EPTAnother Look at High Ground Advantage - Page 7
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DemigodcelpH
1138 Posts
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EatThePath
United States3943 Posts
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. This is reason enough in itself. I see a lot of people suggesting ideas that have to do with map design (chokes). You must realize that we've tried basically everything in WoL and there are simply limits to what's it's possible to have in a map without creating a broken matchup. Position in SC2 is only a matter of time-between-locations and openness, and those things exactly are constrained by balance considerations like "too far for creep" or "too easy to win with forcefield". As Gfire has pointed out, having a tool decoupled from routes themselves would explode the depth of possibilities in map design, let alone in gameplay. Using custom map features is fine, but there hasn't been a single map yet used in tournaments with anything like a "guardian shield area". If we can have high ground advantage, that will always provide a useful tool for sculpting positional dynamics. Why not have one versatile mechanic to master instead of multiple oddball ones that have much more potential for confusion? I also want to point out that there's no reason we can't use both vision -and- some other mechanic for high ground at the same time. Personally, I doubt this will be addressed in HotS, beta or otherwise, but player comprehension should not be an impediment we need to worry about. Explaining any chosen high ground advantage mechanic would be eminently feasible within the paradigm the game already uses for demonstrating its rules. All you need is a campaign mission highlighting how it works, and a blurb in the multiplayer tutorial / help screen. "It doesn't make immediate sense" shouldn't be a barrier in a game like Starcraft where there is an expectation of complexity, and I'm not sure that statement is even true for most people. There are idiosyncrasies in the current mechanic anyway, like air units can be seen when attacking, and therefore the colossus can't attack from high ground without revealing itself. Lastly, while I like the idea of high ground advantage for situations where there is a cliff between the enemies, I don't think it does enough to help in underdog engagements on a wide ramp, as in BW. Because it's so easy to move all your guys into firing position (as mentioned in the OP about pathing), most of the time a smaller force won't be able to use a high ground advantage long enough for it to pay off when the aggressor can just move onto the high ground. However, it does widen the currently very narrow window of a difference of forces that can be overcome, which may be good enough. I don't think it can do any harm, and it would only make the game deeper. | ||
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Alex1Sun
494 Posts
Agreed, however we don't need to change any game mechanics in order to get the same effect as stronger high ground advantage provides. Have a look here: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=395256 | ||
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Randomaccount#77123
United States5003 Posts
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Obamanation666
United States70 Posts
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LavaLava
United States235 Posts
This would do a lot of good things to the gameplay. | ||
Falling
Canada11349 Posts
On January 26 2013 01:33 Obamanation666 wrote: I really like your post, and I agree with most everything your saying, but I fear it's a little late at this point to try and implement something like this (release is right around the corner). The changes to the entire foundation of the game could be dramatic and unforeseen. This is something that should have been tried around the initial release of Beta. Maybe. But if not Beta, then it will be never short of SC3. If anything Blizzard has been too conservative with their changes. Without high ground, you actually lose irreplaceable strategy. The skilled and intelligent player is able to make use of terrain advantages for great effect. Without it, you play on a flat fields hemmed in by a maze of walls. Without it, there are less opportunities for players to demonstrate skill beyond massing troops and making good concaves. Remember in 2010 with Boxer siege tank placements? High ground encourages that sort of thinking. | ||
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Thieving Magpie
United States6752 Posts
On January 26 2013 03:54 Falling wrote: Maybe. But if not Beta, then it will be never short of SC3. If anything Blizzard has been too conservative with their changes. Without high ground, you actually lose irreplaceable strategy. The skilled and intelligent player is able to make use of terrain advantages for great effect. Without it, you play on a flat fields hemmed in by a maze of walls. Without it, there are less opportunities for players to demonstrate skill beyond massing troops and making good concaves. Remember in 2010 with Boxer siege tank placements? High ground encourages that sort of thinking. Lets take in the facts. 1.) Blizzard will, most likely, never add these kinds of things into the game. Period. 2.) We have a map editor that *can* put similar effects into the game. 3.) When we changed Blizz maps for tournaments, Blizz followed. 4.) The responsibility is not for Blizzard to just add in stuff that they already said they won't add in, but in the Map Makers and TOURNAMENT ORGANIZERS (Like GSL, SPL, MLG, etc...) to implement those new maps and show that they work. When we have done things like that in the past (such as rocks on thirds, chokes on thirds, larger maps, etc...) we as a community were more successful with showing what works than simply asking for what works. Will what we input be silly looking at first? (such as depots at the bottom of the ramp) Yes! When Blizzard decides its a good idea will they make it look cleaner? (like flat rocks at the bottom of ramps instead of Depots in HotS) YES. Show that the game will play better (albeit uglier) and Blizzard *will* follow suit. | ||
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KillingVector
United States96 Posts
On January 26 2013 04:38 Thieving Magpie wrote: Lets take in the facts. 1.) Blizzard will, most likely, never add these kinds of things into the game. Period. 2.) We have a map editor that *can* put similar effects into the game. 3.) When we changed Blizz maps for tournaments, Blizz followed. 4.) The responsibility is not for Blizzard to just add in stuff that they already said they won't add in, but in the Map Makers and TOURNAMENT ORGANIZERS (Like GSL, SPL, MLG, etc...) to implement those new maps and show that they work. When we have done things like that in the past (such as rocks on thirds, chokes on thirds, larger maps, etc...) we as a community were more successful with showing what works than simply asking for what works. Will what we input be silly looking at first? (such as depots at the bottom of the ramp) Yes! When Blizzard decides its a good idea will they make it look cleaner? (like flat rocks at the bottom of ramps instead of Depots in HotS) YES. Show that the game will play better (albeit uglier) and Blizzard *will* follow suit. Yes, most likely this is the way it will have to go. So we should at least ask Blizzard for the ability to put different high ground effects into custom maps via the editor instead of resorting to mods. Edit: It certainly isn't too late into the Beta for Blizzard to add another functionality that by default isn't used. This should be done in the beta, because it will probably involve altering the flow of the program in some minor way, which is much less likely to happen after the beta. | ||
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Gfire
United States1699 Posts
On January 26 2013 04:38 Thieving Magpie wrote: Lets take in the facts. 1.) Blizzard will, most likely, never add these kinds of things into the game. Period. 2.) We have a map editor that *can* put similar effects into the game. 3.) When we changed Blizz maps for tournaments, Blizz followed. 4.) The responsibility is not for Blizzard to just add in stuff that they already said they won't add in, but in the Map Makers and TOURNAMENT ORGANIZERS (Like GSL, SPL, MLG, etc...) to implement those new maps and show that they work. When we have done things like that in the past (such as rocks on thirds, chokes on thirds, larger maps, etc...) we as a community were more successful with showing what works than simply asking for what works. Will what we input be silly looking at first? (such as depots at the bottom of the ramp) Yes! When Blizzard decides its a good idea will they make it look cleaner? (like flat rocks at the bottom of ramps instead of Depots in HotS) YES. Show that the game will play better (albeit uglier) and Blizzard *will* follow suit. Source for #1 please. Adding high ground advantage is more than being a custom map. You're actually changing the mechanics of something that exists already on other maps. This is more of a pro-mod, something like OneGoal and Starbow. Major tournaments won't use something like that, will they? They might, however, use other types of terrain advantages which are new features and unrelated to high ground. Then Blizzard might realize they need terrain features and add high ground advantage, which would be sort of a ladder-friendly and good base terrain advantage. | ||
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Thieving Magpie
United States6752 Posts
On January 26 2013 05:02 Gfire wrote: Source for #1 please. Adding high ground advantage is more than being a custom map. You're actually changing the mechanics of something that exists already on other maps. This is more of a pro-mod, something like OneGoal and Starbow. Major tournaments won't use something like that, will they? They might, however, use other types of terrain advantages which are new features and unrelated to high ground. Then Blizzard might realize they need terrain features and add high ground advantage, which would be sort of a ladder-friendly and good base terrain advantage. They don't have to be mods--permanent area buffs based on unit location is already present without mods. It *will* look ugly, it *will* look silly and it *hopefully* will produce the dynamic gameplay we want the game to have. Better gameplay leads to better tournament use, better tournament use means more widespread adoption, better widespread adoption will force blizzard's hand. If we have to put healing wells, "invisible" armor bonuses, permanent spells, actual coded trigger effects, etc... then let's! We wouldn't need mods, we wouldn't need ad-ons. We would simply make a custom map to play on like we already do--and if it gets widespread it will force Blizzard's hand. | ||
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EatThePath
United States3943 Posts
On January 26 2013 05:53 Thieving Magpie wrote: They don't have to be mods--permanent area buffs based on unit location is already present without mods. It *will* look ugly, it *will* look silly and it *hopefully* will produce the dynamic gameplay we want the game to have. Better gameplay leads to better tournament use, better tournament use means more widespread adoption, better widespread adoption will force blizzard's hand. If we have to put healing wells, "invisible" armor bonuses, permanent spells, actual coded trigger effects, etc... then let's! We wouldn't need mods, we wouldn't need ad-ons. We would simply make a custom map to play on like we already do--and if it gets widespread it will force Blizzard's hand. Widespread, that's the difficulty. I'm not sure how much you follow mapmaking, but it's been a disheartening slog since forever. Without much attention consistent attention from the community, it's like we're doing it for our own amusement and enlightenment. TLMC was the only exception. Would a map with neutral disruption web win a new TLMC? Not unless it's fundamentally a good map anyway, which is what we concentrate on typically. | ||
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Randomaccount#77123
United States5003 Posts
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Thieving Magpie
United States6752 Posts
On January 26 2013 07:28 Barrin wrote: By the way I've been citing a a stronger high ground mechanic as the best way to make mapmaking more interesting/rewarding. If you can't give us attention can you at least give us a high ground mechanic, PLEASE  I really wish reduced mineral patches took off... | ||
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