The next major balance patch - David Kim - Page 26

On December 06 2012 03:28 LOLItsRyann wrote:
I can't connect to HotS. Is there a patch coming or maintenance or something?

On December 06 2012 03:33 Qgelfich wrote:
I can connect just as usual, so dont get exited. Would be strage to patch on wednesday anyway, usually they come on friday so we can play it during the weekend.

On December 06 2012 03:51 Everlong wrote:
"Hey everyone -

We will be bringing the beta down shortly for maintenance today. Stay tuned for more information on what will be included in this update.

Thanks for all your help with testing Swarm. We're excited about the direction we are heading in!"

http://eu.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/6083128347

On December 06 2012 04:27 {ToT}ColmA wrote:
i doubt its the balance patch, would be too good to be true

On December 04 2012 03:09 MockHamill wrote:

Zerg
1. Hydralisk movement speed upgrade to Lair

I'm guessing it's just groups?

On December 05 2012 23:31 Stratos_speAr wrote:
The two things that promote deathball play are pathing and clumping, not map sizes or unit effectiveness (unit effectiveness can be traced back to these problems). Pathing automatically clumps units as they move; this should be changed so that units roughly stay in formation as they move. Furthermore, units are basically able to dry-hump each other, meaning that ranged units can cram into a small space. Both of these significantly increase their damage output for the space they occupy, nullifying the power of melee units in melee by reducing the amount of surface area they can be attacked on by melee units. They need to be changed in tandem (you can't just change one or another) or else players will just be encouraged to manually clump their units instead of the AI doing it for them. Finally, splash damage (specifically, Siege Tanks and Psi Storm) don't do enough damage; these were nerfed pretty hard early in the game's development. Without high splash damage to deter clumping, you get incentives for deathballs.

To fix this, you need to introduce collision boxes to keep units away from each other, introduce formation moving, and increase splash damage/radius. This will make the gains of deathball play far worse than the risks you take by doing so, meaning that marching a 200/200 army through a small choke will be useless (and usually incredibly detrimental).This will then lead players to maximize the use of their armies, so they will split up armies more often.

Not only this, it will increase defender's advantage by reducing the effectiveness of clumps of units going through a choke and increasing the effectiveness of splash damage. Increasing defender's advantage will then lead to more aggressive play; part of the reason that you don't see that much aggressive play is because losing one's army is almost a sure loss because you simply can't defend without a roughly even army (this is partly due to macro mechanics, especially for T, not allowing for re-maxing as fast as the other races). However, with more powerful splash, one can run the risk of losing a large chunk of his units early on, but by having strategically placed units at a choke point, he can still defend with fewer units against a counter-attack, so there is hope, and thus a good incentive to be aggressive.

The best part is that this has all been done in the editor; nothing about the game engine needs to be changed. All of these pathing/clumping/damage/radius things are simply number values in SC2's map editor, so they are easily changeable. That said, Blizzard will, of course, never do it, since it will take some noticeable re-balancing efforts, but hey, that's what you get when you design a game terribly.

Another issue with this is Protoss design. The entire race is so horribly designed that the very nature of how it must be played works against non-deathball play and interesting spectating. The power of Warpgates necessitates weak Gateway units and overly-powerful Forcefields, leading to deathball play, and this would also need to be changed if we ended up changing the way pathing, clumping, and splash works.

Oh, and this has all been said a dozen times before, I'm just repeating myself and others.

On December 06 2012 05:41 Sapphire.lux wrote:
we'd like to maybe test combining the vehicle and air upgrades at the armory
This is potentially a huge, huge change. It can fix the mech anti air problem and having 3-3 banshees along with Tanks and Hellions...might even be to strong.

On December 06 2012 06:10 Berceno wrote:
major hots patch? don't think so, but I want it so bad