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Battle.net thread: http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/7710222005#1
Reddit thread: http://www.reddit.com/r/starcraft/comments/174172/another_look_at_high_ground_advantage_analysis_of/
Hello! I'm Gfire from the ESV Mapmaking Team. I’ve decided to write this post about high ground advantage and how I think changing the high ground mechanics in SC2 could be something worth considering.
Introduction:
In Starcraft 2, the high ground advantage is all about vision. The advantage of being on high ground is that you can’t be shot at without the opponent having vision (for ground units). Then when they get vision, the advantage disappears and it’s a fair fight.
For details, you can see this: http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/High_Ground_and_Low_Ground
Now, in contrast, the system in Starcraft 1 was somewhat different. If a unit attacked from the highground, it was revealed briefly so it could be shot at from the low ground. However, whether you had vision or not, there was another advantage the units on high ground had. When you shot up from low ground, there was a chance that your attack would miss completely.
More details here: http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft/Terrain_Features#High_Ground
So you can see there are some major differences. I’m now going to provide a few quotes from the early development of SC2 relating to terrain advantages.
"landscape will also play a much bigger role in Multiplayer, using terrain to gain strategic and combat advantage will be just as important."
(http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=92932http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=92932)
"Terrain plays a more important role now, as it offers more tactical possibilities ... For example, it's now [even] more beneficial to place troops on high ground."
"You cannot see them from low ground. At least as long as you do not use spotters, flyers or special talents, like the Terran scan. This can be a huge advantage, especially for Terran with their mighty Siege Tanks: As long as the enemy does not reveal them, they can blow him into pieces without resistance. Zerg profit the least from height advantage, since their ground range units do not fire very far. But with the Overlord and the Overseer they field two very good spotters. Apart from this, height differences have no effect. In SCI, there was a chance that units on the lowground would miss enemies on high ground. We removed this percentage since we do not like chance elements. The players ought to know exactly what advantage they have. And how to counter it."
(http://www.gosugamers.net/starcraft/news/9889-interview-with-dustin-browder)
In these interviews Dustin Browder compares SC2 to SC1 and explains that the intention of the current mechanic is to actually be stronger than that of SC1. However, it turns out players almost always have spotters to see the high ground. It’s arguably even easier to spot the high ground in HotS.
I propose that we take another look at the high ground advantage in SC2 while we’re in beta. It’s the sort of change that can’t just be tweaked or balanced later on in the polishing stages of the game, but needs to be explored during a time like this. While I don’t know that altering the terrain mechanics is necessarily the best thing for the game, I strongly believe that it’s something that should be tried out, and I would love to see it in HotS beta.
Core effects on gameplay:
The current system doesn’t give a very consistent positional advantage. It’s very easy to negate. If you get any vision then all your units can fire with 100% efficiency. This makes it pretty poor at stopping rushes (all you have to do is pop one unit up the ramp,) and even poorer at give armies strong control points in the mid to late game.
The system was designed (according to Blizzard,) to start out strong but then eventually disappear. This sounded like a good thing to me at first, weakening rushing but not encouraging turtling later on. However, with the way SC2 has developed, I no longer agree with that.
Most matchups don’t require any sort of high ground advantage to work. Most games you see players taking expansions just fine before the earliest aggression comes, even with a flat choke at the natural. The main thing high ground is good for is preventing blink and warp-ins into the main, which is unrelated to the high ground advantage and would have worked the same way whether we had BW- or SC2-style high ground. It also doesn’t even really apply in HotS. The high ground advantage itself is very weak in HotS.
The current high ground system doesn’t do much to help with the deathball problem. Rushes aside, in the mid and late game there's not enough ability for a player to use positioning to do alright in a battle even with a smaller army.
A bigger army has a very strong advantage in SC2 for a few reasons. In SC2, with unlimited unit selection, the army doesn’t get a whole lot harder to manage as it gets bigger, unless you are splitting it up. Your unit’s efficiency also stays pretty high even with a huge army all together, because, with the smooth pathing in SC2, the long ranges and small unit sizes, it’s easy to get most of your units in range even if there are a lot.
We could partially fix this by adjusting unit sizes or ranges and potentially altering the way pathing works or limiting the number of units you can select, but this post is about using high ground advantage as a partial solution.
A real high ground advantage allows the player with better positioning to gain an advantage even when both armies are the same size, or even they player has a smaller army. There are various situations where this is possible, like early game with luck and rushing and not enough apm requirements to reward the better player at a high level, mid game when racial asymmetry comes into effect or there is a slight mistake or misread or miscalculation by one player, or if one player is going all-in and thus has a big army, or late game when both players are maxed and have their deathballs.
In addition, it also allows a smaller army to defend a space from a bigger army, allowing you to defend a spot with some of your army while splitting off other parts, meaning that deathball play is less frequently the best way to play and splitting your units up is on average better.
A high ground advantage also gives an increased defenders advantage where the map makers allow it so even if you lose an engagement in the middle of the map (possibly due to the high ground advantage your opponent had,) you will still be able to defend more easily when their army gets to your door, allowing for more back and forth gameplay.
Map Design:
I’d like to point out a thread on this subject made by Barrin on TL:
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=330085
It’s a good thread and I’d recommend reading some of it.
Now as a map maker, I tend to try to utilize smaller choke points in contrast with open spaces in order to create these control points where an army can have a defensive advantage, even once the opponent has spotters. You can sometimes use watchtowers, too, but only from time to time.
It would be incredibly helpful to be able to use high ground independently from choke points or watchtowers tin order to the increase the amount of variety and control within map making. The amount of possibilities goes way up and we can fine tune maps way more to prevent unwanted strategies or encourage all sorts of (new) awesome strategies. Players will be able to further use terrain to their advantage when you have separate choke point usage and high ground usage. There could be a lot of depth introduced.
One major problem with using choke points for a positional advantage is that it doesn’t always help the defender. Depending on the compositions, it can do more harm than good. A tight choke allows tanks to shoot at you from across it, but you have to funnel down the choke to engage them unless you can get some kind of flank. Force Fields can also utilize tighter areas more even if it’s the attacker who’s using them.
Skill:
There are a few other things I wanted to mention related to comebacks and the skill of the players, and high ground advantage in general.
There's a potential downside to it I thought of. When a player has the ability to engage with a huge advantage like this, it could end up creating 1-sided battles where the low-ground player, who gets caught in a bad spot, loses the battle. The game might need to be more forgiving of bad engagements in order for a high ground advantage to work out. Since it's very clear that engaging up a ramp is a bad thing though (compared to some poor engagements you could take on flat ground,) I don't think players will be making those mistakes too much so long as they are patient.
I think having spaces that you just can't get up no matter how skilled you are or (especially) how ahead you are can actually be a good thing, so long as you can only create these spaces at key locations on the map (map makers control how strong it can be to prevent super turtling.)
Conclusion:
I hope I’ve brought up enough here to explain why high ground advantage should at least be worth a shot in beta. I hope that it won’t be out of the realm of possibility just because it’s too close to release, or there’s not enough time to test it with proper maps, since the current map pool wasn’t designed for it. Of course if it’s an excuse to replace the currents maps with better ones… well, I’m all for that.
I don’t think doing something more like BW (an actual disadvantage when shooting at higher ground,) would be too confusing for players… I think the current system is just as hard to learn about, and much more frustrating to deal with. Much like all the other complex things in the game, if you make it clear to newer players and explain to them the way it works (the numbers,) then I think it would be just fine.
As far as the exact implementation, I’m not sure what’s best. In BW there was a chance to miss. This is interesting because it’s a bit hard to predict, and it’s also simple since it keeps all the actual damage the same if the ability does hit. On the other hand, it could be confusing or unclear if there’s not a good visual representation of a miss, and many people also feel that that amount of randomness doesn’t belong in SC2. A partial damage decrease, such as cutting damage in half for units shooting up cliffs, might be better. Whether or not the inability to fire up cliffs even if you are shot at is maintained, I don’t really think is important. Since we’re used to it, I imagined a change involving introducing a defensive advantage even with vision, but keeping the same setup without vision. However air units already work the way that all units did in SC1, so maybe that’s simpler.
I’ll end this here before I ramble on any longer. Thanks everyone for reading!
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As long as the enemy does not reveal them, they can blow him into pieces without resistance. Zerg profit the least from height advantage, since their ground range units do not fire very far. But with the Overlord and the Overseer they field two very good spotters
You have a good point here about it being easy to spot high advantage. He even admits it here, saying that Zerg has two good spotters, both of which are not very valuable nor hard to get.
Like you say, I am one of those who do not feel a chance factor belongs in SC2. However, what they could do is something similar to the semi-random system in WC3, in which it wasn't pure random (AKA it would be pretty consistent over small sample sets), or make it even less random by making it something like "miss every Xth attack". But beyond that, I can't think of anything that Blizzard and I would both like.
Skill:
I think you may need some clarification here, I don't really see your point. So I get that you like for there to be some forgiveness and comeback ability.
When a player has the ability to engage with a huge advantage like this, it could end up creating 1-sided battles where the low-ground player, who gets caught in a bad spot, loses the battle. It's important, for this to work, to give the player the opportunity to retreat from a bad position.
But then... you say that it can create 1 sided battles. You say it's important "for this to work", for what to work? Do you want or not want them to retreat, to have abilities like time warp to stop them from retreating or to help them escape? Make it unforgiveable to run into a bad spot, but overall make games be more forgiveable via comebacks through running into bad spots?
I would like to see what you mean here, can you elaborate?
I believe Blizz is most likely still open (as usual) on this topic as long as there is a good solution, but I can't think of anything else. Maybe something like an increase in armor? A decrease % in damage was also suggested on Bnet, but that can cause complications like decimals and such (IIRC there are decimal damages in the game already though, with things like Mutalisk attack bounce and such -- maybe this would be best).
If anything I think a % decrease would be best, and a very small one of course, since small differences end up causing a big difference in the result.
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I'm all for more back and fourth and forgiving gameplay.
As for the implementation and clarity, it's always possible to put a "miss" graphic just like the xp number on top of the units. Damage reduction sounds good too.
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On January 23 2013 16:25 Yoshi Kirishima wrote:Show nested quote +When a player has the ability to engage with a huge advantage like this, it could end up creating 1-sided battles where the low-ground player, who gets caught in a bad spot, loses the battle. It's important, for this to work, to give the player the opportunity to retreat from a bad position. But then... you say that it can create 1 sided battles. You say it's important "for this to work", for what to work? Do you want or not want them to retreat, to have abilities like time warp to stop them from retreating or to help them escape? Make it unforgiveable to run into a bad spot, but overall make games be more forgiveable via comebacks through running into bad spots? I would like to see what you mean here, can you elaborate?
Ah... Yeah.
What I mean is... When you introduce a high ground advantage, it has the potential downside of creating very one-sided battles. A single bad engagement could cost you the game even more than it already does. I do want players to be able to retreat more, for sure.
The reason it's vague is probably because I don't actually know... I think it's something that would need testing to know how it would work out exactly. Would we see terrible games where one player tries to rush up a ramp and get's slaughtered? Or would it be an improvement? I tend to think players, at least at a high level, will know better than that, even if they don't know all the best ways to engage otherwise.
I'll try to clarify it a bit.
Edit: I rewrote that part to hopefully be more clear. Is that better?
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Ah, I see. And yes, it is very clear now!
That is definitely interesting. I think it's worth trying out -- like you say, it's sorta obvious not to engage up hill especially if there is new disadvantage to that. Meanwhile, holding ground (as long as the map is made well and doesn't simply allow super turtling) can make games more dynamic by simply adding more to keep in mind of while playing a game. It can also increase defender's advantage in general, which seems to be lacking in the lategame after major battles, causing games to end shortly after a brief period of action starting from when they get their 3rd/4th bases. It could also allow players to be more aggressive early on, which seems very passive and stale recently, by claiming key positions on the map to do things such as limit the opponent's expanding or force him to expand a certain unfavorable direction.
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Right now play SC2 after min 5 (after early scouting) its like playing a flat game. Every race moves around with a unit that denies high ground (overseers, observers, medivacs/vikings). Thats why since early WOL stages high ground have very little inpact in SC2 gameplay.
We need something diferent (boost armor or boost damage vs low ground).
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I completely agree. I think high ground advantage and its contribution to defender's advantage is part of the reason Brood War is a great game. When it's possible to defend against a larger force with a smaller force in certain positions, it is more beneficial to invest more units into harassment and counterattacks, and as you said, deathball play is less prevalent.
IMO anything that increases defender's advantage in Starcraft 2 is a good thing. I think a percent reduction in damage taken by high ground units from low ground attacks would be a good solution. If instead damage dealt by low ground units was reduced by a constant percent, the proportion of damage taken by higher ground units from lower ground units would vary depending on armor of higher value units and damage of lower ground attacks.
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On January 23 2013 16:25 Yoshi Kirishima wrote:
I believe Blizz is most likely still open (as usual) on this topic as long as there is a good solution, but I can't think of anything else. Maybe something like an increase in armor? A decrease % in damage was also suggested on Bnet, but that can cause complications like decimals and such (IIRC there are decimal damages in the game already though, with things like Mutalisk attack bounce and such -- maybe this would be best).
Try -1 range to units shooting from the low ground. Maybe that helps and has no decimal issues
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I think a vision and/or attack range bonus for units shooting down cliffs or a penalty for units shooting up would make sense both logically and game-play wise.
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On January 23 2013 18:32 submarine wrote:
I think a vision and/or attack range bonus for units shooting down cliffs or a penalty for units shooting up would make sense both logically and game-play wise.
Good point. An attack range bonus and penalty attacking lower ground and higher ground would be logical. You can't throw an object as far uphill as you can throw it downhill before it hits the ground. This would give high ground units a large advantage without being luck-based or disproportionately affecting some units more than others. I like this idea more than the Brood War solution.
The main difficulty I can think of is keeping attack range changes proportional to the attack range of the affected unit. For this to work, units would need to have decimal attack ranges. I think a proportional change is needed because a fixed change in range across all ranged units would have large effects on low-range units but relatively small effects on high range units. If decimal attack ranges are possible in Starcraft 2, then a percentage reduction of attack range while attacking higher ground units and percentage increase of attack range while attacking lower ground units would be a great solution.
I disagree about the vision range bonus and penalty ideas. A vision penalty for units shooting up cliffs wouldn't make much of a difference, because units can't see up cliffs anyway. A vision bonus for units shooting down cliffs would be awkward to implement, because the radius of vision would only be larger in lower ground areas.
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I like the play with the Vision and also that Terran is able to deny it, while the other races have spells that ignores it. So I think it should really stay ingame. But it would have been interesting if they tested some additional advantage in Beta. I like comebacks. But the defenders advantage with the vision usually helps the stronger army.
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I agree it would be interesting to try some variation of this in beta
Subtracting damage (either -1 or -%) from each attack from lowground seems simple enough, but would affect some races / compositions more than others. Same for adding damage to highground, but reversed.
Either solution would affect high attack rate units like marines more than slow high damage units (e.g. stalker, immortal, marauder, tank). derrr
As mentioned above a flat range reduction on lowground will adversely affect short range units (i.e. zerg).
I think it needs testing. Obviously the above balance issues could be worked with, maybe by giving damage bonus to high-ground that is balanced for different units to give similar dps boost across races.
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As much as i think high ground advantage should be here i can only agree with not having chance bound elements in the game. They got enough experience from Wow on miss systems to be the better knowing here about this.
I think the proper direction would be range. It is a more simple solution. Units shooting uphill loses 1 range. It shouldn't go the other way around because it may cause problems with chasing units down and suddenly losing the ability to shoot as you both move down. Should only be hindering the offensive abilities of the one attacking uphill really.
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I can guarantee they won't change high ground this late into development, there's less than two months until release.
But for our mods, obviously the solution is to miss once every x attacks, this does not disadvantage say Marines vs. high armor enemy units the way a percentage would.
It would slightly disadvantage units with a very slow firing rate, like Siege Tanks, but that's not a problem because splash is not supposed to be affected in any way, only the main target damage.
I would also propose the reintroduction of terrain cover from BW, it doesn't block pathing or sight like a cliffside does but it creates a high ground advantage effect that works against any terrain height and even against air units.
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Great post. I 100% agree with you.
I hope Blizzard reads this.
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Why not just use a damage reducer instead of a % chance to hit, to completely remove the randomness?
I do agree with browder, anything that is random does not have a place in a strategy game.
But the high ground advantage is not enough in its current state in SC2.
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I concur. A high ground advantage similar to BW must return. Perhaps making it more strategic than a random hit or miss.
Let's say units closest to the cliff do about 85% damage, units a bit further away do 70% and the ones furthest away could do 50%. This would affect positions a lot.
Edit: In my experience, you can't really see what's atop the cliff if you're standing very close to it. The further away you are from the cliff, the clearer you can see the cliff top. So perhaps the high ground advantage I mentioned should be done the other way round, closer units aren't able to see clearly what's on top, but units further away can.
What do you guys think?
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WarCraft 3 is a thousand steps ahead of sc2 when it comes to highground : 33 % miss chance handicap for the unit standing on the lowground.That's an awesome defender's advantage that should be implemented in sc2, it would cut a lot of the bullcrap 1base/2base all-in viability.
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United Kingdom12022 Posts
On January 23 2013 21:30 Steglich wrote:
Why not just use a damage reducer instead of a % chance to hit, to completely remove the randomness?
I do agree with browder, anything that is random does not have a place in a strategy game.
But the high ground advantage is not enough in its current state in SC2.
Actually, I think having some randomness, especially in attacking highground is really good for strategy.
It adds to the :"Do I or don't I" attack into this position kind of thing.
Warcraft 3 system would be good though. The current High Ground Advantage isn't really an advantage at all after about 5 minutes.
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Sounds good to me. It's one of those things that can help vs the luck based factor of a build order loss. I hate it when people lose/win just because he couldn't find the tech building that's gonna screw him over. I think positional and high ground usage could broaden the player skill at the pro level too.
Besides, there's no reason why it shouldn't be tested in beta? That's partially what beta is for.
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EPT
