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On January 24 2013 14:49 Piousflea wrote:
I'm not sure that SC2 really needs stronger defender's advantage, for the following reasons:
1) Defenders are already winning the metagame over attackers. 1-base builds and cheeses are extremely rare. 2nd bases are extremely easy to hold. 3rd bases are mostly safe. The WoL metagame has evolved to where Zerg and Toss players tech up very quickly to their endgame tech (BLs, Colossi), and the pros are adapting to fend off counter-timing attacks such as immortal/sentry all-ins.
2) SC2 has more mechanics that bypass high ground. Stalkers Blink uphill. Banelings roll right up the ramp. Colossi are still firing "downhill" against someone on high ground. A strong high ground mechanic would make it very difficult for Terrans to attack uphill, without affecting Blink or baneling bust all-ins. (let alone BLs, colossi, or skytoss)
3) SC2 has a much higher penalty for failed attacks: This is the big one, and it's due to the much more efficient economy in SC2. The attacker already sacrificed some of his economy to make units. When an attack fails, he's now down units AND economy. The successful defender out-econs and out-techs the attacker very rapidly. (As opposed to BW, where economy cannot be maxed out so easily so the defender doesn't have as big of an econ advantage)
That is why so many SC2 attacks are all-in; if you lose a bunch of units attacking it is very difficult to come back. Not because your defense is weak, but because your economy is weak. Increasing the defender's advantage would further penalize aggressive attacking.
Honestly if we want to encourage multi-pronged attacking and discourage 200/200 deathballs, what we need is a reversion to BW-style mineral economics. There needs to be diminishing returns between 1 SCV/patch, 2 SCV/patch and 3+ SCV/patch. This would nerf the exponential economic increase where cutting a few workers early means you are irrevocably behind on econ unless you can do a ton of damage.
The illusion of a strong defender's advantage is primarily only due to the close proximity of bases, especially the first 3. This doesn't necessarily make it easy to defend, it just makes it easy to turtle, which is boring. With a real defender's advantage, bases could be more spread out, which encourages more army movement, map control, and sending small squads to harass far-away expansions.
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On January 24 2013 14:49 Piousflea wrote:
I'm not sure that SC2 really needs stronger defender's advantage, for the following reasons:
1) Defenders are already winning the metagame over attackers. 1-base builds and cheeses are extremely rare. 2nd bases are extremely easy to hold. 3rd bases are mostly safe. The WoL metagame has evolved to where Zerg and Toss players tech up very quickly to their endgame tech (BLs, Colossi), and the pros are adapting to fend off counter-timing attacks such as immortal/sentry all-ins.
2) SC2 has more mechanics that bypass high ground. Stalkers Blink uphill. Banelings roll right up the ramp. Colossi are still firing "downhill" against someone on high ground. A strong high ground mechanic would make it very difficult for Terrans to attack uphill, without affecting Blink or baneling bust all-ins. (let alone BLs, colossi, or skytoss)
3) SC2 has a much higher penalty for failed attacks: This is the big one, and it's due to the much more efficient economy in SC2. The attacker already sacrificed some of his economy to make units. When an attack fails, he's now down units AND economy. The successful defender out-econs and out-techs the attacker very rapidly. (As opposed to BW, where economy cannot be maxed out so easily so the defender doesn't have as big of an econ advantage)
1) Defenders have advantage right now thanks to the choke points, not by a high ground advantage. (Especially when air units or detectors come in combat ).
2) A strong high ground advantage will give more sense to units like blik stalkers, colosus, reapers and drops, but instead throw them into the main army, players will be forced to search weak spots along the map.
3) Players will be screwed if they throw a deadth-ball into another deadth-ball in high ground (defensive position) An army in a defensive position have advantage only in that position, so players will be forced to play in a diferent way to avoid engage well placed armies (side attacks, drop play).
But right now its only theory.
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United Kingdom14103 Posts
On January 24 2013 15:50 Alex1Sun wrote:Show nested quote +On January 24 2013 03:21 Thieving Magpie wrote:
It doesn't have to be high ground--trying to put the focus purely on high ground will cause blizz to simply think "well this isn't BW"
What's needed is terrain relevance on a pound-per-pound basis. A terrain difference where two equal units are no longer equal because of terrain.
Chokes only affect large numbers of units
Vision is an on/off function
What's needed is something to make it so that when one stalker fights another without micro--the one in the better terrain wins. I don't care if it's low ground advantage or tree advantage or fog or whatever--but it's needed. Exactly. And I also feel it's up to mapmakers to introduce such areas. No need to change basic game mechanics, just add a few maps with different ground advantage zones and see which ones add interesting and balanced gameplay.
If there is no mechanic for map makers to use how can they base terrain around that mechanic?
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I always wonder why peopel don't consider a +1 armor / attack bonus for the highground or -1 on the low ground. It's a very clear non-chance based bonus. Is it just that it would be too much of a advantage? Just as far as being clear / non-chancy, saying you have a bonus to your attack on the high ground seems straight forward enough.
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United Kingdom14103 Posts
On January 24 2013 20:28 IndyO wrote:
I always wonder why peopel don't consider a +1 armor / attack bonus for the highground or -1 on the low ground. It's a very clear non-chance based bonus. Is it just that it would be too much of a advantage? Just as far as being clear / non-chancy, saying you have a bonus to your attack on the high ground seems straight forward enough.
Because armour effects different attacks in different ways.
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United States4883 Posts
On January 24 2013 20:11 Targe wrote:Show nested quote +On January 24 2013 15:50 Alex1Sun wrote:On January 24 2013 03:21 Thieving Magpie wrote:
It doesn't have to be high ground--trying to put the focus purely on high ground will cause blizz to simply think "well this isn't BW"
What's needed is terrain relevance on a pound-per-pound basis. A terrain difference where two equal units are no longer equal because of terrain.
Chokes only affect large numbers of units
Vision is an on/off function
What's needed is something to make it so that when one stalker fights another without micro--the one in the better terrain wins. I don't care if it's low ground advantage or tree advantage or fog or whatever--but it's needed. Exactly. And I also feel it's up to mapmakers to introduce such areas. No need to change basic game mechanics, just add a few maps with different ground advantage zones and see which ones add interesting and balanced gameplay. If there is no mechanic for map makers to use how can they base terrain around that mechanic?
Two posts later, following the same question:
On January 24 2013 16:28 Alex1Sun wrote:Show nested quote +On January 24 2013 16:18 MikeMM wrote:On January 24 2013 15:50 Alex1Sun wrote:On January 24 2013 03:21 Thieving Magpie wrote:
It doesn't have to be high ground--trying to put the focus purely on high ground will cause blizz to simply think "well this isn't BW"
What's needed is terrain relevance on a pound-per-pound basis. A terrain difference where two equal units are no longer equal because of terrain.
Chokes only affect large numbers of units
Vision is an on/off function
What's needed is something to make it so that when one stalker fights another without micro--the one in the better terrain wins. I don't care if it's low ground advantage or tree advantage or fog or whatever--but it's needed. Exactly. And I also feel it's up to mapmakers to introduce such areas. No need to change basic game mechanics, just add a few maps with different ground advantage zones and see which ones add interesting and balanced gameplay. It's definitely not up to mapmakers. A very very good mapmaker SUPEROUMAN tried his best to create exciting maps using current game mechanics and eventualy he got disappointed that because of game mechanics of SC2 maps don't influence gameplay that much. Here is the link on his post http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/6713481997?page=1#0 Well, he made good maps, but I never saw him trying to implement any new forms of ground advantage in his maps. Again, it doesn't even have to be high-ground advantage. A lot of things can serve similar purpose. For comparison look at some BW maps: static disruption webs, static dark swarms, lots of interesting features. SC2 editor easily allows such things and more.
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On January 24 2013 21:08 Targe wrote:Show nested quote +On January 24 2013 20:28 IndyO wrote:
I always wonder why peopel don't consider a +1 armor / attack bonus for the highground or -1 on the low ground. It's a very clear non-chance based bonus. Is it just that it would be too much of a advantage? Just as far as being clear / non-chancy, saying you have a bonus to your attack on the high ground seems straight forward enough. Because armour effects different attacks in different ways.
What about range then? Makes sence that short range units would be more affected than longer ranged units.
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United Kingdom14103 Posts
On January 24 2013 22:39 SC2John wrote:Show nested quote +On January 24 2013 20:11 Targe wrote:On January 24 2013 15:50 Alex1Sun wrote:On January 24 2013 03:21 Thieving Magpie wrote:
It doesn't have to be high ground--trying to put the focus purely on high ground will cause blizz to simply think "well this isn't BW"
What's needed is terrain relevance on a pound-per-pound basis. A terrain difference where two equal units are no longer equal because of terrain.
Chokes only affect large numbers of units
Vision is an on/off function
What's needed is something to make it so that when one stalker fights another without micro--the one in the better terrain wins. I don't care if it's low ground advantage or tree advantage or fog or whatever--but it's needed. Exactly. And I also feel it's up to mapmakers to introduce such areas. No need to change basic game mechanics, just add a few maps with different ground advantage zones and see which ones add interesting and balanced gameplay. If there is no mechanic for map makers to use how can they base terrain around that mechanic? Two posts later, following the same question: Show nested quote +On January 24 2013 16:28 Alex1Sun wrote:On January 24 2013 16:18 MikeMM wrote:On January 24 2013 15:50 Alex1Sun wrote:On January 24 2013 03:21 Thieving Magpie wrote:
It doesn't have to be high ground--trying to put the focus purely on high ground will cause blizz to simply think "well this isn't BW"
What's needed is terrain relevance on a pound-per-pound basis. A terrain difference where two equal units are no longer equal because of terrain.
Chokes only affect large numbers of units
Vision is an on/off function
What's needed is something to make it so that when one stalker fights another without micro--the one in the better terrain wins. I don't care if it's low ground advantage or tree advantage or fog or whatever--but it's needed. Exactly. And I also feel it's up to mapmakers to introduce such areas. No need to change basic game mechanics, just add a few maps with different ground advantage zones and see which ones add interesting and balanced gameplay. It's definitely not up to mapmakers. A very very good mapmaker SUPEROUMAN tried his best to create exciting maps using current game mechanics and eventualy he got disappointed that because of game mechanics of SC2 maps don't influence gameplay that much. Here is the link on his post http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/6713481997?page=1#0 Well, he made good maps, but I never saw him trying to implement any new forms of ground advantage in his maps. Again, it doesn't even have to be high-ground advantage. A lot of things can serve similar purpose. For comparison look at some BW maps: static disruption webs, static dark swarms, lots of interesting features. SC2 editor easily allows such things and more.
Oh wow, I expect SPL will be using stuff like that when they introduce new maps then!
On January 24 2013 22:45 Sumadin wrote:Show nested quote +On January 24 2013 21:08 Targe wrote:On January 24 2013 20:28 IndyO wrote:
I always wonder why peopel don't consider a +1 armor / attack bonus for the highground or -1 on the low ground. It's a very clear non-chance based bonus. Is it just that it would be too much of a advantage? Just as far as being clear / non-chancy, saying you have a bonus to your attack on the high ground seems straight forward enough. Because armour effects different attacks in different ways. What about range then? Makes sence that short range units would be more affected than longer ranged units.
Range is definitely a possible choice, then again a random chance to miss isn't that bad tbh, it worked in BW so I would think it would work in SC2 as well, you're never really going to be in the situation where the randomness will effect anything as army sizes in SC2 are much higher.
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Since in SC2 a melee map is any map we choose to call one, why not implant some cool features such as slow zones, heal pads (already exist in HOTS) and other ground advantage stuff.
Personally I want to hear more feedback on the whole - climbing ramps make you slow, which affects both small and large armies while being pretty realistic. I think this idea is better then random stuff or uneven stuff like damage and range.nerfs while attacking onto a high ground, since it also affects melee units.
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First for the people who say that the effects of random chance "average out," this isn't always true. Consider a group of marines with 2 tanks attacking into a high ground position in TvZ. There will be great variance in how the battle turns out based on the initial target firing of the tanks on banelings. The rest of the battle is greatly dependent on whether these initial tank shots hit the banelings.
For people worried about decimals for a flat % damage decrease, if the game internally stores health as integers and not floats, then all they need to do is internally multiply all health, damage, and modifiers by 3 (or 4 or whatever base of fraction you want to use). They can still display rounded or truncated health, and I think it completely preserves the integrity of the game.
The biggest question for the flat % damage decrease is whether to add in the effects before or after other damage modifiers. I feel like after is more appropriate, so it will keep the effects of armor more uniform.
Edit: Also, I wouldn't get your hopes up about Blizzard testing these changes in HOTS or LOTV. It would completely change the base balance of the game (that is, WOL). Many of the basic units have already been (at least for the most part) balanced against each other in WoL. Doing this would throw everything out of balance I guess, and they would be starting over from scratch whenever they implement it.
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I understand DB's point about elements of chance and think it's a good one, but there are non-chance elements that could be incorporated into the game that still grant a high ground advantage while making sure both players know what's going on. For instance, reduced range or a set damage penalty against high ground. I really would like to see it improved upon.
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On January 24 2013 13:07 ysnake wrote:
I have to point out one thing that should NEVER be implemented in Starcraft II and that is RNG (Random Number Generator). This is a term widely known by the MMORPG community, and since we all here played at least one RPG game, RNG=critical chance. There should be no "maybe it misses", like a Stalker taking out a 2 HP Siege Tank on the high ground and it misses its shot.
Might as well give an upgrade that Zerglings have a chance to deal x2 damage (a critical strike) or any other random thing. This just does not belong in any competitive play, any RNG is bad and should be avoided at all costs in strategy games such as Starcraft II.
I was a Gladiator (not a huge achievement but serves my argument) in WoW and I hated every aspect of RNG involved in that game. From my Mage's shatter not critting at all, or a random crit that kills me, same goes for DAoC, when someone resists a CC, or even worse, an instant CC (which had, at that time, 8+ minutes cooldown, some even 30 minutes).
Just keep RNG out of Starcraft II.
Well, a) it's too late for that. Every unit has a random initial firing delay. Burrow has a random initial delay. Spawn positions can be random.
But b) Broodwar had a random miss chance as well so it's not really a solid argument "against esports" or whatever.
c) The examples you cite are 1v1 combat whereas in SC2 armies tend to be larger so it's a bit more probable chances will average out over the course of a game, and
d) in your examples there's no way for the players to influence their luck whereas in SC2 the risk of firing up a cliff is well-known and a conscious decision. You can avoid getting into the situation
Again, not saying randomness is bound to be good for SC2. Just saying having this absolute a stance against any sort of randomness is a bit closed-minded.
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In regard to my previous post above, I may have been a little premature. I realized that I may not correctly understand how hit chance works with AoE for something like a siege tank. Is the hit chance applied before doing AoE (that is once for all units under area) or is it applied to each unit in the area of effect individually?
I was assuming the former case, but I think that for the latter case my example still stands as random hit chance != flat % damage reduction. That is, suppose there is only one siege tank and it takes one volley to kill banelings. With the latter case for hit chance, about half of the banelings remain. For flat damage % reduction, all banelings are at half health. Even though they are at half health, they still have the potential to do the same damage because they are suicide units. Of course, its now easier for the marines to shoot them down, but it seems to me that the equivalence of the outcomes isn't necessarily true. It would need some testing.
Edit: But then my example is messing up AoE anyways, so I don't know. My main point is that something like banelings do their damage on suicide, so reducing their life by 1/2 doesn't necessarily reduce the damage they will do over their lifetime by 1/2.
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On January 25 2013 00:58 KillingVector wrote:
In regard to my previous post above, I may have been a little premature. I realized that I may not correctly understand how hit chance works with AoE for something like a siege tank. Is the hit chance applied before doing AoE (that is once for all units under area) or is it applied to each unit in the area of effect individually?
I was assuming the former case, but I think that for the latter case my example still stands as random hit chance != flat % damage reduction. That is, suppose there is only one siege tank and it takes one volley to kill banelings. With the latter case for hit chance, about half of the banelings remain. For flat damage % reduction, all banelings are at half health. Even though they are at half health, they still have the potential to do the same damage because they are suicide units. Of course, its now easier for the marines to shoot them down, but it seems to me that the equivalence of the outcomes isn't necessarily true. It would need some testing.
Edit: But then my example is messing up AoE anyways, so I don't know. My main point is that something like banelings do their damage on suicide, so reducing their life by 1/2 doesn't necessarily reduce the damage they will do over their lifetime by 1/2.
High ground AoE never missed in BW. It makes sense because once a bomb explodes, it's shrapnel flies in all directions and does end up hitting everyone around it. So, if a tank shell missed a direct hit on a dragoon, it won't do full 70 damage, but since it explodes anyway the shrapnel from it flies in all directions would do full AoE damage which was 35.
Real science applied in a virtual game.
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If you introduce high ground advantage then you have to change the maps, then the balance, and at that point Blizzard needs to be fully on board. This change is not going to happen, I'd suggest for people to focus their efforts in other directions. In fact, all fundamental changes to the game - including economy, macro mechanics, pathfinding, high ground advantage, improved positional play, MBS/AM/SC, moving shot - are never going to be implemented, no matter how much the community wants it to happen.
If you want to make a positive contribution then you should probably brainstorm map features that can be implemented right now by GSL map makers and such.
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On January 25 2013 03:49 Grumbels wrote:
If you introduce high ground advantage then you have to change the maps, then the balance, and at that point Blizzard needs to be fully on board. This change is not going to happen, I'd suggest for people to focus their efforts in other directions. In fact, all fundamental changes to the game - including economy, macro mechanics, pathfinding, high ground advantage, improved positional play, MBS/AM/SC, moving shot - are never going to be implemented, no matter how much the community wants it to happen.
If you want to make a positive contribution then you should probably brainstorm map features that can be implemented right now by GSL map makers and such.
What are you talking about? High ground advtange in SC has been this way for over a decade. Also, I want Blizzard to focus on this as well, because this is one of the "other directions" you speak of.
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On January 25 2013 03:49 Grumbels wrote:
If you introduce high ground advantage then you have to change the maps, then the balance, and at that point Blizzard needs to be fully on board. This change is not going to happen, I'd suggest for people to focus their efforts in other directions. In fact, all fundamental changes to the game - including economy, macro mechanics, pathfinding, high ground advantage, improved positional play, MBS/AM/SC, moving shot - are never going to be implemented, no matter how much the community wants it to happen.
If you want to make a positive contribution then you should probably brainstorm map features that can be implemented right now by GSL map makers and such.
I personally wouldn't mind more islands 
Actual islands too--not just walled off by destructible rocks.
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On January 25 2013 04:11 Scrubwave wrote:
I get and agree that current high ground "advantage" is stupid but what makes you think blizzard will consider any changes to it?
To make the game more interesting, and encourage strategic advances towards enemy base? Games will be more about harassment rather than full-scale frontal attacks. Who doesn't like to watch continuous clever harassment that requires micro and is actually properly planned.
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On January 25 2013 04:20 Unshapely wrote:Show nested quote +On January 25 2013 04:11 Scrubwave wrote:
I get and agree that current high ground "advantage" is stupid but what makes you think blizzard will consider any changes to it? To make the game more interesting, and encourage strategic advances towards enemy base? Games will be more about harassment rather than full-scale frontal attacks.
Well, we don't need "terrain advantage" for that--they could just buff midgame defences so that it's almost impossible to win an outright frontal assault forcing a need for more sideways attacks.
For example, if Planetary Fortresses were given a bigger AoE radius and scaled with mech upgrades--breaking through a lategame terran wall would be almost impossible forcing less frontal attacks.
Or what if the Dark Shrine had cannon upgrades that increased cannon range and gave cannons hardened armor?
It's already impossible to break through spine walls supported by Infestors forcing lots of harass play XvZ games.
Etc...
Terrain advantages need to have a very specific reason for existing that can't be solved by simply buffing turrets and cannons.
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EPT
