Lastly, I'm not sure if the actual space (collision size) around each unit needs to be increased. That should depend on testing. I think mostly this stuff can be solved with movement modifications.
The real problem with clumpyness is that it neutralises much of the defender's advantage. in BW, when an army was moving towards a base, it would be in a line so it was inefficient.
THIS is the main problem with this game, THIS is the main cause of the deathball. Forget Colossus, forget forcefields (no they really don't help, but TvZ has this deathball problem, just to a lesser extent).
Browder simply put, is an incompetent clown. He has destroyed C&C and he's going to do the same with Starcraft. Best proof that this idiot has never questionned his decisions... Gold minerals. Why in 2012, 2 years after the release of the game, do we still have gold minerals in the ladder maps? Now I'd understand for a 4-5-6 mineral patches base, but a 8 gold minerals..? Really? has he not realized that in some matchups, mainly pvz, its impossible for one of the player to punish the other player's fast expanding after he's done a certain build ( Forge Fast Expand, for example).
How can this man be taken seriously? I remember his face when everyone were screaming "WE WANT LAN", he was all like " but i don't want lan...." It's not what that mentality that this game is going to be alive in a few years. Legacy of the Void will fit its name well. Battle.Net will literally be the Void.
Most people here seems to not understand that Brood War do not force units to push each other out of the way.
As of now, SC2's units move in to a certain location and form a huge blob around it. And in the process of moving the units to a specific location, the units will curve their path to find the optimal length of arriving to the destination.
In BW, instead your army move at the same formation that you have originally set them up unless that there are some obstacles in way to collides with them. But that doesn't mean that the units will spread out voluntarily in any other way. You can totally clump out your units at the start of the movement, they'll remain clump throughout the game.
So what's is the advantage of this type of games? Well in StarCraft 2, the battles don't last long while BW, sometime last up to one full minute of back and forth pushing. That's because one player will have one formation while the opposition have set up their own. With the units all spread out, it gives the players more time to locate their army to counter the shape of the opponent's thus allowing more room to micro.
But however at the same time, there are very much specific occasion where clumping your units is more optimal than having them spread out. Like vs Mutalisks flocks, you don't want your units to roll out in a tango lines but more or less having one deathball of Bio Units as they will get picked off one by one. And in the case vs Zergling surrounds or Zealot ones, having them clumped out will optimize your dmg output and to not let those pesky units to penetrate your bio wall.
In the case of Sc2, player's micromanagement style is pretty much restricted by this clumping engine. And that's what Day[9] means in his analogy of Baseball (forced movement) vs Frisbee (dynamic movements).
That being said, this whole design features can be observed with just a tiny VODs samples from each game of let's say 10 video/game. The fact that DB is overlooking those points proves to us that he obviously has never carefully examine BW and why it reached such a grand stage but just plain ignorant.
On October 24 2012 07:50 Xiphos wrote: Most people here seems to not understand that Brood War do not force units to push each other out of the way.
As of now, SC2's units move in to a certain location and form a huge blob around it. And in the process of moving the units to a specific location, the units will curve their path to find the optimal length of arriving to the destination.
In BW, instead your army move at the same formation that you have originally set them up unless that there are some obstacles in way to collides with them. But that doesn't mean that the units will spread out voluntarily in any other way. You can totally clump out your units at the start of the movement, they'll remain clump throughout the game.
So what's is the advantage of this type of games? Well in StarCraft 2, the battles don't last long while BW, sometime last up to one full minute of back and forth pushing. That's because one player will have one formation while the opposition have set up their own. With the units all spread out, it gives the players more time to locate their army to counter the shape of the opponent's thus allowing more room to micro.
But however at the same time, there are very much specific occasion where clumping your units is more optimal than having them spread out. Like vs Mutalisks flocks, you don't want your units to roll out in a tango lines but more or less having one deathball of Bio Units as they will get picked off one by one. And in the case vs Zergling surrounds or Zealot ones, having them clumped out will optimize your dmg output and to not let those pesky units to penetrate your bio wall.
In the case of Sc2, player's micromanagement style is pretty much restricted by this clumping engine. And that's what Day[9] means in his analogy of Baseball (forced movement) vs Frisbee (dynamic movements).
That being said, this whole design features can be observed with just a tiny VODs samples from each game of let's say 10 video/game. The fact that DB is overlooking those points proves to us that he obviously has never carefully examine BW and why it reached such a grand stage but just plain ignorant.
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.
alternative 3 feels so realistic. i like. marine split will be easier. but i think slingbane wont take much spash dmg either. and muta easily magic box.
On October 24 2012 07:50 Xiphos wrote: Most people here seems to not understand that Brood War do not force units to push each other out of the way.
As of now, SC2's units move in to a certain location and form a huge blob around it. And in the process of moving the units to a specific location, the units will curve their path to find the optimal length of arriving to the destination.
In BW, instead your army move at the same formation that you have originally set them up unless that there are some obstacles in way to collides with them. But that doesn't mean that the units will spread out voluntarily in any other way. You can totally clump out your units at the start of the movement, they'll remain clump throughout the game.
So what's is the advantage of this type of games? Well in StarCraft 2, the battles don't last long while BW, sometime last up to one full minute of back and forth pushing. That's because one player will have one formation while the opposition have set up their own. With the units all spread out, it gives the players more time to locate their army to counter the shape of the opponent's thus allowing more room to micro.
But however at the same time, there are very much specific occasion where clumping your units is more optimal than having them spread out. Like vs Mutalisks flocks, you don't want your units to roll out in a tango lines but more or less having one deathball of Bio Units as they will get picked off one by one. And in the case vs Zergling surrounds or Zealot ones, having them clumped out will optimize your dmg output and to not let those pesky units to penetrate your bio wall.
In the case of Sc2, player's micromanagement style is pretty much restricted by this clumping engine. And that's what Day[9] means in his analogy of Baseball (forced movement) vs Frisbee (dynamic movements).
That being said, this whole design features can be observed with just a tiny VODs samples from each game of let's say 10 video/game. The fact that DB is overlooking those points proves to us that he obviously has never carefully examine BW and why it reached such a grand stage but just plain ignorant.
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.
It's true that players normally give move commands close to the units they're moving; if every unit beelines to that location, they naturally clump even if they started out spread... but that's hardly insurmountable.
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.
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."
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?
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!
On October 24 2012 02:43 Evangelist wrote: So basically they found what every single person with any common sense already knew and figured out it made not a jot of difference.
Of course, you're so obsessed with making this into BW, you don't understand that BW had its pathing/hitboxes precisely because it was poorly coded. Face it. You aren't getting it.
It also fundamentally changes the nature of terrain and positioning when a small ramp actually affects how long it takes to move troops. Are you saying that the apart from the annoyance factor, this doesn't make a better and more interesting game, especially for competition?
It doesn't make a damn bit of difference. It's artificial difficulty.
What's wrong with artificial difficulty ? Great things have come out of this poor coding and bugs in BW, as Falling explains it nicely in his today's blog.
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.
In my opinion, all of these "alternative movement" ideas are stupid.
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.
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.
I think the most important factor here is also quite a superficial one: the game will simply look better with more spread out units, it will be far more visually appealing to watch...not to mention if units at least somewhat moved in formations it would make large armies way more interesting as their formations would mean a whole lot more than being a giant indescernable blob of shifting death.
Falling I'm sure it wasn't exactly your purpose but when I read "The dragoon would spaz." I got a huge happy grin on my face thinking about all the times bad mechanics have resulted in me finding 3 or 4 dragoons pathing around the top of the base on Andromeda, failing to make it down the ramp. At the time, man I was pissed. But I know if I was a better player I wouldn't have that issue and it's silly and funny to find them just colliding into each other, stumbling around.
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)
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. :\
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. :\
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.
I have to completely agree with Dustin on that the change makes no difference.
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.
Looks like Dustin is quite engaged in the discussion on the HOTS beta forums. Those of you with good arguments for a change please post on the HOTS beta forum... we have his ear, so lets win him over!
its not like this only buff T. zerg raised the skill cap because they can now split banelings so they dont all die to 1 tank shot. b4. they wud clump up. how many times do we see a bunch of lings just all die in 1 take volley. how many lings wud survive the initial charge if theyre pre split? tank wouldnt do shit. also muta are already magic boxed. flying units wont insta die to 2 thor shots when all clumped up. marine has low dps when theyre separated too. its not all about marine splitting against banelings. it would take marine longer to travel across the map than it is for Z. its just that the way blizz designed the game to be a deathball. they dont wanna ruin that. since theyve been balancing it for ever. that would means more work for them. 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
Not only did I see nothing wrong with that gif, it's going on my desktop so I can watch it whenever I hover over another gif of a tank doing donuts from ThSL. .. this is off topic.
What Blizzard is trying to do is make deathballs usable, but make it so that there are much better ways to utilize your units, nearly every new unit in HotS is being developed with this philosophy. Instead of attacking it head on by changing the pathing outright, thus making it a non-issue for everyone, they're providing attractive alternatives to the deathball, that don't require your units to split but encouraging you to do it yourself. If they succeed, then what we'll have is something akin to the old BW pathing: something that doesn't come easy to non-pros, and is vital to succeed in pro-level play. The big difference is, it's more accessible to new players, as it's more intuitive, and it's easier to appreciate the skill involved with precise micro(the E factor, if you wanna go there), thereby accomplishing 2 of Blizzard's main goals with this game as opposed to BW.
Obviously this post is not about making pathing retarded like in BW. Its about making pathing more controllable. Surly this is would be better than both BW and WOL? As the vids show, it doesn't dumb down pathing, it just allows the player to keep units in formation if they want to or ball up otherwise.
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!
On October 24 2012 02:43 Evangelist wrote: So basically they found what every single person with any common sense already knew and figured out it made not a jot of difference.
Of course, you're so obsessed with making this into BW, you don't understand that BW had its pathing/hitboxes precisely because it was poorly coded. Face it. You aren't getting it.
It also fundamentally changes the nature of terrain and positioning when a small ramp actually affects how long it takes to move troops. Are you saying that the apart from the annoyance factor, this doesn't make a better and more interesting game, especially for competition?
It doesn't make a damn bit of difference. It's artificial difficulty.
What's wrong with artificial difficulty ? Great things have come out of this poor coding and bugs in BW, as Falling explains it nicely in his today's blog.
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.
Wow.. someone has never watched Brood War pro gaming...
I started watching both SC2 and BW at the same time, and for no nostalgic reasons, I find BW WAY more enjoying to watch, and I am not alone. That 200 deathball vs 200 deathball situation that happens 95% of the games are caused by the fact that the deathball is too easy to move around. Without even putting in the 12 units selection limit, just have the units move in a certain line, aka having a higher space between them, would give a higher advantage to the defender.. therefore you couldn't just 1a to your enemy's base. Now there is no advantage between the defender and the attacker since the ball moves so fast in range, and without obstacles, that there is no reason to be on defense.
In BW like I've said many times.. have a few spider mines and 5-6 siege tanks at a location, and a 100 supply army couldn't get through. There isn't that anymore, you need your whole army to stop his whole army, which created that mess that is SC2.
Speaking of mines, why are widow mines not friendly-fire enabled?
On October 24 2012 02:43 Evangelist wrote: So basically they found what every single person with any common sense already knew and figured out it made not a jot of difference.
Of course, you're so obsessed with making this into BW, you don't understand that BW had its pathing/hitboxes precisely because it was poorly coded. Face it. You aren't getting it.
It also fundamentally changes the nature of terrain and positioning when a small ramp actually affects how long it takes to move troops. Are you saying that the apart from the annoyance factor, this doesn't make a better and more interesting game, especially for competition?
It doesn't make a damn bit of difference. It's artificial difficulty.
What's wrong with artificial difficulty ? Great things have come out of this poor coding and bugs in BW, as Falling explains it nicely in his today's blog.
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.
Speaking of mines, why are widow mines not friendly-fire enabled?
Sad to see lead game designer is infact one of those idiots who say big ball more split more micro herp derp. How fucking hard is it too grasp that not clumped up armies actually encourage micro, if you buff aoe ofcourse.
On October 24 2012 12:13 boomudead1 wrote: its not like this only buff T. zerg raised the skill cap because they can now split banelings so they dont all die to 1 tank shot. b4. they wud clump up. how many times do we see a bunch of lings just all die in 1 take volley. how many lings wud survive the initial charge if theyre pre split? tank wouldnt do shit. also muta are already magic boxed. flying units wont insta die to 2 thor shots when all clumped up. marine has low dps when theyre separated too. its not all about marine splitting against banelings. it would take marine longer to travel across the map than it is for Z. its just that the way blizz designed the game to be a deathball. they dont wanna ruin that. since theyve been balancing it for ever. that would means more work for them. 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
I don't think I care how much work Blizzard have to do to improve the game... Most people don't seem very fond of the deathball and blizzard are aware of it as they have tied to incorporate positional units into the game. However positional units can still largely form part of the ball. Less dps is great imo, battles are currently over way too quickly. 200 v 200 battles can last only seconds sometimes. If you like that then I think you're part of a minority. SC2 needs less clumpiness, either by pathing and/or unit collision radius.
I also feel that buffing AOE is not going to help. Firstly because AOE ends up just fighting AOE and makes battles even shorter. Secondly because AOE can be used almost just as well on a smaller squad of clumped units as it does on a deathball (think fungal).
Blizzard please at least test increasing unit collision radius. Stop the unit orgies.
I thought clumping occurs because units hitboxes/models become smaller when they're under move command. (an extreme example is workers mineral-walking, or air-units that have no collison while moving)
All they have to do is NOT change the unit sizes depending on their actions? (except workers and air units)
On October 24 2012 12:30 NewSunshine wrote: What Blizzard is trying to do is make deathballs usable, but make it so that there are much better ways to utilize your units, nearly every new unit in HotS is being developed with this philosophy. Instead of attacking it head on by changing the pathing outright, thus making it a non-issue for everyone, they're providing attractive alternatives to the deathball, that don't require your units to split but encouraging you to do it yourself. If they succeed, then what we'll have is something akin to the old BW pathing: something that doesn't come easy to non-pros, and is vital to succeed in pro-level play. The big difference is, it's more accessible to new players, as it's more intuitive, and it's easier to appreciate the skill involved with precise micro(the E factor, if you wanna go there), thereby accomplishing 2 of Blizzard's main goals with this game as opposed to BW.
I like this description, and I hope it works out this way, but I think it's backwards -- fighting the fundamentals of the genre itself.
Engagement dynamics are governed by local DPS density. This is the source of much of the depth in RTS games. Higher DPS density is inherently rewarded because you are dealing concentrated damage. It's like focus fire happening automatically, in analogy. Usually there are lots of factors that mitigate this basic strength to make the game more interesting, many of which make use of the ability of units to reposition to avoid high enemy DPS and to increase your own local DPS. The most typical dynamic is pursuing an engagement with units in a high DPS area while retreating from your opponent's high DPS area. In the simplest way, a flank does this automatically, but there are lots of other formations you could imagine, and the complexity of situations quickly develops once you have units with different stats and abilities.
Let's imagine extreme cases to illustrate the point I'm making. What if units didn't collide at all. One of the above "mitigating factors" is the banal fact that units can't take up the same space, but lets get rid of that. 12 marines vs 12 marines, go. Well... the only strategy will ever be stacking your marines perfectly on top of one another and then walking straight at the enemy and target firing the top of the stack. If you do anything else, like try to make an arc, you will quickly lose out on the local DPS front. Pull micro just means you've lost local DPS. Retreat can only lose local DPS in a similar way.
What if units did collide as normal, and their collision barrier was twice their actual size, but you could place them close together with attention. But while in transit and unattended at their destination, they would be somewhat spread out. 12 marines vs 12 marines, go. This looks completely different. Attacking is now a lot harder; the system has inherent defenders advantage. Attacking units have to move into position, which reduces their local DPS. Just to attack on even footing, you have to arrange an elaborate position and synchronize the arrival of your units, otherwise you'll be suffering from a DPS deficit (despite mirror armies!) from the outset. And no matter what formation you take, the defender can adjust to demand further actions on your part. And so on and so on, but the defender always has the upper hand.
Which one sounds more like SC2? Which one sounds more interesting?
You can get a lot of desirable dynamics just by changing basic unit properties, you don't have to resort to AoE effects and special abilities. I would gladly go into even more depth but I think this makes the point sufficiently for now. I'll just add that the latter example demands constant attention and unit control in an engagement, while the other is almost maximized efficiency with an a-move.
On October 24 2012 13:13 NukeD wrote: Sad to see lead game designer is infact one of those idiots who say big ball more split more micro herp derp. How fucking hard is it too grasp that not clumped up armies actually encourage micro, if you buff aoe ofcourse.
You don't even need to buff AoE, it happens naturally.
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?
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."
So if this "doesnt" change anything significantly, why not just add the changes for the sake us guys who have been asking for this since beta? Why revert back to the old pathing whent the "we will need to rebalance everything" argument falls flat.
On October 24 2012 04:45 PitBoo wrote: Awesome. Someone should send this to browder.
... do you know what this thread is about?
also to someone, of course, everyone underestimates blizzard and thinks they're total idiots
Just because blizzard doesn't explain every single little thing, people get all elitist and proudly believe blizz is just idiots who can't balance or design anything
they've shown they listen, are reasonable, and they even inform us of how things are going and allow us to give feedback
Im new, i'm not sure how things work here, lol. But i'm not sure if Blizzard devs read TL. I've only seen them taking tips from the Bnet forun.
Nevermind I misunderstood you, please disregard my question X)
On October 24 2012 04:45 PitBoo wrote: Awesome. Someone should send this to browder.
... do you know what this thread is about?
also to someone, of course, everyone underestimates blizzard and thinks they're total idiots
Just because blizzard doesn't explain every single little thing, people get all elitist and proudly believe blizz is just idiots who can't balance or design anything
they've shown they listen, are reasonable, and they even inform us of how things are going and allow us to give feedback
Nevertheless, it should be posted on BNet.
Not because Blizz is a bunch of "idiots who can't balance or design anything," but because they haven't explored every option yet. If I'm interpreting what Browder said correctly, they ran some tests on it with different variables, but only with the map in the video. If they try different methods of breaking up deathballs, then they might like it.
I understand that, sorry if i was unclear in my post, yes they can and should keep investigating new ways to change things up regarding unit pathing/clumping/etc.
On October 24 2012 12:30 NewSunshine wrote: What Blizzard is trying to do is make deathballs usable, but make it so that there are much better ways to utilize your units, nearly every new unit in HotS is being developed with this philosophy. Instead of attacking it head on by changing the pathing outright, thus making it a non-issue for everyone, they're providing attractive alternatives to the deathball, that don't require your units to split but encouraging you to do it yourself. If they succeed, then what we'll have is something akin to the old BW pathing: something that doesn't come easy to non-pros, and is vital to succeed in pro-level play. The big difference is, it's more accessible to new players, as it's more intuitive, and it's easier to appreciate the skill involved with precise micro(the E factor, if you wanna go there), thereby accomplishing 2 of Blizzard's main goals with this game as opposed to BW.
I like this description, and I hope it works out this way, but I think it's backwards -- fighting the fundamentals of the genre itself.
Engagement dynamics are governed by local DPS density. This is the source of much of the depth in RTS games. Higher DPS density is inherently rewarded because you are dealing concentrated damage. It's like focus fire happening automatically, in analogy. Usually there are lots of factors that mitigate this basic strength to make the game more interesting, many of which make use of the ability of units to reposition to avoid high enemy DPS and to increase your own local DPS. The most typical dynamic is pursuing an engagement with units in a high DPS area while retreating from your opponent's high DPS area. In the simplest way, a flank does this automatically, but there are lots of other formations you could imagine, and the complexity of situations quickly develops once you have units with different stats and abilities.
Let's imagine extreme cases to illustrate the point I'm making. What if units didn't collide at all. One of the above "mitigating factors" is the banal fact that units can't take up the same space, but lets get rid of that. 12 marines vs 12 marines, go. Well... the only strategy will ever be stacking your marines perfectly on top of one another and then walking straight at the enemy and target firing the top of the stack. If you do anything else, like try to make an arc, you will quickly lose out on the local DPS front. Pull micro just means you've lost local DPS. Retreat can only lose local DPS in a similar way.
What if units did collide as normal, and their collision barrier was twice their actual size, but you could place them close together with attention. But while in transit and unattended at their destination, they would be somewhat spread out. 12 marines vs 12 marines, go. This looks completely different. Attacking is now a lot harder; the system has inherent defenders advantage. Attacking units have to move into position, which reduces their local DPS. Just to attack on even footing, you have to arrange an elaborate position and synchronize the arrival of your units, otherwise you'll be suffering from a DPS deficit (despite mirror armies!) from the outset. And no matter what formation you take, the defender can adjust to demand further actions on your part. And so on and so on, but the defender always has the upper hand.
Which one sounds more like SC2? Which one sounds more interesting?
You can get a lot of desirable dynamics just by changing basic unit properties, you don't have to resort to AoE effects and special abilities. I would gladly go into even more depth but I think this makes the point sufficiently for now. I'll just add that the latter example demands constant attention and unit control in an engagement, while the other is almost maximized efficiency with an a-move.
You need a beta key my friend. Should post this over at the HOTS beta forum.
On October 24 2012 12:30 NewSunshine wrote: What Blizzard is trying to do is make deathballs usable, but make it so that there are much better ways to utilize your units, nearly every new unit in HotS is being developed with this philosophy. Instead of attacking it head on by changing the pathing outright, thus making it a non-issue for everyone, they're providing attractive alternatives to the deathball, that don't require your units to split but encouraging you to do it yourself. If they succeed, then what we'll have is something akin to the old BW pathing: something that doesn't come easy to non-pros, and is vital to succeed in pro-level play. The big difference is, it's more accessible to new players, as it's more intuitive, and it's easier to appreciate the skill involved with precise micro(the E factor, if you wanna go there), thereby accomplishing 2 of Blizzard's main goals with this game as opposed to BW.
I like this description, and I hope it works out this way, but I think it's backwards -- fighting the fundamentals of the genre itself.
Engagement dynamics are governed by local DPS density. This is the source of much of the depth in RTS games. Higher DPS density is inherently rewarded because you are dealing concentrated damage. It's like focus fire happening automatically, in analogy. Usually there are lots of factors that mitigate this basic strength to make the game more interesting, many of which make use of the ability of units to reposition to avoid high enemy DPS and to increase your own local DPS. The most typical dynamic is pursuing an engagement with units in a high DPS area while retreating from your opponent's high DPS area. In the simplest way, a flank does this automatically, but there are lots of other formations you could imagine, and the complexity of situations quickly develops once you have units with different stats and abilities.
Let's imagine extreme cases to illustrate the point I'm making. What if units didn't collide at all. One of the above "mitigating factors" is the banal fact that units can't take up the same space, but lets get rid of that. 12 marines vs 12 marines, go. Well... the only strategy will ever be stacking your marines perfectly on top of one another and then walking straight at the enemy and target firing the top of the stack. If you do anything else, like try to make an arc, you will quickly lose out on the local DPS front. Pull micro just means you've lost local DPS. Retreat can only lose local DPS in a similar way.
What if units did collide as normal, and their collision barrier was twice their actual size, but you could place them close together with attention. But while in transit and unattended at their destination, they would be somewhat spread out. 12 marines vs 12 marines, go. This looks completely different. Attacking is now a lot harder; the system has inherent defenders advantage. Attacking units have to move into position, which reduces their local DPS. Just to attack on even footing, you have to arrange an elaborate position and synchronize the arrival of your units, otherwise you'll be suffering from a DPS deficit (despite mirror armies!) from the outset. And no matter what formation you take, the defender can adjust to demand further actions on your part. And so on and so on, but the defender always has the upper hand.
Which one sounds more like SC2? Which one sounds more interesting?
You can get a lot of desirable dynamics just by changing basic unit properties, you don't have to resort to AoE effects and special abilities. I would gladly go into even more depth but I think this makes the point sufficiently for now. I'll just add that the latter example demands constant attention and unit control in an engagement, while the other is almost maximized efficiency with an a-move.
I'm in for those changes. The argument that it will decrease micro is false. Its exactly the other way. Now micro is impossible any shutter stepping causes your army to form a big blob. Instead of focusing fire or creating a cone all i try to do in a fight is split my forces not to die as one big ball in fungal or storm...
On October 24 2012 05:44 Probe1 wrote: I have difficulty believing Blizzard and especially Dustin Browder will ever actually listen to the community.
If they tried to tweak various values and explored different clumping options, they went far beyond just listening. "Listening" does not equal "doing what is suggested". Blizzard can certainly consider something and decide against it, which is what Dustin describes as happening. You can certainly disagree with them, but in this case you can't accuse them of ignoring the idea, unless you believe he's lying.
I hardly base my observations of what happens when I walk outside my home on what happened yesterday. I have 2 years of unequivocal evidence that Dustin Browder does not understand or does not listen.
People go from complaining about sc2 being too easy, then want the game to split their units for them. Please stop whining and start trying to actually test this beta.
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 Post... Simply this dude dont listen to ppl ... He think that is skill to split your unites out and that is it...
Dustin B SC2 with this pathing isnt Spectator friendly !!!!
He look at this pathing change like this... If we remove death ball pathing then PPl with less skill dont need to split their unites out....and pro ppl cant show their skill of SPLITING units..
But he is so retarded that if he change pathing... (to LOOK GOOD GREAT E SPORT LOOK) he need to Add BIGGER AOE range in game... not 1.5 instead 2.0 or 2.5 ..
After add new Aoe range then Pro ppl need to split their unites and less skill ppl need to do that to.....
So Dustin B if you dont understand the game Quit the job give some ppl that will listen to community and know what is SC all abouth... Sc2 need to bee Spectator FRIENDLY for E Sport and this Pathing that we have now dont do that...
On October 24 2012 02:43 Evangelist wrote: So basically they found what every single person with any common sense already knew and figured out it made not a jot of difference.
Of course, you're so obsessed with making this into BW, you don't understand that BW had its pathing/hitboxes precisely because it was poorly coded. Face it. You aren't getting it.
It also fundamentally changes the nature of terrain and positioning when a small ramp actually affects how long it takes to move troops. Are you saying that the apart from the annoyance factor, this doesn't make a better and more interesting game, especially for competition?
It doesn't make a damn bit of difference. It's artificial difficulty.
What's wrong with artificial difficulty ? Great things have come out of this poor coding and bugs in BW, as Falling explains it nicely in his today's blog.
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.
Don't defile the reaver only because you don't know how it works. Go read on how scarabs work(http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=118741). Your last sentence after spewing plain ignorance(because you're objectively wrong, if you still haven't got it) is so self rewarding that I puked a little in my mouth.
On October 24 2012 13:46 EatThePath wrote: Engagement dynamics are governed by local DPS density. This is the source of much of the depth in RTS games. Higher DPS density is inherently rewarded because you are dealing concentrated damage. It's like focus fire happening automatically, in analogy. Usually there are lots of factors that mitigate this basic strength to make the game more interesting, many of which make use of the ability of units to reposition to avoid high enemy DPS and to increase your own local DPS. The most typical dynamic is pursuing an engagement with units in a high DPS area while retreating from your opponent's high DPS area. In the simplest way, a flank does this automatically, but there are lots of other formations you could imagine, and the complexity of situations quickly develops once you have units with different stats and abilities.
High dps density is basically a measurement of how big an individual unit is and how many you have. The damage it puts out is linear and only really matters when range matters. This is also why melee units are inherently stronger and why ultralisks have such great troubles being effective in a lot of ways.
The direct counterpart to density is splash damage. The denser the ball, the more effective splash becomes, unless it is a colossus. The interesting thing about colossus is that their AoE is actually more suited to fight against concaves than balls.
If you make units ball up less, you also make splash less powerful. Then suddenly you will realize that the units that become more viable due to weaker splash are the very same units that promote dps density in the first place, meaning you wont actually adress the issue imo.
Let's imagine extreme cases to illustrate the point I'm making. What if units didn't collide at all. One of the above "mitigating factors" is the banal fact that units can't take up the same space, but lets get rid of that. 12 marines vs 12 marines, go. Well... the only strategy will ever be stacking your marines perfectly on top of one another and then walking straight at the enemy and target firing the top of the stack. If you do anything else, like try to make an arc, you will quickly lose out on the local DPS front. Pull micro just means you've lost local DPS. Retreat can only lose local DPS in a similar way.
Marines have a hitpoint to dps ratio of 6.4. With stim it is 4.3. In comparison, a stalker(the other end of the spectrum) has 23.2 to light and 16.5 to armored. On top of that, the fire rate of a marine is 1 shot every 0.86 seconds(0.57 with stim), where as the stalker shots every 1.44 seconds.
Micro has to do with opportunity cost. Marines do way more damage than they do surviving, meaning it becomes imperative to let them dps. The reason you are not so rewarded from micro in deathballs is because damage output is so high that it overshadows the superior position that you can attain from micro. Attacking with a deathball is fire and forget in a lot of ways.
Also, the slower something fires, the easier it is to actually move it without losing dps time at all. With marines shooting twice per second, you end up clipping a lot, you just dont notice it the way you notice clipping an attack timer with a thor for example.
My point is that there are plenty of way to encourage splitting and encourage a better position (maps are important here as well). I don't dislike the current unit movement and pathing because in my perspective it is a huge improvement from brood war. The unwanted effect that has is a tendency to clump units and that benefits some units more than others. As Browder has also confirmed, this does not change by changing the way that units retain formations, at least not in practise.
What if units did collide as normal, and their collision barrier was twice their actual size, but you could place them close together with attention. But while in transit and unattended at their destination, they would be somewhat spread out. 12 marines vs 12 marines, go. This looks completely different. Attacking is now a lot harder; the system has inherent defenders advantage. Attacking units have to move into position, which reduces their local DPS. Just to attack on even footing, you have to arrange an elaborate position and synchronize the arrival of your units, otherwise you'll be suffering from a DPS deficit (despite mirror armies!) from the outset. And no matter what formation you take, the defender can adjust to demand further actions on your part. And so on and so on, but the defender always has the upper hand.
I agree that this is a nice example. Yet, what becomes of siege tanks and our beloved colossus? In my eyes this would also be a massive buff to bio, against any non bio composition.
You could essentially achieve the same results by arbitrarily restricting units from firing depth wise in a formation. Say that units block LoS of each other. You could also reduce the length of each unit of "range". That effectively does the same thing as just increasing the size of all units, without distorting the scale of the game. You could also have a slight "penetration" effect from single target units, so that any unit standing behind a unit would take 25% of the damage or something, making deep formations less attractive to wide ones.
The big issue imo is that in order to say that an idea is good, we need to make sure to test it properly, but who has the time and energy to do that? On paper, you suggestion here feels pretty good, but I can make up a bunch of speculative counter arguments rather easily.
I actually think the pathing is even worse than the clumping. Harvesters that go around minerals to mine unless you micro them. Army suddenly split. You have to spend time waiting after you click to see what happens and correct. That kind of crap never happened in ez mode BW.
We have already decided it's not useful, that's why we didn't put it in a patch. I'm not going to waste time, energy and resources testing something that doesn't do anything positive for the game. A change like this will require extensive testing and take a lot of effort to make sure it didn't break anything in campaign or anywhere else in the game.
If you don't agree, that is totally cool. Go test it now. You have an editor. I'm not stopping you. =)
They are wasting their time energy and resources with HotS anyway. Why not put it to something positive?
I know for a fact that most low level players can not deal with AOE.
A good example is a platinum Terran going up against ling baneling. He gets absolutely crushed because 2 banelings kill 20 clumped up marines. Same idea with Protoss players going against Fungals. If units would spread out more, this kind of game ending AOE wouldn't be so broken.
Even marines in BW didn't get massacred as easily by Reavers. Maybe 5 or so died from one blast, and that was because they didn't clump so much.
On October 25 2012 04:51 Zombo Joe wrote: They are wasting their time energy and resources with HotS anyway. Why not put it to something positive?
I know for a fact that most low level players can not deal with AOE.
A good example is a platinum Terran going up against ling baneling. He gets absolutely crushed because 2 banelings kill 20 clumped up marines. Same idea with Protoss players going against Fungals. If units would spread out more, this kind of game ending AOE wouldn't be so broken.
Even marines in BW didn't get massacred as easily by Reavers. Maybe 5 or so died from one blast, and that was because they didn't clump so much.
Then you would have these same players unable to get up and down ramps to get into a defensive position.
Splitting vs AoE is part of a skill cap.
I would prefer not to see unit movement change and instead see a focus on units that require micro in their own right to be more effective without the need of a spell to be a micro unit.
As it is now all the units we have are micro units because of spells for the most part.
Wanna know whats fun? controlling certain units to do cool things when controlled well.
Banshees and Stalkers against marines for example in the early game. We need more micro unit interaction at more stages of the game. So far the swarm host actually kind of adds to this. If I put stalkers in front of collossus as an a move the stalkers die and lose numbers. If I blink my stalkers back they survive more. So I need to actually blink back stalkers while my collossus are there while ALSO trying to defend them or keep vipers from taking them.
Its very cool and really fun. Before vipers I can basically step forward a could collossus and put others on hold position to slowly chew away at a swarm host massing player.
We have already decided it's not useful, that's why we didn't put it in a patch. I'm not going to waste time, energy and resources testing something that doesn't do anything positive for the game. A change like this will require extensive testing and take a lot of effort to make sure it didn't break anything in campaign or anywhere else in the game.
If you don't agree, that is totally cool. Go test it now. You have an editor. I'm not stopping you. =)
Telling the community, their customers, that they're wrong about their preferences. Nice. Each time they talk, it surprises me less and less why their recent games haven't been up to their usual (older) standards.
We have already decided it's not useful, that's why we didn't put it in a patch. I'm not going to waste time, energy and resources testing something that doesn't do anything positive for the game. A change like this will require extensive testing and take a lot of effort to make sure it didn't break anything in campaign or anywhere else in the game.
If you don't agree, that is totally cool. Go test it now. You have an editor. I'm not stopping you. =)
Telling the community, their customers, that they're wrong about their preferences. Nice. Each time they talk, it surprises me less and less why their recent games haven't been up to their usual (older) standards.
DB is an RTS expert compared to almost any unit movement complainer. We can trust his conclusion more than the wish of someone who does not understand the game to a level as an expert.
We have already decided it's not useful, that's why we didn't put it in a patch. I'm not going to waste time, energy and resources testing something that doesn't do anything positive for the game. A change like this will require extensive testing and take a lot of effort to make sure it didn't break anything in campaign or anywhere else in the game.
If you don't agree, that is totally cool. Go test it now. You have an editor. I'm not stopping you. =)
Telling the community, their customers, that they're wrong about their preferences. Nice. Each time they talk, it surprises me less and less why their recent games haven't been up to their usual (older) standards.
Maybe we should ask Day[9] to text D. Browder. Day[9]: Hey D. Browder units clump we need to fix this. D. Browder: NP Day[9] NP i change that shit. Day[9]: D. Browder your so bro your so bro
We have already decided it's not useful, that's why we didn't put it in a patch. I'm not going to waste time, energy and resources testing something that doesn't do anything positive for the game. A change like this will require extensive testing and take a lot of effort to make sure it didn't break anything in campaign or anywhere else in the game.
If you don't agree, that is totally cool. Go test it now. You have an editor. I'm not stopping you. =)
Telling the community, their customers, that they're wrong about their preferences. Nice. Each time they talk, it surprises me less and less why their recent games haven't been up to their usual (older) standards.
DB is an RTS expert compared to almost any unit movement complainer. We can trust his conclusion more than the wish of someone who does not understand the game to a level as an expert.
I really have to ask: where does this confidence come from? Is there anything in his resume that screams "this guy knows what he's doing"? The only question I really need to ask myself is, "what exists in SC2 that wasn't taken straight from BW that has actually added interesting gameplay dynamics?". At least in my mind, the only examples are the Phoenix and the current incarnation of the Widow Mine.
I just think: why would anyone look to DB and be so inspired to have faith when there's incredibly smart people like QXC and Day[9] (I admit I'm biased. hmc'10) that clearly understand what makes an RTS interesting and entertaining so much better.
As I've suggested, but not said outright, people are talking about 2 separate but related issues.
1) Unit movement-- How units move across the map, around terrain, etc. 2) Unit "clumpiness"-- How those units interact when they come together to form a ball.
Of course how units move on the map affects how they form a ball, but we need to realize that we have people talking about 2 things here.
In SC2, units tend to form a ball automatically at every click. This video shows how numbers can be tweaked so that the player can actively control his units formation while moving: whether in a ball (as they do now) or more spread out (as they do in his mod). I believe this video modifies the magic box, but Im not entirely sure.
My suggestion:
A fix would require modifying movement and control in such a way that units don't move entirely optimally (NOT Broodwar-bad but just a bit imperfectly) with a simple move command, while also allowing the player to spread out his units and keep them spread out like in video #2.
Why do I think this would be good?
Because if units move perfectly (like now) it keeps the deathball stuck together as it moves across the map instead of spreading it out like in Maverck's video. A-move a toss army across the map and it still forms a ball when it ends up at the other players base.
If you fix this, it makes controlling your army a more skillful exercise. Not some uber l33t apm-fest but enough that the player needs to pay careful attention to his army's movement.
picture how stalkers are a bit faster than zealots, stalkers and colossi. If you simply a-move across the map, your stalkers will die first. This modified movement makes armies slower, as they will have to negotiate obstacles, or risk being picked off one-by-one in the same way that stalkers sometimes get picked off because they are faster. A good player will control his army carefully when navigating terrain because he does not want this to happen.
Imagine an army at the top of the cliff in Maverck's map. Those marines would walk one-by-one into a meatgrinder. In SC2, they would all arrive together and perform much better. But a good player would stop at the foot of the ramp and make sure he wasn't walking into a trap
So what does adding the magic box ability do?
It means that you can keep your army spread out and moving in any formation the player chooses (as in the second video). That means that you can keep your army in whatever formation is best while it moves, unless it has to move through terrain or something.
This makes it easier to control your units in a battle while taking nothing away from the game: you can still clump your units if you want.
The marines start out perfectly spread so that one baneling will never hit more than 1 marine. In SC2, if the banelings run in and you try to move your marines back, they will begin to clump up and start to die. If you make the magic box better, you can move your entire marine army back while keeping them in that exact spread out formation. Imagine how different the battle would be.
But if the terran wanted to suddenly move all his marines into a tight ball (imagine zerglings come instead), he could do that by clicking in the center of his army, causing his marines to converge together
Yeah, I think we need to change how we present our arguments. Our argument should be that the change promotes micro because the units don't immediately ball up after you spent so much painstaking work to split them apart. It's wasted effort to constantly fight the game that automatically balls up your units after every reposition.
We have already decided it's not useful, that's why we didn't put it in a patch. I'm not going to waste time, energy and resources testing something that doesn't do anything positive for the game. A change like this will require extensive testing and take a lot of effort to make sure it didn't break anything in campaign or anywhere else in the game.
If you don't agree, that is totally cool. Go test it now. You have an editor. I'm not stopping you. =)
Telling the community, their customers, that they're wrong about their preferences. Nice. Each time they talk, it surprises me less and less why their recent games haven't been up to their usual (older) standards.
I'm with you. 5 Years ago did Blizzard ever say that something was too hard, so they wouldn't do it despite the benefits?
In summary of multiple connected threads/issues: DPS density/unit pathing and the macro mechanics of the game reinforce each other to produce the deathball syndrome. The faster game speed + macro mechanics and the overwhelming advantage of dps density encourages passivity, weakens the efficacy of harassment, and prevents multi-front engagements. The unease about HOTS that the community is slowly articulating is due to Blizzard's unwillingness to radically alter the game through the expansions (or if they are, they are not communicating this). Blizzard has to prioritize the spectating quality of the game over everything else as the "serious" player base undergoes the normal decline, if sc2 is to continue as an esport.
They should just have units take more space. Like have an invisible bubble so that a group of marine is actually bigger because there is space between them.
This would make battles longer (because it takes more effort or more time to reach full dps) and more fun to watch (due to being longer and more spread) which is what this game needs imo.
Would it break balance ? Probably. But hey HotS will break balance anyway, patches are here for a reason its not like WoL came out balanced.
I don't understand this obsession with wanting to "de-clump" units. You want to make it automatically easier to mitigate AoE damage? You want marines splitting vs banelings to be suddenly something everyone can do? Some of the best micro we've ever seen is on the fly army control/splitting in order to avoid AoE damage...and people want to take that away?
We have already decided it's not useful, that's why we didn't put it in a patch. I'm not going to waste time, energy and resources testing something that doesn't do anything positive for the game. A change like this will require extensive testing and take a lot of effort to make sure it didn't break anything in campaign or anywhere else in the game.
If you don't agree, that is totally cool. Go test it now. You have an editor. I'm not stopping you. =)
Telling the community, their customers, that they're wrong about their preferences. Nice. Each time they talk, it surprises me less and less why their recent games haven't been up to their usual (older) standards.
DB is an RTS expert compared to almost any unit movement complainer. We can trust his conclusion more than the wish of someone who does not understand the game to a level as an expert.
Go Wiki DB and check the 'great' games he made.. Blizzard are just lazy..
It's not about 'Promoting'/'destroying' micro its about "Maintaining" it. When you split your armies (APM), whether you attack or retreat... you immediately begin to lose the apm you've invested into your army "in a counter intuitive way".
In a War, if you decide to separate your army into different squads and tell them all to retreat... they would only clump up when surrounded by the enemy, or blocked by Terrain. Its just unnatural to tell your Army to retreat and they clump up as if they are surrounded (when they clearly are not). Its doubtful that in a war-zone the general has to tell his armies to retreat... and then re-split... then retreat... then re-split. Splitting an army (once accomplished) is generally something that should be maintained.
EDIT: I don't want units to naturally be 'De-clumped', that's exchanging the seated Player with SunTzu. I just don't want to see someone having to repeatedly mitigate damage from their Mutalisks (for example) when they are attacking/retreating multiple times in a harassment. If they've invested into splitting then their present APM shouldn't counter their past APM. (Unless they order the units to ball up by clicking somewhere near the 'middle' of the splitted forces)
On October 25 2012 10:37 KrazyTrumpet wrote: I don't understand this obsession with wanting to "de-clump" units. You want to make it automatically easier to mitigate AoE damage? You want marines splitting vs banelings to be suddenly something everyone can do? Some of the best micro we've ever seen is on the fly army control/splitting in order to avoid AoE damage...and people want to take that away?
SO what the problem of doubling range/radius of all aoe weapons/abilities?
On October 25 2012 10:37 KrazyTrumpet wrote: I don't understand this obsession with wanting to "de-clump" units. You want to make it automatically easier to mitigate AoE damage? You want marines splitting vs banelings to be suddenly something everyone can do? Some of the best micro we've ever seen is on the fly army control/splitting in order to avoid AoE damage...and people want to take that away?
Who wants to take that away? You have not read this thread, or the other thread and seen what people have to say in support of this... or you lack imagination.
Either way, no one will take "some of the best" micro you've seen away. Why the hell would micro vs aoe disapear? Clumping of your units is still easily possible by clicking within their magic box, and indeed, there will be situations clumping is prefered. What if those situations were AMPLIFIED! What if new micro situations arose due to this change?
Why are people fighting complexity?
Even Dustin Browder knows the complexity that could arise from this change when he talks about all the EXTENSIVE testing his team would have to do to make sure it didn't break the game... yet he says it does nothing, HAH!
On October 25 2012 10:37 KrazyTrumpet wrote: I don't understand this obsession with wanting to "de-clump" units. You want to make it automatically easier to mitigate AoE damage? You want marines splitting vs banelings to be suddenly something everyone can do? Some of the best micro we've ever seen is on the fly army control/splitting in order to avoid AoE damage...and people want to take that away?
SO what the problem of doubling range/radius of all aoe weapons/abilities?
For one, doubling the radius quadruples the area. That also means that way more of the map is covered by the AoE, yet the map size didn't change. Did you not double the speed of all the units? Then now it's way harder to get out of AoE because it covers so much more area, unless you already had a split twice as good as the spread you needed to have a chance of avoiding the AoE before. And if you don't split, now there's really no way to get your units out of the full area of a storm, and one fungal now covers your entire army.
I am not sure that changing unit clumping alone would remove death balls. If anything, it would make death balls stronger, because units in a death ball would automatically pre-split and suffer less damage from AOE.
I believe a proper change against death balls should incorporate stronger positional space-control units and stronger AOE or a combination of these changes. For reasoning please have a look at this thread: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=373484
On October 25 2012 10:37 KrazyTrumpet wrote: I don't understand this obsession with wanting to "de-clump" units. You want to make it automatically easier to mitigate AoE damage? You want marines splitting vs banelings to be suddenly something everyone can do? Some of the best micro we've ever seen is on the fly army control/splitting in order to avoid AoE damage...and people want to take that away?
SO what the problem of doubling range/radius of all aoe weapons/abilities?
For one, doubling the radius quadruples the area. That also means that way more of the map is covered by the AoE, yet the map size didn't change. Did you not double the speed of all the units? Then now it's way harder to get out of AoE because it covers so much more area, unless you already had a split twice as good as the spread you needed to have a chance of avoiding the AoE before. And if you don't split, now there's really no way to get your units out of the full area of a storm, and one fungal now covers your entire army.
Plus, 18 range Collosus with the upgrade. Yeah.
He exaggerated it a bit.. but have to agree here, the consequences are a lot more complicated than you guys are making it out to be
On October 25 2012 11:35 Zombo Joe wrote: Units not clumping up means battles will last a lot longer, instead of looking away from your army for 2 seconds only to get fungaled to death.
I guess, this change can't be made in a vacuum. In order to retain a skill-cap with this automatic pre-split you'll need stronger AOE and rebalance a lot of things. Otherwise with this change alone you'll only make deathballs stronger and less micro-intensive because they will auto-presplit themselves against AOE.
Edit the OP to include the video of the game played on the mm map or just say that it makes absolutely no difference at all in an actual game. everyone who sees it will just be like "OMG THIS WILL FIX CLUMPING AND DEATHBALLS". Even the followup videos that he uploaded of this applied to an actual game and even a video made by HDstarcraft showed that it made no difference at all.
In reality what happens in an actual game situation that it literally makes 0 or .1% of a difference because players have a tendency to purposefully ball units and they just clump up automatically when turning around corners. If you don't believe me or Dustin or anyone else who says this, go on battlenet and fucking play the modified movement maps as if you're playing seriously.
On October 25 2012 11:35 Zombo Joe wrote: Units not clumping up means battles will last a lot longer, instead of looking away from your army for 2 seconds only to get fungaled to death.
I guess, this change can't be made in a vacuum. In order to retain a skill-cap with this automatic pre-split you'll need stronger AOE and rebalance a lot of things. Otherwise with this change alone you'll only make deathballs stronger and less micro-intensive because they will auto-presplit themselves against AOE.
AoE isn't the only thing. If engagements are less-DPS dense, the opportunity to get value from unit control alone explodes. AoE is a brute-force way of answering density, it should be a strategic factor, not a stand-in for positioning and repositioning your units. It also collapses the timescale of an engagement making little things recede in the face of big ticket priorities for APM, which will be simply casting AoE and some basic target-firing.
Think about early game fights where the players spend so much attention on the smallest details of unit control, because it actually matters. Something like 5-10 supply of army. Now multiply that opportunity for gain by detailed unit control by 10 or more in a major engagement near maxed supply. Things aren't dying as quickly, there's is more time to micro different areas of the fight, the positioning of the battle can shift and reshift over 30 seconds of intense fighting, with different local "winners" across more than a screen of space.
The balance with less clumpy units would be totally different, reliant on micro. Who knows what you might need to change.
The AoE could be stronger/bigger, but it wouldn't necessarily have to be.
OK, so pathing isn't going to be changed.. And some people seem to like clumping. However, it still seems ridiculous that units clump up SO MUCH! 200/200 should not be able to fit into such a tight space.. DPS density is therefore so high that battles last seconds. Please let me know who likes this?
If unit collision radius were slightly increased the ball would be a little more spread out without pathing changes. DPS density drops a bit and battles last longer. Furthermore balling up your entire supply should become less than optimal because some of your army is not engaging in ball v ball battles. Hence it becomes advantageous to rather split your army up into squads so that they can flank larger armies. Also a smaller army can at least do some damage to a bigger one.
In the real world a big stacked up army can take a lot of casualties from smaller spread out squads. This barely ever happens in SC2 unless the bigger army is well soft/hard-countered.
Some changes to unit collision radius could have the following effects: 1. Lower the DPS density (making deathballs suboptimal) 2. Generally lengthen battle times 3. Allow for stronger positional play 4. Make battles more micro intensive 5. Doesn't affect lower level players (a-move still OK, just not optimal) 6. Looks better (unit orgies don't look good to me) 7. Ramp issues (some work for blizzard) 8. Aoe less strong (blizzard buffs and balances, more work for them again)
So blizzard can just try it out in hots, if it looks good they just put a little effort into balancing things. Its quite a change but to me seems like mostly positives. Death to the deathball.
On October 25 2012 12:48 winsonsonho wrote: If unit collision radius were slightly increased the ball would be a little more spread out without pathing changes. DPS density drops a bit and battles last longer. Furthermore balling up your entire supply should become less than optimal because some of your army is not engaging in ball v ball battles. Hence it becomes advantageous to rather split your army up into squads so that they can flank larger armies. Also a smaller army can at least do some damage to a bigger one.
I don't think creating an invisible bubble around units is the right solution. It's not spectator friendly and it still leaves us with less than adequate unit control. People in support of this just have to keep posting their opinion until the bliz team can't take it anymore. There is a thread on the European battle.net too-> http://eu.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/5723363987
It's ridiculous that they are so pressed in getting HOTS out ASAP that they couldn't even consider a change like this.
Like I've said, the AOE numbers are already balanced around how many shots kills a base unit, only the radius would have to be balanced.
The main advantages to this (aside from an observer's POV) is longer battles due to optimal formations, and greater returns from small micro decisions.
Balancing should not be a huge issue. Don't forget the META balance will take place and little to no changes may be necessary.
I think the #1 reason to do this is because it just looks better.
I mean, we can discuss on a per-strategy or a per-unit basis regarding balance after we all have laddered with it, If ever Blizzard wakes up and puts it in.
All this talk about how its going to fix or break anything is a bit moot. I mean, for me, it's like discussing the effect if creep color was changed to Blue because it will look pretty but Protoss units will be harder to see when they walk on it or something to that effect.
I bet all those that disagree about any balance ramifications will agree that, cosmetically, it makes SC2 feel more natural.
We have already decided it's not useful, that's why we didn't put it in a patch. I'm not going to waste time, energy and resources testing something that doesn't do anything positive for the game. A change like this will require extensive testing and take a lot of effort to make sure it didn't break anything in campaign or anywhere else in the game.
If you don't agree, that is totally cool. Go test it now. You have an editor. I'm not stopping you. =)
Telling the community, their customers, that they're wrong about their preferences. Nice. Each time they talk, it surprises me less and less why their recent games haven't been up to their usual (older) standards.
DB is an RTS expert compared to almost any unit movement complainer. We can trust his conclusion more than the wish of someone who does not understand the game to a level as an expert.
I really have to ask: where does this confidence come from? Is there anything in his resume that screams "this guy knows what he's doing"? The only question I really need to ask myself is, "what exists in SC2 that wasn't taken straight from BW that has actually added interesting gameplay dynamics?". At least in my mind, the only examples are the Phoenix and the current incarnation of the Widow Mine.
I just think: why would anyone look to DB and be so inspired to have faith when there's incredibly smart people like QXC and Day[9] (I admit I'm biased. hmc'10) that clearly understand what makes an RTS interesting and entertaining so much better.
Qxc and Day[9] were probably under the impression that it would be possible to have it not only appear more BW-like, but to have it play out more like BW.
SC2 is not BW, and Dustin Browder knows that. One would need to not only change movement and spreading, you have to make a whole new game, only to remake an old game. An old game which found almost no new players in the western world.
Unit clumping can be good to focus damage, but bad to avoid splash damage. Unit clumping makes it harder to follow a battle, but you can only do so much for entertainment value.
I really doubt that Day[9] or Qcx know *better* how to make a game than DB with his team. (Dustin just leads the team, he does not make all decisions by himself.) DB already led a team which made WoL, the most successful RTS in years. Day and Qcx are only players. Very smart players, but they have not shown yet that they can develop a game like Starcraft. They probably would use what they already know – Broodwar.
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).
We have already decided it's not useful, that's why we didn't put it in a patch. I'm not going to waste time, energy and resources testing something that doesn't do anything positive for the game. A change like this will require extensive testing and take a lot of effort to make sure it didn't break anything in campaign or anywhere else in the game.
If you don't agree, that is totally cool. Go test it now. You have an editor. I'm not stopping you. =)
Telling the community, their customers, that they're wrong about their preferences. Nice. Each time they talk, it surprises me less and less why their recent games haven't been up to their usual (older) standards.
DB is an RTS expert compared to almost any unit movement complainer. We can trust his conclusion more than the wish of someone who does not understand the game to a level as an expert.
I really have to ask: where does this confidence come from? Is there anything in his resume that screams "this guy knows what he's doing"? The only question I really need to ask myself is, "what exists in SC2 that wasn't taken straight from BW that has actually added interesting gameplay dynamics?". At least in my mind, the only examples are the Phoenix and the current incarnation of the Widow Mine.
I just think: why would anyone look to DB and be so inspired to have faith when there's incredibly smart people like QXC and Day[9] (I admit I'm biased. hmc'10) that clearly understand what makes an RTS interesting and entertaining so much better.
Qxc and Day[9] were probably under the impression that it would be possible to have it not only appear more BW-like, but to have it play out more like BW.
SC2 is not BW, and Dustin Browder knows that. One would need to not only change movement and spreading, you have to make a whole new game, only to remake an old game. An old game which found almost no new players in the western world.
Unit clumping can be good to focus damage, but bad to avoid splash damage. Unit clumping makes it harder to follow a battle, but you can only do so much for entertainment value.
I really doubt that Day[9] or Qcx know *better* how to make a game than DB with his team. (Dustin just leads the team, he does not make all decisions by himself.) DB already led a team which made WoL, the most successful RTS in years. Day and Qcx are only players. Very smart players, but they have not shown yet that they can develop a game like Starcraft. They probably would use what they already know – Broodwar.
it's only the most successful because of it's predecessor and the big name "blizzard", not because it is the best rts game. and i'am sure qxc and day9 would make a better game than bowder and kim.
We have already decided it's not useful, that's why we didn't put it in a patch. I'm not going to waste time, energy and resources testing something that doesn't do anything positive for the game. A change like this will require extensive testing and take a lot of effort to make sure it didn't break anything in campaign or anywhere else in the game.
If you don't agree, that is totally cool. Go test it now. You have an editor. I'm not stopping you. =)
Telling the community, their customers, that they're wrong about their preferences. Nice. Each time they talk, it surprises me less and less why their recent games haven't been up to their usual (older) standards.
DB is an RTS expert compared to almost any unit movement complainer. We can trust his conclusion more than the wish of someone who does not understand the game to a level as an expert.
I have to disagree here, because none of the Blizzard devs seem to understand the problems they have caused by creating a game which gives the players a totally ridiculously high "dps per area" by making the units move and fight in such perfectly tight formations. This is the reason why defensive play is impossible in the game and part of the reason why there is no defenders advantage. Compare the "dps per area" in BW and SC2 and you see that the second one is MUCH higher. And yet they think the problem of the game can be solved by twiddling around with the numbers of the units? Such naivete and narrowsightedness is astonishing. Oh and "DB the RTS expert" did ruin which other RTS series again? Yeah, C&C was popular ... in the good old days, but the last ones were terrible. Of which RTS does THAT remind me again? Hint: the name begins with an "S" and it ends with "craft".
The problem is that Dustin Browder and David Kim and all the other developers are too involved in the process and are basically all hamsters running in their treadmill. Sometimes it is necessary to take a break and look at something this big from an impartial and distant perspective to see the flaws. The "dps per area" is just such an example, but there are others like the "production speed boosts" for the three races, which kick in at different times. Who thinks that this will NOT be a bad thing for casual players who might be overwhelmed by the sheer multitasking of the game? This is the reason why I am not playing anymore for example.
As a viewer of competitive gameplay I get terribly bored by deathball "max army vs max army" engagements, because we have seen them for 2-3 years now without any other viable strategy being possible. This is again a consequence of the "dps per area" problem in combination with the number of units per control group and the tight unit movement. Defensive structures only matter in the very beginning of the game OR when you can afford to build 20 Spine Crawlers later on; at any other time they simply get overwhelmed in 2 seconds by tightly packed formations of attackers.
These problems exist, but everything the Blizzard devs say shows that they are ignorant of these NOT UNIT RELATED THINGS. In addition there are the countless problems with BNet 0.2 which have been promised and havent been included.
yep they have to fix the clumping. it destroys observability, micro and defenders advantage and it is responsible for maxed battles that last 5 seconds that leads to one big battle and the game is decided (too much dps in tight space).
Its not juts Pathing problem with this game....Micro almost dont exist !!!! ... You dont see micro like in SC BW and WC3 at all in game...
split isnt Micro i think it is but not like normal mico from WC3 or SC BW.... moving one unite away at the time that is Micro we dont see in this game..
I watch Morrow stream hi is terran and I see only trades of army... who have bather trade he wins .. almost no micro involved battles ...
Sige Tanks Hellbats ghost army vs Toss army immortals zealots HTs Arcons all A MOVE UNITES...
this become bad game from E sport spectator pont to player less micro intensive skill to from every angle this is BAD GAME....
Unites are also not only problem A move unites.... problem is in game speed ... How ? Simply no Human cant micro vs that high DPS per sec ....
Massive dps in short time kill micro easy.. A move unites kill micro also... And ofc Pathing is one problem that need to be solved to....
The last 4 posts basically cover it, saying it in their different ways.
The thread on b.net is a garbage pile that missed the true point from the beginning. Would it even be worth it to post in there? I feel like it'd just come off as further whining.
I don't blame Browder and Kim at all for their response to community outcry, because usually it is senseless yammering. For example, the biggest "fix SC2" issue since the beginning was about individual unit and ability design, when I think it's clear from this thread and remote analysis that the underlying fundamentals are the problem, but no one ever articulates that clearly and it's much harder to understand.
I think the unlimited selection but much more spread out pathing (vulture video was rlly good IMO but the other ones are also acceptable) would benefit the game a lot. You could still "a-move" but focusing on control would definitely a lot more rewarding. You would have to make sure your units don't just stream to their death, flanks a lot more deadly, ect.
And fuck it, it's the beta. Why not try out more shit to make the game the best that it can be?
On October 26 2012 12:07 shizaep wrote: I think the unlimited selection but much more spread out pathing (vulture video was rlly good IMO but the other ones are also acceptable) would benefit the game a lot. You could still "a-move" but focusing on control would definitely a lot more rewarding. You would have to make sure your units don't just stream to their death, flanks a lot more deadly, ect.
And fuck it, it's the beta. Why not try out more shit to make the game the best that it can be?
... because the shit they add is just another unit or two and those really wont fix any of the problems they *should be* working on. The excuses they give about testing dynamic unit movement or any changes to that are just weak and this leaves me to believe that they genuinely do not see the problem (either from lack of ability or from lack of will to see them). That is depressing, because the problems and the solutions are so blatantly obvious ...
So any "oh lets just play the beta" comment is just the same as giving up, because most people will then just stop thinking and become happy little hamsters in their treadmills ... "gotta ... play ... more ... games".
Even though I've posted it a thousand times, this is another great place to post it.
I think it is VASTLY underestimated how much the "great" pathing of SC2 is a detriment to the game. The speed that a 200/200 army can go up a ramp, through a choke, make controlling space almost worth nothing. The speed at which buildings can be sniped for no cost- marauders still, snipe, get out... makes the game what we see today.
On the other hand, the clunky units in BW made static defense worth so much more, space worth so much more, chokes worth more, high ground, micro... the list goes on and on. The "ease of control" is also proportional to the "ease" of losing your army to 1 click. Being 1 second late to A-Move respond to your opponents A move into your army, can cost you a game. Because the Auto-Play pathing from their side has annihilated your army.
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.
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
Obviously there are 2 types of micro involved here... if you have clumping you have a type of gameplay that's boring, unrewarding and frustrating.
Better the case of Brood war that promotes a good active micro that is very rewarding when you do it correctly.
Without clumping we also remove the worst part of this game, that fights are decided so quick that there's no fun involved, in contrast to BW where every fight was so LONG and EPIC.
What micro do you prefer ?
Poll: What type of micro do you prefer ?
Brood War Micro , force units to fire better and do more damage keeping them near the front of fire (19)
73%
Dustin Browder MICRO , AUTOMATIC CLUMPING split units to RESIST MORE to enemy fire (frustrating micr (7)
27%
26 total votes
Your vote: What type of micro do you prefer ?
(Vote): Dustin Browder MICRO , AUTOMATIC CLUMPING split units to RESIST MORE to enemy fire (frustrating micr (Vote): Brood War Micro , force units to fire better and do more damage keeping them near the front of fire
AUTOMATIC CLUMPING Dustin Browder MICRO , split units to RESIST MORE to enemy fire (frustrating micro if you fail)
NO CLUMPING Brood War Micro , force units to fire better and do more damage keeping them near the front of fire if you do it correctly there's a better psycological reward (obviously you still have to spread in case of AOE damage)
I played some Warcraft 3 yesterday and I almost broke my mouse in anger. That unit movement is horrendous, good thing Blizz decided to get rid of it. Yeah units clump up, but I've been playing this game for 2 years now and it never occurred to me that SC2's biggest problem is unit clumping. Seriously, now we need a thread about LAN and it will be like travelling back in time.
On October 31 2012 06:27 dragonsuper wrote: sorry you don't like it, but it is my opinion that it's the problem about sc2 actually... if you fix that the things will be really better
I obviously think it's a huge problem too, I started this thread ^_^
On October 24 2012 06:06 SarcasmMonster wrote: I know people hate bringing up BW but in my opinion the ideal solution is somewhere in the middle between WOL and BW.
Actually, i agree with this. There are a lot of buts in addition to this statement, however. I'm not really in the mood to go through all of my thoughts, but i'll give one to illustrate. I think the concern that units clumping too much affecting watchability is a just one, but i don't know what consequences fixing it will have. I could be wrong on the following suggestion, because i haven't played bw in a long time, but one of the things i think is the following: in bw you had a funny mechanic in which units moved parallel to eachother when moved and only went towards eachother when the destination was 'in between' (i'm sorry for poor wording) the units. Regarding the mentioned concern, i think a change to a situation similar to (not the same as) the bw situation could be beneficial, for splitting and clumping is a choice. Once your units have clumped, they don't spread too fast, but when they are spread, they don't clump too fast. Yes, i do think bw is a better game than wol is now. no, i don't want bw2. I hope no one is offended by these suggestions or cynical remarks.
On October 31 2012 06:27 dragonsuper wrote: sorry you don't like it, but it is my opinion that it's the problem about sc2 actually... if you fix that the things will be really better
I don't necessarily dislike the poll, but boy are those options worded in a biased manner. You should try to make the wording a little more neutral for the SC2 version, as opposed to the "random CAPITALIZED words (oh and is frustrating)" slant you've put on it.
On October 31 2012 06:27 dragonsuper wrote: sorry you don't like it, but it is my opinion that it's the problem about sc2 actually... if you fix that the things will be really better
I don't necessarily dislike the poll, but boy are those options worded in a biased manner. You should try to make the wording a little more neutral for the SC2 version, as opposed to the "random CAPITALIZED words (oh and is frustrating)" slant you've put on it.
you are right, it's biased there's nothing i can do about it , if i think that something is not right i fight it no matter what
On October 31 2012 04:07 Inex wrote: I played some Warcraft 3 yesterday and I almost broke my mouse in anger. That unit movement is horrendous, good thing Blizz decided to get rid of it. Yeah units clump up, but I've been playing this game for 2 years now and it never occurred to me that SC2's biggest problem is unit clumping. Seriously, now we need a thread about LAN and it will be like travelling back in time.
You need to spend more than 5 minutes thinking about it objectively. The problem of clumping is really easy to explain and arguments like "I have been playing the game for 2 years now" are stupid, because they tell of your unwillingness to change. Maybe they should not bring out HotS, because that would change up things as well?
1. BW "basis" In Broodwar there was no automatic clumping and you had to work to "force" your units to be as tightly together as possible. Sure there was some pretty silly movement involved, but the units didnt clump up easily. What is the consequence? AoE spells and attacks FEEL powerful (70 damage siege tank attack is enough to 1-shot a lot of units), but isnt really, since they have a slow rate of fire and dont hit that many units. It also deals friendly fire, so the high damage can work against the one using it. This attack can be considered "overpowered" due to that 1-shotting ability, but it still didnt matter and was fair.
2. SC2 "improvements" In Starcraft 2 the units clump up VERY TIGHTLY, so the area attacks had to be nerfed in their magnitude for the simple reason that - with the same stats as in BW - it would have eliminated too much of an opponents army in one shot. Thus the Siege Tank only deals 35 damage to non-armored units (which is the majority of the infantry) now with a bonus (but still less than the BW value) against armored.
So the AoE damage has been DECREASED; but what about the damage from the "troopers"? Lets take the Marine for example. It deals 6 damage in both games, but is that really the same? No it isnt, because in SC2 the Marines are gathered up in a very tight formation which results in a lot more dps than BW had for the same area.
So you have a shift towards more "effective dps" in SC2 for small units and a clear nerf for AoE damage of all sorts to make this shift towards clumped up units work. That is the problem and it is these tightly packed formations of ground units which pretty much make air units useless. There simply is too much danger of getting your capital ships blown out of the sky by 20 tightly clumped up Marines and spells like Feedback or Fungal Growth dont help either.
I really hope that makes the problem of tight formations clear.
APPENDIX: In BW you had to micro as the attacker to get your units together in a tight formation and good position as the ATTACKER. In SC2 you only have to micro as the DEFENDER to evade those pesky Banelings, Fungals, Storms, ... That is a bad shifting of the micro and it makes the defender MUCH weaker/susceptible due to the super tight formations. You cant keep your units spread out as the defender, because the game has auto-clumping AND it also doesnt make sense from a tactical standpoint, because your "few units" will be overrun easily by your opponets "full army". Thus it makes sense from many more standpoints to get rid of the clumped up formations AND the unlimited unit selection.
I agree spaced units looks better and would probably be better for gameplay but I don't think there is a good implementation for it. In all of the video's it either looks very ugly (the vulture one with sort of classic only 8 direction movement) and in the other ones it starts to look really really ugly when you move up ramps. I think the cons outweigh the pro's to change the unit movement. Not clumping up is great but the frustation of units not properly moving around ramps etc when the unit clumping is disabled, plus how ugly it looks around ramps is terrible.
Units not clumping also causes painstakingly annoying micro when you actually WANT your units to be clumped up which is really often, for example moving all your roaches into position. Fighting against the game because your roaches won't maintain a good position because of some anti-clumping movement would be really annoying.
I think it could be possible to have a little of both worlds: Add formation movement to the game! Just add an option (for example ctrl + click) to use formation movement when you want it. The game would work exactly the same as now when you don't use it but you can apply formation movement or formation attack move if you want to. This would basically be somewhat similar as issuing a command in a direction infinitely far away so all units move in that direction but maintain formation. Your units would move normally most of the time (to not cause silly annoyances around ramps etc and just look smooth) but formation movement would let them move as in the video by maverick basically. Note that units would still move at their own speed, they just wouldn't clump (so you don't get the ugly formation movement like you have in red alert 3 for example).
I'm not sure if this is easy to implement (ie units use different pathing based on what sort of move order you give) but it could make avoiding clumps when you don't want to easier and as a result make the pro games, which are the only ones watched anyway, look a lot better.
Thinking more about this, perhaps alternative 2 wouldn't be such a bad thing after all. I assume they only tweaked with the galaxy editor values that led to alternative 2, and their answers do make sense. However, I think it wouldn't be as useless a thing to implement as I had thought before.
I think this can be broken down into 3 pathfinding possibilities.
1. What we have now. Spread formations have a tendency to clump up when moving to a location. Clumped formations remain clumped. This isn't really good because preemptive spreading is completely negated by automatic clumping, which may be too difficult to actively control manually.
2. What seems to happen in BW. Clumped formations actively and automatically spread out when moving. Spread formations obviously remain spread. I don't like this either because it might mean forcing sub-optimal pathfinding, and automating spreading takes away some micro potential from manual spreading.
3. What happens in alternative 2 and what I assumed the developers tested. Clumped formations remain clumped when moving and reaching a destination. Spread formations remain spread when moving a reaching a destination. This gives the player the most control, which is better than the pathfinding forcing certain formations over others. Players can choose to clump up their army and move around the map and engage as a clump, which has a high-DPS concentration but is vulnerable to splash damage. Alternatively, players can choose to preemptively spread their army manually and be able to move around with this spread formation, which negates a lot of splash damage but also reduces their DPS concentration and still requires attention to preemptively position and spread manually.
So I think tweaking the magic box size could end up being a good solution. It doesn't automatically spread units, so players will still have to commit some attention to preemptively spreading manually or leave them clumped. It doesn't force clumping with every move command, which preserves these preemptive spreads. AoE damage can thus be buffed across the board to be more effective and meaningful since there is now a reasonable way to mitigate their damage better.
On October 31 2012 12:08 Patate wrote: Would it really hurt to try it in HoTS beta for a week or two? seriously now.
It isnt that simple ...
If you add in "spread out movement" you have to adjust the AoE damage upwards again since it got nerfed due to the tight formation and finding the right balance here will take some time. If you start fiddling with those values you might also have to start thinking about limiting the number of units per control group to REALLY destroy the "full army vs full army" battles (aka deathball) in the same round of changes.
One or two weeks wont do anything btw., because players take much longer to get used to changed situations. The only thing you need for the decision on which way to go is a clear mind and some logic thinking, because it is - as usual - a way of personal preference and if Dustin likes his clumped up units more than having to admit that the change was bad then we will never ever have an improvement in this situation.
On October 31 2012 03:31 Garmer wrote: why they can't keep the eight direction movement.. i think it's simple and better, who care if we are in 2012
Now now ... be careful with these heretic words, else you will raise a shitstorm by the "disciples of new technology" for saying that something old is better than something new. Everything new has to be better and teenagers obviously know it all better than older people! [/sarcasm off]
Many people believe they are atheists, but have really become "disciples of technology" or "new things" instead. There isnt a church yet, but the fanaticism and stupidity and lack of acceptance of other ways is there. Nothing new is automatically better than something old until it has proven itself to be so and even your brand new super hightech PC might be worse, because it actually consumes 5 times as much power as a slightly older one ... Its the same for new cars which have the tendency to be filled with "new gadgets" which make them heavier and consume more fuel; plus they usually have only a rather tiny rear window, which makes them rather bad at getting into a parking space.
The same problem is true for kids who believe that SC2 is better in everything compared to BW. It isnt! Movement/clumping/unit selection is one of the things where it is worse; micro - like Nony's carrier micro - is another. Returning to "old ways" isnt going backwards, its wise and should be logical after thinking this through.
On October 31 2012 12:23 Markwerf wrote: Add formation movement to the game!
Bad idea, because you are supposed to MICRO to get your units into the correct position and not sort them out before the battle and then just march across the map in the correct formation. Formations also have the problem that they could be too static and not that easily adjusted during a battle. It simply isnt the style of Starcraft ...
BW had the best solution here ... spread out units in small groups, so you HAD TO control and direct them intelligently.
On October 31 2012 23:58 Angry.Zerg wrote: What blizzard should do is to limit the amount of units you can select to 12 supply... and bam! death balls and clumpy fixed.
That alone doesnt fix the clumping, because you can simply set your units on "follow" and you will still have a very densely packed bunch of units close together without much need for control. I dont know how it is in SC2, but following units shouldnt fight, so the only thing that would be left was for you to box your units in a battle and target them on a unit.
12 SUPPLY is also not that much ... unless you are using Zerglings, so you either switch that to 24 supply or stick to the traditional 12 units.
Without changing the pathing you will still have the densely packed clumps (although they would arrive at the battle a bit later maybe) of units which make capital ships and defensive structures rather useless right now. So we really need to spread the units automatically and only allow them to get packed through micro.
On October 31 2012 23:58 Angry.Zerg wrote: What blizzard should do is to limit the amount of units you can select to 12 supply... and bam! death balls and clumpy fixed.
That alone doesnt fix the clumping, because you can simply set your units on "follow" and you will still have a very densely packed bunch of units close together without much need for control. I dont know how it is in SC2, but following units shouldnt fight, so the only thing that would be left was for you to box your units in a battle and target them on a unit.
12 SUPPLY is also not that much ... unless you are using Zerglings, so you either switch that to 24 supply or stick to the traditional 12 units.
Without changing the pathing you will still have the densely packed clumps (although they would arrive at the battle a bit later maybe) of units which make capital ships and defensive structures rather useless right now. So we really need to spread the units automatically and only allow them to get packed through micro.
Your thinking this would "fix" the game is hilarious. If it's easy to keep units packed, nothing changes. If it's difficult to keep units packed, it's suicide to ever attack into a defensive position because the DPS will ruin you before you get a chance to clump up your units and maximize your own DPS.
The only way this would not be the case would be if you increase the collision box sizes of units to force them to "spread" but that leads to all sorts of issues with pathing, clarity of whether or not a hole in a wall-in is truly "plugged"... units like marines would actually have to be buffed in some way to not get picked apart by early game compositions by P/Z, AoE buffs would consequently mean any AoE drop into a worker line easily destroyed every single worker mining instead of 1/3-1/2...
And for what? For the sake of having units that don't clump up? You'd have to rebalance the entire game, completely alter unit behavior, lessen clarity... and that's for the option that DOESN'T involve making attacking into any group of marines ever an exercise in complete cost inefficiency unless you have AoE with your army. All it does is shuffle problems around, it doesn't FIX anything.
On October 31 2012 23:58 Angry.Zerg wrote: What blizzard should do is to limit the amount of units you can select to 12 supply... and bam! death balls and clumpy fixed.
That alone doesnt fix the clumping, because you can simply set your units on "follow" and you will still have a very densely packed bunch of units close together without much need for control. I dont know how it is in SC2, but following units shouldnt fight, so the only thing that would be left was for you to box your units in a battle and target them on a unit.
12 SUPPLY is also not that much ... unless you are using Zerglings, so you either switch that to 24 supply or stick to the traditional 12 units.
Without changing the pathing you will still have the densely packed clumps (although they would arrive at the battle a bit later maybe) of units which make capital ships and defensive structures rather useless right now. So we really need to spread the units automatically and only allow them to get packed through micro.
Your thinking this would "fix" the game is hilarious. If it's easy to keep units packed, nothing changes. If it's difficult to keep units packed, it's suicide to ever attack into a defensive position because the DPS will ruin you before you get a chance to clump up your units and maximize your own DPS.
1. It has been done in BW, so it DOES WORK. 2. If it is difficult to assault a position you would actually NEED the Viper and its abduct spell to break a Terran Siege line. Right now that is a gimmick and totally unnecessary unless you are getting behind and the Terran is sieging you outside your bases.
So as the end result less clumped units, limited unit selection and more AoE damage would actually REQUIRE units like the Viper, the Tempest and the Battlecruiser to break these positions. These changes would actually give them a purpose in the game beyond "looking flashy". Thus there would be a need for more flexible and mixed strategies (the Terran would need anti-air against these "Siege Tank killers", which would reduce his ground army).
Right now there is only "tightly packed army vs. another tightly packed army" with a clear advantage for the attacker. There is no positional play and no surprising strategies even though TLO does his best to innovate even as a Zerg (nydusing into a main base while guarding the Nydus with some Infested Terrans for example).
I rage quit a 2v2 yesterday because of the unit pathing. I felt bad because I was playing with a good friend, but this particular.... thing ...just makes me mad sometimes.
On October 31 2012 23:58 Angry.Zerg wrote: What blizzard should do is to limit the amount of units you can select to 12 supply... and bam! death balls and clumpy fixed.
That alone doesnt fix the clumping, because you can simply set your units on "follow" and you will still have a very densely packed bunch of units close together without much need for control. I dont know how it is in SC2, but following units shouldnt fight, so the only thing that would be left was for you to box your units in a battle and target them on a unit.
12 SUPPLY is also not that much ... unless you are using Zerglings, so you either switch that to 24 supply or stick to the traditional 12 units.
Without changing the pathing you will still have the densely packed clumps (although they would arrive at the battle a bit later maybe) of units which make capital ships and defensive structures rather useless right now. So we really need to spread the units automatically and only allow them to get packed through micro.
Your thinking this would "fix" the game is hilarious. If it's easy to keep units packed, nothing changes. If it's difficult to keep units packed, it's suicide to ever attack into a defensive position because the DPS will ruin you before you get a chance to clump up your units and maximize your own DPS.
1. It has been done in BW, so it DOES WORK. 2. If it is difficult to assault a position you would actually NEED the Viper and its abduct spell to break a Terran Siege line. Right now that is a gimmick and totally unnecessary unless you are getting behind and the Terran is sieging you outside your bases.
So as the end result less clumped units, limited unit selection and more AoE damage would actually REQUIRE units like the Viper, the Tempest and the Battlecruiser to break these positions. These changes would actually give them a purpose in the game beyond "looking flashy". Thus there would be a need for more flexible and mixed strategies (the Terran would need anti-air against these "Siege Tank killers", which would reduce his ground army).
Right now there is only "tightly packed army vs. another tightly packed army" with a clear advantage for the attacker. There is no positional play and no surprising strategies even though TLO does his best to innovate even as a Zerg (nydusing into a main base while guarding the Nydus with some Infested Terrans for example).
In BW, the AI was so awful that it was a struggle to get all your units in range to fight, period. Had little to do with the spread vs. clump dynamic at all, and much more to do with how many units could actually fight the enemy units at any given time. As I mentioned before, if it's easy to clump nothing changes, if it's hard to clump you can never attack into a pre-clumped army without AoE without getting smashed.
Z already cannot attack into a siege line unless Z already has a significant lead and is throwing money at its problems to make them go away. And again this wouldn't balance the game even if your assertion were true-- it would merely shuffle problems around. If you make tanks so strong that Zerg can't attack them without the Viper, they'll be incredibly strong on offense, too, before the Zerg investment into Viper tech + Vipers actually pays off-- unless you nerf their offensive capabilities in some way that makes their role one-dimensional. The entire game has to change to accomodate... more spreading for the sake of spreading?
Also "clear advantage to the attacker"? What in the hell? In what world is that true in SC2?
We get it. You want SC2 to be exactly like BroodWar. There's no way to make SC2 like BroodWar, though. Too much in BW is dependent on the engine and AI and everything else. It would be impossible to maintain a modern, current-gen feel to SC2 while recreating all of the quirks of BW that made it somewhat balanced and actually playable in its state.
On October 31 2012 23:58 Angry.Zerg wrote: What blizzard should do is to limit the amount of units you can select to 12 supply... and bam! death balls and clumpy fixed.
That alone doesnt fix the clumping, because you can simply set your units on "follow" and you will still have a very densely packed bunch of units close together without much need for control. I dont know how it is in SC2, but following units shouldnt fight, so the only thing that would be left was for you to box your units in a battle and target them on a unit.
12 SUPPLY is also not that much ... unless you are using Zerglings, so you either switch that to 24 supply or stick to the traditional 12 units.
Without changing the pathing you will still have the densely packed clumps (although they would arrive at the battle a bit later maybe) of units which make capital ships and defensive structures rather useless right now. So we really need to spread the units automatically and only allow them to get packed through micro.
Yes it does. Set your units on follow won't make them clump... they tend to form a line the longer the distance is. Also, as you said, they won't attack which is the whole point of a clump... being able to a-click once on the ground and sit while your army kills everything wont happen anymore.
But let's say that what you wrote is efficient (it is not). Put all your army to follow a unit or units of one group... it's apm intensive (the sole action of making the follow, then make them attack), which is good.
12 supply is fine. Why? Because it fixes some issues. Nowdays you can have 18 infestors in 1 hotkey and is easy to micro all of them, they automatically choose the infestor with more energy to fungal... etc. With 12 supply you can have only 6 infestors in a group. Since you can't select all of them... then you have to choose those with energy. That's APM intensive and time consuming, and that's good.
Same with a protoss death ball... you actually have to use APM to make it work.
And this is good in all levels of play. I would say some things wont be as imba in bronze league as they are today.
It will allow some nice come backs that are now impossible. Why? because you cant just one a-click into the base of someone anymore, giving him chances to recover if he over plays you.
Rising the skill cap this way is good, not really hard to implement and fun to watch. But we will never know if someone don't create a custom map with this implemented (because Blizzard won't implement it unless the community shows how does it work).
Spreading units is part of the skill of this game. Also, deathball syndrome will naturally go away so long as players are being more active with their units in the early and mid game (rather than just sitting around and passively macroing Idra/Artosis style).
--------APPENDIX: In BW you had to micro as the attacker to get your units together in a tight formation and good position as the ATTACKER. In SC2 you only have to micro as the DEFENDER to evade those pesky Banelings, Fungals, Storms, ... That is a bad shifting of the micro and it makes the defender MUCH weaker/susceptible due to the super tight formations. You cant keep your units spread out as the defender, because the game has auto-clumping AND it also doesnt make sense from a tactical standpoint, because your "few units" will be overrun easily by your opponets "full army". Thus it makes sense from many more standpoints to get rid of the clumped up formations AND the unlimited unit selection.
i agree units not clumping up would be pretty cool. but would not stop deathballs because players do them on purpose. and as db said it would require a LOT of testing for somthing that most players will not use
Browder has replied to that thread a few times now so they are definitely monitoring that thread.
It's so frustrating when people in that thread, Browder included, implies that the community hasn't tried hard enough exploring and testing alternative unit movement when the videos in the first post show that it has been tried by many people.
Browder has replied to that thread a few times now so they are definitely monitoring that thread.
It's so frustrating when people in that thread, Browder included, implies that the community hasn't tried hard enough exploring and testing alternative unit movement when the videos in the first post show that it has been tried by many people.
He acknowledges those sorts of attempts with his statement about little practical difference being made in-game: and he's right. Very rarely are you moving your units on a single a-click across the map, and most of the time they're just going to clump up anyways as a result of your clicks/movements, without implementing some sort of system that makes your units behave erratically/unpredictably/inefficiently specifically to keep them from clumping up, at which point I'm not sure the gains come anywhere near approaching the losses.
any hampering at pathfiding would result in less reliable reponse to commands. unavoidable randomness. in pvp you will be moving up a fat ramp and one time out of 5 time you stalkers will bug out. you did the same thing taht oyu did last 4-9 times but results were different. every onces in a while when you are splitting marines againt baneligns, taht 2 marines in the middle will bug out and bling will melt everything. you did the samething you always do, but results were different. reponses to commands need to be consistent. sc2 is both very responsive and consistent. I dont see any reason to hamper that.
surely occolusion size has nothing to do with this but units pushing friendly units should not be deformed.
On October 31 2012 23:58 Angry.Zerg wrote: What blizzard should do is to limit the amount of units you can select to 12 supply... and bam! death balls and clumpy fixed.
This is terribly unintuitive and highly restrictive. If I wanted to control Carriers, 12 supply of Carriers is literally TWO Carriers. Why the hell would I want to play a game where the selection limit is as low as 2? I could even select more units in Warcraft 1! Taking away multiple unit selection and only having singe unit selection would "raise the skill cap" even more, so why not go with that? I absolutely do not like this suggestion.
On October 31 2012 23:58 Angry.Zerg wrote: What blizzard should do is to limit the amount of units you can select to 12 supply... and bam! death balls and clumpy fixed.
This is terribly unintuitive and highly restrictive. If I wanted to control Carriers, 12 supply of Carriers is literally TWO Carriers. Why the hell would I want to play a game where the selection limit is as low as 2? I could even select more units in Warcraft 1! Taking away multiple unit selection and only having singe unit selection would "raise the skill cap" even more, so why not go with that? I absolutely do not like this suggestion.
You are not supposed to mass carriers, and if you do.. then it should take some skill to manipulate them.
Simple as that.
On a side note, do you mass carriers in a normal game? I have played around 7,000 games on ladder since 2010 and hardly can remember someone using carriers more than a few times (maybe 10?)
W/e... what is the usual QQ about zergs being a protoss?? oh... Infestors... Broodlords... well, guess what? with this change actually that combo would require skill to make it work.
I wrote it in another post.. but if you have 18 infestors... you can't just spam click fungal... you could only select 6 infestors and would have to micro them wisely and actually put attention to what infestor has enough energy.
I'm using infestors since most Terrans and protoss QQ about them being too strong. But choose whatever you want... mass roaches a-clicking? well... it would take some skill to make it works while you don't eliminate that possibility from the game.
This change would make... actually... big battles of Tier 3 units fun to watch on progamers. And can't be abused in lower ranks.
On October 31 2012 23:58 Angry.Zerg wrote: What blizzard should do is to limit the amount of units you can select to 12 supply... and bam! death balls and clumpy fixed.
This is terribly unintuitive and highly restrictive. If I wanted to control Carriers, 12 supply of Carriers is literally TWO Carriers. Why the hell would I want to play a game where the selection limit is as low as 2? I could even select more units in Warcraft 1! Taking away multiple unit selection and only having singe unit selection would "raise the skill cap" even more, so why not go with that? I absolutely do not like this suggestion.
You are not supposed to mass carriers, and if you do.. then it should take some skill to manipulate them.
Simple as that.
On a side note, do you mass carriers in a normal game? I have played around 7,000 games on ladder since 2010 and hardly can remember someone using carriers more than a few times (maybe 10?)
W/e... what is the usual QQ about zergs being a protoss?? oh... Infestors... Broodlords... well, guess what? with this change actually that combo would require skill to make it work.
I wrote it in another post.. but if you have 18 infestors... you can't just spam click fungal... you could only select 6 infestors and would have to micro them wisely and actually put attention to what infestor has enough energy.
I'm using infestors since most Terrans and protoss QQ about them being too strong. But choose whatever you want... mass roaches a-clicking? well... it would take some skill to make it works while you don't eliminate that possibility from the game.
This change would make... actually... big battles of Tier 3 units fun to watch on progamers. And can't be abused in lower ranks.
Then why is it that I can select 12 Carriers in BW, but with this suggestion I can only select 2 in SC2? Why is it that I can select 12 Zealots in BW, but with this suggestion I can only select 6 in SC2? 12 Mutas in BW but only 6 in SC2? 12 Tanks in BW but only 4 in SC2? This is a regression from past games, not a progression.
Limiting selection based on supply is unintuitive. It's much better to limit selection based on unit count, not supply.
Dustin, it's been 2 years and we still have the very best progamers using deathballs. They aren't suddenly going to realize it's better to spread them out, because it isn't necessarily better. More concentrated = higher damage output and less likely for units to get separated/sniped.
Independently from the limited unit selection, the anti-clumping aspect of the game has to get in the game. 1-a an army should be viable for casuals, but suicide for pros.. the units should move out in a line becuase the 2nd row gets blocked by the 1st, 3rd by 2nd, and vice versa.
And for those who think it doesn't make a difference, or that it would take too much balance just for this, may I remind you that the "just for this" is actually the difference between a flourishing E-sport, and a dead game. SC2 is just not fun to watch right now.. either the game ends in a build order win, a timing push, or one big engagement. There is no dynamic gameplay like in BW, and this is one of the reasons (the other being too high income per base, and too much supply linked to workers).
So either Blizzard fixes this, whatever the effort (hey, aren't they paid to be working to make this game a better one), or they come out with a few new units and no fix, and then pretty much the end of the pro scene of this game (just look at the OSL). Back in Blizzcon, they announced the Oracle as an unit that isn't integrated to the deathball. One year later, they did a 180degree.. they realized every units need their use in the deathball at the current state of this game.
On October 31 2012 23:58 Angry.Zerg wrote: What blizzard should do is to limit the amount of units you can select to 12 supply... and bam! death balls and clumpy fixed.
This is terribly unintuitive and highly restrictive. If I wanted to control Carriers, 12 supply of Carriers is literally TWO Carriers. Why the hell would I want to play a game where the selection limit is as low as 2? I could even select more units in Warcraft 1! Taking away multiple unit selection and only having singe unit selection would "raise the skill cap" even more, so why not go with that? I absolutely do not like this suggestion.
You are not supposed to mass carriers, and if you do.. then it should take some skill to manipulate them.
Simple as that.
On a side note, do you mass carriers in a normal game? I have played around 7,000 games on ladder since 2010 and hardly can remember someone using carriers more than a few times (maybe 10?)
W/e... what is the usual QQ about zergs being a protoss?? oh... Infestors... Broodlords... well, guess what? with this change actually that combo would require skill to make it work.
I wrote it in another post.. but if you have 18 infestors... you can't just spam click fungal... you could only select 6 infestors and would have to micro them wisely and actually put attention to what infestor has enough energy.
I'm using infestors since most Terrans and protoss QQ about them being too strong. But choose whatever you want... mass roaches a-clicking? well... it would take some skill to make it works while you don't eliminate that possibility from the game.
This change would make... actually... big battles of Tier 3 units fun to watch on progamers. And can't be abused in lower ranks.
Then why is it that I can select 12 Carriers in BW, but with this suggestion I can only select 2 in SC2? Why is it that I can select 12 Zealots in BW, but with this suggestion I can only select 6 in SC2? 12 Mutas in BW but only 6 in SC2? 12 Tanks in BW but only 4 in SC2? This is a regression from past games, not a progression.
Limiting selection based on supply is unintuitive. It's much better to limit selection based on unit count, not supply.
I've never implied anything from BW in my comments. I don't care about BW, never played it. My suggestions are in benefit of increasing skill cap, increase viewer enjoyment, without breaking the game or making it impossible for lower leagues.
A powerful army should be hard to control, not easier.
And it won't be as hard for progamers as some are saying. They already have to spread their broodlords and infestors to avoid archon toilets, and move their T3 units in blocks. Won't be as frustrating for bronce players either. Some all-ins and cheeses will be harder to perform (like marine+scv won't be an a-click dance) and easier to defend.
On October 31 2012 23:58 Angry.Zerg wrote: What blizzard should do is to limit the amount of units you can select to 12 supply... and bam! death balls and clumpy fixed.
This is terribly unintuitive and highly restrictive. If I wanted to control Carriers, 12 supply of Carriers is literally TWO Carriers. Why the hell would I want to play a game where the selection limit is as low as 2? I could even select more units in Warcraft 1! Taking away multiple unit selection and only having singe unit selection would "raise the skill cap" even more, so why not go with that? I absolutely do not like this suggestion.
You are not supposed to mass carriers, and if you do.. then it should take some skill to manipulate them.
Simple as that.
On a side note, do you mass carriers in a normal game? I have played around 7,000 games on ladder since 2010 and hardly can remember someone using carriers more than a few times (maybe 10?)
W/e... what is the usual QQ about zergs being a protoss?? oh... Infestors... Broodlords... well, guess what? with this change actually that combo would require skill to make it work.
I wrote it in another post.. but if you have 18 infestors... you can't just spam click fungal... you could only select 6 infestors and would have to micro them wisely and actually put attention to what infestor has enough energy.
I'm using infestors since most Terrans and protoss QQ about them being too strong. But choose whatever you want... mass roaches a-clicking? well... it would take some skill to make it works while you don't eliminate that possibility from the game.
This change would make... actually... big battles of Tier 3 units fun to watch on progamers. And can't be abused in lower ranks.
Then why is it that I can select 12 Carriers in BW, but with this suggestion I can only select 2 in SC2? Why is it that I can select 12 Zealots in BW, but with this suggestion I can only select 6 in SC2? 12 Mutas in BW but only 6 in SC2? 12 Tanks in BW but only 4 in SC2? This is a regression from past games, not a progression.
Limiting selection based on supply is unintuitive. It's much better to limit selection based on unit count, not supply.
I've never implied anything from BW in my comments. I don't care about BW, never played it. My suggestions are in benefit of increasing skill cap, increase viewer enjoyment, without breaking the game or making it impossible for lower leagues.
A powerful army should be hard to control, not easier.
And it won't be as hard for progamers as some are saying. They already have to spread their broodlords and infestors to avoid archon toilets, and move their T3 units in blocks. Won't be as frustrating for bronce players either. Some all-ins and cheeses will be harder to perform (like marine+scv won't be an a-click dance) and easier to defend.
And all that is good.
Well, something of this sort has never been tried out in any other RTS ever made. Never, ever. Unit selection limits have always been based on unit count, not supply, in every single RTS that had a selection limit. I think there may be a reason for that.
On October 31 2012 23:58 Angry.Zerg wrote: What blizzard should do is to limit the amount of units you can select to 12 supply... and bam! death balls and clumpy fixed.
This is terribly unintuitive and highly restrictive. If I wanted to control Carriers, 12 supply of Carriers is literally TWO Carriers. Why the hell would I want to play a game where the selection limit is as low as 2? I could even select more units in Warcraft 1! Taking away multiple unit selection and only having singe unit selection would "raise the skill cap" even more, so why not go with that? I absolutely do not like this suggestion.
You are not supposed to mass carriers, and if you do.. then it should take some skill to manipulate them.
Simple as that.
On a side note, do you mass carriers in a normal game? I have played around 7,000 games on ladder since 2010 and hardly can remember someone using carriers more than a few times (maybe 10?)
W/e... what is the usual QQ about zergs being a protoss?? oh... Infestors... Broodlords... well, guess what? with this change actually that combo would require skill to make it work.
I wrote it in another post.. but if you have 18 infestors... you can't just spam click fungal... you could only select 6 infestors and would have to micro them wisely and actually put attention to what infestor has enough energy.
I'm using infestors since most Terrans and protoss QQ about them being too strong. But choose whatever you want... mass roaches a-clicking? well... it would take some skill to make it works while you don't eliminate that possibility from the game.
This change would make... actually... big battles of Tier 3 units fun to watch on progamers. And can't be abused in lower ranks.
Then why is it that I can select 12 Carriers in BW, but with this suggestion I can only select 2 in SC2? Why is it that I can select 12 Zealots in BW, but with this suggestion I can only select 6 in SC2? 12 Mutas in BW but only 6 in SC2? 12 Tanks in BW but only 4 in SC2? This is a regression from past games, not a progression.
Limiting selection based on supply is unintuitive. It's much better to limit selection based on unit count, not supply.
I've never implied anything from BW in my comments. I don't care about BW, never played it. My suggestions are in benefit of increasing skill cap, increase viewer enjoyment, without breaking the game or making it impossible for lower leagues.
A powerful army should be hard to control, not easier.
And it won't be as hard for progamers as some are saying. They already have to spread their broodlords and infestors to avoid archon toilets, and move their T3 units in blocks. Won't be as frustrating for bronce players either. Some all-ins and cheeses will be harder to perform (like marine+scv won't be an a-click dance) and easier to defend.
And all that is good.
Well, something of this sort has never been tried out in any other RTS ever made. Never, ever. Unit selection limits have always been based on unit count, not supply, in every single RTS that had a selection limit. I think there may be a reason for that.
"X has never been tried before, it should be bad". That is not an argument, an argument is: "X would be bad because it will cause Y and Z".
I'm providing examples of actual strategies and compositions that are being used in the current metagame.
On October 31 2012 23:58 Angry.Zerg wrote: What blizzard should do is to limit the amount of units you can select to 12 supply... and bam! death balls and clumpy fixed.
That alone doesnt fix the clumping, because you can simply set your units on "follow" and you will still have a very densely packed bunch of units close together without much need for control. I dont know how it is in SC2, but following units shouldnt fight, so the only thing that would be left was for you to box your units in a battle and target them on a unit.
12 SUPPLY is also not that much ... unless you are using Zerglings, so you either switch that to 24 supply or stick to the traditional 12 units.
Without changing the pathing you will still have the densely packed clumps (although they would arrive at the battle a bit later maybe) of units which make capital ships and defensive structures rather useless right now. So we really need to spread the units automatically and only allow them to get packed through micro.
Your thinking this would "fix" the game is hilarious. If it's easy to keep units packed, nothing changes. If it's difficult to keep units packed, it's suicide to ever attack into a defensive position because the DPS will ruin you before you get a chance to clump up your units and maximize your own DPS.
1. It has been done in BW, so it DOES WORK. 2. If it is difficult to assault a position you would actually NEED the Viper and its abduct spell to break a Terran Siege line. Right now that is a gimmick and totally unnecessary unless you are getting behind and the Terran is sieging you outside your bases.
So as the end result less clumped units, limited unit selection and more AoE damage would actually REQUIRE units like the Viper, the Tempest and the Battlecruiser to break these positions. These changes would actually give them a purpose in the game beyond "looking flashy". Thus there would be a need for more flexible and mixed strategies (the Terran would need anti-air against these "Siege Tank killers", which would reduce his ground army).
Right now there is only "tightly packed army vs. another tightly packed army" with a clear advantage for the attacker. There is no positional play and no surprising strategies even though TLO does his best to innovate even as a Zerg (nydusing into a main base while guarding the Nydus with some Infested Terrans for example).
In BW, the AI was so awful that it was a struggle to get all your units in range to fight, period. Had little to do with the spread vs. clump dynamic at all, and much more to do with how many units could actually fight the enemy units at any given time. As I mentioned before, if it's easy to clump nothing changes, if it's hard to clump you can never attack into a pre-clumped army without AoE without getting smashed.
Z already cannot attack into a siege line unless Z already has a significant lead and is throwing money at its problems to make them go away. And again this wouldn't balance the game even if your assertion were true-- it would merely shuffle problems around. If you make tanks so strong that Zerg can't attack them without the Viper, they'll be incredibly strong on offense, too, before the Zerg investment into Viper tech + Vipers actually pays off-- unless you nerf their offensive capabilities in some way that makes their role one-dimensional. The entire game has to change to accomodate... more spreading for the sake of spreading?
Also "clear advantage to the attacker"? What in the hell? In what world is that true in SC2?
We get it. You want SC2 to be exactly like BroodWar. There's no way to make SC2 like BroodWar, though. Too much in BW is dependent on the engine and AI and everything else. It would be impossible to maintain a modern, current-gen feel to SC2 while recreating all of the quirks of BW that made it somewhat balanced and actually playable in its state.
1. Movement isnt really "the AI" ... its a mechanic used by the game and has nothing to do with the AI which controls "NPC players". I fully agree with you that the way in which units moved in BW was infuriating sometimes (getting Dragoons into a tight formation was WORK), BUT at the same time I would say that SC2 "perfection" went too far and has several consequences which affected the gameplay negatively.
If it is easy to clump nothing changes indeed ... UNLESS you add a penalty for clumping up by making AoE stronger.
2. Zerg doesnt need to attack into a siege line because the Terran needs to have all his Siege Tanks together to have a chance against any Zergling/Baneling attacks and this gives Zerg the opportunity to go around them. You dont win by killing the enemy army, you win by killing their base. Zerg can easily attack into a Siege line with Broodlords and if a major part of the Terran army is invested in tanks they cant defend well against that, plus the Infestor is the strongest spellcaster in the game. Zerg also have and will get many more "free unit generators" and these make assaulting Siege lines pretty easy.
3. You apparently didnt understand what I wrote. Just think about the Marines in both games and a bunker/photon cannon/spine crawler [just a static defense to demonstrate the changes]. I hope the calculations in THIS THREAD are correct and this gives 6.2 dps for a BW Marine and 6.97 for a SC2 Marine. That isnt that much different, but it isnt the only change to the dps. You also have to include the movement and formation change. In BW your units were heading to the front "single file in squads of 12" and in SC2 they are charging "as a clump of unlimited size". This makes it clear that there will be many more of them in range of your target much quicker. In war it is a distinct advantage to have the first shot and the attacker decides where the engagement takes place.
Now lets come back to the bunker/photon cannon/spine crawler. These are static defenses which *could be* used to assist a defender, but their value between the games has decreased due to the increased density of attackers. You simply tear them apart - once a critical number is reached - far too quickly for them to be a threat. This is a clear advantage for the attacker and it is the same for any battle between two armies. You cant play defensively - in a later game engagement with bigger armies - unless you have something like Force Field or Fungal Growth to "modify the battlefield in your favor". The advantage for the attacker doesnt really show until the armies are bigger, but it is there nonetheless since the dps of the units increased significantly by having more of them in the same area "automatically".
In BW you needed to have spells like Dark Swarm and other tricks to break into a defended position, in SC2 you dont need them, because you can simply use the right formation for chopping off a part of your opponents army if he is in a bad spot. So adding such spells like Dark Swarm would be making the game totally unfair and yet we already have similar spells in the form of Forcefield and most importantly Fungal Growth. The Viper does get a "new Dark Swarm" though, right? So ... the attackers advantage is clearly there and yet they add "break the defender" spells? That doesnt work!
4. You dont get it. I DONT want SC2 to be like Broodwar, I just compare the two games and look at the differences. There is a decided lack in playstyles in SC2 but there wasnt in BW and this makes the newer game worse than the old one. The design of SC2 is limiting the things which the devs can do simply because spells and AoE attacks are "too powerful" against tightly clumped packs. If they get rid of that and the deathball they can add more fancy spells without them being overpowered. Thats the problem of SC2 ... it is limited in its potential by the design flaw of tight formations and unlimited unit selection (plus a few others like the burst production of units).
----
AoE attacks in BW - lets take the Siege Tank as an example - can have an efficiency between 1 and maybe 3-5, which means that you hit 1 Marine (and kill it) or you hit 3-5 targets (due to the "loose formation" you hit a lot of "open space").
In SC2 you have a totally different situation, because your attacks can hit between 1 and 20 targets depending upon the formation. Thus the attack had to be nerfed, because otherwise it would have been "unfair". + Show Spoiler +
Basically the Siege Tank in SC2 is efficient only when it can hit a certain minimum amount of targets, while it could kill a single Marine on its own in BW.
But by how much do you nerf it? Due to the MUCH greater variation of targets you have a reduced margin of error with this and it is this problem which limits the flexibility of the designers (the margin of error). This is BAD ... VERY BAD for the game and any future unit design.
Supply based unit selection limit is a terrible idea. It is unintuitive and forces calculations onto the player which do not represent additional player skill. In SC1 you could put 12 muta or 12 lings or 12 carriers in a selection. It was easy to understand and use. I have no problem with a limited selection being re implemented, but not based on supply.
every time i see this thread bump it pisses me off . like REALLY . split units should be a manual skill . stop doing auto stuff . auto splitting or Pre splitting ? seriously ? damn the guy who made this thread is a genius . and you even dare to ask developers about this . so the difference between mkp split and you will be none . GG make pro gamers worth even lower !!
On October 31 2012 23:58 Angry.Zerg wrote: What blizzard should do is to limit the amount of units you can select to 12 supply... and bam! death balls and clumpy fixed.
No point in suggesting or discussing unit selection caps.
Browder already adamantly stated that they will not put in any kind of unit selection cap as they hurt lower skilled players too much.
Why would he make such a claim? Probably because unit selection caps have already been thoroughly tested like everything else they do.
Haven't read the whole thread but just wanted to say in RA3 you could press a hotkey and units will expand from center point, I believe there's is a collapse formation command too. Also if you press both mouse buttons at the same time and move the mouse it cycles through different formations for units selected. always thought SC2 could copy a lot of these ideas.
I know some people pride themselves on being able to score high on the marine split challenge but honestly spreading out units shouldn't be a chore. If you chuck a grenade into the middle of a group of people they split pretty instinctively, I don't see why that needs to be a big skill in Starcraft.
On October 31 2012 23:58 Angry.Zerg wrote: What blizzard should do is to limit the amount of units you can select to 12 supply... and bam! death balls and clumpy fixed.
No point in suggesting or discussing unit selection caps.
Browder already adamantly stated that they will not put in any kind of unit selection cap as they hurt lower skilled players too much.
Why would he make such a claim? Probably because unit selection caps have already been thoroughly tested like everything else they do.
Makes you wonder how they could ever need anyone else's help for balancing, right?
On November 01 2012 17:15 xsnac wrote: every time i see this thread bump it pisses me off . like REALLY . split units should be a manual skill . stop doing auto stuff . auto splitting or Pre splitting ? seriously ? damn the guy who made this thread is a genius . and you even dare to ask developers about this . so the difference between mkp split and you will be none . GG make pro gamers worth even lower !!
No ... CLUMPED units should be a manual skill ...
So which one is better? I have given my math-based reasons for my opinion, where are your reasons? Both require skill, but yours puts the "skill requirement" on the defender, while I would like to put it on the attacker. No one is asking for "auto splitting" btw ... just NOT auto-clustering (plus limited unit selection).
Pros in BW managed to give us awesome games without auto-clumping, so what is your point exactly?
DB is right in this regard. Any novel twist to pathing will be overridden by the spam click. What point he is missing is that the win conditions for the player is to still deathball. The intrinsic properties of the units make it so. Long range, tightly packed, mobile units where the entire ball can use its DPS with near 100% uptime for 200 supply army.
Units need more space between them, less range, and less uniform mobility. The win states will naturally diverge from ball vs ball. I would put it on b.net but no beta.
On October 31 2012 23:58 Angry.Zerg wrote: What blizzard should do is to limit the amount of units you can select to 12 supply... and bam! death balls and clumpy fixed.
No point in suggesting or discussing unit selection caps.
Browder already adamantly stated that they will not put in any kind of unit selection cap as they hurt lower skilled players too much.
Why would he make such a claim? Probably because unit selection caps have already been thoroughly tested like everything else they do.
Makes you wonder how they could ever need anyone else's help for balancing, right?
They also said people don't want chats and the Facebook integration would be the most amazing feature ever. For sure they already thoroughly tested like everything else they do.
Cap didn't hurt lower skilled players in all their previous RTSs.
I'm disappointed. I've described how it would affect the game in the current metagame, and wrote about some examples occurring in the Master league (which is the one I play), but the only counter-arguments people say is "It has never been done before!!!" or "They said it will hurt lower skilled players, it should be true".
I still think everyone needs to get off the clumped units ruining the game and 12 unit selection bandwagon. If they limited unit selection most of the ppl would quit the game because it would be too hard for them. thats counter productive. And if you dont like your units clumped... split your units manually. Pro's lately are just really getting into spliiting their units fully. Rain vs Hero showed the benefits of splitting ur units. Just stop being lazy and split your units. spreading them out more is not needed. The only thing positive to get from it is visual but its better to see a good player split his units.
On November 01 2012 17:15 xsnac wrote: every time i see this thread bump it pisses me off . like REALLY . split units should be a manual skill . stop doing auto stuff . auto splitting or Pre splitting ? seriously ? damn the guy who made this thread is a genius . and you even dare to ask developers about this . so the difference between mkp split and you will be none . GG make pro gamers worth even lower !!
No ... CLUMPED units should be a manual skill ...
So which one is better? I have given my math-based reasons for my opinion, where are your reasons? Both require skill, but yours puts the "skill requirement" on the defender, while I would like to put it on the attacker. No one is asking for "auto splitting" btw ... just NOT auto-clustering (plus limited unit selection).
Pros in BW managed to give us awesome games without auto-clumping, so what is your point exactly?
dude sc2 is sc2 , is not bw and it will never be . if you miss so much how units would go in a indian line when u give them attack command or move command . sc:bw servers are still active . i just played on iccup yeasterday . clump up units should not be a skill . since clumping up is never useful (excepting melee vs range in huge numbers ) .
edit : ye , clumping gives no benefit . so making units to not clump up , will make game easier . immagine fungal growth on units that are not cumplet up . btw . tell me when we you have ever saw a pro gamer that clump up units to gain an edge or have a benefit . your ideeas are just dumb .
I think the game would be much easier if they make the units walk around in a less clumpy fashion. With all the AOE in this game combined with the clumpy pathing it actually adds some skill to the game. If you take that out that's like half the micro in sc2 gone. And nothing you do to the pathing will make the game more like bw, shitty pathing+12 unit ctrl groups are what made it good. Unless blizzard is willing to go back to a lower ctrl group cap, changing the pathing to something less clumpy will only make the game easier in my opinion.
On November 01 2012 17:15 xsnac wrote: every time i see this thread bump it pisses me off . like REALLY . split units should be a manual skill . stop doing auto stuff . auto splitting or Pre splitting ? seriously ? damn the guy who made this thread is a genius . and you even dare to ask developers about this . so the difference between mkp split and you will be none . GG make pro gamers worth even lower !!
No ... CLUMPED units should be a manual skill ...
So which one is better? I have given my math-based reasons for my opinion, where are your reasons? Both require skill, but yours puts the "skill requirement" on the defender, while I would like to put it on the attacker. No one is asking for "auto splitting" btw ... just NOT auto-clustering (plus limited unit selection).
Pros in BW managed to give us awesome games without auto-clumping, so what is your point exactly?
dude sc2 is sc2 , is not bw and it will never be . if you miss so much how units would go in a indian line when u give them attack command or move command . sc:bw servers are still active . i just played on iccup yeasterday . clump up units should not be a skill . since clumping up is never useful (excepting melee vs range in huge numbers ) .
edit : ye , clumping gives no benefit . so making units to not clump up , will make game easier . immagine fungal growth on units that are not cumplet up . btw . tell me when we you have ever saw a pro gamer that clump up units to gain an edge or have a benefit . your ideeas are just dumb .
No one is saying that the game does not need to be rebalanced after such changes... most people are proposing a buff to AOE radius/damage to compensate for change.
A buffed Fungal Growth will absolutely slay anyone who doesn't spread their units.
Clumping units does have an advantage in many situations, it maximizes the DPS of your ball of units.
On November 01 2012 17:15 xsnac wrote: every time i see this thread bump it pisses me off . like REALLY . split units should be a manual skill . stop doing auto stuff . auto splitting or Pre splitting ? seriously ? damn the guy who made this thread is a genius . and you even dare to ask developers about this . so the difference between mkp split and you will be none . GG make pro gamers worth even lower !!
No ... CLUMPED units should be a manual skill ...
So which one is better? I have given my math-based reasons for my opinion, where are your reasons? Both require skill, but yours puts the "skill requirement" on the defender, while I would like to put it on the attacker. No one is asking for "auto splitting" btw ... just NOT auto-clustering (plus limited unit selection).
Pros in BW managed to give us awesome games without auto-clumping, so what is your point exactly?
dude sc2 is sc2 , is not bw and it will never be . if you miss so much how units would go in a indian line when u give them attack command or move command . sc:bw servers are still active . i just played on iccup yeasterday . clump up units should not be a skill . since clumping up is never useful (excepting melee vs range in huge numbers ) .
edit : ye , clumping gives no benefit . so making units to not clump up , will make game easier . immagine fungal growth on units that are not cumplet up . btw . tell me when we you have ever saw a pro gamer that clump up units to gain an edge or have a benefit . your ideeas are just dumb .
I think you've missed the point completely. Read some more of this thread before commenting.
On November 01 2012 21:57 Cloak wrote: DB is right in this regard. Any novel twist to pathing will be overridden by the spam click. What point he is missing is that the win conditions for the player is to still deathball. The intrinsic properties of the units make it so. Long range, tightly packed, mobile units where the entire ball can use its DPS with near 100% uptime for 200 supply army.
Units need more space between them, less range, and less uniform mobility. The win states will naturally diverge from ball vs ball. I would put it on b.net but no beta.
On November 01 2012 21:57 Cloak wrote: DB is right in this regard. Any novel twist to pathing will be overridden by the spam click. What point he is missing is that the win conditions for the player is to still deathball. The intrinsic properties of the units make it so. Long range, tightly packed, mobile units where the entire ball can use its DPS with near 100% uptime for 200 supply army.
Units need more space between them, less range, and less uniform mobility. The win states will naturally diverge from ball vs ball. I would put it on b.net but no beta.
Yes that's a fair point as well. I've been a fan of making marauders a tiny bit slower than marines so that they dont all move around in a compact blob together.
The problem is deeply rooted, which is why Browder will not consider removing it even though he should be testing different unit pathing ideas constantly.
SC2 needs a few things:
1) A better magic box, which as I've said many times in this thread, will allow a player to control precisely how his units spread out: tight or clumped, it doesn't matter. It takes nothing away from progamers (it even adds skill to the game unlike an automatic formation button). It ensures the player doesnt fight the interface like Broodwar or SC2 pathing (where units prefer to clump up and also get pushed around by each other).
Splitting marines vs banelings is still a skill, but it is intuitive and satisfying to get it right. Units you want split stay split instead of re-converging because of the pathing issues.
2) Units need to spread out more as they move, instead of clumping up perfectly in a ball. Some people hate this because it "looks ugly" or its "not optimal movement" or something, but this change increases the defender's advantage. Noobs will find little change while pros will be able to micro effectively enough to mitigate its effects. We aren't talking BW pathing, were making armies a bit more spread out as they move ensuring that a smaller enemy army can pick a larger army apart as it moves, or that a strong efficient defense will be able to trade well with a larger more spread out army.
Larger armies should be harder to control than smaller armies, but not impossible, hence no 12 unit cap or other madness. Let's not fight old battles again.
3) When these are changed, AoE needs to be revisited and tweaked if necessary. There's all sorts of unhealthy things in the game: fungal as a root, EMP + fungal without a dodgable projectile, and colossi. Let's address these issues. If radius/damage need to be buffed, so be it. But let's add skill instead of taking it away.
4) As cloak says, units need to be differentiated more. Look at reavers and templars in broodwar. You cant 1-a across the map with a reaver/dragoon/zealot/archon deathball even if pathing were to become like SC2.
1) A better magic box, which as I've said many times in this thread, will allow a player to control precisely how his units spread out: tight or clumped, it doesn't matter. It takes nothing away from progamers (it even adds skill to the game unlike an automatic formation button). It ensures the player doesnt fight the interface like Broodwar or SC2 pathing (where units prefer to clump up and also get pushed around by each other).
Splitting marines vs banelings is still a skill, but it is intuitive and satisfying to get it right. Units you want split stay split instead of re-converging because of the pathing issues.
2) Units need to spread out more as they move, instead of clumping up perfectly in a ball. Some people hate this because it "looks ugly" or its "not optimal movement" or something, but this change increases the defender's advantage. Noobs will find little change while pros will be able to micro effectively enough to mitigate its effects. We aren't talking BW pathing, were making armies a bit more spread out as they move ensuring that a smaller enemy army can pick a larger army apart as it moves, or that a strong efficient defense will be able to trade well with a larger more spread out army.
Larger armies should be harder to control than smaller armies, but not impossible, hence no 12 unit cap or other madness. Let's not fight old battles again.
3) When these are changed, AoE needs to be revisited and tweaked if necessary. There's all sorts of unhealthy things in the game: fungal as a root, EMP + fungal without a dodgable projectile, and colossi. Let's address these issues. If radius/damage need to be buffed, so be it. But let's add skill instead of taking it away.
4) As cloak says, units need to be differentiated more. Look at reavers and templars in broodwar. You cant 1-a across the map with a reaver/dragoon/zealot/archon deathball even if pathing were to become like SC2.
I really like this post. Simply making the units spread out more automatically by itself could degrade the difficulty and make the game less interesting. However, the issue I think is more complex than that. The pathing needs to be fixed because players are "fighting" the UI which is never good design; I really like the idea of a super efficient, well executed defense being able to prevail, as well as the fact that a moving army is slightly more vulnerable than an army in position to attack.
On November 01 2012 21:57 Cloak wrote: DB is right in this regard. Any novel twist to pathing will be overridden by the spam click. What point he is missing is that the win conditions for the player is to still deathball. The intrinsic properties of the units make it so. Long range, tightly packed, mobile units where the entire ball can use its DPS with near 100% uptime for 200 supply army.
Units need more space between them, less range, and less uniform mobility. The win states will naturally diverge from ball vs ball. I would put it on b.net but no beta.
Perfectly summarised. I wish people would read more replies like this and think before commenting. Each of the three (small unit collision radius-UCR-/Long weapon range/uniform mobility) all exacerbate the problem that is the ease of use of the deathball. Any of these three changes will help. However, I feel blizzard are less likely to lower range or increase UCR. I feel that it is imperetive that unit mobility needs to be more diverse.
If the collosus were slower (maybe attack path changed too), marines had a slightly larger UCR, and the infestor wasn't the queen(chess) of zerg ^^ we might see a lot more positional gameplay from top players.
1) A better magic box, which as I've said many times in this thread, will allow a player to control precisely how his units spread out: tight or clumped, it doesn't matter. It takes nothing away from progamers (it even adds skill to the game unlike an automatic formation button). It ensures the player doesnt fight the interface like Broodwar or SC2 pathing (where units prefer to clump up and also get pushed around by each other).
Splitting marines vs banelings is still a skill, but it is intuitive and satisfying to get it right. Units you want split stay split instead of re-converging because of the pathing issues.
2) Units need to spread out more as they move, instead of clumping up perfectly in a ball. Some people hate this because it "looks ugly" or its "not optimal movement" or something, but this change increases the defender's advantage. Noobs will find little change while pros will be able to micro effectively enough to mitigate its effects. We aren't talking BW pathing, were making armies a bit more spread out as they move ensuring that a smaller enemy army can pick a larger army apart as it moves, or that a strong efficient defense will be able to trade well with a larger more spread out army.
Larger armies should be harder to control than smaller armies, but not impossible, hence no 12 unit cap or other madness. Let's not fight old battles again.
3) When these are changed, AoE needs to be revisited and tweaked if necessary. There's all sorts of unhealthy things in the game: fungal as a root, EMP + fungal without a dodgable projectile, and colossi. Let's address these issues. If radius/damage need to be buffed, so be it. But let's add skill instead of taking it away.
4) As cloak says, units need to be differentiated more. Look at reavers and templars in broodwar. You cant 1-a across the map with a reaver/dragoon/zealot/archon deathball even if pathing were to become like SC2.
I really like this post. Simply making the units spread out more automatically by itself could degrade the difficulty and make the game less interesting. However, the issue I think is more complex than that. The pathing needs to be fixed because players are "fighting" the UI which is never good design; I really like the idea of a super efficient, well executed defense being able to prevail, as well as the fact that a moving army is slightly more vulnerable than an army in position to attack.
Really well thought-out post, thanks
We need to start a new thread summarising these great concepts. And have the same one put on the Blizzard beta forum. I'd really hate to see SC2 HOTS become just SC2.09. A few new units is not gonna cut it in my mind, for the pros or for spectators with a brain.
On November 01 2012 17:15 xsnac wrote: every time i see this thread bump it pisses me off . like REALLY . split units should be a manual skill . stop doing auto stuff . auto splitting or Pre splitting ? seriously ? damn the guy who made this thread is a genius . and you even dare to ask developers about this . so the difference between mkp split and you will be none . GG make pro gamers worth even lower !!
No ... CLUMPED units should be a manual skill ...
So which one is better? I have given my math-based reasons for my opinion, where are your reasons? Both require skill, but yours puts the "skill requirement" on the defender, while I would like to put it on the attacker. No one is asking for "auto splitting" btw ... just NOT auto-clustering (plus limited unit selection).
Pros in BW managed to give us awesome games without auto-clumping, so what is your point exactly?
dude sc2 is sc2 , is not bw and it will never be . if you miss so much how units would go in a indian line when u give them attack command or move command . sc:bw servers are still active . i just played on iccup yeasterday . clump up units should not be a skill . since clumping up is never useful (excepting melee vs range in huge numbers ) .
edit : ye , clumping gives no benefit . so making units to not clump up , will make game easier . immagine fungal growth on units that are not cumplet up . btw . tell me when we you have ever saw a pro gamer that clump up units to gain an edge or have a benefit . your ideeas are just dumb .
No one is saying that the game does not need to be rebalanced after such changes... most people are proposing a buff to AOE radius/damage to compensate for change.
A buffed Fungal Growth will absolutely slay anyone who doesn't spread their units.
Clumping units does have an advantage in many situations, it maximizes the DPS of your ball of units.
Exactly the point ... with non-clumping possible and a buffed AoE damage you are suddenly faced with a CHOICE: clump up and maximize your own dps and take the risk to be annihilated OR not clump up and work with a lesser dps for your attacking formation. Its all about adding more choice to the game and variety of tactics for the viewer.
The current "big splashes of green" in a ZvZ when two roach, baneling, fungal and infested terran egg armies clash is pretty ugly and boring, because you can't differentiate between these masses of brown and green and which belongs to which side. So spreading them out would help with that AND it would slow down the battles, so you could actually make a difference with micro (like focus firing with your units). Personally I really like games of harrassment here and there and everywhere much more than two full armies clashing, but harrassment isnt that easy to pull off.
----
Dear xsnac,
please dont "dude" me and please tell me why BW is such a terrible game that you dont want SC2 to become more like it. No one is actually saying that SC2 should become exactly like it, but there are several bad "improvements" which were made for SC2 whose negative side effects are only becoming clear just now. There are mathematical reasons why the clumped unit formations are terrible and stifling to the development of strategies and yet you dont seem to understand this.
Since this is a forum for discussions it would be really nice of you to actually argue with our point of view and talk about our explanations as to why clumped unit movement is bad .... instead of simply "accusing" us to try and make the game more like BW. Open and loose formations will require more skill and give more opportunities for micro and strategies to develop and it will make balancing the units easier. Thats really easy to understand, but why should it be bad? Enlighten us please.
Frodan: I also want to follow up on a post you made a while ago. It was on the forums, I'm not sure if you can recall. But you talked about changing maybe the unit pathing AI, maybe tweaking some of the dynamic movement. Can you explain exactly what you guys did, maybe the results, and maybe some of your concerns because you said it wasn't that different.
Browder: We saw some videos that our fans put together, which is awesome. A variable which they were tweaking within the path finder, it would basically cause units to keep their position until they got to their target point, and they would still cluster up again. A lot of our players have felt that the spreading out would be something beneficial for E-sports, that it would cause the armies to look bigger, it would be a little easier to read what's going on in some of the bigger armies. So we tested this variable in our game, we tested it for a couple of days, playing tons and tons of games and it didn't make much of a difference because the reality is the test they were showing on a map was all these units spread out with a single right click across the map so the units will all spread out, so it look great. But nobody plays that way. They click rapidly in very short spaces so the units are always clustered. The other thing too that's typical about this is the fact of the matter that players want their units clustered. They don't want them spread out. It's more cool for E-sports perspective but not if you want to win a game. If you want to win a game, you want to cluster. You especially want to cluster when you are fighting with Marines and Maruaders, say against Zealots. You want to be in a tight ball and murdering them. You do want to split when you want to fight Banelings. So there's sometimes you want to split, and sometimes want to cluster. So it's really about what's the default and for us it felt like the smarter answer is look most of the time, especially for new users, clustering is correct. If the pros want to split up their units, they should split up their units and that's something they can do. We're seeing more and more and more pros who want to win games are spreading out their armies at the appropriate moment and gaining an advantage for it. But at the end of the day, we didn't put that one in beta because it didn't do that much. I wouldn't be ashamed to try something else at some point to see how that feels but that one did not do sort of what we all thought it would. It was actually almost no change to the game at all, so at that point what's the point of introducing all that work on us, all the testing, and all the uncertainty of that if it doesn't actually change much.
I'm getting the impression they ONLY tested the implementation from the original BNet thread's OP, and never tried the other plausible implementations.
Frodan: I also want to follow up on a post you made a while ago. It was on the forums, I'm not sure if you can recall. But you talked about changing maybe the unit pathing AI, maybe tweaking some of the dynamic movement. Can you explain exactly what you guys did, maybe the results, and maybe some of your concerns because you said it wasn't that different.
Browder: We saw some videos that our fans put together, which is awesome. A variable which they were tweaking within the path finder, it would basically cause units to keep their position until they got to their target point, and they would still cluster up again. A lot of our players have felt that the spreading out would be something beneficial for E-sports, that it would cause the armies to look bigger, it would be a little easier to read what's going on in some of the bigger armies. So we tested this variable in our game, we tested it for a couple of days, playing tons and tons of games and it didn't make much of a difference because the reality is the test they were showing on a map was all these units spread out with a single right click across the map so the units will all spread out, so it look great. But nobody plays that way. They click rapidly in very short spaces so the units are always clustered. The other thing too that's typical about this is the fact of the matter that players want their units clustered. They don't want them spread out. It's more cool for E-sports perspective but not if you want to win a game. If you want to win a game, you want to cluster. You especially want to cluster when you are fighting with Marines and Maruaders, say against Zealots. You want to be in a tight ball and murdering them. You do want to split when you want to fight Banelings. So there's sometimes you want to split, and sometimes want to cluster. So it's really about what's the default and for us it felt like the smarter answer is look most of the time, especially for new users, clustering is correct. If the pros want to split up their units, they should split up their units and that's something they can do. We're seeing more and more and more pros who want to win games are spreading out their armies at the appropriate moment and gaining an advantage for it. But at the end of the day, we didn't put that one in beta because it didn't do that much. I wouldn't be ashamed to try something else at some point to see how that feels but that one did not do sort of what we all thought it would. It was actually almost no change to the game at all, so at that point what's the point of introducing all that work on us, all the testing, and all the uncertainty of that if it doesn't actually change much.
I'm getting the impression they ONLY tested the implementation from the original BNet thread's OP, and never tried the other plausible implementations.
They also dont understand the reason why clumped units are terrible ... which is actually terribly simple.
Units have a different balance relationship to other units based upon the number of units involved in a battle. Easy example: 2 Marines vs 1 Zealot means the Marines have to run a lot, but change that to 20 Marines vs 10 Zealots and the Marines dont have to run as much, because the clump of Marines will kill a few of the Zealots before they even get in range. The bigger the number the bigger the difference is to "just a few" units. This is the reason why SC2 has so many "critical number units" like Void Rays, Colossi, Hydras, ... Broodwar didnt have critical numbers of units - or at least not that many - and the reason is the much lower density of the units.
Frodan: I also want to follow up on a post you made a while ago. It was on the forums, I'm not sure if you can recall. But you talked about changing maybe the unit pathing AI, maybe tweaking some of the dynamic movement. Can you explain exactly what you guys did, maybe the results, and maybe some of your concerns because you said it wasn't that different.
Browder: We saw some videos that our fans put together, which is awesome. A variable which they were tweaking within the path finder, it would basically cause units to keep their position until they got to their target point, and they would still cluster up again. A lot of our players have felt that the spreading out would be something beneficial for E-sports, that it would cause the armies to look bigger, it would be a little easier to read what's going on in some of the bigger armies. So we tested this variable in our game, we tested it for a couple of days, playing tons and tons of games and it didn't make much of a difference because the reality is the test they were showing on a map was all these units spread out with a single right click across the map so the units will all spread out, so it look great. But nobody plays that way. They click rapidly in very short spaces so the units are always clustered. The other thing too that's typical about this is the fact of the matter that players want their units clustered. They don't want them spread out. It's more cool for E-sports perspective but not if you want to win a game. If you want to win a game, you want to cluster. You especially want to cluster when you are fighting with Marines and Maruaders, say against Zealots. You want to be in a tight ball and murdering them. You do want to split when you want to fight Banelings. So there's sometimes you want to split, and sometimes want to cluster. So it's really about what's the default and for us it felt like the smarter answer is look most of the time, especially for new users, clustering is correct. If the pros want to split up their units, they should split up their units and that's something they can do. We're seeing more and more and more pros who want to win games are spreading out their armies at the appropriate moment and gaining an advantage for it. But at the end of the day, we didn't put that one in beta because it didn't do that much. I wouldn't be ashamed to try something else at some point to see how that feels but that one did not do sort of what we all thought it would. It was actually almost no change to the game at all, so at that point what's the point of introducing all that work on us, all the testing, and all the uncertainty of that if it doesn't actually change much.
Every time he talks it becomes clearer that he has no clue. The man is an imbecile.
Of course people want to clump. Units have small collision radius, massive range and all move at the same speed. YOU BUILT THE GAME SO THAT CLUMPING IS OPTIMAL.
Since clumping is ugly and boring, the simplest fix is therefore, FORCE them to not be able to clump.
It's not that only solution. Even he understands that in some situations, it's bad to clump. A different design fix is therefore: make it bad to clump more often. This one might require much more thought. Too hard.
This just seems like it would be a downgrade to SC2. Sure, it would APPEAR to be more like BW, but I think people need to give this idea up. We're making a new game, just split your units it's not that hard. You don't need to split EVERY unit to make things much better for you. Doesn't everyone want more micro? Wouldn't this lessen it?
On November 19 2012 01:17 bole wrote: I will not by HOTS if they dont change pathing... its so retarded and in WC3 you Have option to chose CLUMP PATHING OR SPREAD OUT PATHING....
i Dustin Browder think he is smartest person and he know what is good or not.. he dont understend the game what is wrong with it...
He is so RETARDED !!!!!
I didnt play much of WC3 but i didnt know they had that option.
seeing as they did have the option, what mode did the user opt for most?
On November 19 2012 01:17 bole wrote: I will not by HOTS if they dont change pathing... its so retarded and in WC3 you Have option to chose CLUMP PATHING OR SPREAD OUT PATHING....
i Dustin Browder think he is smartest person and he know what is good or not.. he dont understend the game what is wrong with it...
He is so RETARDED !!!!!
I didnt play much of WC3 but i didnt know they had that option.
seeing as they did have the option, what mode did the user opt for most?
he came from C&C generals... one of the worst game of the series... what you expect ?
On November 19 2012 01:17 bole wrote: I will not by HOTS if they dont change pathing... its so retarded and in WC3 you Have option to chose CLUMP PATHING OR SPREAD OUT PATHING....
i Dustin Browder think he is smartest person and he know what is good or not.. he dont understend the game what is wrong with it...
He is so RETARDED !!!!!
I didnt play much of WC3 but i didnt know they had that option.
seeing as they did have the option, what mode did the user opt for most?
most people switched between the two depending on the situation and frankly it wasn't all that great. If you don't want your units to clump then spread them out, it actually takes skill to do it right.... its another thing that seperates the good from the bad and as the game develops more and more pros are making decisions to either stay clumped or not. Adding a button that will do it for you is actually removing skill from the game.
And as Dustin says, in many situations you want your units clumped for highest DPS density. They've fooled around with the tweak in the videos and found that it made little difference because you don't tend to make 1 a-click across the map but many little ones, which makes the units clump up again.
Sorry but i'm all for clumping and making spreading out a skill needed rather than having them spread out by default and the game needing less micro. Army control is what separates skill levels, when you play someone 2 leagues lower you win not by superior macro but by being more efficient with your army. If your opponent can click a button that spreads out his army then your superior abilities are somewhat negated
Frodan: I also want to follow up on a post you made a while ago. It was on the forums, I'm not sure if you can recall. But you talked about changing maybe the unit pathing AI, maybe tweaking some of the dynamic movement. Can you explain exactly what you guys did, maybe the results, and maybe some of your concerns because you said it wasn't that different.
Browder: We saw some videos that our fans put together, which is awesome. A variable which they were tweaking within the path finder, it would basically cause units to keep their position until they got to their target point, and they would still cluster up again. A lot of our players have felt that the spreading out would be something beneficial for E-sports, that it would cause the armies to look bigger, it would be a little easier to read what's going on in some of the bigger armies. So we tested this variable in our game, we tested it for a couple of days, playing tons and tons of games and it didn't make much of a difference because the reality is the test they were showing on a map was all these units spread out with a single right click across the map so the units will all spread out, so it look great. But nobody plays that way. They click rapidly in very short spaces so the units are always clustered. The other thing too that's typical about this is the fact of the matter that players want their units clustered. They don't want them spread out. It's more cool for E-sports perspective but not if you want to win a game. If you want to win a game, you want to cluster. You especially want to cluster when you are fighting with Marines and Maruaders, say against Zealots. You want to be in a tight ball and murdering them. You do want to split when you want to fight Banelings. So there's sometimes you want to split, and sometimes want to cluster. So it's really about what's the default and for us it felt like the smarter answer is look most of the time, especially for new users, clustering is correct. If the pros want to split up their units, they should split up their units and that's something they can do. We're seeing more and more and more pros who want to win games are spreading out their armies at the appropriate moment and gaining an advantage for it. But at the end of the day, we didn't put that one in beta because it didn't do that much. I wouldn't be ashamed to try something else at some point to see how that feels but that one did not do sort of what we all thought it would. It was actually almost no change to the game at all, so at that point what's the point of introducing all that work on us, all the testing, and all the uncertainty of that if it doesn't actually change much.
I'm getting the impression they ONLY tested the implementation from the original BNet thread's OP, and never tried the other plausible implementations.
Interesting.
They don't seem to believe that there is a fundamental problem with unit movement and are therefore not pursuing it with as much vigor as they should be. If they believed that this was a true problem with the game, they wouldn't just be checking it off a list of community concerns ("oh they want this? it doesnt work afterall? ok. Let's just stop wasting our time go back to designing the new units now").
I dont see them pursuing different solutions to this concern: they aren't reading the forums, they aren't familiar with the root of the complaint, which is that armies are too dense and move around too easily, ensuring that armies are always in the optimal formation, eliminating defenders advantage, making fights short and difficult to spectate. Most importantly, they don't seem to be testing new solutions to this constantly.
Or if they are aware of our concerns and actually understand them, they're afraid that they dont have the time/resources to make a thorough investigation, or more likely, that they are taking a risk-averse approach to SC2 balance, which is that anything uncertain is bad, hence how most of the new units (especially toss) are out of the way and sort of fit in at the edges instead of reinventing how the races work.
I am of the opinion that pro players can and should spread out their units more by hand. The benefits are enormous. Fortunately we are starting to see this in some games and I expect this trend to continue
well Mr. Fuckbrowder, I'm not a pro. I'm just a masters league dude with 80 apm. Help me by giving me a way that doesn't take 10 actions to spread my 8 marines, or to unclump my vikigns so i dont lose to ONE fungal growth. Or let me watch a game that looks awesome, and not like a big moving pile of i dont know what + Show Spoiler +
shit
.
Seriously fuck you Dustin Browder. Fuck you.
User was warned for this post
So you want to just chill out in masters without having to have any mechanical skill whatsoever? Sounds like a good idea, just for that I hope Dustin Browder makes it so medivacs don't autocast heal.
On November 19 2012 01:17 bole wrote: I will not by HOTS if they dont change pathing... its so retarded and in WC3 you Have option to chose CLUMP PATHING OR SPREAD OUT PATHING....
i Dustin Browder think he is smartest person and he know what is good or not.. he dont understend the game what is wrong with it...
He is so RETARDED !!!!!
I didnt play much of WC3 but i didnt know they had that option.
seeing as they did have the option, what mode did the user opt for most?
Sorry but i'm all for clumping and making spreading out a skill needed rather than having them spread out by default and the game needing less micro. Army control is what separates skill levels, when you play someone 2 leagues lower you win not by superior macro but by being more efficient with your army. If your opponent can click a button that spreads out his army then your superior abilities are somewhat negated
Thats okay man. No need to apologize for being wrong.
Seriously tho, its undeniably true that spreading your healthbars takes a lot of skill, thats not the issue. The thing is that if they fixed the clumping and made the movement more spread out, it would take even more skill to make your units work efficiently. And no I will not explain why that is the case for the 70th time, a lot of people have already explained thoroughly why.
Basically this way we would get day 9's frisbees rather than balls we have now if you know the reference.
Yes let's artificially create a way to show mechanical skill, by forcing players to micro aggainst the computer. It makes me think of 12 units per control group, and no rally points. If Browder wants micro, there are many other possible ways to introduce it that don't involve something artificial like this.
Actually, if the AI didn't interfere with movement we could see much more interesting micro, because players would actually take the time to make cool, formations / tactics. As it is now, no one will bother spending 15s putting zealots at front in a perfect line followed by sentries, followed by stalkers, like we would see in a middle-ages battle with archers, spearmen, etc, because as soon as they click to move the units start to move stupidly with disregard to whatever their relative positions, and all that hard work goes to waste.
Keep being illuded if you think auto clumping is actually doing good to this game.
I'd just like to chime in since a lot of people have used the speedling/baneling versus marine comparison.
The reason why speedlings trade so extremely poorly against a ball of marines atm is exactly that: It's a ball! The surface area is extremely low, yet that is not the main thing. A lot of the marines will be shooting the same speedling at the same time!
In effect this means that the DPS from the Zerglings drop insanely as they die off relatively quickly. The tradeoff is that a few banelings get in there and it will be a complete massacre. If Terran spreads out more and the Zerglings spread out more, they will not be target fired to the same extent, and their uptime and thus damage will be better. Either Banelings will be able to clean up a marine ball, or Zerglings will be more effective against it.
I don't see how that can be a voice of concern, unless the spreading would be made so huge that zerglings are just more effective than banelings. ( Which with proper splitting is already the case. Yet you need the banelings to force the terran to split, so your Zerglings gain their efficiency, yadda yadda. )
I didnt play much of WC3 but i didnt know they had that option.
seeing as they did have the option, what mode did the user opt for most?
he came from C&C generals... one of the worst game of the series... what you expect ?
B
Dustin Browder is noob for E SPORTS games he dont know what is micro what is macro excetera....
I still play WC3 TFT and its better game then SC2 skill wise ... simply amount of gameplay (micro) and staff u need to pull out to win a game cant compare WC3 vs SC2 ....
SC2 is good macro game (you need a lot of skill to build your army and base ) But WC3 is 10 time bather when ARMIES come and colapse When armies Are FIGHT each other...
Watch some WC3 games how intense they are.....every unite is important like in SC BW was... but Dustin Browder dont get it....
He is C&C retard who dont care he wont to made many from noob ppl and ppl who dont know what Blizz games are...
Pathing is First problem ...Secund problem (because there is no micro ) is HARD COUNTERSA MOVE UNITES ...Third problem is MAPS...
Because of 8 min 2 ghas in each base there is no little bettles in beginning of game( so no micro) ..and then ppl sit on 2 base 3 base till get 200 pop army ...BALL ARMY....
In BW there were no clumped up units and Deathball 200/200 15 sec battles. But unfortunately Dustin Browder decided he was a genius and created a whole different game which is IMHO by far worse than BW for spectators.
On November 19 2012 01:17 bole wrote: I will not by HOTS if they dont change pathing... its so retarded and in WC3 you Have option to chose CLUMP PATHING OR SPREAD OUT PATHING....
i Dustin Browder think he is smartest person and he know what is good or not.. he dont understend the game what is wrong with it...
He is so RETARDED !!!!!
I didnt play much of WC3 but i didnt know they had that option.
seeing as they did have the option, what mode did the user opt for most?
And as Dustin says, in many situations you want your units clumped for highest DPS density. They've fooled around with the tweak in the videos and found that it made little difference because you don't tend to make 1 a-click across the map but many little ones, which makes the units clump up again.
Sorry but i'm all for clumping and making spreading out a skill needed rather than having them spread out by default and the game needing less micro. Army control is what separates skill levels, when you play someone 2 leagues lower you win not by superior macro but by being more efficient with your army. If your opponent can click a button that spreads out his army then your superior abilities are somewhat negated
What is so interesting in the game in which almost only micro is spreading units? In BW and WC3 there are much more ways to micro units.
SC2 badly lacks of micro. In current macro orientated metagame there is no possibility to distinguish best players from good players that is why we have so many different winners of big tournaments (Parting, Life, Seed, MVP, DRG, Jiakji, MMA, Creator, Alive.)
On November 19 2012 01:17 bole wrote: I will not by HOTS if they dont change pathing... its so retarded and in WC3 you Have option to chose CLUMP PATHING OR SPREAD OUT PATHING....
i Dustin Browder think he is smartest person and he know what is good or not.. he dont understend the game what is wrong with it...
He is so RETARDED !!!!!
I didnt play much of WC3 but i didnt know they had that option.
seeing as they did have the option, what mode did the user opt for most?
most people switched between the two depending on the situation and frankly it wasn't all that great. If you don't want your units to clump then spread them out, it actually takes skill to do it right.... its another thing that seperates the good from the bad and as the game develops more and more pros are making decisions to either stay clumped or not. Adding a button that will do it for you is actually removing skill from the game.
And as Dustin says, in many situations you want your units clumped for highest DPS density. They've fooled around with the tweak in the videos and found that it made little difference because you don't tend to make 1 a-click across the map but many little ones, which makes the units clump up again.
Sorry but i'm all for clumping and making spreading out a skill needed rather than having them spread out by default and the game needing less micro. Army control is what separates skill levels, when you play someone 2 leagues lower you win not by superior macro but by being more efficient with your army. If your opponent can click a button that spreads out his army then your superior abilities are somewhat negated
You have a Dustin Browder level of understanding, aka completely missing the point. You seem to think that people want a UI improvement to make units easier to spread out. NOPE.
Actually, we want it to be OPTIMAL to spread out. Why? Becuase clumpy deathballs are boring to watch, boring to play and difficult to balance from a game design point of view.
In the case of marines vs banes, players do spread out. But for every other scenario, deathballs beat non deathballs so obviously players choose to clump up. Make deathballs less good and players will spread out more.
Alternatively, make deathballs impossible with a simple pathing tweak and the whole problem goes away. (Yes you will have to rebalance some spells. No it's not difficult to tweak).
I like the one where they stay in formation A LOT.
It encourages actual micro, presplit marines as well as live splitting of marines, changes how deathballs work by making clumping an actual decision, looks badass, and allows spells to be buffed by making units they're used against less clumped.
the problem is the path and always will be, if they are unwilling to change it, it will be impossible to get rid of deathballs, no matter what units you put in. we need the old path with 8 directional movements to fix this completely
This has already been stated, but something like this is a HUGE buff to Terran, and it will require rebalancing of pretty much every splash unit in the game to re balance the races.
I just don't see why blizzard would change something that is an aesthetic problem when there is so much balance problems at the moment, this change will increase the problems and unbalance the the arguably already overpowered marine.
On November 19 2012 01:17 bole wrote: I will not by HOTS if they dont change pathing... its so retarded and in WC3 you Have option to chose CLUMP PATHING OR SPREAD OUT PATHING....
i Dustin Browder think he is smartest person and he know what is good or not.. he dont understend the game what is wrong with it...
He is so RETARDED !!!!!
I didnt play much of WC3 but i didnt know they had that option.
seeing as they did have the option, what mode did the user opt for most?
Sorry but i'm all for clumping and making spreading out a skill needed rather than having them spread out by default and the game needing less micro. Army control is what separates skill levels, when you play someone 2 leagues lower you win not by superior macro but by being more efficient with your army. If your opponent can click a button that spreads out his army then your superior abilities are somewhat negated
Thats okay man. No need to apologize for being wrong.
Seriously tho, its undeniably true that spreading your healthbars takes a lot of skill, thats not the issue. The thing is that if they fixed the clumping and made the movement more spread out, it would take even more skill to make your units work efficiently. And no I will not explain why that is the case for the 70th time, a lot of people have already explained thoroughly why.
Basically this way we would get day 9's frisbees rather than balls we have now if you know the reference.
By all means, correct army handling is a skill that separates good from bad players. However, it makes the game too volatile in my opinion.
If you have one wrong engagement, you tend to lose your whole army, which is basically game. If the units where less clumped, you would generally only lose part of them, because your units are spaced out and harder to trap, and because your opponents units are more spaced out and dish out less dps overall. That is, if you have the skill to react quickly and accordingly.
Macro skill is still my preferred way of separating good and bad players. If a good player has a short slip of attention and his macro suffers, he can always macro off his ass and catch up. If his attention slipped so long that his macro is way of the majority of the game and he lose the critical engagement, then he deserved to lose that game.
On November 19 2012 01:17 bole wrote: I will not by HOTS if they dont change pathing... its so retarded and in WC3 you Have option to chose CLUMP PATHING OR SPREAD OUT PATHING....
i Dustin Browder think he is smartest person and he know what is good or not.. he dont understend the game what is wrong with it...
He is so RETARDED !!!!!
I didnt play much of WC3 but i didnt know they had that option.
seeing as they did have the option, what mode did the user opt for most?
he came from C&C generals... one of the worst game of the series... what you expect ?
B
Didnt he also make RA2? arguably the best game of the series?
I dont know of the pathing is a absolute problem. Units do die too fast in this game however. All deciding 30 second engaments is less than optimal. If this is due to the pathing it is a serious problem. It is however also possible that the units are just too high dps.
Sometimes I feel like they made this game on normal speed, after realising this was too easy (and or slow) they changed it too fastest. And now there is a game where everything dies, and half the games are decided with a single missclick.
I don't think units die too fast, just that there is too little benefit to be gained from micro. If I were designing pathing, I'd give units a natural tendency to separate from each other, kind of like mutalisks in BW(but still with a hard boundary), and reintroduce BW style magic boxing, so if you box a small group of units and amove across map, their target locations will be the same formation as the start of the move command. They will clump somewhat when moving around corners or through chokes, as well as if you tell them to move a short distance relative to the spread of the group.
I'm not sure if anyone noticed, but all the HotS scenes showing the battles in HotS have unclumped movements, and the battles looked AWESOME. i saw these in the BWC. Funny how Blizzard makes the game look cool like that, but refuses to implement it in the actual game.
On November 20 2012 03:20 SoulWager wrote: I don't think units die too fast, just that there is too little benefit to be gained from micro. If I were designing pathing, I'd give units a natural tendency to separate from each other, kind of like mutalisks in BW(but still with a hard boundary), and reintroduce BW style magic boxing, so if you box a small group of units and amove across map, their target locations will be the same formation as the start of the move command. They will clump somewhat when moving around corners or through chokes, as well as if you tell them to move a short distance relative to the spread of the group.
There is "too little benefit to be gained from micro" simply because "brute force" [superior numbers] outweighs micro easily and you cant micro whole packs of units [apart from stutter-step or blink maybe]. Cutesy play goes down the drain when there are masses on the battlefield and thats a real shame and one of the reasons why the clumped unit movement and the unlimited unit selection needs to go. Seeing a BW pro win in a "2 Zerglings vs. 2 Zerglings" battle with BOTH his Zerglings still alive is MUCH more exciting than seeing 30 Banelings roll over a troop of Marines. Skill is admired, brawn isnt.
If you don't like it's movement pathing, the battles ending too fast, etc, just don't buy the game. It's the best way to make them wake up. I for one, won't be buying it, unless it gets much better than WoL, which so far, doesn't seem to be the case.
On November 20 2012 06:31 Apolo wrote: If you don't like it's movement pathing, the battles ending too fast, etc, just don't buy the game. It's the best way to make them wake up. I for one, won't be buying it, unless it gets much better than WoL, which so far, doesn't seem to be the case.
Thats a really stupid comment, because I happen to like the game, but it could be better ... MUCH better. Clumped unit movement and high concentrations of infantry NEGATE MICRO by making it less efficient or simply impossible to focus on few units which is why these mechanics simply limit the game.
Its about the same as "dont watch Star Wars I if you hate Jar Jar Binx". Its still the same universe and it kinda belongs to the story AND it has its ok-parts ... and its the same for Starcraft 2.
Oh and the last reason for "dont like it dont buy it" is the fact that you kinda form your opinion about problems AFTER making the purchase. Of course if you never think about things you wont find any faults with it ...
On November 20 2012 04:23 ultratorr wrote: I'm not sure if anyone noticed, but all the HotS scenes showing the battles in HotS have unclumped movements, and the battles looked AWESOME. i saw these in the BWC. Funny how Blizzard makes the game look cool like that, but refuses to implement it in the actual game.
Browder's already agreed in the Frodan interview that unclumping is better for spectating. Too bad that's not good enough of a reason for Blizz to put more effort into this.
On November 19 2012 01:17 bole wrote: I will not by HOTS if they dont change pathing... its so retarded and in WC3 you Have option to chose CLUMP PATHING OR SPREAD OUT PATHING....
i Dustin Browder think he is smartest person and he know what is good or not.. he dont understend the game what is wrong with it...
He is so RETARDED !!!!!
I didnt play much of WC3 but i didnt know they had that option.
seeing as they did have the option, what mode did the user opt for most?
he came from C&C generals... one of the worst game of the series... what you expect ?
B
Didnt he also make RA2? arguably the best game of the series?
I dont know of the pathing is a absolute problem. Units do die too fast in this game however. All deciding 30 second engaments is less than optimal. If this is due to the pathing it is a serious problem. It is however also possible that the units are just too high dps.
Sometimes I feel like they made this game on normal speed, after realising this was too easy (and or slow) they changed it too fastest. And now there is a game where everything dies, and half the games are decided with a single missclick.
On November 20 2012 06:31 Apolo wrote: If you don't like it's movement pathing, the battles ending too fast, etc, just don't buy the game. It's the best way to make them wake up. I for one, won't be buying it, unless it gets much better than WoL, which so far, doesn't seem to be the case.
the majority of people who buy this game do not care about stuff like this. blizzard will sell, for all intents and purposes, the same amount. even if this whole community "votes with their wallets" and boycotts HotS, it will be a drop in the bucket. the only pull this community has is in the esports scene, and that's only because blizzard cares enough to listen. people here forget esports is a niche past-time, and sc2 is a niche within that niche...
It's actually surprising that Blizzard is putting so much effort into eSports, while many other companies don't do this and still sell games for the same price.
There is one big argument that Dustin Browder said and that is !!!!
We dont whont to make a change to pathing because Look Pro ppl whont to they unites stand clamp up and he give exemple....
Example was : Look Terran marines You want them to stay together and be clumped up !!!! YES but if you are terran !!!!
If you are ZErg or Protoss you want to spreed your army Browder and when you spreed it you whont to stay in that Formation and dont get clump up agean...
Because of Clump up range have a lot advantage compare to MALE UNITES like zealots and zerglings becous they dont have ability like ultralisc to break balls !!!!!
I absolutely love this, and I think this has many good effects:
1) Makes the game much more interesting from a spectator perspective 2) Does a little bit to reduce the mechanics gap between Terran armies and Zerg/Protoss armies 3) Potentially weakens AoE (this would obviously need to be balanced) which would make this game less reliant on massing splash damage units 4) Elongates battles due to lower dps from all parties (spread marines do less dps than a tight ball, and they also take less AoE dps).
This is a big change, no doubt, but HotS is a perfect time to get it in.
Just throwing a curve ball here but wouldn't it be simpler for everyone and solve alot of the issues if the game was played at a lower speed setting? Because then splitting wouldn't be an issue of speed but more of a strategic decision. fungals would still hit but you would get a chance to position against them.
My thought here is to make the game more of a chess game and less of speedaholic contest. Btw I play @ 130 apm on blizz seconds and I would love more actions.
I'm sure there is alot of reasons why it's unfeasable but just trying to think outside the box here.
I don't like the idea of changing the way movement is handled as shown in the videos. I see the manual splitting of units as not only fun to watch but also to play.
yeah, i mean I'm kind of on the fence about this subject because really, why should blizzard make a-moving across a map easier? I think more than anything splash damage across all races need to be buffed so players are forced into splitting. Only problem is these splash damage units need MORE draw backs to compensate so that they aren't completely over powered at lower leagues. Who cares about lower leagues though right? ahem, blizzard does! So I think it's important that we have units with extreme positives and negatives.
On November 23 2012 11:47 Firkraag8 wrote: I don't like the idea of changing the way movement is handled as shown in the videos. I see the manual splitting of units as not only fun to watch but also to play.
a. Do you think "Joe Bronzeleague" or even "Benny Silver" can do that? Does he have a chance against Banelings? Are Banelings as hard to use as Marine splitting? Casuals ARE IMPORTANT ...
b. Clumped up units are a high concentration and this prevents REAL micro from happening, because brute force will win over cutesy micro. You know you have seen REAL micro when there is a battle between 2 Zerglings on one side and 2 Zerglings on the other side and one player moves his units so well that he wins with both his Zerglings still alive.
c. Clumped up units have a shifting - and thus unpredictable - balance depending upon their number. - 2 Marines vs. 1 Zealot is different from 40 Marines vs. 20 Zealots. The second group of Marines will kill the Zealots fast enough so only a few of them ever get close enough to swing their blades, but the first one involves a lot of running from the Marines. - Stalkers and Marines have roughly the same dps, BUT since you can stack more Marines in the same space their "clump dps" is higher. Math is against clumped units ... it doesnt make sense no matter how "beautiful" it might look. There will be other micro for unclumped units IMO; MUCH MORE because everyone has to work to get their units as tight as possible and not only the opponent of the Banelings.
On November 23 2012 11:47 Firkraag8 wrote: I don't like the idea of changing the way movement is handled as shown in the videos. I see the manual splitting of units as not only fun to watch but also to play.
Hahaha :D this is like kind of argument that Dustin Browder give.. But did you ever watch WC3 or SC BW ?
One of good mechanic that SC2 produced its Banglings vs Marines ...And that is Sad !!! How much micro mechanic you have in WC3 and in SC BW...
IN SC BW you can micro almost everything dodge plenty of atc and combinations....
SC2 if you noticed its almost everything about BALL of Mrines splliting and running around ... that is fact...
IN SC2 there is 2 More race that need to be explored their micro potencial and that is Protoss and Zerg ...
if you are protoss you want your army to stay spreed when you ATC in to terran Ball ..Also if you are zerg you want to your army stay spreed instead of clamp up when atc MARINES BALLS or Protoss ....
If you play any of Blizzard games before you know this is bad pathing ...but problem is bigger then it probelm is in spells to ... like Fungel and Force Fealds ....also A move unites Colloss thors ....and on...
More than a little perplexed that he said there was no affect at all in their tests. Having played SC1, WC3, SC2, and some of the SC2 test maps people have made, I can say they all feel completely different. Both in terms of enjoyability during micro as well fun viewing, to me the current SC2 pathing is the worst of all the alternatives .
On November 23 2012 21:51 Gaius Baltar wrote: More than a little perplexed that he said there was no affect at all in their tests. Having played SC1, WC3, SC2, and some of the SC2 test maps people have made, I can say they all feel completely different. Both in terms of enjoyability during micro as well fun viewing, to me the current SC2 pathing is the worst of all the alternatives .
Blizzard just tested ONE SMALL MODIFICATION - which probably wouldnt be enough anyways - AND which would have been one of roughly four adjustments necessary to tune SC2 down from the "deathball worship" to "strategic and microable play". 1. unit selection limit = 12 2. forced unit spread with microable stacking 3. removal of all production speed boosts 4. removal of the MULE (the one economic boost which isnt connected directly to production)
So they HAD TO fail at finding something noticeable, but it also shows how much they dont know or dont care about the general gameplay. Until they fix this I think they are in "ignorance mode" + Show Spoiler +
and you know that ignorance is bliss
and think that they can fix and balance the game through unit abilities alone. This will make the game more and more complex as the "lets balance Fungal by limiting it to non-psionic units" idea shows, which is a bad idea because it takes away the control/choice from the player by "forcing him" to build unit X to hard-counter unit Y instead of being able to do it with anything he chooses.
On November 19 2012 01:17 bole wrote: I will not by HOTS if they dont change pathing... its so retarded and in WC3 you Have option to chose CLUMP PATHING OR SPREAD OUT PATHING....
i Dustin Browder think he is smartest person and he know what is good or not.. he dont understend the game what is wrong with it...
He is so RETARDED !!!!!
I didnt play much of WC3 but i didnt know they had that option.
seeing as they did have the option, what mode did the user opt for most?
he came from C&C generals... one of the worst game of the series... what you expect ?
B
Didnt he also make RA2? arguably the best game of the series?
I dont know of the pathing is a absolute problem. Units do die too fast in this game however. All deciding 30 second engaments is less than optimal. If this is due to the pathing it is a serious problem. It is however also possible that the units are just too high dps.
Sometimes I feel like they made this game on normal speed, after realising this was too easy (and or slow) they changed it too fastest. And now there is a game where everything dies, and half the games are decided with a single missclick.
Has RA2 or C&C had any success as eSport?
browders games were all huge esport titels with perfect balance + Show Spoiler +
On November 19 2012 01:17 bole wrote: I will not by HOTS if they dont change pathing... its so retarded and in WC3 you Have option to chose CLUMP PATHING OR SPREAD OUT PATHING....
i Dustin Browder think he is smartest person and he know what is good or not.. he dont understend the game what is wrong with it...
He is so RETARDED !!!!!
I didnt play much of WC3 but i didnt know they had that option.
seeing as they did have the option, what mode did the user opt for most?
he came from C&C generals... one of the worst game of the series... what you expect ?
B
Didnt he also make RA2? arguably the best game of the series?
I dont know of the pathing is a absolute problem. Units do die too fast in this game however. All deciding 30 second engaments is less than optimal. If this is due to the pathing it is a serious problem. It is however also possible that the units are just too high dps.
Sometimes I feel like they made this game on normal speed, after realising this was too easy (and or slow) they changed it too fastest. And now there is a game where everything dies, and half the games are decided with a single missclick.
Has RA2 or C&C had any success as eSport?
browders games were all huge esport titels with perfect balance + Show Spoiler +
NOT
Have you played Battle for Middle Earth's multiplayer? Shit was the most unbalanced game I have ever witnessed. Basically everyone went as Rohan and trampled over everyone else's Infantry with cavalry. There were even very easily accessible spells that made pikemen completely useless, so horses owned everything.
On November 19 2012 01:17 bole wrote: I will not by HOTS if they dont change pathing... its so retarded and in WC3 you Have option to chose CLUMP PATHING OR SPREAD OUT PATHING....
i Dustin Browder think he is smartest person and he know what is good or not.. he dont understend the game what is wrong with it...
He is so RETARDED !!!!!
I didnt play much of WC3 but i didnt know they had that option.
seeing as they did have the option, what mode did the user opt for most?
he came from C&C generals... one of the worst game of the series... what you expect ?
B
Didnt he also make RA2? arguably the best game of the series?
I dont know of the pathing is a absolute problem. Units do die too fast in this game however. All deciding 30 second engaments is less than optimal. If this is due to the pathing it is a serious problem. It is however also possible that the units are just too high dps.
Sometimes I feel like they made this game on normal speed, after realising this was too easy (and or slow) they changed it too fastest. And now there is a game where everything dies, and half the games are decided with a single missclick.
Has RA2 or C&C had any success as eSport?
browders games were all huge esport titels with perfect balance + Show Spoiler +
NOT
Have you played Battle for Middle Earth's multiplayer? Shit was the most unbalanced game I have ever witnessed. Basically everyone went as Rohan and trampled over everyone else's Infantry with cavalry. There were even very easily accessible spells that made pikemen completely useless, so horses owned everything.
Maybe that had something to do with the support Browder got from the dev as well.
On November 19 2012 01:17 bole wrote: I will not by HOTS if they dont change pathing... its so retarded and in WC3 you Have option to chose CLUMP PATHING OR SPREAD OUT PATHING....
i Dustin Browder think he is smartest person and he know what is good or not.. he dont understend the game what is wrong with it...
He is so RETARDED !!!!!
I didnt play much of WC3 but i didnt know they had that option.
seeing as they did have the option, what mode did the user opt for most?
he came from C&C generals... one of the worst game of the series... what you expect ?
B
Didnt he also make RA2? arguably the best game of the series?
I dont know of the pathing is a absolute problem. Units do die too fast in this game however. All deciding 30 second engaments is less than optimal. If this is due to the pathing it is a serious problem. It is however also possible that the units are just too high dps.
Sometimes I feel like they made this game on normal speed, after realising this was too easy (and or slow) they changed it too fastest. And now there is a game where everything dies, and half the games are decided with a single missclick.
Has RA2 or C&C had any success as eSport?
browders games were all huge esport titels with perfect balance + Show Spoiler +
NOT
Have you played Battle for Middle Earth's multiplayer? Shit was the most unbalanced game I have ever witnessed. Basically everyone went as Rohan and trampled over everyone else's Infantry with cavalry. There were even very easily accessible spells that made pikemen completely useless, so horses owned everything.
Maybe that had something to do with the support Browder got from the dev as well.
I think their is a difference in the amount of resources Blizzard gives for continious patching/balancing of the game compared to EA to say the least.
On November 19 2012 01:17 bole wrote: I will not by HOTS if they dont change pathing... its so retarded and in WC3 you Have option to chose CLUMP PATHING OR SPREAD OUT PATHING....
i Dustin Browder think he is smartest person and he know what is good or not.. he dont understend the game what is wrong with it...
He is so RETARDED !!!!!
I didnt play much of WC3 but i didnt know they had that option.
seeing as they did have the option, what mode did the user opt for most?
he came from C&C generals... one of the worst game of the series... what you expect ?
B
Didnt he also make RA2? arguably the best game of the series?
I dont know of the pathing is a absolute problem. Units do die too fast in this game however. All deciding 30 second engaments is less than optimal. If this is due to the pathing it is a serious problem. It is however also possible that the units are just too high dps.
Sometimes I feel like they made this game on normal speed, after realising this was too easy (and or slow) they changed it too fastest. And now there is a game where everything dies, and half the games are decided with a single missclick.
Has RA2 or C&C had any success as eSport?
browders games were all huge esport titels with perfect balance + Show Spoiler +
NOT
Have you played Battle for Middle Earth's multiplayer? Shit was the most unbalanced game I have ever witnessed. Basically everyone went as Rohan and trampled over everyone else's Infantry with cavalry. There were even very easily accessible spells that made pikemen completely useless, so horses owned everything.
Maybe that had something to do with the support Browder got from the dev as well.
I think their is a difference in the amount of resources Blizzard gives for continious patching/balancing of the game compared to EA to say the least.
Nope. If the "core concept" is as flawed as that of SC2, there is not a lot you can do with pure "unit balancing" as they are trying. The core concept of "more more more [units on the screen]" and "bigger bigger bigger [battles]" can never ever allow for MICRO, which is the ultimate skillcap for a player. Not even "Marine spreading" - which is the ONLY example that Blizzard / Browder fanboys are bringing for micro - is really micro, because it lacks precision.
You can TRY to fix the balance by inventing ever more complex rules and units, but that will make it even harder to keep the game balanced. The prime example is their idea to limit Fungal Growth to non-psionic units, which doesnt really make sense.
Such a "player skillcap" is what makes a game fun to watch, because builds can be copied by every monkey out there, but true microing skill cant. Sadly SC2 is more about resource management and tricking your opponent into bad builds than actually using the units well. Building the right stuff is more important in SC2 as well due to their core concept of "bonus damage"; sure there was something similar in BW as well, but it didnt dominate the unit stats as much as SC2. The easiest example is the Thor, which is supposed to be mech anti-air, but its only good against Mutalisks IF the opponent doesnt know about magic boxing. Against anything else in the air it is junk due to the bonus damage ...
Blizzard HAD TO invent several crutches to make this "tight infantry unit clump" system work: - Forcefield - Fungal Growth ... and all of these are terrible ideas.
On November 23 2012 21:51 Gaius Baltar wrote: More than a little perplexed that he said there was no affect at all in their tests. Having played SC1, WC3, SC2, and some of the SC2 test maps people have made, I can say they all feel completely different. Both in terms of enjoyability during micro as well fun viewing, to me the current SC2 pathing is the worst of all the alternatives .
Blizzard just tested ONE SMALL MODIFICATION - which probably wouldnt be enough anyways - AND which would have been one of roughly four adjustments necessary to tune SC2 down from the "deathball worship" to "strategic and microable play". 1. unit selection limit = 12 2. forced unit spread with microable stacking 3. removal of all production speed boosts 4. removal of the MULE (the one economic boost which isnt connected directly to production)
So they HAD TO fail at finding something noticeable, but it also shows how much they dont know or dont care about the general gameplay. Until they fix this I think they are in "ignorance mode" + Show Spoiler +
and you know that ignorance is bliss
and think that they can fix and balance the game through unit abilities alone. This will make the game more and more complex as the "lets balance Fungal by limiting it to non-psionic units" idea shows, which is a bad idea because it takes away the control/choice from the player by "forcing him" to build unit X to hard-counter unit Y instead of being able to do it with anything he chooses.
Man, everything you are saying about how to make SC2 more interesting to watch is so true. I wish DB read this.
Almost 3 years have passed since the introduction of SC2 beta and many things now are clearer about SC2 mechanics.
So many things that were introduced in SC2 make this game less interesting to watch. I remember that 2-3 years ago in some interview DB said that they wanted to make SC2 faster. Back then I didn’t pay much attention on these words.
Now I understand that Blizzard took completely wrong approach. They should have tried to make this game more interesting to watch and to play instead of making it faster.
Does anyone have an actual proof that unit formation and/or movement matters?
1) Dustin Browder claims blizzard tested it with no result 2) I recall hearing that HD also tested it, with no result 3) There are no games in this thread that I can find where there is any actual testing going, only unit vs unit videos. 4) The burden of proof lies on the person making the claims, not the ones criticising them. "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence". 5) Why the hateful attitude? Few of the people in here make games, Few of them test games whereas D Browder does both yet that seems to hold no relevance whatsoever. Why is that?
On November 26 2012 18:49 Fenris420 wrote: Does anyone have an actual proof that unit formation and/or movement matters?
It would matter for spectating, but I don't think it would matter for much else.
Browder argued about this on the SC2 forums and basically won.
Have either of you read the thread...??
If you had, you would know that DB made a post and people continued to disagree. But that pertains to the movement change where you just tweak the magic box number, which won't matter 90% of the time for ground units in SC2.
The discussion is about clumping and pathing and how that affects the game, with BW as a reference point for comparison. It's been laid out in detail throughout the thread how better pathing leads to clumping that is a default best-formation due to the superior DPS even in the face of AoE damage and godly micro.
Inferior pathing that strings out unit movement and requires micro to assemble a stationary tight clump provides defender advantage directly correlated to the degree of pathing spread and eliminates the very possibility of a deathball (which you should distinguish from an endgame push with a "perfect" army).
On November 26 2012 18:49 Fenris420 wrote: Does anyone have an actual proof that unit formation and/or movement matters?
1) Dustin Browder claims blizzard tested it with no result 2) I recall hearing that HD also tested it, with no result 3) There are no games in this thread that I can find where there is any actual testing going, only unit vs unit videos. 4) The burden of proof lies on the person making the claims, not the ones criticising them. "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence". 5) Why the hateful attitude? Few of the people in here make games, Few of them test games whereas D Browder does both yet that seems to hold no relevance whatsoever. Why is that?
0. Your brain [basic math plus a little imagination and extrapolation skill] can give you "proof" that density of the units matters and affects the game.
Just look at the Stalker and the Marine. They both have somewhat "similar" dps [Stalker: 7 dps; Marine: 6.9 dps; SOURCE], BUT they differ in size. So it is logical that you can have a higher "dps per area" from a clump of Marines than you get from a clump of Stalkers and yet they start at the same individual dps. That is not debatable and based on math, but what you can have an "opinion" on is if it affects the gameplay negatively or not. The "units per 1 square" is not a value we have, because the size really isnt a known value. So there cant really be precise calculations as to how high the unit density "dps per area" is for each unit unless Blizzard does it. You might be able to create a tiny map and completely fill it with units of type X and then count them, but thats a braindead work I am not willing to do. The point is that there is a big "uncertainty factor" injected into the game balance and this cant be good.
Tight clumps of units have also nerfed Siege Tanks somewhat from their BW version, to the point that you might be able to kill a Siege Tank with some infantry without even losing a single unit yourself. In BW it was rather impossible to get 20 Marines into range of a Siege Tank without taking at least one shot and having a Marine or two die in the process, BUT the "perfectly tight" unit movement allows for far greater numbers of Marines to bum rush the tank - who gets 1 shot off without killing any unit (yay ... 35 damage vs. non-armored doesnt even kill a Marine and barely kills a Zergling!!) - and kill it in the blink of an eye. This is basically the downfall of mech, because the backbone unit can be rushed by too many units far too fast and killed without many losses. With a limited number of units in a control group AND forcing them to spread out while moving, you couldnt bring that many infantry in range easily, so you would actually need to think about how to do it.
If you increase the combat values of the Siege Tank (either health or damage output ... doesnt really matter which) you will make the tank far too powerful in a "few vs few" situation. This clearly shows that it is a terrible idea to have a big difference in balancing between "few vs. few" and "many vs many". Unit density is at the core here and it should NOT be impossible to get a high unit density, BUT it should come at a cost (potentially losing a big chunk to AoE) AND require work from the player instead of coming "automatically".
4) Both sides have claimed a lot of things, so you cant really argue that way.
5) With people unwilling (I dont want to be insulting, so I dont say "incapable") to see the reason why automatically tight unit clumping is a bad idea [explained again under 0 above] AND getting the same dumb retorts+ Show Spoiler +
- You dont work at Blizzard, so you dont know everything you need to know about the game. <- If that was a requirement for thinking about the game and forming an opinion we should rather close down TL and all other fansites and just become happy little consumer-zombies without using our brain for thinking. - I trust in Blizzard/Dustin Browder. <- Blind faith in a leader has never been a good thing. You have to ALWAYS think about what he/they is/are doing and if things go badly you need to say STOP. Thinking about stuff and possibilities is GOOD, because it EXERCISES YOUR BRAIN! - Just play BW then. <- [CENSORED] - You gave no clear argument. <- I have explained it so many times and they most often read all of them and yet didnt understand it. Thats a depressing thought, because its actually very easy to understand. - I like the deathball. <- This is the only valid albeit rather simplistic retort.
every time I would say its acceptable to be a little more aggressive. The people "trusting in Blizzard" rarely ever argue with the reasoning either ... which is lazy, dumb or just plain trolling IMO. Thats why I personally am a bit fed up with "the other side of the discussion" and maybe go a bit too far sometimes, but so far no one has given me any counterargument to the math supporting the "tight unit clumping is terrible" point of view.
In addition I really hate the PROPAGANDA that "deathball is good for casuals" ... which it clearly isnt. a. Casuals are overwhelmed by the sheer number of units and forcing them to a 12 unit limit per control group makes it easier. b. No casual can split his Marines like MarineKing; every casual can a-move a bunch of Banelings into a group of Marines and annihilate them.
I would like to add that when army supply in SC2 is from 60 to 100 there are no many clumped units and ironically max number of selected units is around 12 progamers can produce very interesting games. On IEM Singapore Grand Finals between Grubby and Sting in game 3 on Cloud Kingdom there was beautiful micro and that game was awesome.
The problem is that with production boosts and high income rate armies very quickly reach 200/200 thus creating deathballs with clumped up units and battle between two deathballs lasts only 10-20 seconds.
On November 26 2012 21:19 Parcelleus wrote: In response to the OP, micro your units.
Really smart response ... NOT.
The problem with SC2 is that "micro your units" is required in different amounts for the races.
- compare Marines vs Banelings ... using Banelings is easy, splitting Marines against that is hard; it also pushes the required micro on the side of the defender and thus gives the attacker a distinct advantage in addition to already choosing the place for the engagement. Terrible idea and defenders advantage is basically a requirement for an RTS to even up the advantages. - Protoss have their Forcefield and Blink micro early on, but what have the other two races? - How easy is killing units in these tight clumps with Fungal? Really easy! Compared to the counter it is too efficient.
0. Your brain [basic math plus a little imagination and extrapolation skill] can give you "proof" that density of the units matters and affects the game.
This is the silliest thing I have read in this entire thread. There is a reason that you do experiments... not everything plays out in reality the same way that it does while theory-crafting in your head. This is not "proof", it's opinion, and will be that until we actually have a video of people playing against each other with the "better" pathing/clumping.
SC2 is a different game. It can't and shouldn't be the same as Brood War.
If you're going to make the claim that things like limited unit selection, "bad" pathing, and less clumping would make SC2 a better game, you have to show the evidence for it. That's it. Show a video of 2 people playing with the clumping, and show a clear place where it made the players "micro more" or made tanks "more powerful" or whatever your argument is. If internal testing showed not a huge change, I trust it.
On November 26 2012 18:49 Fenris420 wrote: Does anyone have an actual proof that unit formation and/or movement matters?
1) Dustin Browder claims blizzard tested it with no result 2) I recall hearing that HD also tested it, with no result 3) There are no games in this thread that I can find where there is any actual testing going, only unit vs unit videos. 4) The burden of proof lies on the person making the claims, not the ones criticising them. "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence". 5) Why the hateful attitude? Few of the people in here make games, Few of them test games whereas D Browder does both yet that seems to hold no relevance whatsoever. Why is that?
1) His test is clearly retarded. They allow UI tweaks to make it easier to spread but it's still optimal to clump up due to small unit size + long range. Therefore people chose to clump instead of spread.
2) Link please. Can't comment on this one, don't know it.
3) See BW.
4) This might be a fallacy (depending how you define 'extraordinary'. There are different applications with Bayes' Rule.)
5) Because he's stupid. He doesn't even understand the criticisms people are making. Case in point: he thinks people are asking for UI tweaks when what they want is a good reason to spread out.
On November 26 2012 19:23 EatThePath wrote: The discussion is about clumping and pathing and how that affects the game, with BW as a reference point for comparison. It's been laid out in detail throughout the thread how better pathing leads to clumping that is a default best-formation due to the superior DPS even in the face of AoE damage and godly micro.
But if units were ALLOWED to fall into that position at all, it would always be chosen to do so, as it has the DPS advantage. The only exception would be against AoE, but you can still split your units in SC2, it just takes more effort.
On November 26 2012 19:23 EatThePath wrote: Inferior pathing that strings out unit movement and requires micro to assemble a stationary tight clump provides defender advantage directly correlated to the degree of pathing spread and eliminates the very possibility of a deathball (which you should distinguish from an endgame push with a "perfect" army).
This sounds like a much bigger overhaul than Blizzard is prepared to attempt at this stage, but I would be interested to see them try.
Am I the only one who's not bothered by deathballs? While I agree that they need to be broken up, I think that they will start to do this on their own, ESPECIALLY with the new changes in HOTS. Just think of how effective protoss harass is, now with the oracle and tempest. This will definitely discourage protoss deathballing imo. Also, thanks to widow mines, death balls, at least against terran, are not very viable until the late late game. Not only this, but terran units don't deathball well, due to the frailty of marines, the immobility of mech, and the cost of air terran. The get torn apart by well-placed storms/feedbacks, and melted by colossi. Zerg has an equally easy time destroying terran deathballs. This means that neither protoss or terran should be deathballing very much once the game develops a bit more. As for zerg, I think the problem is trickier. We need to definitely nerf fungal growth. I think making it like plague would do this quite nicely. As for infested terran, just make it cost 50, spawn two infested terrans, and have a cooldown. This would allow it to still be effective with small groups of infestors, but not powerful with many of them. Also, zerg units aren't currently very mobile, with the exception of lings and mutas, which I think makes them less effective for harass. As a result, I would recommend the hydra upgrade being moved to lair, and maybe the reworking of the infestor or the viper into a harassment unit rather than a combat spellcaster. This would give zerg more harassment options. With these options, one could definitely nerf broodling fire rate (but give DPS a buff, because currently banshees have higher dps than brood lords + broodlings combined) along turning fungal growth into plague.
On November 26 2012 18:49 Fenris420 wrote: Does anyone have an actual proof that unit formation and/or movement matters?
It would matter for spectating, but I don't think it would matter for much else.
Browder argued about this on the SC2 forums and basically won.
He won how? Because he's a dev? His pedigree is from effing command and conquer. Browder either intentionally misunderstands (I think this is the case) or is too dumb to understand the real complaints people have about unit movement. He just doesn't want to admit people don't like something he does because it's a huge part of SC 2 now and would require lots of work. That would be really humbling for him and his team.
0. Your brain [basic math plus a little imagination and extrapolation skill] can give you "proof" that density of the units matters and affects the game.
This is the silliest thing I have read in this entire thread. There is a reason that you do experiments... not everything plays out in reality the same way that it does while theory-crafting in your head. This is not "proof", it's opinion, and will be that until we actually have a video of people playing against each other with the "better" pathing/clumping.
SC2 is a different game. It can't and shouldn't be the same as Brood War.
If you're going to make the claim that things like limited unit selection, "bad" pathing, and less clumping would make SC2 a better game, you have to show the evidence for it. That's it. Show a video of 2 people playing with the clumping, and show a clear place where it made the players "micro more" or made tanks "more powerful" or whatever your argument is. If internal testing showed not a huge change, I trust it.
You fell straight into the category @Rabiator described in point 5. Well done, you provided no counterargument. You do not have to argue every point you make with a video (unless you are trying to explain something to illogical human beings). The dps density for a marine ball is definitely higher than that of a stalker ball of the same size. Please explain why high dps density and clumping are good for sc2 with actual counterarguments so that we can have a useful discussion.
0. Your brain [basic math plus a little imagination and extrapolation skill] can give you "proof" that density of the units matters and affects the game.
Show a video of 2 people playing with the clumping, and show a clear place where it made the players "micro more" or made tanks "more powerful" or whatever your argument is. If internal testing showed not a huge change, I trust it.
Yesterday on TL there were several streams of BW. And in these games units didn’t clump up.
0. Your brain [basic math plus a little imagination and extrapolation skill] can give you "proof" that density of the units matters and affects the game.
This is the silliest thing I have read in this entire thread. There is a reason that you do experiments... not everything plays out in reality the same way that it does while theory-crafting in your head. This is not "proof", it's opinion, and will be that until we actually have a video of people playing against each other with the "better" pathing/clumping.
SC2 is a different game. It can't and shouldn't be the same as Brood War.
If you're going to make the claim that things like limited unit selection, "bad" pathing, and less clumping would make SC2 a better game, you have to show the evidence for it. That's it. Show a video of 2 people playing with the clumping, and show a clear place where it made the players "micro more" or made tanks "more powerful" or whatever your argument is. If internal testing showed not a huge change, I trust it.
"Better" is subject to opinion, so no one can show you a video proving it.
The one thing I can give you is an example of a tough unit POSSIBLY being too powerful when it comes out early. AugustWeRRa vs. oGsLeader ... GSL 1 Obviously Spunky didnt have enough Stalkers to deal with the BC, but thats the whole point. If you made the Siege Tank more powerful to be more effective in the late game he could easily deal with few opposing units in the early game. You clearly didnt exercise your brain, because you say yourself that you didnt understand this argument ... and yet you tell me that I am wrong?
Oh and I dont have to show you anything if you dont want to exercise your brain. Do you really need me to make a video - which I cant, since I dont have the means to do it - of showing a screen full of Stalkers and counting them and then doing the same for Marines to accept that Marines stack tighter than Stalkers? Really? How this greater density of units affects a fight does NOT require a video, just some thinking about it. - Stalkers and Marines have the same dps individually - more Marines pack into the same area as do Stalkers - Dustin Browder has said it himself in one of the two interviews that players WANT to have tightly packed units because it is more efficient - since Marines cost 50 minerals and Stalkers cost 125/50 you get roughly 3 Marines per Stalker AND you can have all of them fight due to the tight clumping. End result: Terran has 3 times the dps of the Protoss available and Protos HAS TO make up for it with the crutches of Forcefield and Blink. (Stalkers are a bit more durable than Marines to make up for the lower dps, but Medivacs kinda make up for that comparatively low durability of the Marines.) That works fine to a degree at pro-level, but what about casuals? - logical conclusion: crutches should be taken out of the game and the relative increase in dps has to be cut off at some point by limiting the number of units selected and by making them spread out while moving.
"Different game" is an extremely stupid argument, because it might be true at a basic level, but SC2 is a SEQUEL and part of its success is owed to the success of the predecessor AND both games are linked through the story. Kinda silly to argue that it should be totally different and in that case it should have been about Argosian fruitflys battling it out with the Zarthan cows and Martian farmers and not Terrans, Protoss and Zerg.
I am not saying that SC2 makes people "micro more"; quite the contrary ... it makes them micro LESS. Thats rather easy to understand, because you have the ez-mode-1-selection-group-to-rule-them-all controls. Just a 1a is enough and thats terrible.
0. Your brain [basic math plus a little imagination and extrapolation skill] can give you "proof" that density of the units matters and affects the game.
Show a video of 2 people playing with the clumping, and show a clear place where it made the players "micro more" or made tanks "more powerful" or whatever your argument is. If internal testing showed not a huge change, I trust it.
Yesterday on TL there were several streams of BW. And in these games units didn’t clump up.
I think he totally didnt understand anything and thinks that I am saying "clumping makes people micro more" - which it doesnt. BW movement and the 12 units per control group makes people micro more, because every unit is important and not the "clump dps". It is the "2 Zerglings vs. 2 Zerglings" example which I always give; when you see such a battle and one player wins the fight and kept both his Zerglings alive you have seen true micro. With 200 army clumps it is just "shift a big chunk of units into a better concave"-boring kind of micro.
On October 24 2012 02:20 Zoltan wrote: well Mr. Fuckbrowder, I'm not a pro. I'm just a masters league dude with 80 apm.
As a high Diamond Terran player with anywhere from 150 to 170 average SC2 APM, this depresses me. There's definitely something missing in my play that's keeping me from Masters... T_T
Anywho, even those video examples show what DB was talking about: once the units reach their destination, they tend to clump up anyway. Given that players almost never just command their units to walk across the map with a single action, there's going to be a chain of destinations your army reaches, meaning the army is still going to remain mostly clumped in a real game situation.
Even if there could be a solution to the clumping issue without sacrificing the superior unit pathing AI, these proposed solutions from the community are not it IMO.
On November 26 2012 20:10 Rabiator wrote: 0. Your brain [basic math plus a little imagination and extrapolation skill] can give you "proof" that density of the units matters and affects the game.
Just look at the Stalker and the Marine. They both have somewhat "similar" dps [Stalker: 7 dps; Marine: 6.9 dps; SOURCE], BUT they differ in size. So it is logical that you can have a higher "dps per area" from a clump of Marines than you get from a clump of Stalkers and yet they start at the same individual dps. That is not debatable and based on math, but what you can have an "opinion" on is if it affects the gameplay negatively or not. The "units per 1 square" is not a value we have, because the size really isnt a known value. So there cant really be precise calculations as to how high the unit density "dps per area" is for each unit unless Blizzard does it. You might be able to create a tiny map and completely fill it with units of type X and then count them, but thats a braindead work I am not willing to do. The point is that there is a big "uncertainty factor" injected into the game balance and this cant be good.
Tight clumps of units have also nerfed Siege Tanks somewhat from their BW version, to the point that you might be able to kill a Siege Tank with some infantry without even losing a single unit yourself. In BW it was rather impossible to get 20 Marines into range of a Siege Tank without taking at least one shot and having a Marine or two die in the process, BUT the "perfectly tight" unit movement allows for far greater numbers of Marines to bum rush the tank - who gets 1 shot off without killing any unit (yay ... 35 damage vs. non-armored doesnt even kill a Marine and barely kills a Zergling!!) - and kill it in the blink of an eye. This is basically the downfall of mech, because the backbone unit can be rushed by too many units far too fast and killed without many losses. With a limited number of units in a control group AND forcing them to spread out while moving, you couldnt bring that many infantry in range easily, so you would actually need to think about how to do it.
If you increase the combat values of the Siege Tank (either health or damage output ... doesnt really matter which) you will make the tank far too powerful in a "few vs few" situation. This clearly shows that it is a terrible idea to have a big difference in balancing between "few vs. few" and "many vs many". Unit density is at the core here and it should NOT be impossible to get a high unit density, BUT it should come at a cost (potentially losing a big chunk to AoE) AND require work from the player instead of coming "automatically".
I do not disagree with you about unit sizes. I disagree with the conclusions you are making.
Just because there is a preceived correlation between pathing and "what is wrong with sc2" doesnt make it so. You need to prove it by experimentation.
Browder did not report how his experiments were carried out, nor what the parameters included. If he did, there would be much less speculation about how valid those tests are and why. This is his fault, but the same rule applies to everyone else
Either way, it is the only data we have and it says your theory is incorrect.
4) Both sides have claimed a lot of things, so you cant really argue that way.
There are no "sides". I am asking you to back your arguments up. I don't have any of my own, but I am sceptical to this kind of conclusion. If you can prove to me that pathing solves an observable problem, I will happily support your claims.
You dont work at Blizzard, so you dont know everything you need to know about the game. <- If that was a requirement for thinking about the game and forming an opinion we should rather close down TL and all other fansites and just become happy little consumer-zombies without using our brain for thinking.
Blizzard has access to data that you do not, but that doesn't bother you when you are coming to your conclusions? Obviously you are entitled to an oppinion, but why would that mean your oppinion is suddenly more valid than the blizzard one, when you clearly have less data available.
I trust in Blizzard/Dustin Browder. <- Blind faith in a leader has never been a good thing. You have to ALWAYS think about what he/they is/are doing and if things go badly you need to say STOP. Thinking about stuff and possibilities is GOOD, because it EXERCISES YOUR BRAIN!
You have proposed zero concrete evidence, only speculation, yet you complain when people would rather take Blizzards side instead of your own because that would be blind faith? I am not defending Blizzard, I am asking why people feel such need to criticise them for what they do.
This is what I wrote in a post earlier in the thread:
You could essentially achieve the same results by arbitrarily restricting units from firing depth wise in a formation. Say that units block LoS of each other. You could also reduce the length of each unit of "range". That effectively does the same thing as just increasing the size of all units, without distorting the scale of the game. You could also have a slight "penetration" effect from single target units, so that any unit standing behind a unit would take 25% of the damage or something, making deep formations less attractive to wide ones.
I can't prove that these are theories that will work, but I think they will. So how do you argue against that?
On November 27 2012 03:52 theSAiNT wrote: 1) His test is clearly retarded. They allow UI tweaks to make it easier to spread but it's still optimal to clump up due to small unit size + long range. Therefore people chose to clump instead of spread.
2) Link please. Can't comment on this one, don't know it.
3) See BW.
4) This might be a fallacy (depending how you define 'extraordinary'. There are different applications with Bayes' Rule.)
5) Because he's stupid. He doesn't even understand the criticisms people are making. Case in point: he thinks people are asking for UI tweaks when what they want is a good reason to spread out.
1) I agree with you here. However, that has nothing to do with unit pathing now does it? I did not follow the blizzard thread super carefully, but it was my interpretation that they tested the kind of unit movement suggested by the community. A lot. What I gathered is that once you start moving these formations around in a normal game you eventually disable the magic box anyway.
So in the end, people do not chose to clump up, they simply do not need to split up. Unit pathing and formations then have no bearing on their play? Or do you think people would bother clumping up if they could with this new system?
2) I will have to concede this point, I can't find the video. All I know is that HD alledegly tried it and it didnt seem to matter much. Maybe someone else knows.
3) Broodwar is an isometric game with no physics. Unit pathing was terrible and I do not think that we want to have any of that back. I think another big contributor to units not being as clumped up then would be that you only moved 12 units at the time. The game of BW would split your units for you because of how the engine was designed. It is an oft used argument, but it is true. Sc2 is not the same as BW. What works for brood war might not work for Sc2. I am unsure of how we would even go about trying to prove in which ways you can compare the two.
4) What I think Mr Sagan means is that exceptional proof is simply put proof that is likely true. All I am saying is that I feel like the unit pathing is viewed as a silver bullet for sc2 and in order for me to believe that you will need more than just a video of units that are not clumped up.
5) If you look at the original battle.net thread, you will see that he gets pretty much all forms of critisism. People were asking for unit movement changes, not more reasons to spread out. The topic even explicitly states this.
The reason you have death balls is because you don't need to spread. In what way does non clumpy unit movement solve this? People already complain quite a lot about having to spread bio versus protoss, which is precisely the kind of situation that you are advocating. Splitting and overall positioning in that way is mostly a mechanical challenge, where as positioning a siege tank is a strategical one.
If you force units to not clump, you are removing the challenge but bring nothing else back. Now MMM will stomp siege tanks and colossus and storms all day because they are presplit. So you want to increase the radius of the splash? Then you are back to square one. The only difference is that the units now occupy a larger part of the ground they stand on. Maybe that is a good thing for the esthetics, but honestly I don't feel like it is important for gameplay at all. The one thing that I would like is for the maps to be a part of this. With chokes and open spaces in different positions, you can be more succesful in the right engagement. Cloud Kingdom does this well, Entombed Valley not at all.
I think the damage output is just too high, that is why we call them death balls. There is no time to position units or take advantage of things. In that sense, forced unit formations would only be a bandaid fix.
On November 26 2012 20:10 Rabiator wrote: 0. Your brain [basic math plus a little imagination and extrapolation skill] can give you "proof" that density of the units matters and affects the game.
Just look at the Stalker and the Marine. They both have somewhat "similar" dps [Stalker: 7 dps; Marine: 6.9 dps; SOURCE], BUT they differ in size. So it is logical that you can have a higher "dps per area" from a clump of Marines than you get from a clump of Stalkers and yet they start at the same individual dps. That is not debatable and based on math, but what you can have an "opinion" on is if it affects the gameplay negatively or not. The "units per 1 square" is not a value we have, because the size really isnt a known value. So there cant really be precise calculations as to how high the unit density "dps per area" is for each unit unless Blizzard does it. You might be able to create a tiny map and completely fill it with units of type X and then count them, but thats a braindead work I am not willing to do. The point is that there is a big "uncertainty factor" injected into the game balance and this cant be good.
Tight clumps of units have also nerfed Siege Tanks somewhat from their BW version, to the point that you might be able to kill a Siege Tank with some infantry without even losing a single unit yourself. In BW it was rather impossible to get 20 Marines into range of a Siege Tank without taking at least one shot and having a Marine or two die in the process, BUT the "perfectly tight" unit movement allows for far greater numbers of Marines to bum rush the tank - who gets 1 shot off without killing any unit (yay ... 35 damage vs. non-armored doesnt even kill a Marine and barely kills a Zergling!!) - and kill it in the blink of an eye. This is basically the downfall of mech, because the backbone unit can be rushed by too many units far too fast and killed without many losses. With a limited number of units in a control group AND forcing them to spread out while moving, you couldnt bring that many infantry in range easily, so you would actually need to think about how to do it.
If you increase the combat values of the Siege Tank (either health or damage output ... doesnt really matter which) you will make the tank far too powerful in a "few vs few" situation. This clearly shows that it is a terrible idea to have a big difference in balancing between "few vs. few" and "many vs many". Unit density is at the core here and it should NOT be impossible to get a high unit density, BUT it should come at a cost (potentially losing a big chunk to AoE) AND require work from the player instead of coming "automatically".
3) Broodwar is an isometric game with no physics. Unit pathing was terrible and I do not think that we want to have any of that back.
What was so terrible in BW unit pathing? Aside from zealots moving in Benny Hill style(which is imho funny and not terrible).
For me if the choice is from BW pathing and SC2 pathing I would choose BW.
I dont watch many Dota 2 and LOL games so I can't be sure, but unit pathing in those games looks OK.
On November 26 2012 20:10 Rabiator wrote: 0. Your brain [basic math plus a little imagination and extrapolation skill] can give you "proof" that density of the units matters and affects the game.
Just look at the Stalker and the Marine. They both have somewhat "similar" dps [Stalker: 7 dps; Marine: 6.9 dps; SOURCE], BUT they differ in size. So it is logical that you can have a higher "dps per area" from a clump of Marines than you get from a clump of Stalkers and yet they start at the same individual dps. That is not debatable and based on math, but what you can have an "opinion" on is if it affects the gameplay negatively or not. The "units per 1 square" is not a value we have, because the size really isnt a known value. So there cant really be precise calculations as to how high the unit density "dps per area" is for each unit unless Blizzard does it. You might be able to create a tiny map and completely fill it with units of type X and then count them, but thats a braindead work I am not willing to do. The point is that there is a big "uncertainty factor" injected into the game balance and this cant be good.
Tight clumps of units have also nerfed Siege Tanks somewhat from their BW version, to the point that you might be able to kill a Siege Tank with some infantry without even losing a single unit yourself. In BW it was rather impossible to get 20 Marines into range of a Siege Tank without taking at least one shot and having a Marine or two die in the process, BUT the "perfectly tight" unit movement allows for far greater numbers of Marines to bum rush the tank - who gets 1 shot off without killing any unit (yay ... 35 damage vs. non-armored doesnt even kill a Marine and barely kills a Zergling!!) - and kill it in the blink of an eye. This is basically the downfall of mech, because the backbone unit can be rushed by too many units far too fast and killed without many losses. With a limited number of units in a control group AND forcing them to spread out while moving, you couldnt bring that many infantry in range easily, so you would actually need to think about how to do it.
If you increase the combat values of the Siege Tank (either health or damage output ... doesnt really matter which) you will make the tank far too powerful in a "few vs few" situation. This clearly shows that it is a terrible idea to have a big difference in balancing between "few vs. few" and "many vs many". Unit density is at the core here and it should NOT be impossible to get a high unit density, BUT it should come at a cost (potentially losing a big chunk to AoE) AND require work from the player instead of coming "automatically".
I do not disagree with you about unit sizes. I disagree with the conclusions you are making.
Just because there is a preceived correlation between pathing and "what is wrong with sc2" doesnt make it so. You need to prove it by experimentation.
Browder did not report how his experiments were carried out, nor what the parameters included. If he did, there would be much less speculation about how valid those tests are and why. This is his fault, but the same rule applies to everyone else
Either way, it is the only data we have and it says your theory is incorrect.
The thing is: a. Blizzard has NOT proven their theory by examples either (and neither has any of the "trust in Blizzard" people) no matter what you claim. They didnt say how they tested it and you said it yourself ... and yet you claim that is "the only data we have"? b. My reasoning is quite simply that tight movement and unlimited unit selection create a "fluctuating balance" between units of type a and b according to the number of units involved and this makes balancing stupidly hard. My reasoning also claims that the deathball is making the game boring to watch simply because you cant efficiently siege your enemy. My reasoning also claims that Blizzard is making their own job of balancing units and creating fun units harder because of the existence of auto-clumping; the examples of "super-strong" attacks and abilities in BW shows that quite clearly. They were OP, but acceptable since they never affected a big chunk of your opponents army.
I dont need a video for to show that more Marines can be stacked into the same space compared to Stalkers. The dps of the Marine clump will be higher per area of units. You are agreeing with me here that there is a fluctuation in balance and come to the conclusion that it isnt as bad. That is your right, but you are continuing to tell me that I am wrong without any proof yourself.
I dont need a video to "prove" that the damage of the Siege Tank had to be nerfed simply because it would have annihilated too much stuff with the BW values. The consequence is that in fewer numbers they dont really do their job anymore and dont kill enough before getting killed themselves easily. This is clearly a consequence of tight unit movement and also unlimited unit selection.
The big issue is that it adds a degree of uncertainty to the game which could be taken out if the unit selection was limited to 12 and units would spread out while moving. Sure you have the same amount of units on the map, but its all about "how many units can affect each other?" and thats where the problem starts.
If TOO MANY small units can shoot a big unit - Siege Tank, Thor, Carrier, Battlecruiser - the big ones die too fast and arent worth it. Logical and trivial conclusion which requires no video.
Trying to fix this "big units seem to be made of paper" problem by making them tougher or stronger doesnt work, because they will get too tough if you rush them out and overwhelm the opponent easily.
I also dont need a video to describe how the deathball (any tight army) works. You either think its great OR you are like me and think its terribly boring.
I also dont need a video to tell you that positional play and siegeing your opponent isnt worth it because of the deathball, because hey, Dustin Browder said it himself ... the deathball is the most efficient way and it is a trivial logic which says that this focused damage is more efficient than spreading out your forces. So the deathball - which essentially IS tight movement and unlimited unit selection - LIMITS STRATEGIES. It ultimately boils down to ... - Do you want a game with big armies dancing around each other and eventually erasing each other in a big 30 second battle? OR - Do you want constant small and medium sized engagements all over with nifty tricks being used to dislodge a fortified position in a constantly ongoing war? - Do you want one strategy only to be viable or more than one? - Do you want interesting and potentially overpowered abilities which dont matter because they are only rarely overpowered?
The point is that automatic tight unit movement and unlimited selection make it TOO EASY to form a concentrated group of units, but it would be better if ... - you had the OPTION (instead of getting it automatically) to clump your units through MICRO and - you could be penalized for doing so by strong AoE attacks and - you could be as efficient with a somewhat spread out army. I dont need to prove anything here, because most of it is pure math and quite trivial.
With the post (which is now above the above post) in mind, I've just tested a game of BW to confirm the effectiveness of unit pathing.
Here is what happened when I tried to move a control group of zerglings:
- I initially spread them out in a concave, as if they were about to surround an unsuspecting enemy. - I gave the move command, and my zerglings began forming a line. (the concave shape was gone...) - The zerglings at the front moved smoothly. - The ones at the back bumped with the zerglings in the front. (Don't even ask how...they just did) - This made the zergling stop for some fractions of a second, as if it was stunned. - The zergling at the front kept moving without being affected.
This actually made my army seem spread out, because my control group of zerglings didn't move as one - the ones at the back bumped with the ones at front, stopped for some micro seconds and then moved on. This bump caused a space to develop between the zergling at the front (which didn't bump into anything).
A video might be better, but I hope my limited english conveyed the picture.
So, ladies and gentlemen, the unit pathing in BW is buggy. The "spread-out" doesn't seem intentional... Not surprising, considering mutalisk stacking is also a bug, along with other bugs that became so crucial to BW micro.
On November 27 2012 19:58 Unshapely wrote: With the post (which is now above the above post) in mind, I've just testing a game of BW to confirm the effectiveness of unit pathing.
Here is what happened when I tried to move a control group of zerglings:
- I initially spread them out in a concave, as if they were about to surround an unsuspecting enemy. - I gave the move command, and my zerglings began forming a line. (the concave shape was gone...) - The zerglings at the front moved smoothly. - The ones at the back bumped with the zergling in the front. (Don't even ask how...they just did) - This made the zergling stop for some fractions of a second, as if it was stunned. - The zergling at the front kept moving without being affected.
This actually made my army seem spread out, because my control group of zerglings didn't move as one - the ones at the back bumped with the ones at front, stopped for some micro seconds and then moved on. This bump caused a space to develop between the zergling at the front (which didn't bump into anything).
A video might be better, but I hope my limited english conveyed the picture.
So, ladies and gentlemen, the unit pathing in BW is buggy. The "spread-out" doesn't seem intentional... Not surprising, considering mutalisk stacking is also a bug, along with other bugs that became so crucial to BW micro.
But the end result is that units are spread out in BW?
OK since you are talking about bad and buggy animation look at Thors in SC2. They constantly penetrate (don’t know which better word to use) into each other.
Yes, that is the core reason why units are spread out in BW. They just don't move as one (in SC2, units move really smoothly). I've just tested this with marines as well, and a couple of larger units such as dragoons.
On November 27 2012 20:38 Unshapely wrote: Yes, that is the core reason why units are spread out in BW. They just don't move as one (in SC2, units move really smoothly). I've just tested this with marines as well, and a couple of larger units such as dragoons.
In that case in SC2 Blizzard should have done smooth movement but kept end result of movement from BW (spread out units).
On November 26 2012 20:10 Rabiator wrote: 0. Your brain [basic math plus a little imagination and extrapolation skill] can give you "proof" that density of the units matters and affects the game.
Just look at the Stalker and the Marine. They both have somewhat "similar" dps [Stalker: 7 dps; Marine: 6.9 dps; SOURCE], BUT they differ in size. So it is logical that you can have a higher "dps per area" from a clump of Marines than you get from a clump of Stalkers and yet they start at the same individual dps. That is not debatable and based on math, but what you can have an "opinion" on is if it affects the gameplay negatively or not. The "units per 1 square" is not a value we have, because the size really isnt a known value. So there cant really be precise calculations as to how high the unit density "dps per area" is for each unit unless Blizzard does it. You might be able to create a tiny map and completely fill it with units of type X and then count them, but thats a braindead work I am not willing to do. The point is that there is a big "uncertainty factor" injected into the game balance and this cant be good.
Tight clumps of units have also nerfed Siege Tanks somewhat from their BW version, to the point that you might be able to kill a Siege Tank with some infantry without even losing a single unit yourself. In BW it was rather impossible to get 20 Marines into range of a Siege Tank without taking at least one shot and having a Marine or two die in the process, BUT the "perfectly tight" unit movement allows for far greater numbers of Marines to bum rush the tank - who gets 1 shot off without killing any unit (yay ... 35 damage vs. non-armored doesnt even kill a Marine and barely kills a Zergling!!) - and kill it in the blink of an eye. This is basically the downfall of mech, because the backbone unit can be rushed by too many units far too fast and killed without many losses. With a limited number of units in a control group AND forcing them to spread out while moving, you couldnt bring that many infantry in range easily, so you would actually need to think about how to do it.
If you increase the combat values of the Siege Tank (either health or damage output ... doesnt really matter which) you will make the tank far too powerful in a "few vs few" situation. This clearly shows that it is a terrible idea to have a big difference in balancing between "few vs. few" and "many vs many". Unit density is at the core here and it should NOT be impossible to get a high unit density, BUT it should come at a cost (potentially losing a big chunk to AoE) AND require work from the player instead of coming "automatically".
I do not disagree with you about unit sizes. I disagree with the conclusions you are making.
Just because there is a preceived correlation between pathing and "what is wrong with sc2" doesnt make it so. You need to prove it by experimentation.
Browder did not report how his experiments were carried out, nor what the parameters included. If he did, there would be much less speculation about how valid those tests are and why. This is his fault, but the same rule applies to everyone else
Either way, it is the only data we have and it says your theory is incorrect.
The thing is: a. Blizzard has NOT proven their theory by examples either (and neither has any of the "trust in Blizzard" people) no matter what you claim. They didnt say how they tested it and you said it yourself ... and yet you claim that is "the only data we have"? b. My reasoning is quite simply that tight movement and unlimited unit selection create a "fluctuating balance" between units of type a and b according to the number of units involved and this makes balancing stupidly hard. My reasoning also claims that the deathball is making the game boring to watch simply because you cant efficiently siege your enemy. My reasoning also claims that Blizzard is making their own job of balancing units and creating fun units harder because of the existence of auto-clumping; the examples of "super-strong" attacks and abilities in BW shows that quite clearly. They were OP, but acceptable since they never affected a big chunk of your opponents army.
I dont need a video for to show that more Marines can be stacked into the same space compared to Stalkers. The dps of the Marine clump will be higher per area of units. You are agreeing with me here that there is a fluctuation in balance and come to the conclusion that it isnt as bad. That is your right, but you are continuing to tell me that I am wrong without any proof yourself.
I dont need a video to "prove" that the damage of the Siege Tank had to be nerfed simply because it would have annihilated too much stuff with the BW values. The consequence is that in fewer numbers they dont really do their job anymore and dont kill enough before getting killed themselves easily. This is clearly a consequence of tight unit movement and also unlimited unit selection.
The big issue is that it adds a degree of uncertainty to the game which could be taken out if the unit selection was limited to 12 and units would spread out while moving. Sure you have the same amount of units on the map, but its all about "how many units can affect each other?" and thats where the problem starts.
If TOO MANY small units can shoot a big unit - Siege Tank, Thor, Carrier, Battlecruiser - the big ones die too fast and arent worth it. Logical and trivial conclusion which requires no video.
I also dont need a video to tell you that positional play and siegeing your opponent isnt worth it because of the deathball, because hey, Dustin Browder said it himself ... the deathball is the most efficient way and it is a trivial logic which says that this focused damage is more efficient than spreading out your forces. So the deathball - which essentially IS tight movement and unlimited unit selection - LIMITS STRATEGIES. It ultimately boils down to ... - Do you want a game with big armies dancing around each other and eventually erasing each other in a big 30 second battle? OR - Do you want constant small and medium sized engagements all over with nifty tricks being used to dislodge a fortified position in a constantly ongoing war? - Do you want one strategy only to be viable or more than one? - Do you want interesting and potentially overpowered abilities which dont matter because they are only rarely overpowered?
I dont need to prove anything here, because most of it is pure math and quite trivial.
I don't know why you are bringing up Stalkers vs. Marines. Clearly the game has already been balanced with this in mind (you even atested this with siege tanks being nerfed). The same can be applied to the "too many small units can shoot a big unit" argument you're making. And even if there is a balance issue, this can all be fixed by nerfing or buffing units. Even in the worst case scenario, you would just make marines the slightest bit larger so there is less concentrated DPS, they would still clump but do slightly less DPS, ergo the clumping is not the issue.
Regarding the 'fluctuating balance' and 'uncertainty', is this not still dependant on the player's ability? If the player is consistent in the way he engages, then how can there be uncertainty? And If the player is always clumping his units to get maximum damage, then how is this uncertain? And if he isn't, then is he not disadvantaging himself (if as you say clumping is the most efficient method)? On this same train of thought, have you thought perhaps that this added variable of proper micro/movement of your army may be increasing the skill ceiling by providing more micro opportunities, since it takes a better player to be consistent and engage in the correct manner? Keep in mind that in SC2 Blizzard has given you the ability to both clump your units and spread them out if the situation calls for it and you have the APM for it (obviously, and no different to your return to 12 unit selection suggestion).
So the only problem as far as I can see - if there is one - is the somewhat lack in incentive to keep your units spread rather than a clump. Certain situations call for it, such as marine v banelings, mutalisk magic boxing thor, X v fungal growth/emp/storm, but since people still complain in threads like these about clumped armies, perhaps it isn't enough. HOTS may fix this with Widow Mines and Blinding Cloud. But either way, the pathing itself is not the issue (on the contrary, it is part of the solution if there is enough incentive for both forms of movement, since pre-split units like in BW do not give you this kind of luxury).
On November 26 2012 20:10 Rabiator wrote: 0. Your brain [basic math plus a little imagination and extrapolation skill] can give you "proof" that density of the units matters and affects the game.
Just look at the Stalker and the Marine. They both have somewhat "similar" dps [Stalker: 7 dps; Marine: 6.9 dps; SOURCE], BUT they differ in size. So it is logical that you can have a higher "dps per area" from a clump of Marines than you get from a clump of Stalkers and yet they start at the same individual dps. That is not debatable and based on math, but what you can have an "opinion" on is if it affects the gameplay negatively or not. The "units per 1 square" is not a value we have, because the size really isnt a known value. So there cant really be precise calculations as to how high the unit density "dps per area" is for each unit unless Blizzard does it. You might be able to create a tiny map and completely fill it with units of type X and then count them, but thats a braindead work I am not willing to do. The point is that there is a big "uncertainty factor" injected into the game balance and this cant be good.
Tight clumps of units have also nerfed Siege Tanks somewhat from their BW version, to the point that you might be able to kill a Siege Tank with some infantry without even losing a single unit yourself. In BW it was rather impossible to get 20 Marines into range of a Siege Tank without taking at least one shot and having a Marine or two die in the process, BUT the "perfectly tight" unit movement allows for far greater numbers of Marines to bum rush the tank - who gets 1 shot off without killing any unit (yay ... 35 damage vs. non-armored doesnt even kill a Marine and barely kills a Zergling!!) - and kill it in the blink of an eye. This is basically the downfall of mech, because the backbone unit can be rushed by too many units far too fast and killed without many losses. With a limited number of units in a control group AND forcing them to spread out while moving, you couldnt bring that many infantry in range easily, so you would actually need to think about how to do it.
If you increase the combat values of the Siege Tank (either health or damage output ... doesnt really matter which) you will make the tank far too powerful in a "few vs few" situation. This clearly shows that it is a terrible idea to have a big difference in balancing between "few vs. few" and "many vs many". Unit density is at the core here and it should NOT be impossible to get a high unit density, BUT it should come at a cost (potentially losing a big chunk to AoE) AND require work from the player instead of coming "automatically".
I do not disagree with you about unit sizes. I disagree with the conclusions you are making.
Just because there is a preceived correlation between pathing and "what is wrong with sc2" doesnt make it so. You need to prove it by experimentation.
Browder did not report how his experiments were carried out, nor what the parameters included. If he did, there would be much less speculation about how valid those tests are and why. This is his fault, but the same rule applies to everyone else
Either way, it is the only data we have and it says your theory is incorrect.
The thing is: a. Blizzard has NOT proven their theory by examples either (and neither has any of the "trust in Blizzard" people) no matter what you claim. They didnt say how they tested it and you said it yourself ... and yet you claim that is "the only data we have"? b. My reasoning is quite simply that tight movement and unlimited unit selection create a "fluctuating balance" between units of type a and b according to the number of units involved and this makes balancing stupidly hard. My reasoning also claims that the deathball is making the game boring to watch simply because you cant efficiently siege your enemy. My reasoning also claims that Blizzard is making their own job of balancing units and creating fun units harder because of the existence of auto-clumping; the examples of "super-strong" attacks and abilities in BW shows that quite clearly. They were OP, but acceptable since they never affected a big chunk of your opponents army.
I dont need a video for to show that more Marines can be stacked into the same space compared to Stalkers. The dps of the Marine clump will be higher per area of units. You are agreeing with me here that there is a fluctuation in balance and come to the conclusion that it isnt as bad. That is your right, but you are continuing to tell me that I am wrong without any proof yourself.
I dont need a video to "prove" that the damage of the Siege Tank had to be nerfed simply because it would have annihilated too much stuff with the BW values. The consequence is that in fewer numbers they dont really do their job anymore and dont kill enough before getting killed themselves easily. This is clearly a consequence of tight unit movement and also unlimited unit selection.
The big issue is that it adds a degree of uncertainty to the game which could be taken out if the unit selection was limited to 12 and units would spread out while moving. Sure you have the same amount of units on the map, but its all about "how many units can affect each other?" and thats where the problem starts.
If TOO MANY small units can shoot a big unit - Siege Tank, Thor, Carrier, Battlecruiser - the big ones die too fast and arent worth it. Logical and trivial conclusion which requires no video.
Trying to fix this "big units seem to be made of paper" problem by making them tougher or stronger doesnt work, because they will get too tough if you rush them out and overwhelm the opponent easily.
I also dont need a video to describe how the deathball (any tight army) works. You either think its great OR you are like me and think its terribly boring.
I also dont need a video to tell you that positional play and siegeing your opponent isnt worth it because of the deathball, because hey, Dustin Browder said it himself ... the deathball is the most efficient way and it is a trivial logic which says that this focused damage is more efficient than spreading out your forces. So the deathball - which essentially IS tight movement and unlimited unit selection - LIMITS STRATEGIES. It ultimately boils down to ... - Do you want a game with big armies dancing around each other and eventually erasing each other in a big 30 second battle? OR - Do you want constant small and medium sized engagements all over with nifty tricks being used to dislodge a fortified position in a constantly ongoing war? - Do you want one strategy only to be viable or more than one? - Do you want interesting and potentially overpowered abilities which dont matter because they are only rarely overpowered?
The point is that automatic tight unit movement and unlimited selection make it TOO EASY to form a concentrated group of units, but it would be better if ... - you had the OPTION (instead of getting it automatically) to clump your units through MICRO and - you could be penalized for doing so by strong AoE attacks and - you could be as efficient with a somewhat spread out army. I dont need to prove anything here, because most of it is pure math and quite trivial.
Why do you keep bringing up marines and stalkers? It has nothing to do with anything he's saying.
What he is saying is you need to PROVE THAT MOVEMENT CHANGES WILL MAKE A DIFFERENCE IN HOW THE GAME ACTUALLY PLAYS OUT. Prove that these tweaks actually change something in a real-game situation, and demonstrate how those changes play out.
What Browder has mentioned (And HD as well after his testing) is that due to the way players move their armies across the map, even with movement tweaks the game looks and plays out essentially the same. The burden of proof is ON YOU to prove that it makes a difference.
On November 26 2012 20:10 Rabiator wrote: 0. Your brain [basic math plus a little imagination and extrapolation skill] can give you "proof" that density of the units matters and affects the game.
Just look at the Stalker and the Marine. They both have somewhat "similar" dps [Stalker: 7 dps; Marine: 6.9 dps; SOURCE], BUT they differ in size. So it is logical that you can have a higher "dps per area" from a clump of Marines than you get from a clump of Stalkers and yet they start at the same individual dps. That is not debatable and based on math, but what you can have an "opinion" on is if it affects the gameplay negatively or not. The "units per 1 square" is not a value we have, because the size really isnt a known value. So there cant really be precise calculations as to how high the unit density "dps per area" is for each unit unless Blizzard does it. You might be able to create a tiny map and completely fill it with units of type X and then count them, but thats a braindead work I am not willing to do. The point is that there is a big "uncertainty factor" injected into the game balance and this cant be good.
Tight clumps of units have also nerfed Siege Tanks somewhat from their BW version, to the point that you might be able to kill a Siege Tank with some infantry without even losing a single unit yourself. In BW it was rather impossible to get 20 Marines into range of a Siege Tank without taking at least one shot and having a Marine or two die in the process, BUT the "perfectly tight" unit movement allows for far greater numbers of Marines to bum rush the tank - who gets 1 shot off without killing any unit (yay ... 35 damage vs. non-armored doesnt even kill a Marine and barely kills a Zergling!!) - and kill it in the blink of an eye. This is basically the downfall of mech, because the backbone unit can be rushed by too many units far too fast and killed without many losses. With a limited number of units in a control group AND forcing them to spread out while moving, you couldnt bring that many infantry in range easily, so you would actually need to think about how to do it.
If you increase the combat values of the Siege Tank (either health or damage output ... doesnt really matter which) you will make the tank far too powerful in a "few vs few" situation. This clearly shows that it is a terrible idea to have a big difference in balancing between "few vs. few" and "many vs many". Unit density is at the core here and it should NOT be impossible to get a high unit density, BUT it should come at a cost (potentially losing a big chunk to AoE) AND require work from the player instead of coming "automatically".
I do not disagree with you about unit sizes. I disagree with the conclusions you are making.
Just because there is a preceived correlation between pathing and "what is wrong with sc2" doesnt make it so. You need to prove it by experimentation.
Browder did not report how his experiments were carried out, nor what the parameters included. If he did, there would be much less speculation about how valid those tests are and why. This is his fault, but the same rule applies to everyone else
Either way, it is the only data we have and it says your theory is incorrect.
The thing is: a. Blizzard has NOT proven their theory by examples either (and neither has any of the "trust in Blizzard" people) no matter what you claim. They didnt say how they tested it and you said it yourself ... and yet you claim that is "the only data we have"? b. My reasoning is quite simply that tight movement and unlimited unit selection create a "fluctuating balance" between units of type a and b according to the number of units involved and this makes balancing stupidly hard. My reasoning also claims that the deathball is making the game boring to watch simply because you cant efficiently siege your enemy. My reasoning also claims that Blizzard is making their own job of balancing units and creating fun units harder because of the existence of auto-clumping; the examples of "super-strong" attacks and abilities in BW shows that quite clearly. They were OP, but acceptable since they never affected a big chunk of your opponents army.
I dont need a video for to show that more Marines can be stacked into the same space compared to Stalkers. The dps of the Marine clump will be higher per area of units. You are agreeing with me here that there is a fluctuation in balance and come to the conclusion that it isnt as bad. That is your right, but you are continuing to tell me that I am wrong without any proof yourself.
I dont need a video to "prove" that the damage of the Siege Tank had to be nerfed simply because it would have annihilated too much stuff with the BW values. The consequence is that in fewer numbers they dont really do their job anymore and dont kill enough before getting killed themselves easily. This is clearly a consequence of tight unit movement and also unlimited unit selection.
The big issue is that it adds a degree of uncertainty to the game which could be taken out if the unit selection was limited to 12 and units would spread out while moving. Sure you have the same amount of units on the map, but its all about "how many units can affect each other?" and thats where the problem starts.
If TOO MANY small units can shoot a big unit - Siege Tank, Thor, Carrier, Battlecruiser - the big ones die too fast and arent worth it. Logical and trivial conclusion which requires no video.
Trying to fix this "big units seem to be made of paper" problem by making them tougher or stronger doesnt work, because they will get too tough if you rush them out and overwhelm the opponent easily.
I also dont need a video to describe how the deathball (any tight army) works. You either think its great OR you are like me and think its terribly boring.
I also dont need a video to tell you that positional play and siegeing your opponent isnt worth it because of the deathball, because hey, Dustin Browder said it himself ... the deathball is the most efficient way and it is a trivial logic which says that this focused damage is more efficient than spreading out your forces. So the deathball - which essentially IS tight movement and unlimited unit selection - LIMITS STRATEGIES. It ultimately boils down to ... - Do you want a game with big armies dancing around each other and eventually erasing each other in a big 30 second battle? OR - Do you want constant small and medium sized engagements all over with nifty tricks being used to dislodge a fortified position in a constantly ongoing war? - Do you want one strategy only to be viable or more than one? - Do you want interesting and potentially overpowered abilities which dont matter because they are only rarely overpowered?
The point is that automatic tight unit movement and unlimited selection make it TOO EASY to form a concentrated group of units, but it would be better if ... - you had the OPTION (instead of getting it automatically) to clump your units through MICRO and - you could be penalized for doing so by strong AoE attacks and - you could be as efficient with a somewhat spread out army. I dont need to prove anything here, because most of it is pure math and quite trivial.
Why do you keep bringing up marines and stalkers? It has nothing to do with anything he's saying.
What he is saying is you need to PROVE THAT MOVEMENT CHANGES WILL MAKE A DIFFERENCE IN HOW THE GAME ACTUALLY PLAYS OUT. Prove that these tweaks actually change something in a real-game situation, and demonstrate how those changes play out.
What Browder has mentioned (And HD as well after his testing) is that due to the way players move their armies across the map, even with movement tweaks the game looks and plays out essentially the same. The burden of proof is ON YOU to prove that it makes a difference.
Stop this 'burden of proof' rhetoric. All it means is that you're more inherently biased towards one point of view than another.
Clearly unit movement makes a difference to gameplay. Look at BW. Or any other RTS game which has different unit movements to SC2, e.g. C&C, CoH, DoW, War3 etc. Unit movement affects gameplay. There is no 'burden of proof'. The statement is self evidently true.
In this particular instance, it's even worse to cite Browder's 'test' as 'proof' because, as I've noted before, it was a STUPID, BAD TEST.
In SC2, it is optimal to clump units due to long range and small unit size. So when given the choice, players still choose to clump up. WHICH IS EXACTLY AS EXPECTED.
On November 26 2012 20:10 Rabiator wrote: 0. Your brain [basic math plus a little imagination and extrapolation skill] can give you "proof" that density of the units matters and affects the game.
Just look at the Stalker and the Marine. They both have somewhat "similar" dps [Stalker: 7 dps; Marine: 6.9 dps; SOURCE], BUT they differ in size. So it is logical that you can have a higher "dps per area" from a clump of Marines than you get from a clump of Stalkers and yet they start at the same individual dps. That is not debatable and based on math, but what you can have an "opinion" on is if it affects the gameplay negatively or not. The "units per 1 square" is not a value we have, because the size really isnt a known value. So there cant really be precise calculations as to how high the unit density "dps per area" is for each unit unless Blizzard does it. You might be able to create a tiny map and completely fill it with units of type X and then count them, but thats a braindead work I am not willing to do. The point is that there is a big "uncertainty factor" injected into the game balance and this cant be good.
Tight clumps of units have also nerfed Siege Tanks somewhat from their BW version, to the point that you might be able to kill a Siege Tank with some infantry without even losing a single unit yourself. In BW it was rather impossible to get 20 Marines into range of a Siege Tank without taking at least one shot and having a Marine or two die in the process, BUT the "perfectly tight" unit movement allows for far greater numbers of Marines to bum rush the tank - who gets 1 shot off without killing any unit (yay ... 35 damage vs. non-armored doesnt even kill a Marine and barely kills a Zergling!!) - and kill it in the blink of an eye. This is basically the downfall of mech, because the backbone unit can be rushed by too many units far too fast and killed without many losses. With a limited number of units in a control group AND forcing them to spread out while moving, you couldnt bring that many infantry in range easily, so you would actually need to think about how to do it.
If you increase the combat values of the Siege Tank (either health or damage output ... doesnt really matter which) you will make the tank far too powerful in a "few vs few" situation. This clearly shows that it is a terrible idea to have a big difference in balancing between "few vs. few" and "many vs many". Unit density is at the core here and it should NOT be impossible to get a high unit density, BUT it should come at a cost (potentially losing a big chunk to AoE) AND require work from the player instead of coming "automatically".
I do not disagree with you about unit sizes. I disagree with the conclusions you are making.
Just because there is a preceived correlation between pathing and "what is wrong with sc2" doesnt make it so. You need to prove it by experimentation.
Browder did not report how his experiments were carried out, nor what the parameters included. If he did, there would be much less speculation about how valid those tests are and why. This is his fault, but the same rule applies to everyone else
Either way, it is the only data we have and it says your theory is incorrect.
The thing is: a. Blizzard has NOT proven their theory by examples either (and neither has any of the "trust in Blizzard" people) no matter what you claim. They didnt say how they tested it and you said it yourself ... and yet you claim that is "the only data we have"? b. My reasoning is quite simply that tight movement and unlimited unit selection create a "fluctuating balance" between units of type a and b according to the number of units involved and this makes balancing stupidly hard. My reasoning also claims that the deathball is making the game boring to watch simply because you cant efficiently siege your enemy. My reasoning also claims that Blizzard is making their own job of balancing units and creating fun units harder because of the existence of auto-clumping; the examples of "super-strong" attacks and abilities in BW shows that quite clearly. They were OP, but acceptable since they never affected a big chunk of your opponents army.
I dont need a video for to show that more Marines can be stacked into the same space compared to Stalkers. The dps of the Marine clump will be higher per area of units. You are agreeing with me here that there is a fluctuation in balance and come to the conclusion that it isnt as bad. That is your right, but you are continuing to tell me that I am wrong without any proof yourself.
I dont need a video to "prove" that the damage of the Siege Tank had to be nerfed simply because it would have annihilated too much stuff with the BW values. The consequence is that in fewer numbers they dont really do their job anymore and dont kill enough before getting killed themselves easily. This is clearly a consequence of tight unit movement and also unlimited unit selection.
The big issue is that it adds a degree of uncertainty to the game which could be taken out if the unit selection was limited to 12 and units would spread out while moving. Sure you have the same amount of units on the map, but its all about "how many units can affect each other?" and thats where the problem starts.
If TOO MANY small units can shoot a big unit - Siege Tank, Thor, Carrier, Battlecruiser - the big ones die too fast and arent worth it. Logical and trivial conclusion which requires no video.
Trying to fix this "big units seem to be made of paper" problem by making them tougher or stronger doesnt work, because they will get too tough if you rush them out and overwhelm the opponent easily.
I also dont need a video to describe how the deathball (any tight army) works. You either think its great OR you are like me and think its terribly boring.
I also dont need a video to tell you that positional play and siegeing your opponent isnt worth it because of the deathball, because hey, Dustin Browder said it himself ... the deathball is the most efficient way and it is a trivial logic which says that this focused damage is more efficient than spreading out your forces. So the deathball - which essentially IS tight movement and unlimited unit selection - LIMITS STRATEGIES. It ultimately boils down to ... - Do you want a game with big armies dancing around each other and eventually erasing each other in a big 30 second battle? OR - Do you want constant small and medium sized engagements all over with nifty tricks being used to dislodge a fortified position in a constantly ongoing war? - Do you want one strategy only to be viable or more than one? - Do you want interesting and potentially overpowered abilities which dont matter because they are only rarely overpowered?
The point is that automatic tight unit movement and unlimited selection make it TOO EASY to form a concentrated group of units, but it would be better if ... - you had the OPTION (instead of getting it automatically) to clump your units through MICRO and - you could be penalized for doing so by strong AoE attacks and - you could be as efficient with a somewhat spread out army. I dont need to prove anything here, because most of it is pure math and quite trivial.
Why do you keep bringing up marines and stalkers? It has nothing to do with anything he's saying.
What he is saying is you need to PROVE THAT MOVEMENT CHANGES WILL MAKE A DIFFERENCE IN HOW THE GAME ACTUALLY PLAYS OUT. Prove that these tweaks actually change something in a real-game situation, and demonstrate how those changes play out.
What Browder has mentioned (And HD as well after his testing) is that due to the way players move their armies across the map, even with movement tweaks the game looks and plays out essentially the same. The burden of proof is ON YOU to prove that it makes a difference.
Stop this 'burden of proof' rhetoric. All it means is that you're more inherently biased towards one point of view than another.
Clearly unit movement makes a difference to gameplay. Look at BW. Or any other RTS game which has different unit movements to SC2, e.g. C&C, CoH, DoW, War3 etc. Unit movement affects gameplay. There is no 'burden of proof'. The statement is self evidently true.
In this particular instance, it's even worse to cite Browder's 'test' as 'proof' because, as I've noted before, it was a STUPID, BAD TEST.
In SC2, it is optimal to clump units due to long range and small unit size. So when given the choice, players still choose to clump up. WHICH IS EXACTLY AS EXPECTED.
It's not rhetoric. You can't just make a statement and have it be accepted as true without any evidence to support it. That's just the way it works. Clearly the way units move and interact within an engine makes a difference for gameplay, but that doesn't mean any of the proposed anti-clumping suggestions within the existing SC2 engine make an actual difference when it comes to gameplay.
And you appear to be suggesting that the unit movement isn't the source of any perceived problems here, so thanks for the support of my argument I guess?
I am under the impression we are stuck with how unit movement works.
Blizzard needs the movement system to be the same across all breadths of game play. If they change the unit formation, the campaign will change in wild and unpredictable ways, Bliz will not likely want to even bother changing that. It also changes a core principle for all multiplayer games have ever played in SC2.
They would need to actually code in new changes, develop new pathing. Messing with just formation diameter only hurts the current skill cap and warrants an entire re-balance of the game, turning off unit blocking to get spread out units doesn't stop swarm movement and also makes the game way more noob unfriendly. Bliz can't have that, it'd be like removing auto mining.
My actual hopes for improvement in the game are making defenders advantage and chokes matter which helps cure the death ball problem. Unfortunately, the whole game play bliz went for is quicker matches. The units are designed to work in this respect, not for BW style positional game play. Hell, we lost two very key positional units (reaver/lurker) and got two super fast units instead (bane/col).
On November 28 2012 02:58 decemberscalm wrote: I am under the impression we are stuck with how unit movement works.
Blizzard needs the movement system to be the same across all breadths of game play. If they change the unit formation, the campaign will change in wild and unpredictable ways, Bliz will not likely want to even bother changing that. It also changes a core principle for all multiplayer games have ever played in SC2.
They would need to actually code in new changes, develop new pathing. Messing with just formation diameter only hurts the current skill cap and warrants an entire re-balance of the game, turning off unit blocking to get spread out units doesn't stop swarm movement and also makes the game way more noob unfriendly. Bliz can't have that, it'd be like removing auto mining.
My actual hopes for improvement in the game are making defenders advantage and chokes matter which helps cure the death ball problem. Unfortunately, the whole game play bliz went for is quicker matches. The units are designed to work in this respect, not for BW style positional game play. Hell, we lost two very key positional units (reaver/lurker) and got two super fast units instead (bane/col).
You are right, lack of defenders advantage makes SC2 less strategic game compared to BW. In BW defenders advantage was achieved imho mainly because armies were less mobile and reinforcements arrived slowly. Now with warp gates protoss can reinforce his army almost instantly. Terran and Zerg thanks to rally points can also reinforce their armies relatively fast. We can see defenders advantage quite rarely and mainly in ZvZ in roach wars.
So even if pathing is improved and clumping of units is fixed, SC2 will never have positional and strategic plays which were in BW. That is why there is absolutely no place in SC2 for reavers and lurkers.
On November 27 2012 19:58 Unshapely wrote: With the post (which is now above the above post) in mind, I've just tested a game of BW to confirm the effectiveness of unit pathing.
Here is what happened when I tried to move a control group of zerglings:
- I initially spread them out in a concave, as if they were about to surround an unsuspecting enemy. - I gave the move command, and my zerglings began forming a line. (the concave shape was gone...) - The zerglings at the front moved smoothly. - The ones at the back bumped with the zerglings in the front. (Don't even ask how...they just did) - This made the zergling stop for some fractions of a second, as if it was stunned. - The zergling at the front kept moving without being affected.
This actually made my army seem spread out, because my control group of zerglings didn't move as one - the ones at the back bumped with the ones at front, stopped for some micro seconds and then moved on. This bump caused a space to develop between the zergling at the front (which didn't bump into anything).
A video might be better, but I hope my limited english conveyed the picture.
So, ladies and gentlemen, the unit pathing in BW is buggy. The "spread-out" doesn't seem intentional... Not surprising, considering mutalisk stacking is also a bug, along with other bugs that became so crucial to BW micro.
As MikeMM already said ... your units got spread out no matter how "buggy" it looked. I would like to ask you to play some Planetside 2 or any other military shooter with tanks and then run right next to one as a trooper. Eventually the tank will turn or move backwards and RUN YOU OVER (happened to me yesterday). Thus perfectly tight movement doesnt make sense while a platoon us moving.
On November 27 2012 21:22 XenoX101 wrote: Regarding the 'fluctuating balance' and 'uncertainty', is this not still dependant on the player's ability?
No? It is only dependant upon the PRODUCTION of units. If you can bring more units to the field you win and if you can stack them tighter - thus get higher dps for the whole pack - you win. You have to realize that from a certain point you can start one-shotting your opponent units even if it is a rather tough unit. That is a terrible thing, because what is the point of a regenerating shield if you get killed right away without any chance to run for it?
In BW you could "stack" your units in a static position and thus achieve a pretty high density and a defenders advantage. In SC2 you can have all your units in one big group AND they are perfectly stacked while moving too, so this totally negates any defenders advantage.
In BW you also have your army divided into chunks of 12 and thus you pretty much eliminate/reduce the "I have more forces than you so I will crush you" problem.
On November 26 2012 20:10 Rabiator wrote: 0. Your brain [basic math plus a little imagination and extrapolation skill] can give you "proof" that density of the units matters and affects the game.
Just look at the Stalker and the Marine. They both have somewhat "similar" dps [Stalker: 7 dps; Marine: 6.9 dps; SOURCE], BUT they differ in size. So it is logical that you can have a higher "dps per area" from a clump of Marines than you get from a clump of Stalkers and yet they start at the same individual dps. That is not debatable and based on math, but what you can have an "opinion" on is if it affects the gameplay negatively or not. The "units per 1 square" is not a value we have, because the size really isnt a known value. So there cant really be precise calculations as to how high the unit density "dps per area" is for each unit unless Blizzard does it. You might be able to create a tiny map and completely fill it with units of type X and then count them, but thats a braindead work I am not willing to do. The point is that there is a big "uncertainty factor" injected into the game balance and this cant be good.
Tight clumps of units have also nerfed Siege Tanks somewhat from their BW version, to the point that you might be able to kill a Siege Tank with some infantry without even losing a single unit yourself. In BW it was rather impossible to get 20 Marines into range of a Siege Tank without taking at least one shot and having a Marine or two die in the process, BUT the "perfectly tight" unit movement allows for far greater numbers of Marines to bum rush the tank - who gets 1 shot off without killing any unit (yay ... 35 damage vs. non-armored doesnt even kill a Marine and barely kills a Zergling!!) - and kill it in the blink of an eye. This is basically the downfall of mech, because the backbone unit can be rushed by too many units far too fast and killed without many losses. With a limited number of units in a control group AND forcing them to spread out while moving, you couldnt bring that many infantry in range easily, so you would actually need to think about how to do it.
If you increase the combat values of the Siege Tank (either health or damage output ... doesnt really matter which) you will make the tank far too powerful in a "few vs few" situation. This clearly shows that it is a terrible idea to have a big difference in balancing between "few vs. few" and "many vs many". Unit density is at the core here and it should NOT be impossible to get a high unit density, BUT it should come at a cost (potentially losing a big chunk to AoE) AND require work from the player instead of coming "automatically".
I do not disagree with you about unit sizes. I disagree with the conclusions you are making.
Just because there is a preceived correlation between pathing and "what is wrong with sc2" doesnt make it so. You need to prove it by experimentation.
Browder did not report how his experiments were carried out, nor what the parameters included. If he did, there would be much less speculation about how valid those tests are and why. This is his fault, but the same rule applies to everyone else
Either way, it is the only data we have and it says your theory is incorrect.
The thing is: a. Blizzard has NOT proven their theory by examples either (and neither has any of the "trust in Blizzard" people) no matter what you claim. They didnt say how they tested it and you said it yourself ... and yet you claim that is "the only data we have"? b. My reasoning is quite simply that tight movement and unlimited unit selection create a "fluctuating balance" between units of type a and b according to the number of units involved and this makes balancing stupidly hard. My reasoning also claims that the deathball is making the game boring to watch simply because you cant efficiently siege your enemy. My reasoning also claims that Blizzard is making their own job of balancing units and creating fun units harder because of the existence of auto-clumping; the examples of "super-strong" attacks and abilities in BW shows that quite clearly. They were OP, but acceptable since they never affected a big chunk of your opponents army.
I dont need a video for to show that more Marines can be stacked into the same space compared to Stalkers. The dps of the Marine clump will be higher per area of units. You are agreeing with me here that there is a fluctuation in balance and come to the conclusion that it isnt as bad. That is your right, but you are continuing to tell me that I am wrong without any proof yourself.
I dont need a video to "prove" that the damage of the Siege Tank had to be nerfed simply because it would have annihilated too much stuff with the BW values. The consequence is that in fewer numbers they dont really do their job anymore and dont kill enough before getting killed themselves easily. This is clearly a consequence of tight unit movement and also unlimited unit selection.
The big issue is that it adds a degree of uncertainty to the game which could be taken out if the unit selection was limited to 12 and units would spread out while moving. Sure you have the same amount of units on the map, but its all about "how many units can affect each other?" and thats where the problem starts.
If TOO MANY small units can shoot a big unit - Siege Tank, Thor, Carrier, Battlecruiser - the big ones die too fast and arent worth it. Logical and trivial conclusion which requires no video.
Trying to fix this "big units seem to be made of paper" problem by making them tougher or stronger doesnt work, because they will get too tough if you rush them out and overwhelm the opponent easily.
I also dont need a video to describe how the deathball (any tight army) works. You either think its great OR you are like me and think its terribly boring.
I also dont need a video to tell you that positional play and siegeing your opponent isnt worth it because of the deathball, because hey, Dustin Browder said it himself ... the deathball is the most efficient way and it is a trivial logic which says that this focused damage is more efficient than spreading out your forces. So the deathball - which essentially IS tight movement and unlimited unit selection - LIMITS STRATEGIES. It ultimately boils down to ... - Do you want a game with big armies dancing around each other and eventually erasing each other in a big 30 second battle? OR - Do you want constant small and medium sized engagements all over with nifty tricks being used to dislodge a fortified position in a constantly ongoing war? - Do you want one strategy only to be viable or more than one? - Do you want interesting and potentially overpowered abilities which dont matter because they are only rarely overpowered?
The point is that automatic tight unit movement and unlimited selection make it TOO EASY to form a concentrated group of units, but it would be better if ... - you had the OPTION (instead of getting it automatically) to clump your units through MICRO and - you could be penalized for doing so by strong AoE attacks and - you could be as efficient with a somewhat spread out army. I dont need to prove anything here, because most of it is pure math and quite trivial.
Why do you keep bringing up marines and stalkers? It has nothing to do with anything he's saying.
What he is saying is you need to PROVE THAT MOVEMENT CHANGES WILL MAKE A DIFFERENCE IN HOW THE GAME ACTUALLY PLAYS OUT. Prove that these tweaks actually change something in a real-game situation, and demonstrate how those changes play out.
What Browder has mentioned (And HD as well after his testing) is that due to the way players move their armies across the map, even with movement tweaks the game looks and plays out essentially the same. The burden of proof is ON YOU to prove that it makes a difference.
1. I am not answering Browder or anyone, I am the one pointing out the core problems of the game here ...
2. I dont have to prove how the movement changes will make the game different/better, because it has already been proven in BROODWAR. In any case "better" is a subjective argument, but I have described something of the logic above (again). Now please dont pull "a dumb one" and retort by saying "BW movement is dumb" or "BW movement is buggy" or ugly or whatever ... because no one is asking to get the same movement mechanic implemented into the game.
Units simply should "bump into each other" and then take a wide berth around the other ones while on the move. The logic behind this is simple ... the "tank and the tropper" example I gave above.
3. Browder and probably HD (who cares about him anyways and I dont know what he did) only tested one - probably insufficient - modification which is not enough to fix the game anyways.
In any case ... WHERE IS BROWDER's (and your) "PROOF" that changing the movement system to something like BW where units bump into each other would NOT change the game? Add this to a 12 unit selection limit and you have a game that is more easy to balance because engagements are smaller and thus the "efficiency increases with larger packs of Marines compared to Stalkers" problem is cut off at some point. You also dont have to use Stalkers, but you can simply replace them by Zealots and the Marines will simply win by killing the Zealots before they even get to the Marines if they reach a critical number.
----
The movement system of BW looks clunky and in many cases units bug out and get stuck (probably a consequence of the buildings and terrain as much as the movement), BUT at least it looks somewhat alive. Units do things "their way" instead of taking a straight line towards the point where you clicked.
In contrast the movement system of SC2 looks "perfect", right? Weellll, ... I would describe it with a different word: STERILE and BORING, because it lacks this feeling of being alive.
There is no reason to believe that there is no middle ground and that we cant ever get the "liveliness" of BW without its bugginess instead of the sterile SC2 version. All it takes is the will of the developers ... and that is lacking.
On November 27 2012 20:38 Unshapely wrote: Yes, that is the core reason why units are spread out in BW. They just don't move as one (in SC2, units move really smoothly). I've just tested this with marines as well, and a couple of larger units such as dragoons.
In that case in SC2 Blizzard should have done smooth movement but kept end result of movement from BW (spread out units).
...You can't have smooth movement that spreads out units. The bumpiness is what makes them form a line and space themselves out.
On November 28 2012 02:58 decemberscalm wrote: My actual hopes for improvement in the game are making defenders advantage and chokes matter which helps cure the death ball problem. Unfortunately, the whole game play bliz went for is quicker matches. The units are designed to work in this respect, not for BW style positional game play. Hell, we lost two very key positional units (reaver/lurker) and got two super fast units instead (bane/col).
Your first sentence is a bit backwards. If units didn't clump so easily, there would be inherent defenders advantage (ever seen BW PvP with lines of dragoons?) and chokepoints would be extra effective. Not only would a "deathball" formation be defunct, it wouldn't be the default best way to control your units or attack.
On November 27 2012 20:38 Unshapely wrote: Yes, that is the core reason why units are spread out in BW. They just don't move as one (in SC2, units move really smoothly). I've just tested this with marines as well, and a couple of larger units such as dragoons.
In that case in SC2 Blizzard should have done smooth movement but kept end result of movement from BW (spread out units).
...You can't have smooth movement that spreads out units. The bumpiness is what makes them form a line and space themselves out.
You can simulate that easily. You could easily add something similar to the game and through a small random factor which says that a unit does NOT move in a straight line towards the target and instead wiggles slightly left or right. Bumping into other units would push them as well. In any case you could easily add a "wide berth variable" to make units spread out while they are "moving = true". Just because Blizzard didnt do it doesnt mean its impossible.
Backwards? I was talking about in context of keeping the same movement which Blizzard seems extremely unlikely to change. Maps? With enough leagues using different maps, that can change.
Amazingly death balls existed in BW!!!! Surprising I know.
Sure it'll be slightly hardest for form a deathball when you need it, just requires more clicking inside the magic box. Unit movement and unit group group itself did NOT make the deathball a non factor 100% of the time. It only helped.
Think of your PvZ's and TvZ's where deathballs exist practically every game in BW. What stopped the T deathball from just rolling over a base as soon as muta pressure ended (or before muta pressure). Sunken colonies had twice the dps, more range, lurkers were amazing positional control units, and chokepoints in BW mattered more because of the pathing. Its only part of the equation. Unsmooth movement? You'd still see Toss deathballs in SC2 but more clicking to get them in that formation because it is the most efficient method of killing your opponents army (which you have to do to defend bases in sc2, no maps generally have chokes or tiny ramps, positional units and static D get busted by super high hp super anti building units eaaaaaasy).
On November 27 2012 20:38 Unshapely wrote: Yes, that is the core reason why units are spread out in BW. They just don't move as one (in SC2, units move really smoothly). I've just tested this with marines as well, and a couple of larger units such as dragoons.
In that case in SC2 Blizzard should have done smooth movement but kept end result of movement from BW (spread out units).
...You can't have smooth movement that spreads out units. The bumpiness is what makes them form a line and space themselves out.
You can simulate that easily. You could easily add something similar to the game and through a small random factor which says that a unit does NOT move in a straight line towards the target and instead wiggles slightly left or right. Bumping into other units would push them as well. In any case you could easily add a "wide berth variable" to make units spread out while they are "moving = true". Just because Blizzard didnt do it doesnt mean its impossible.
The problem is that we don't control our armies like that. Most players control them through a large number of tiny clicks as they move across the map. Any movement system they place to make the game look nicer will be canceled out by players attempting to move their armies in ways that make them most ready for combat. If people do not like clumped units, we should stop asking for maps with tiny chokes, ramps everywhere and small open areas. I can't think of how I would move my army in Cloud Kingom or daybreak except in a large ball.
Unit AI and pathing is not the solution to the clumping issue and Blizzard is right for not focusing on it. There are better ways for them to encourage players to split up their army.
On November 27 2012 20:38 Unshapely wrote: Yes, that is the core reason why units are spread out in BW. They just don't move as one (in SC2, units move really smoothly). I've just tested this with marines as well, and a couple of larger units such as dragoons.
In that case in SC2 Blizzard should have done smooth movement but kept end result of movement from BW (spread out units).
...You can't have smooth movement that spreads out units. The bumpiness is what makes them form a line and space themselves out.
You can simulate that easily. You could easily add something similar to the game and through a small random factor which says that a unit does NOT move in a straight line towards the target and instead wiggles slightly left or right. Bumping into other units would push them as well. In any case you could easily add a "wide berth variable" to make units spread out while they are "moving = true". Just because Blizzard didnt do it doesnt mean its impossible.
The problem is that we don't control our armies like that. Most players control them through a large number of tiny clicks as they move across the map. Any movement system they place to make the game look nicer will be canceled out by players attempting to move their armies in ways that make them most ready for combat. If people do not like clumped units, we should stop asking for maps with tiny chokes, ramps everywhere and small open areas. I can't think of how I would move my army in Cloud Kingom or daybreak except in a large ball.
Unit AI and pathing is not the solution to the clumping issue and Blizzard is right for not focusing on it. There are better ways for them to encourage players to split up their army.
The "large number of tiny clicks" would be removed if Blizzard added in 12 unit limited selection ... which is one part of the right way to solve the problem of the deathball in addition to making the units spread out.
If the players "overrule" the spreading out then they will have to be PUNISHED for it by rebalancing the AoE attacks of certain units/spells ... which is necessary if "spread out" becomes the defined norm for unit movement (and thus the beginning of a fight). + Show Spoiler +
There is ZERO punishment in the game right now for putting all your units in a tight ball ... well maybe Fungal Growth can be counted as one and Storm as the other, but Terrans have nothing since the Siege Tank got nerfed to be only tickling to non-armored units.
This is all perfectly acceptable and fully taken into account and basically is the CHOICE which the players have after the change compared to NO CHOICE right now. Oh and players can learn to play differently just as they learned to spam-click ...
You can still move your army in a pretty massive formation ... it just requires 1a2a3a4a instead of a simple 1a. Oh and I am also of the opinion that Blizzard should take out the production speed boosts, because they add too many units to a battlefield anyways ... so your "big army" wouldnt be quite as big anymore, but since that works for both sides it is ok.
POWER (tight unit formation and thus high dps per area) has to be balanced by CONSEQUENCES (losing a lot to AoE if you choose to take the risk) and WORK (1a2a3a) instead of being available in ez-mode!
On November 27 2012 20:38 Unshapely wrote: Yes, that is the core reason why units are spread out in BW. They just don't move as one (in SC2, units move really smoothly). I've just tested this with marines as well, and a couple of larger units such as dragoons.
In that case in SC2 Blizzard should have done smooth movement but kept end result of movement from BW (spread out units).
...You can't have smooth movement that spreads out units. The bumpiness is what makes them form a line and space themselves out.
C&C has pathing where the units move perfectly, and they dont clump (not to the extend sc2 does). A possibly problem with that pathing is that the units always stand in formation, which doesnt look weird for Terran, but it would be weird for Zerg.
On November 27 2012 20:38 Unshapely wrote: Yes, that is the core reason why units are spread out in BW. They just don't move as one (in SC2, units move really smoothly). I've just tested this with marines as well, and a couple of larger units such as dragoons.
In that case in SC2 Blizzard should have done smooth movement but kept end result of movement from BW (spread out units).
...You can't have smooth movement that spreads out units. The bumpiness is what makes them form a line and space themselves out.
C&C has pathing where the units move perfectly, and they dont clump (not to the extend sc2 does). A possibly problem with that pathing is that the units always stand in formation, which doesnt look weird for Terran, but it would be weird for Zerg.
You can artificially spread units out if you want with code that deliberately bastardizes the operation of the pathing algorithm. That's not what I'm talking about. That would operate beyond the inherent properties of unit collision based on actual size, and it would be rather a phony way to go about it.
For the record, I agree that we shouldn't expect a pathing engine change. I just want to make it clear that BW style pathing would single handedly curb the deathball play we see in SC2 by dint of A) literally impossible and B) much better defender's advantage.
On November 27 2012 20:38 Unshapely wrote: Yes, that is the core reason why units are spread out in BW. They just don't move as one (in SC2, units move really smoothly). I've just tested this with marines as well, and a couple of larger units such as dragoons.
In that case in SC2 Blizzard should have done smooth movement but kept end result of movement from BW (spread out units).
...You can't have smooth movement that spreads out units. The bumpiness is what makes them form a line and space themselves out.
C&C has pathing where the units move perfectly, and they dont clump (not to the extend sc2 does). A possibly problem with that pathing is that the units always stand in formation, which doesnt look weird for Terran, but it would be weird for Zerg.
You can artificially spread units out if you want with code that deliberately bastardizes the operation of the pathing algorithm. That's not what I'm talking about. That would operate beyond the inherent properties of unit collision based on actual size, and it would be rather a phony way to go about it.
For the record, I agree that we shouldn't expect a pathing engine change. I just want to make it clear that BW style pathing would single handedly curb the deathball play we see in SC2 by dint of A) literally impossible and B) much better defender's advantage.
Why would adding "left and right movement" or a "bounce into each other mechanic" be phony? Just because it "ruins" the supposedly perfect movement system we have now?
It is realistic because running right next to the Tank as a Marine will be really bad, because eventually the tank has to turn and will run you over. Thus a wider berth than 0,0 cm should be added. That shouldnt be too difficult either, but so far there hasnt even been any indication by Blizzard that they understand the problem or rather ... the potential of this solution at all ... which is really depressing.
On November 23 2012 11:47 Firkraag8 wrote: I don't like the idea of changing the way movement is handled as shown in the videos. I see the manual splitting of units as not only fun to watch but also to play.
do some fucking research on bw please. So you got your marine splitting in sc2. I can name one unit and already equalize the scale, hydralisk storm dodging with 3-4 groups of hydralisks is just as hard in bw.
And now to tip the scale into favour of broodwar, you've also got mutalisk micro, scourge micro, wraith micro, marine splitting micro vs lurkers, carrier micro, dragoon vs mine micro, vulture micro,........
On November 23 2012 11:47 Firkraag8 wrote: I don't like the idea of changing the way movement is handled as shown in the videos. I see the manual splitting of units as not only fun to watch but also to play.
do some fucking research on bw please. So you got your marine splitting in sc2. I can name one unit and already equalize the scale, hydralisk storm dodging with 3-4 groups of hydralisks is just as hard in bw.
And now to tip the scale into favour of broodwar, you've also got mutalisk micro, scourge micro, wraith micro, marine splitting micro vs lurkers, carrier micro, dragoon vs mine micro, vulture micro,........
First of all, chill out. He isn't hurling insults at BW or anything. Second of all, we're talking about a pathing change here. Not various micro techniques that have everything to do with bugs (good ones, of course) and nothing to do with spread out pathing.
On November 23 2012 11:47 Firkraag8 wrote: I don't like the idea of changing the way movement is handled as shown in the videos. I see the manual splitting of units as not only fun to watch but also to play.
do some fucking research on bw please. So you got your marine splitting in sc2. I can name one unit and already equalize the scale, hydralisk storm dodging with 3-4 groups of hydralisks is just as hard in bw.
And now to tip the scale into favour of broodwar, you've also got mutalisk micro, scourge micro, wraith micro, marine splitting micro vs lurkers, carrier micro, dragoon vs mine micro, vulture micro,........
First of all, chill out. He isn't hurling insults at BW or anything. Second of all, we're talking about a pathing change here. Not various micro techniques that have everything to do with bugs (good ones, of course) and nothing to do with spread out pathing.
The micro in BW was required NOT because of bugs, but because of the movement system ... which in itself was NOT a bug. It was clunky, but thats not the same as a bug.
The point about Firkraag8's post is that he seems to suggest that there was no micro to do and watch in BW while there was FAR MORE MICRO in that game due to the movement and unit selection systems. So answering such a post with a bit more harsh language is justified. The SC2-Blizzard fanboys who have never even played a game of BW in their life are the worst, because they are arrogant as heck and think that going back to spread out units and a 12 unit selection limit will ruin the game because they wont have Marine splitting micro anymore ... when the opposite is true and you have to micro far more. I am sick of the ignorant and arrogant idiots by now who either cant or dont want to understand.
On November 30 2012 13:34 AnachronisticAnarchy wrote:
On November 30 2012 06:48 wcr.4fun wrote:
On November 23 2012 11:47 Firkraag8 wrote: I don't like the idea of changing the way movement is handled as shown in the videos. I see the manual splitting of units as not only fun to watch but also to play.
do some fucking research on bw please. So you got your marine splitting in sc2. I can name one unit and already equalize the scale, hydralisk storm dodging with 3-4 groups of hydralisks is just as hard in bw.
And now to tip the scale into favour of broodwar, you've also got mutalisk micro, scourge micro, wraith micro, marine splitting micro vs lurkers, carrier micro, dragoon vs mine micro, vulture micro,........
First of all, chill out. He isn't hurling insults at BW or anything. Second of all, we're talking about a pathing change here. Not various micro techniques that have everything to do with bugs (good ones, of course) and nothing to do with spread out pathing.
The micro in BW was required NOT because of bugs, but because of the movement system ... which in itself was NOT a bug. It was clunky, but thats not the same as a bug.
Carrier micro was actually only possible due to glitches. Mutalisk micro vs. scourge also incorporated glitches. This is why these units cannot be micromanaged the same way in SC2. They definitely have everything to do with bugs like AnachronisticAnarchy said. You also need to chill out, by the way.
On November 30 2012 13:34 AnachronisticAnarchy wrote:
On November 30 2012 06:48 wcr.4fun wrote:
On November 23 2012 11:47 Firkraag8 wrote: I don't like the idea of changing the way movement is handled as shown in the videos. I see the manual splitting of units as not only fun to watch but also to play.
do some fucking research on bw please. So you got your marine splitting in sc2. I can name one unit and already equalize the scale, hydralisk storm dodging with 3-4 groups of hydralisks is just as hard in bw.
And now to tip the scale into favour of broodwar, you've also got mutalisk micro, scourge micro, wraith micro, marine splitting micro vs lurkers, carrier micro, dragoon vs mine micro, vulture micro,........
First of all, chill out. He isn't hurling insults at BW or anything. Second of all, we're talking about a pathing change here. Not various micro techniques that have everything to do with bugs (good ones, of course) and nothing to do with spread out pathing.
The micro in BW was required NOT because of bugs, but because of the movement system ... which in itself was NOT a bug. It was clunky, but thats not the same as a bug.
Carrier micro was actually only possible due to glitches. Mutalisk micro vs. scourge also incorporated glitches. This is why these units cannot be micromanaged the same way in SC2. They definitely have everything to do with bugs like AnachronisticAnarchy said. You also need to chill out, by the way.
Maybe it were bugs (I have no idea). In Quake strafe jumping was a bug. But it was awesome, and the dev decided to keep it in the game.
I dont think something good should be taken out of the game just because the dev didnt intend it to work like that originally.
On November 30 2012 13:34 AnachronisticAnarchy wrote:
On November 30 2012 06:48 wcr.4fun wrote:
On November 23 2012 11:47 Firkraag8 wrote: I don't like the idea of changing the way movement is handled as shown in the videos. I see the manual splitting of units as not only fun to watch but also to play.
do some fucking research on bw please. So you got your marine splitting in sc2. I can name one unit and already equalize the scale, hydralisk storm dodging with 3-4 groups of hydralisks is just as hard in bw.
And now to tip the scale into favour of broodwar, you've also got mutalisk micro, scourge micro, wraith micro, marine splitting micro vs lurkers, carrier micro, dragoon vs mine micro, vulture micro,........
First of all, chill out. He isn't hurling insults at BW or anything. Second of all, we're talking about a pathing change here. Not various micro techniques that have everything to do with bugs (good ones, of course) and nothing to do with spread out pathing.
The micro in BW was required NOT because of bugs, but because of the movement system ... which in itself was NOT a bug. It was clunky, but thats not the same as a bug.
Carrier micro was actually only possible due to glitches. Mutalisk micro vs. scourge also incorporated glitches. This is why these units cannot be micromanaged the same way in SC2. They definitely have everything to do with bugs like AnachronisticAnarchy said. You also need to chill out, by the way.
Maybe it were bugs (I have no idea). In Quake strafe jumping was a bug. But it was awesome, and the dev decided to keep it in the game.
I dont think something good should be taken out of the game just because the dev didnt intend it to work like that originally.
Oh don't get me wrong, I agree with you. I'd love to see Blizzard modify the Carrier in SC2 to function the same (or at least similar) as in BW, so it could be micromanaged in the same way. I was just addressing the fellow saying this sort of micro was only the result of the pathing AI in Brood War, and not bug exploit.
Um, the unit movement is intended to make you pull units into a concave/separate positions. It's called micro. Stop whining to Blizzard about everything and make the effort to get better.
I'm a diamond player and it erks me how simple user fixes or practice can eliminate the problems with HoTS and WoL everyone talks about.
On November 30 2012 17:03 slytown wrote: Um, the unit movement is intended to make you pull units into a concave/separate positions. It's called micro. Stop whining to Blizzard about everything and make the effort to get better.
I'm a diamond player and it erks me how simple user fixes or practice can eliminate the problems with HoTS and WoL everyone talks about.
Oh please ... shoving around your clumps of units isnt the "pinnacle of micro", but we could have A LOT MORE to micro if the movement system was changed AND you would still be able to "micro" your units into a concave, but with additional micro added to the game. Thats one of the points of the discussion here and the other is "balancing is made unnecessarily hard through too many units in the battles" and another is "tight clumps of units are ugly and harder to understand for a viewer".
Basically you have said that you are AGAINST adding more micro to the game by keeping its "autoclumping stupidity".
On November 30 2012 13:34 AnachronisticAnarchy wrote:
On November 30 2012 06:48 wcr.4fun wrote:
On November 23 2012 11:47 Firkraag8 wrote: I don't like the idea of changing the way movement is handled as shown in the videos. I see the manual splitting of units as not only fun to watch but also to play.
do some fucking research on bw please. So you got your marine splitting in sc2. I can name one unit and already equalize the scale, hydralisk storm dodging with 3-4 groups of hydralisks is just as hard in bw.
And now to tip the scale into favour of broodwar, you've also got mutalisk micro, scourge micro, wraith micro, marine splitting micro vs lurkers, carrier micro, dragoon vs mine micro, vulture micro,........
First of all, chill out. He isn't hurling insults at BW or anything. Second of all, we're talking about a pathing change here. Not various micro techniques that have everything to do with bugs (good ones, of course) and nothing to do with spread out pathing.
The micro in BW was required NOT because of bugs, but because of the movement system ... which in itself was NOT a bug. It was clunky, but thats not the same as a bug.
Carrier micro was actually only possible due to glitches. Mutalisk micro vs. scourge also incorporated glitches. This is why these units cannot be micromanaged the same way in SC2. They definitely have everything to do with bugs like AnachronisticAnarchy said. You also need to chill out, by the way.
A glitch isnt the same as a bug ... using those glitches tool SKILL and thus they were a good addition to the game.
One rather wise rock musician once said something like this: "If you have a bad day and dont hit the right note at one part of the song you better make the same mistake again later on so you can say that was on purpose." So glitch or no glitch is part of the perspective.
I dont get to chill out, because of posts like the one I quoted above. People who seem to claim to be "pro micro" and who seem to have no clue about BW and the necessary micro an unclumped movement would have.
One thing i need to say...The fact is that thing right now is clumpy... Like it or not (probably not) I hope they change it simply fact that game is not looking good from E sport perspective...
Also there is one more problem...if you are Protoss or Zerg you want your units to be able to spread and not stay clump up ...
You should have that option because this is strategy game and spreads and unite movement is also important for gameplay... Also in WC3 you have option to unite stay clump or spread around why not have that option in sc2 ?
Bigger AoE and spread formations could help this game become much bather than it is right now.. and more exciting to watch!!!
(FACT IS PATHING IS CLUMPY AND ITS NOT GOOD FOR THE GAME) end..
On December 01 2012 00:13 bole wrote: One thing i need to say...The fact is that thing right now is clumpy... Like it or not (probably not) I hope they change it simply fact that game is not looking good from E sport perspective...
Also there is one more problem...if you are Protoss or Zerg you want your units to be able to spread and not stay clump up ...
You should have that option because this is strategy game and spreads and unite movement is also important for gameplay... Also in WC3 you have option to unite stay clump or spread around why not have that option in sc2 ?
Bigger AoE and spread formations could help this game become much bather than it is right now.. and more exciting to watch!!!
(FACT IS PATHING IS CLUMPY AND ITS NOT GOOD FOR THE GAME) end..
WC3 formation wouldnt look right for SC2 and the point is to add more chances for micro instead of adding more automatism.
On November 30 2012 17:03 slytown wrote: Um, the unit movement is intended to make you pull units into a concave/separate positions. It's called micro. Stop whining to Blizzard about everything and make the effort to get better.
I'm a diamond player and it erks me how simple user fixes or practice can eliminate the problems with HoTS and WoL everyone talks about.
Oh please ... shoving around your clumps of units isnt the "pinnacle of micro", but we could have A LOT MORE to micro if the movement system was changed AND you would still be able to "micro" your units into a concave, but with additional micro added to the game. Thats one of the points of the discussion here and the other is "balancing is made unnecessarily hard through too many units in the battles" and another is "tight clumps of units are ugly and harder to understand for a viewer".
Basically you have said that you are AGAINST adding more micro to the game by keeping its "autoclumping stupidity".
On November 30 2012 13:34 AnachronisticAnarchy wrote:
On November 30 2012 06:48 wcr.4fun wrote:
On November 23 2012 11:47 Firkraag8 wrote: I don't like the idea of changing the way movement is handled as shown in the videos. I see the manual splitting of units as not only fun to watch but also to play.
do some fucking research on bw please. So you got your marine splitting in sc2. I can name one unit and already equalize the scale, hydralisk storm dodging with 3-4 groups of hydralisks is just as hard in bw.
And now to tip the scale into favour of broodwar, you've also got mutalisk micro, scourge micro, wraith micro, marine splitting micro vs lurkers, carrier micro, dragoon vs mine micro, vulture micro,........
First of all, chill out. He isn't hurling insults at BW or anything. Second of all, we're talking about a pathing change here. Not various micro techniques that have everything to do with bugs (good ones, of course) and nothing to do with spread out pathing.
The micro in BW was required NOT because of bugs, but because of the movement system ... which in itself was NOT a bug. It was clunky, but thats not the same as a bug.
Carrier micro was actually only possible due to glitches. Mutalisk micro vs. scourge also incorporated glitches. This is why these units cannot be micromanaged the same way in SC2. They definitely have everything to do with bugs like AnachronisticAnarchy said. You also need to chill out, by the way.
A glitch isnt the same as a bug ... using those glitches tool SKILL and thus they were a good addition to the game.
One rather wise rock musician once said something like this: "If you have a bad day and dont hit the right note at one part of the song you better make the same mistake again later on so you can say that was on purpose." So glitch or no glitch is part of the perspective.
I dont get to chill out, because of posts like the one I quoted above. People who seem to claim to be "pro micro" and who seem to have no clue about BW and the necessary micro an unclumped movement would have.
Ah, if you want to get into details about difference between glitch and bug, then change my usage of "glitch" to "bug". After all, a glitch is generally a temporary and quickly rectified mistake in a program's function, while a bug is a mistake due to the actual code, and is possible to replicate 100%.
I was just using the terms synonymously out of laziness. Either way, AnachronisticAnarchy was still completely correct.
On November 30 2012 17:03 slytown wrote: Um, the unit movement is intended to make you pull units into a concave/separate positions. It's called micro. Stop whining to Blizzard about everything and make the effort to get better.
I'm a diamond player and it erks me how simple user fixes or practice can eliminate the problems with HoTS and WoL everyone talks about.
Oh please ... shoving around your clumps of units isnt the "pinnacle of micro", but we could have A LOT MORE to micro if the movement system was changed AND you would still be able to "micro" your units into a concave, but with additional micro added to the game. Thats one of the points of the discussion here and the other is "balancing is made unnecessarily hard through too many units in the battles" and another is "tight clumps of units are ugly and harder to understand for a viewer".
Basically you have said that you are AGAINST adding more micro to the game by keeping its "autoclumping stupidity".
On November 30 2012 14:41 iamcaustic wrote:
On November 30 2012 14:09 Rabiator wrote:
On November 30 2012 13:34 AnachronisticAnarchy wrote:
On November 30 2012 06:48 wcr.4fun wrote:
On November 23 2012 11:47 Firkraag8 wrote: I don't like the idea of changing the way movement is handled as shown in the videos. I see the manual splitting of units as not only fun to watch but also to play.
do some fucking research on bw please. So you got your marine splitting in sc2. I can name one unit and already equalize the scale, hydralisk storm dodging with 3-4 groups of hydralisks is just as hard in bw.
And now to tip the scale into favour of broodwar, you've also got mutalisk micro, scourge micro, wraith micro, marine splitting micro vs lurkers, carrier micro, dragoon vs mine micro, vulture micro,........
First of all, chill out. He isn't hurling insults at BW or anything. Second of all, we're talking about a pathing change here. Not various micro techniques that have everything to do with bugs (good ones, of course) and nothing to do with spread out pathing.
The micro in BW was required NOT because of bugs, but because of the movement system ... which in itself was NOT a bug. It was clunky, but thats not the same as a bug.
Carrier micro was actually only possible due to glitches. Mutalisk micro vs. scourge also incorporated glitches. This is why these units cannot be micromanaged the same way in SC2. They definitely have everything to do with bugs like AnachronisticAnarchy said. You also need to chill out, by the way.
A glitch isnt the same as a bug ... using those glitches tool SKILL and thus they were a good addition to the game.
One rather wise rock musician once said something like this: "If you have a bad day and dont hit the right note at one part of the song you better make the same mistake again later on so you can say that was on purpose." So glitch or no glitch is part of the perspective.
I dont get to chill out, because of posts like the one I quoted above. People who seem to claim to be "pro micro" and who seem to have no clue about BW and the necessary micro an unclumped movement would have.
Ah, if you want to get into details about difference between glitch and bug, then change my usage of "glitch" to "bug". After all, a glitch is generally a temporary and quickly rectified mistake in a program's function, while a bug is a mistake due to the actual code, and is possible to replicate 100%.
I was just using the terms synonymously out of laziness. Either way, AnachronisticAnarchy was still completely correct.
I could start a "definition duel" by saying that the glitches werent removed from BW, so they became features of the game, but that is not the point. The point rather is that - looking at the "Carrier Micro thread there seem to be some small hints that Blizzard is looking to change that unit to include just such "glitch micro" OR something similar. Maybe they will see that nothing changes due to the tight clumps of Marines and Hydralsks and thats hopefully when they will understand the damage tight clumping does to the game. I dont get my hopes high though, but we cant stop asking for better pathing ...
On November 30 2012 17:03 slytown wrote: Um, the unit movement is intended to make you pull units into a concave/separate positions. It's called micro. Stop whining to Blizzard about everything and make the effort to get better.
I'm a diamond player and it erks me how simple user fixes or practice can eliminate the problems with HoTS and WoL everyone talks about.
units move to get into their own concaves automatically. Btw making changes due to spectator experience is completely valid if it makes it much easier and enjoyable to watch. It's part of the whole esports/growth/entertainment thing. Have to please spectators and players if people want SC 2 to go down that route. Which is obviously harder than just one or the other.
On November 30 2012 17:03 slytown wrote: Um, the unit movement is intended to make you pull units into a concave/separate positions. It's called micro. Stop whining to Blizzard about everything and make the effort to get better.
I'm a diamond player and it erks me how simple user fixes or practice can eliminate the problems with HoTS and WoL everyone talks about.
units move to get into their own concaves automatically. Btw making changes due to spectator experience is completely valid if it makes it much easier and enjoyable to watch. It's part of the whole esports/growth/entertainment thing. Have to please spectators and players if people want SC 2 to go down that route. Which is obviously harder than just one or the other.
It isnt hard to make the game easier for casuals, more interesting to view for spectators AND more challenging for progamers to play; it is relatively easy and all you have to do it make sure that there are FEWER UNITS in each battle.
Few units are easier to control for a casual; with few units in each control group it gets HARDER for the progamers to mass up large clumps of units to attack with and for the viewer this multitude of control groups will give more excitement, because things will be "less perfect" and "less 1a-clicky". Sadly Blizzard doesnt understand this and is determined to make the game more complex through its units and the functionality of the attacks/spells ... which is the wrong way to do it.
On November 30 2012 17:03 slytown wrote: Um, the unit movement is intended to make you pull units into a concave/separate positions. It's called micro. Stop whining to Blizzard about everything and make the effort to get better.
I'm a diamond player and it erks me how simple user fixes or practice can eliminate the problems with HoTS and WoL everyone talks about.
Oh please ... shoving around your clumps of units isnt the "pinnacle of micro", but we could have A LOT MORE to micro if the movement system was changed AND you would still be able to "micro" your units into a concave, but with additional micro added to the game. Thats one of the points of the discussion here and the other is "balancing is made unnecessarily hard through too many units in the battles" and another is "tight clumps of units are ugly and harder to understand for a viewer".
Basically you have said that you are AGAINST adding more micro to the game by keeping its "autoclumping stupidity".
On November 30 2012 14:41 iamcaustic wrote:
On November 30 2012 14:09 Rabiator wrote:
On November 30 2012 13:34 AnachronisticAnarchy wrote:
On November 30 2012 06:48 wcr.4fun wrote:
On November 23 2012 11:47 Firkraag8 wrote: I don't like the idea of changing the way movement is handled as shown in the videos. I see the manual splitting of units as not only fun to watch but also to play.
do some fucking research on bw please. So you got your marine splitting in sc2. I can name one unit and already equalize the scale, hydralisk storm dodging with 3-4 groups of hydralisks is just as hard in bw.
And now to tip the scale into favour of broodwar, you've also got mutalisk micro, scourge micro, wraith micro, marine splitting micro vs lurkers, carrier micro, dragoon vs mine micro, vulture micro,........
First of all, chill out. He isn't hurling insults at BW or anything. Second of all, we're talking about a pathing change here. Not various micro techniques that have everything to do with bugs (good ones, of course) and nothing to do with spread out pathing.
The micro in BW was required NOT because of bugs, but because of the movement system ... which in itself was NOT a bug. It was clunky, but thats not the same as a bug.
Carrier micro was actually only possible due to glitches. Mutalisk micro vs. scourge also incorporated glitches. This is why these units cannot be micromanaged the same way in SC2. They definitely have everything to do with bugs like AnachronisticAnarchy said. You also need to chill out, by the way.
A glitch isnt the same as a bug ... using those glitches tool SKILL and thus they were a good addition to the game.
One rather wise rock musician once said something like this: "If you have a bad day and dont hit the right note at one part of the song you better make the same mistake again later on so you can say that was on purpose." So glitch or no glitch is part of the perspective.
I dont get to chill out, because of posts like the one I quoted above. People who seem to claim to be "pro micro" and who seem to have no clue about BW and the necessary micro an unclumped movement would have.
Ah, if you want to get into details about difference between glitch and bug, then change my usage of "glitch" to "bug". After all, a glitch is generally a temporary and quickly rectified mistake in a program's function, while a bug is a mistake due to the actual code, and is possible to replicate 100%.
I was just using the terms synonymously out of laziness. Either way, AnachronisticAnarchy was still completely correct.
I could start a "definition duel" by saying that the glitches werent removed from BW, so they became features of the game, but that is not the point. The point rather is that - looking at the "Carrier Micro thread there seem to be some small hints that Blizzard is looking to change that unit to include just such "glitch micro" OR something similar. Maybe they will see that nothing changes due to the tight clumps of Marines and Hydralsks and thats hopefully when they will understand the damage tight clumping does to the game. I dont get my hopes high though, but we cant stop asking for better pathing ...
Eh? Blizzard's own game guide says to make marines and hydralisks to counter-act Carriers. That's not a side effect of AI pathing in SC2, that's a deliberate design from Blizzard. You're still free to consider it silly, but the reason is different.
Dustin Browder tested this already and decided it was a waste of time. There's no way Blizzard is going to change unit pathing or clumping without his full support so this whole post seems to be in vain. I personally think a change that would lower the skill cap by limiting micro(splitting) is not beneficial for eSports. The best players split their units when necessary and clump them when it is appropriate. Everyone begging for this change is wasting their breath.
On December 09 2012 16:14 Ewok wrote: Dustin Browder tested this already and decided it was a waste of time. There's no way Blizzard is going to change unit pathing or clumping without his full support so this whole post seems to be in vain. I personally think a change that would lower the skill cap by limiting micro(splitting) can be beneficial for eSports. The best players split their units when necessary and clump them when it is appropriate. Everyone begging for this change is wasting their breath.
Oh come on ... "splitting units" isnt the only micro in existence and force-spreading units will add a new kind of micro which would be required of ALL RACEs - and not just Terrans - to actively clump units together into the efficient tight formation instead of getting that for free. To me that wouldnt be "dumbing down" the game but rather increase the skill cap for players.
It has also been said that the "testing" which DB and his crew did wasnt really "valid", because spreading out the units is only one thing that would have to be changed ...
The method described in the original post isn't really effective. What I think is important now is that many in the community have issues with how the movement / clumping works in SC2. The community and blizzard need to come up with and test ways that are better.
On November 30 2012 17:03 slytown wrote: Um, the unit movement is intended to make you pull units into a concave/separate positions. It's called micro. Stop whining to Blizzard about everything and make the effort to get better.
I'm a diamond player and it erks me how simple user fixes or practice can eliminate the problems with HoTS and WoL everyone talks about.
Oh please ... shoving around your clumps of units isnt the "pinnacle of micro", but we could have A LOT MORE to micro if the movement system was changed AND you would still be able to "micro" your units into a concave, but with additional micro added to the game. Thats one of the points of the discussion here and the other is "balancing is made unnecessarily hard through too many units in the battles" and another is "tight clumps of units are ugly and harder to understand for a viewer".
Basically you have said that you are AGAINST adding more micro to the game by keeping its "autoclumping stupidity".
On November 30 2012 14:41 iamcaustic wrote:
On November 30 2012 14:09 Rabiator wrote:
On November 30 2012 13:34 AnachronisticAnarchy wrote:
On November 30 2012 06:48 wcr.4fun wrote:
On November 23 2012 11:47 Firkraag8 wrote: I don't like the idea of changing the way movement is handled as shown in the videos. I see the manual splitting of units as not only fun to watch but also to play.
do some fucking research on bw please. So you got your marine splitting in sc2. I can name one unit and already equalize the scale, hydralisk storm dodging with 3-4 groups of hydralisks is just as hard in bw.
And now to tip the scale into favour of broodwar, you've also got mutalisk micro, scourge micro, wraith micro, marine splitting micro vs lurkers, carrier micro, dragoon vs mine micro, vulture micro,........
First of all, chill out. He isn't hurling insults at BW or anything. Second of all, we're talking about a pathing change here. Not various micro techniques that have everything to do with bugs (good ones, of course) and nothing to do with spread out pathing.
The micro in BW was required NOT because of bugs, but because of the movement system ... which in itself was NOT a bug. It was clunky, but thats not the same as a bug.
Carrier micro was actually only possible due to glitches. Mutalisk micro vs. scourge also incorporated glitches. This is why these units cannot be micromanaged the same way in SC2. They definitely have everything to do with bugs like AnachronisticAnarchy said. You also need to chill out, by the way.
A glitch isnt the same as a bug ... using those glitches tool SKILL and thus they were a good addition to the game.
One rather wise rock musician once said something like this: "If you have a bad day and dont hit the right note at one part of the song you better make the same mistake again later on so you can say that was on purpose." So glitch or no glitch is part of the perspective.
I dont get to chill out, because of posts like the one I quoted above. People who seem to claim to be "pro micro" and who seem to have no clue about BW and the necessary micro an unclumped movement would have.
Ah, if you want to get into details about difference between glitch and bug, then change my usage of "glitch" to "bug". After all, a glitch is generally a temporary and quickly rectified mistake in a program's function, while a bug is a mistake due to the actual code, and is possible to replicate 100%.
I was just using the terms synonymously out of laziness. Either way, AnachronisticAnarchy was still completely correct.
I could start a "definition duel" by saying that the glitches werent removed from BW, so they became features of the game, but that is not the point. The point rather is that - looking at the "Carrier Micro thread there seem to be some small hints that Blizzard is looking to change that unit to include just such "glitch micro" OR something similar. Maybe they will see that nothing changes due to the tight clumps of Marines and Hydralsks and thats hopefully when they will understand the damage tight clumping does to the game. I dont get my hopes high though, but we cant stop asking for better pathing ...
Eh? Blizzard's own game guide says to make marines and hydralisks to counter-act Carriers. That's not a side effect of AI pathing in SC2, that's a deliberate design from Blizzard. You're still free to consider it silly, but the reason is different.
The point is that the super tight clumps of ground units make big air units rather useless. If you have 5 Hydras it might be viable to use one Carrier or BC against them and the battle would be even, BUT if you have 40 Marines they will shoot down any Carrier/BC in no time. Broodlords are the exception, because they bring their own "protective screen" of free ground units and they have the support of Fungal for crowd control as well ...
----
A slight addendum from the "archives" of Blizzard ... patch 1.5.2:
StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty – Patch 1.5.2 Bug Fixes
General
Pathing has been adjusted. Units will once again take the most optimal route to their destinations.
So Blizzard isnt unwilling to change the pathing in general ... the only problem is convincing them that super tight formations make the game worse (see above).
On December 09 2012 16:14 Ewok wrote: Dustin Browder tested this already and decided it was a waste of time. There's no way Blizzard is going to change unit pathing or clumping without his full support so this whole post seems to be in vain. I personally think a change that would lower the skill cap by limiting micro(splitting) can be beneficial for eSports. The best players split their units when necessary and clump them when it is appropriate. Everyone begging for this change is wasting their breath.
Oh come on ... "splitting units" isnt the only micro in existence and force-spreading units will add a new kind of micro which would be required of ALL RACEs - and not just Terrans - to actively clump units together into the efficient tight formation instead of getting that for free. To me that wouldnt be "dumbing down" the game but rather increase the skill cap for players.
It has also been said that the "testing" which DB and his crew did wasnt really "valid", because spreading out the units is only one thing that would have to be changed ...
I never said that splitting is the only micro in the game. I don't know how you read that from my post. To me when you simply A-move you want your units clumped, as that is the best way for balls of ranged units to achieve maximum dps, while splitting is an easy tactic to learn but difficult to master, like any part of starcraft should be. This mechanic will never change anyway so im wasting my time defending my point here.
On November 30 2012 17:03 slytown wrote: Um, the unit movement is intended to make you pull units into a concave/separate positions. It's called micro. Stop whining to Blizzard about everything and make the effort to get better.
I'm a diamond player and it erks me how simple user fixes or practice can eliminate the problems with HoTS and WoL everyone talks about.
Oh please ... shoving around your clumps of units isnt the "pinnacle of micro", but we could have A LOT MORE to micro if the movement system was changed AND you would still be able to "micro" your units into a concave, but with additional micro added to the game. Thats one of the points of the discussion here and the other is "balancing is made unnecessarily hard through too many units in the battles" and another is "tight clumps of units are ugly and harder to understand for a viewer".
Basically you have said that you are AGAINST adding more micro to the game by keeping its "autoclumping stupidity".
On November 30 2012 14:41 iamcaustic wrote:
On November 30 2012 14:09 Rabiator wrote:
On November 30 2012 13:34 AnachronisticAnarchy wrote:
On November 30 2012 06:48 wcr.4fun wrote:
On November 23 2012 11:47 Firkraag8 wrote: I don't like the idea of changing the way movement is handled as shown in the videos. I see the manual splitting of units as not only fun to watch but also to play.
do some fucking research on bw please. So you got your marine splitting in sc2. I can name one unit and already equalize the scale, hydralisk storm dodging with 3-4 groups of hydralisks is just as hard in bw.
And now to tip the scale into favour of broodwar, you've also got mutalisk micro, scourge micro, wraith micro, marine splitting micro vs lurkers, carrier micro, dragoon vs mine micro, vulture micro,........
First of all, chill out. He isn't hurling insults at BW or anything. Second of all, we're talking about a pathing change here. Not various micro techniques that have everything to do with bugs (good ones, of course) and nothing to do with spread out pathing.
The micro in BW was required NOT because of bugs, but because of the movement system ... which in itself was NOT a bug. It was clunky, but thats not the same as a bug.
Carrier micro was actually only possible due to glitches. Mutalisk micro vs. scourge also incorporated glitches. This is why these units cannot be micromanaged the same way in SC2. They definitely have everything to do with bugs like AnachronisticAnarchy said. You also need to chill out, by the way.
A glitch isnt the same as a bug ... using those glitches tool SKILL and thus they were a good addition to the game.
One rather wise rock musician once said something like this: "If you have a bad day and dont hit the right note at one part of the song you better make the same mistake again later on so you can say that was on purpose." So glitch or no glitch is part of the perspective.
I dont get to chill out, because of posts like the one I quoted above. People who seem to claim to be "pro micro" and who seem to have no clue about BW and the necessary micro an unclumped movement would have.
Ah, if you want to get into details about difference between glitch and bug, then change my usage of "glitch" to "bug". After all, a glitch is generally a temporary and quickly rectified mistake in a program's function, while a bug is a mistake due to the actual code, and is possible to replicate 100%.
I was just using the terms synonymously out of laziness. Either way, AnachronisticAnarchy was still completely correct.
I could start a "definition duel" by saying that the glitches werent removed from BW, so they became features of the game, but that is not the point. The point rather is that - looking at the "Carrier Micro thread there seem to be some small hints that Blizzard is looking to change that unit to include just such "glitch micro" OR something similar. Maybe they will see that nothing changes due to the tight clumps of Marines and Hydralsks and thats hopefully when they will understand the damage tight clumping does to the game. I dont get my hopes high though, but we cant stop asking for better pathing ...
Eh? Blizzard's own game guide says to make marines and hydralisks to counter-act Carriers. That's not a side effect of AI pathing in SC2, that's a deliberate design from Blizzard. You're still free to consider it silly, but the reason is different.
The point is that the super tight clumps of ground units make big air units rather useless. If you have 5 Hydras it might be viable to use one Carrier or BC against them and the battle would be even, BUT if you have 40 Marines they will shoot down any Carrier/BC in no time. Broodlords are the exception, because they bring their own "protective screen" of free ground units and they have the support of Fungal for crowd control as well ...
----
A slight addendum from the "archives" of Blizzard ... patch 1.5.2:
StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty – Patch 1.5.2 Bug Fixes
General
Pathing has been adjusted. Units will once again take the most optimal route to their destinations.
So Blizzard isnt unwilling to change the pathing in general ... the only problem is convincing them that super tight formations make the game worse (see above).
they tried the fix in the video but it made no difference. That is because people don't issue 1 a click right across the map, they do it in a series of small ones, which instantly make the units clump again.
I also agree that splitting your units has become a skill needed to beat players in sc2 and thats a good thing. Everyone is always complaining about how there is no micro in sc2 then wants to remove something that creates the need to micro better...... thats funny to me.
On December 09 2012 16:14 Ewok wrote: Dustin Browder tested this already and decided it was a waste of time. There's no way Blizzard is going to change unit pathing or clumping without his full support so this whole post seems to be in vain. I personally think a change that would lower the skill cap by limiting micro(splitting) can be beneficial for eSports. The best players split their units when necessary and clump them when it is appropriate. Everyone begging for this change is wasting their breath.
Oh come on ... "splitting units" isnt the only micro in existence and force-spreading units will add a new kind of micro which would be required of ALL RACEs - and not just Terrans - to actively clump units together into the efficient tight formation instead of getting that for free. To me that wouldnt be "dumbing down" the game but rather increase the skill cap for players.
It has also been said that the "testing" which DB and his crew did wasnt really "valid", because spreading out the units is only one thing that would have to be changed ...
In high level games, there are more situations where you'll want to spread/split your units than situations where you'll want to clump them up. Avoiding/mitigating AoE and getting a better concave are key aspects to winning a large engagement. I recommend watching SortOf vs. HyuN during this weekend's NASL grand finals. Perfect demonstration of a pro player completely crushing the favourite to win with a superior concave (army split into multiple groups before moving in) and mitigating the opponent's fungals.
Also, what's the source regarding the response to Blizzard's testing? I hope it's a better source than some random guy posting on some forums without valid evidence.
On November 30 2012 17:03 slytown wrote: Um, the unit movement is intended to make you pull units into a concave/separate positions. It's called micro. Stop whining to Blizzard about everything and make the effort to get better.
I'm a diamond player and it erks me how simple user fixes or practice can eliminate the problems with HoTS and WoL everyone talks about.
Oh please ... shoving around your clumps of units isnt the "pinnacle of micro", but we could have A LOT MORE to micro if the movement system was changed AND you would still be able to "micro" your units into a concave, but with additional micro added to the game. Thats one of the points of the discussion here and the other is "balancing is made unnecessarily hard through too many units in the battles" and another is "tight clumps of units are ugly and harder to understand for a viewer".
Basically you have said that you are AGAINST adding more micro to the game by keeping its "autoclumping stupidity".
On November 30 2012 14:41 iamcaustic wrote:
On November 30 2012 14:09 Rabiator wrote:
On November 30 2012 13:34 AnachronisticAnarchy wrote:
On November 30 2012 06:48 wcr.4fun wrote:
On November 23 2012 11:47 Firkraag8 wrote: I don't like the idea of changing the way movement is handled as shown in the videos. I see the manual splitting of units as not only fun to watch but also to play.
do some fucking research on bw please. So you got your marine splitting in sc2. I can name one unit and already equalize the scale, hydralisk storm dodging with 3-4 groups of hydralisks is just as hard in bw.
And now to tip the scale into favour of broodwar, you've also got mutalisk micro, scourge micro, wraith micro, marine splitting micro vs lurkers, carrier micro, dragoon vs mine micro, vulture micro,........
First of all, chill out. He isn't hurling insults at BW or anything. Second of all, we're talking about a pathing change here. Not various micro techniques that have everything to do with bugs (good ones, of course) and nothing to do with spread out pathing.
The micro in BW was required NOT because of bugs, but because of the movement system ... which in itself was NOT a bug. It was clunky, but thats not the same as a bug.
Carrier micro was actually only possible due to glitches. Mutalisk micro vs. scourge also incorporated glitches. This is why these units cannot be micromanaged the same way in SC2. They definitely have everything to do with bugs like AnachronisticAnarchy said. You also need to chill out, by the way.
A glitch isnt the same as a bug ... using those glitches tool SKILL and thus they were a good addition to the game.
One rather wise rock musician once said something like this: "If you have a bad day and dont hit the right note at one part of the song you better make the same mistake again later on so you can say that was on purpose." So glitch or no glitch is part of the perspective.
I dont get to chill out, because of posts like the one I quoted above. People who seem to claim to be "pro micro" and who seem to have no clue about BW and the necessary micro an unclumped movement would have.
Ah, if you want to get into details about difference between glitch and bug, then change my usage of "glitch" to "bug". After all, a glitch is generally a temporary and quickly rectified mistake in a program's function, while a bug is a mistake due to the actual code, and is possible to replicate 100%.
I was just using the terms synonymously out of laziness. Either way, AnachronisticAnarchy was still completely correct.
I could start a "definition duel" by saying that the glitches werent removed from BW, so they became features of the game, but that is not the point. The point rather is that - looking at the "Carrier Micro thread there seem to be some small hints that Blizzard is looking to change that unit to include just such "glitch micro" OR something similar. Maybe they will see that nothing changes due to the tight clumps of Marines and Hydralsks and thats hopefully when they will understand the damage tight clumping does to the game. I dont get my hopes high though, but we cant stop asking for better pathing ...
Eh? Blizzard's own game guide says to make marines and hydralisks to counter-act Carriers. That's not a side effect of AI pathing in SC2, that's a deliberate design from Blizzard. You're still free to consider it silly, but the reason is different.
The point is that the super tight clumps of ground units make big air units rather useless. If you have 5 Hydras it might be viable to use one Carrier or BC against them and the battle would be even, BUT if you have 40 Marines they will shoot down any Carrier/BC in no time. Broodlords are the exception, because they bring their own "protective screen" of free ground units and they have the support of Fungal for crowd control as well ...
Aaaggghhhh... so apparently you don't play late game TvT against bio Terran. Upgraded BCs simply don't die to marines, it's crazy. If your BCs are 0/0 against upgraded marines though, then sure you're in for some pain. If you think that BCs aren't viable at all in WoL, then you need to actually start playing the game.
The Carrier is kinda lame in WoL because air play in general kinda sucks, plus Carrier leash targeting in WoL is kinda bugged (this is fixed in the latest HotS patch). Everyone knows the Carrier has been underwhelming, but it's not because of mass marine or mass hydralisk.
On December 09 2012 18:37 Rabiator wrote: A slight addendum from the "archives" of Blizzard ... patch 1.5.2:
StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty – Patch 1.5.2 Bug Fixes
General
Pathing has been adjusted. Units will once again take the most optimal route to their destinations.
So Blizzard isnt unwilling to change the pathing in general ... the only problem is convincing them that super tight formations make the game worse (see above).
You have to be kidding me. Bug fixes aren't the same as altering the fundamental way pathing works in the game. There was a bug that caused units to sometimes take a less efficient path instead of the most efficient one, which is the intended design of AI pathing in SC2. Note how the patch note states "units will once again take the most optimal route". An earlier patch introduced a bug in the pathing, and Blizzard fixed that bug.
The overall goal is to get rid of the deathball and to make the interesting and expensive units more important in the game. Super tight groups of infantry kill expensive units far too quickly to be able to react/run away/get saved by repairs unless they are part of a huge clump themselves. This forced clumping and too high efficiency is the reason for the lack of positional play and the success of the deathball.
On December 09 2012 16:14 Ewok wrote: Dustin Browder tested this already and decided it was a waste of time. There's no way Blizzard is going to change unit pathing or clumping without his full support so this whole post seems to be in vain. I personally think a change that would lower the skill cap by limiting micro(splitting) can be beneficial for eSports. The best players split their units when necessary and clump them when it is appropriate. Everyone begging for this change is wasting their breath.
Oh come on ... "splitting units" isnt the only micro in existence and force-spreading units will add a new kind of micro which would be required of ALL RACEs - and not just Terrans - to actively clump units together into the efficient tight formation instead of getting that for free. To me that wouldnt be "dumbing down" the game but rather increase the skill cap for players.
It has also been said that the "testing" which DB and his crew did wasnt really "valid", because spreading out the units is only one thing that would have to be changed ...
In high level games, there are more situations where you'll want to spread/split your units than situations where you'll want to clump them up. Avoiding/mitigating AoE and getting a better concave are key aspects to winning a large engagement. I recommend watching SortOf vs. HyuN during this weekend's NASL grand finals. Perfect demonstration of a pro player completely crushing the favourite to win with a superior concave (army split into multiple groups before moving in) and mitigating the opponent's fungals.
Also, what's the source regarding the response to Blizzard's testing? I hope it's a better source than some random guy posting on some forums without valid evidence.
Oh come on ... now you are back to "evidence", eh? How could anyone "prove" that Dustins test was useless and bound to fail before all the components were implemented? You guys really need to learn to think more!
Just use your brain, because with forced spreading of units while moving you need to readjust AoE damage and the simple mod Dustin tested just had a slight ... very slight ... adjustment to movement. With forced spreading while moving you could also have the opposite situation of the one you described ... that pros are good when they know how and when to clump their units for a concentrated attack ... but then I think you didnt bother reading my post, because thats exactly what I said then. The big point is that Dustin doesnt get the point which spreading the units and a "wiggly" movement like BW would have.
See below for another thing that would have to be changed.
On November 30 2012 17:03 slytown wrote: Um, the unit movement is intended to make you pull units into a concave/separate positions. It's called micro. Stop whining to Blizzard about everything and make the effort to get better.
I'm a diamond player and it erks me how simple user fixes or practice can eliminate the problems with HoTS and WoL everyone talks about.
Oh please ... shoving around your clumps of units isnt the "pinnacle of micro", but we could have A LOT MORE to micro if the movement system was changed AND you would still be able to "micro" your units into a concave, but with additional micro added to the game. Thats one of the points of the discussion here and the other is "balancing is made unnecessarily hard through too many units in the battles" and another is "tight clumps of units are ugly and harder to understand for a viewer".
Basically you have said that you are AGAINST adding more micro to the game by keeping its "autoclumping stupidity".
On November 30 2012 14:41 iamcaustic wrote:
On November 30 2012 14:09 Rabiator wrote:
On November 30 2012 13:34 AnachronisticAnarchy wrote:
On November 30 2012 06:48 wcr.4fun wrote: [quote]
do some fucking research on bw please. So you got your marine splitting in sc2. I can name one unit and already equalize the scale, hydralisk storm dodging with 3-4 groups of hydralisks is just as hard in bw.
And now to tip the scale into favour of broodwar, you've also got mutalisk micro, scourge micro, wraith micro, marine splitting micro vs lurkers, carrier micro, dragoon vs mine micro, vulture micro,........
First of all, chill out. He isn't hurling insults at BW or anything. Second of all, we're talking about a pathing change here. Not various micro techniques that have everything to do with bugs (good ones, of course) and nothing to do with spread out pathing.
The micro in BW was required NOT because of bugs, but because of the movement system ... which in itself was NOT a bug. It was clunky, but thats not the same as a bug.
Carrier micro was actually only possible due to glitches. Mutalisk micro vs. scourge also incorporated glitches. This is why these units cannot be micromanaged the same way in SC2. They definitely have everything to do with bugs like AnachronisticAnarchy said. You also need to chill out, by the way.
A glitch isnt the same as a bug ... using those glitches tool SKILL and thus they were a good addition to the game.
One rather wise rock musician once said something like this: "If you have a bad day and dont hit the right note at one part of the song you better make the same mistake again later on so you can say that was on purpose." So glitch or no glitch is part of the perspective.
I dont get to chill out, because of posts like the one I quoted above. People who seem to claim to be "pro micro" and who seem to have no clue about BW and the necessary micro an unclumped movement would have.
Ah, if you want to get into details about difference between glitch and bug, then change my usage of "glitch" to "bug". After all, a glitch is generally a temporary and quickly rectified mistake in a program's function, while a bug is a mistake due to the actual code, and is possible to replicate 100%.
I was just using the terms synonymously out of laziness. Either way, AnachronisticAnarchy was still completely correct.
I could start a "definition duel" by saying that the glitches werent removed from BW, so they became features of the game, but that is not the point. The point rather is that - looking at the "Carrier Micro thread there seem to be some small hints that Blizzard is looking to change that unit to include just such "glitch micro" OR something similar. Maybe they will see that nothing changes due to the tight clumps of Marines and Hydralsks and thats hopefully when they will understand the damage tight clumping does to the game. I dont get my hopes high though, but we cant stop asking for better pathing ...
Eh? Blizzard's own game guide says to make marines and hydralisks to counter-act Carriers. That's not a side effect of AI pathing in SC2, that's a deliberate design from Blizzard. You're still free to consider it silly, but the reason is different.
The point is that the super tight clumps of ground units make big air units rather useless. If you have 5 Hydras it might be viable to use one Carrier or BC against them and the battle would be even, BUT if you have 40 Marines they will shoot down any Carrier/BC in no time. Broodlords are the exception, because they bring their own "protective screen" of free ground units and they have the support of Fungal for crowd control as well ...
Aaaggghhhh... so apparently you don't play late game TvT against bio Terran. Upgraded BCs simply don't die to marines, it's crazy. If your BCs are 0/0 against upgraded marines though, then sure you're in for some pain. If you think that BCs aren't viable at all in WoL, then you need to actually start playing the game.
The Carrier is kinda lame in WoL because air play in general kinda sucks, plus Carrier leash targeting in WoL is kinda bugged (this is fixed in the latest HotS patch). Everyone knows the Carrier has been underwhelming, but it's not because of mass marine or mass hydralisk.
The Carrier is lame because its tiny Interceptors can be shot down in no time by massed AA units and even you cant deny that this is much faster than in BW.
If the BC was so indestructible, why doesnt every TvT end with a BC war or at least one of them going BC? Maybe because it is much easier to mass Marines (or Vikings) than building BCs? Thus removing the production speed boosts would be yet another thing which Blizzard would need to change in addition to forced unit spreading ... to make sure that there are far fewer units on the battlefield. Obviously this also was missing from Dustins movement test.
Sadly Blizzard doesnt see this way of solving the "boring units problem" and rather introduces more cheap units with a lot of overpowered nifty tricks which can break the game (=making it boring to play against or watch) past critical numbers. If every unit is exciting no unit is exciting, because exciting is the norm. To be exciting a unit - or its application/use - must be exceptional and not standard.
On December 10 2012 06:59 iamcaustic wrote: In high level games, there are more situations where you'll want to spread/split your units than situations where you'll want to clump them up. Avoiding/mitigating AoE and getting a better concave are key aspects to winning a large engagement. I recommend watching SortOf vs. HyuN during this weekend's NASL grand finals. Perfect demonstration of a pro player completely crushing the favourite to win with a superior concave (army split into multiple groups before moving in) and mitigating the opponent's fungals.
Also, what's the source regarding the response to Blizzard's testing? I hope it's a better source than some random guy posting on some forums without valid evidence.
Oh come on ... now you are back to "evidence", eh? How could anyone "prove" that Dustins test was useless and bound to fail before all the components were implemented? You guys really need to learn to think more!
Then why even say such a thing? I'm only going to tell you this once: making up crap doesn't give you an argument. Not even so much as a source, let alone your complaints about needing evidence for the claim -- as if it's unfair to have to back up one's statements or something.
On December 10 2012 14:32 Rabiator wrote: Just use your brain, because with forced spreading of units while moving you need to readjust AoE damage and the simple mod Dustin tested just had a slight ... very slight ... adjustment to movement. With forced spreading while moving you could also have the opposite situation of the one you described ... that pros are good when they know how and when to clump their units for a concentrated attack ... but then I think you didnt bother reading my post, because thats exactly what I said then. The big point is that Dustin doesnt get the point which spreading the units and a "wiggly" movement like BW would have.
You need better reading comprehension:
On December 10 2012 06:59 iamcaustic wrote: In high level games, there are more situations where you'll want to spread/split your units than situations where you'll want to clump them up.
That's not the same as saying there are no situations when you'll want your army clumped, it's just those instances are much fewer and farther between. Having to manually split/spread is a more common mechanical tax, thus resulting in a higher skill cap.
On December 10 2012 06:59 iamcaustic wrote: Aaaggghhhh... so apparently you don't play late game TvT against bio Terran. Upgraded BCs simply don't die to marines, it's crazy. If your BCs are 0/0 against upgraded marines though, then sure you're in for some pain. If you think that BCs aren't viable at all in WoL, then you need to actually start playing the game.
The Carrier is kinda lame in WoL because air play in general kinda sucks, plus Carrier leash targeting in WoL is kinda bugged (this is fixed in the latest HotS patch). Everyone knows the Carrier has been underwhelming, but it's not because of mass marine or mass hydralisk.
The Carrier is lame because its tiny Interceptors can be shot down in no time by massed AA units and even you cant deny that this is much faster than in BW.
If the BC was so indestructible, why doesnt every TvT end with a BC war or at least one of them going BC? Maybe because it is much easier to mass Marines (or Vikings) than building BCs? Thus removing the production speed boosts would be yet another thing which Blizzard would need to change in addition to forced unit spreading ... to make sure that there are far fewer units on the battlefield. Obviously this also was missing from Dustins movement test.
Sadly Blizzard doesnt see this way of solving the "boring units problem" and rather introduces more cheap units with a lot of overpowered nifty tricks which can break the game (=making it boring to play against or watch) past critical numbers. If every unit is exciting no unit is exciting, because exciting is the norm. To be exciting a unit - or its application/use - must be exceptional and not standard.
Regarding BCs, nearly every end game TvT features BCs. You're either getting BCs or desperately trying to acquire Thors/marines and build missile turrets if you lack any chance for air dominance. You seriously don't play Terran, do you? The reason why not every TvT features BCs is because many TvTs don't reach that end game.
Regarding Carriers, go watch some Heart of the Swarm (it's actually viable to go air in HotS). You really don't know what you're talking about. Upgraded Carriers are good.
Wow this Browder guy really makes me angry. I am a diamond level Terran and i actually played a few TvZs on Daybreak with the modified movement listed as Alternative 2. Yes the change is not very big if you play exactly like you play without the modified movement. But you can use the bigger magic box to move big armies in certain formations. It makes it possible for players at my level to move units the way you want them to move. You can either move them in a formation or you clump them up. It gives the player options and makes army movement more intuitive. To move them in a certain formation you have to move command outside of the magic box. With the change to the magic box it is perfectly possible to move a big marine tank army in a certain formation through daybreak. Without the bigger magic box you have to constantly rearrange your army to keep some kind of formation. The bigger magic box and the easier army movement in certain formations actually does increase the micro at my level. In fights i can now micro small parts of my army. The army feels more like a number of individual units that can be microed in small groups and less like some kind of big blob. Over all the bigger magic box gives the player an alternative. The player can move his army in a certain formation without korean levels of apm. IMHO that is a good change. Quite sad that these guys at blizz can't see that.
On November 30 2012 17:03 slytown wrote: Um, the unit movement is intended to make you pull units into a concave/separate positions. It's called micro. Stop whining to Blizzard about everything and make the effort to get better.
I'm a diamond player and it erks me how simple user fixes or practice can eliminate the problems with HoTS and WoL everyone talks about.
Oh please ... shoving around your clumps of units isnt the "pinnacle of micro", but we could have A LOT MORE to micro if the movement system was changed AND you would still be able to "micro" your units into a concave, but with additional micro added to the game. Thats one of the points of the discussion here and the other is "balancing is made unnecessarily hard through too many units in the battles" and another is "tight clumps of units are ugly and harder to understand for a viewer".
Basically you have said that you are AGAINST adding more micro to the game by keeping its "autoclumping stupidity".
On November 30 2012 14:41 iamcaustic wrote:
On November 30 2012 14:09 Rabiator wrote:
On November 30 2012 13:34 AnachronisticAnarchy wrote:
On November 30 2012 06:48 wcr.4fun wrote: [quote]
do some fucking research on bw please. So you got your marine splitting in sc2. I can name one unit and already equalize the scale, hydralisk storm dodging with 3-4 groups of hydralisks is just as hard in bw.
And now to tip the scale into favour of broodwar, you've also got mutalisk micro, scourge micro, wraith micro, marine splitting micro vs lurkers, carrier micro, dragoon vs mine micro, vulture micro,........
First of all, chill out. He isn't hurling insults at BW or anything. Second of all, we're talking about a pathing change here. Not various micro techniques that have everything to do with bugs (good ones, of course) and nothing to do with spread out pathing.
The micro in BW was required NOT because of bugs, but because of the movement system ... which in itself was NOT a bug. It was clunky, but thats not the same as a bug.
Carrier micro was actually only possible due to glitches. Mutalisk micro vs. scourge also incorporated glitches. This is why these units cannot be micromanaged the same way in SC2. They definitely have everything to do with bugs like AnachronisticAnarchy said. You also need to chill out, by the way.
A glitch isnt the same as a bug ... using those glitches tool SKILL and thus they were a good addition to the game.
One rather wise rock musician once said something like this: "If you have a bad day and dont hit the right note at one part of the song you better make the same mistake again later on so you can say that was on purpose." So glitch or no glitch is part of the perspective.
I dont get to chill out, because of posts like the one I quoted above. People who seem to claim to be "pro micro" and who seem to have no clue about BW and the necessary micro an unclumped movement would have.
Ah, if you want to get into details about difference between glitch and bug, then change my usage of "glitch" to "bug". After all, a glitch is generally a temporary and quickly rectified mistake in a program's function, while a bug is a mistake due to the actual code, and is possible to replicate 100%.
I was just using the terms synonymously out of laziness. Either way, AnachronisticAnarchy was still completely correct.
I could start a "definition duel" by saying that the glitches werent removed from BW, so they became features of the game, but that is not the point. The point rather is that - looking at the "Carrier Micro thread there seem to be some small hints that Blizzard is looking to change that unit to include just such "glitch micro" OR something similar. Maybe they will see that nothing changes due to the tight clumps of Marines and Hydralsks and thats hopefully when they will understand the damage tight clumping does to the game. I dont get my hopes high though, but we cant stop asking for better pathing ...
Eh? Blizzard's own game guide says to make marines and hydralisks to counter-act Carriers. That's not a side effect of AI pathing in SC2, that's a deliberate design from Blizzard. You're still free to consider it silly, but the reason is different.
The point is that the super tight clumps of ground units make big air units rather useless. If you have 5 Hydras it might be viable to use one Carrier or BC against them and the battle would be even, BUT if you have 40 Marines they will shoot down any Carrier/BC in no time. Broodlords are the exception, because they bring their own "protective screen" of free ground units and they have the support of Fungal for crowd control as well ...
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A slight addendum from the "archives" of Blizzard ... patch 1.5.2:
StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty – Patch 1.5.2 Bug Fixes
General
Pathing has been adjusted. Units will once again take the most optimal route to their destinations.
So Blizzard isnt unwilling to change the pathing in general ... the only problem is convincing them that super tight formations make the game worse (see above).
they tried the fix in the video but it made no difference. That is because people don't issue 1 a click right across the map, they do it in a series of small ones, which instantly make the units clump again.
I also agree that splitting your units has become a skill needed to beat players in sc2 and thats a good thing. Everyone is always complaining about how there is no micro in sc2 then wants to remove something that creates the need to micro better...... thats funny to me.
As i said in an earlier post: I played a few games on Daybreak with the modified movement presented as alternative 2. If you put in a little bit of effort you can move your army in a certain formation with the bigger magic box. It does make a difference. Mr Browder somehow missed that in his tests. Sometimes you have to issue a "stop" or "hold position command" to keep the formation, but generally speaking: If you want to move your army in a certain formation into a certain direction you now can do that. Units now move parallel to each other. They do not all try to move to exactly the same spot. It is a small change but a good one.
don't really care that much about the gameplay effects rather than the spectator effect. I think watching a semi-scattered army spreading out is much more appealing to my eyes than a tightly packed ball formation. Would make 200/200 fights seem actually big lol
EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/kx6vZ.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/U8JP9.jpg)
) for those who never played it.![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/9ecOm.jpg)
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/uBzf9.gif)
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!
