EPTOn March 05 2010 04:56 GGTeMpLaR wrote:
I don't know if this has already been suggested
I don't know if this has already been suggested
Only by about half the people in the thread.
It's over Anakin! - Page 13
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DefMatrixUltra
Canada1992 Posts
Only by about half the people in the thread. | ||
Chill
Calgary25987 Posts
On March 05 2010 04:50 Klogon wrote: While I absolutely agree with this, it does suck for players who are competing for thousands of dollars to have their scarab be a total dud. On the flip side, if it does make the game more entertaining to both play and watch, perhaps there will be more money in the industry as a whole to make up for it? Regardless of whether random factor is implimented, however, I do think that there needs to be some sort of established advantage for being on high ground either with damage reduction or chance to miss. How it'll balance along with the new mechanic of "see to shoot" is up to Blizzard, but please add in elevation advantage. It just adds much more depth to the game. Well I feel like I can see their thought process - the have all these units that hop up cliffs, so you need to use that one to get up and give sight for your army. Unfortunately the game doesn't play like that. | ||
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GGTeMpLaR
United States7226 Posts
sorry about that | ||
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GogoKodo
Canada1785 Posts
On March 05 2010 04:56 GGTeMpLaR wrote: I don't know if this has already been suggested, but perhaps rather than a 30% Miss chance (RNG, random, aka people hate) Have any unit on lower ground attacking a unit on higher ground just do something like 20% less damage? (the exact percent is up for grabs. point is, units do less damage to high-ground units) I am pretty sure this solves the problem of both RNG, and lack of high ground's strategic importance. Just throwing spitballs. tl;dr: Units on high ground take less damage when attacked by units on low ground. Brilliant! I'm sure this hasn't been mentioned in the 11 previous pages. :\ Anyway, I do agree that something like that should be done. I also like the idea to have less range for low ground units. Maybe even a mixture of both. | ||
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Gliche
United States811 Posts
On March 05 2010 03:16 Senx wrote: This post pretty much sumarize the biggest issues with starcraft 2 at this point. This is exactly what I think is the "fundamental error" Dustin Browder says they made during one of his interviews. I feel is this extremely important because it affects entire rest of the game as well. I fear we'll never see the Savior or Flash "minimal defense at key locations" style of gameplay ever again. | ||
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Card5harko6
United States90 Posts
@CardShark What you're proposing doesn't make any sense. The presence/absence of high ground mechanic is fundamental to the way the game is played. It will affect unit balance all by itself, if for no other reason than that it will directly affect build orders. Testing unit balance by removing a variable that's going to be a crucial part of the game doesn't make any sense. If units are balanced without high ground adv they should be balanced with it implemented. Beta is not there to allow us to start designing build orders. It is meant to balance the game as best as possible before a full release. Attempting to balance with a terrain advantage in place brings up a very important question that not only makes the balancing process much harder, it will also take much longer to make good improvements. All in all I think blizzard is trying to avoid 1 simple question during this process, just as any other logical person would want to avoid it. Given a said result, was it due to imbalance or terrain advantage? | ||
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duckhunt
Canada311 Posts
On March 04 2010 23:26 Xlancer wrote: Well I was in the US Marines and I can tell you that ground elevation does not effects my weapon's accuracy at all, only distance effects it. (or not being able to see the target) So if blizzard wanted to re-introduce misses into the game, they should base it on distance not elevation. Maybe blizz could make a ramp cost low ground range units 1 range because there shots have to travel against gravity. This would give high ground a more realistic advantage. ^ i think that is a good idea ^^ | ||
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starcraft911
Korea (South)1263 Posts
Best option in my mind is to make units shooting upward only do 75% dmg or something along those lines. This way pros can calculate in their head the risk vs reward rather than getting shit on because their goons missed 6 shots in a row on a one in a million shit storm of bad luck. | ||
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avilo
United States4100 Posts
I remember being a n00bie on LT 10 years ago and the first thing my clanmate taught me was the simple fundamental of he could hold off my 10 dragoons with his 5-6 goons on top of the ramp. Minor random chance is not always bad guys. It adds a huge element to the game without breaking it - makes it better tbh. And cliche -> do not fix things that are not broken. | ||
Bill307
Canada9103 Posts
But imo they should tweak the random number distribution so that if you approach an extreme situation (e.g. a dragoon missing 5 shots in a row against a marine), then the probability of the situation becoming even more extreme is lower. Example: suppose (for simplicity) units have a 50% chance of hitting units on higher ground. Then the probability of missing 5 shots in a row is 1 / 2^5 = 1 / 32. At that point, you have a 50% chance of missing the 6th shot in a row. I'm suggesting that the probability of missing the 6th shot should be less, say 25%. The nice thing about random numbers is that, if you fired a large # of shots uphill, then 45% to 55% of them would hit (assuming you have a 50% chance). But, for a small # of shots, you can easily get hit %s anywhere from 0% to 100%. And SC has a lot of small yet important battles with a small # of shots fired. This is why it is useful to bring the actual hit % closer to the average % for a small # of shots. Ultimately, it's all about controlling the variance of the random distribution. I agree that no variance -- no randomness -- is bad, but I think that SCBW has too much variance, i.e. you're too likely to end up with a 0% or 100% hit rate when a small # of shots is fired. I think something in between would be best. E.g. "If I attack up this ramp, I can expect 40% to 60% of my shots to miss. Am I willing to accept that risk?" (As opposed to exactly 50%, or 20% to 80%.) | ||
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GogoKodo
Canada1785 Posts
On March 05 2010 05:34 avilo wrote: 100% agree with inc. Some people are making an argument that they "do not want 'chance' in a skill game." The only problem with that is that that simple 1/3 chance that blizzard put into the high ground in SC1 and it added a hell of a lot of depth. I remember being a n00bie on LT 10 years ago and the first thing my clanmate taught me was the simple fundamental of he could hold off my 10 dragoons with his 5-6 goons on top of the ramp. Minor random chance is not always bad guys. It adds a huge element to the game without breaking it - makes it better tbh. And cliche -> do not fix things that are not broken. Generally people seem to be in agreement that something needs to be done about the high ground advantage. The choices aren't necessarily, what it is now, or the way SC1 did it. The situations you described would be the exact same with other implementations that don't use random chance. Less damage dealt by low ground units. Less goons on high ground win against more goons on low ground. More damage dealt by high ground units. Similar outcome, less goons on high ground win against more goons on low ground. Less range for low ground units. Goons on high ground get an extra shot off, or more goons on the high ground are able to fire on the goons on lower ground, so again less goons on high ground defeat more goons on low ground. | ||
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SaetZero
United States855 Posts
1 unit on high ground vs 1 unit on low ground in SC1 = reasonable chance to miss, and rage appropriately afterwards 14 units on high vs 20 on low SC1 = almost for sure some misses, but also almost assuredly some hits Flat damage reductions or some crap makes no sense to me.... while balance wise it might, just as logic. If you were 10 feet higher than me on a ledge or something, and I fired a pistol at you, my bullet is not gonna do less damage because it had to go a little further. Though I probably have less body area to hit, making me miss more often. Keep it the old way. Also: for people interested in how to generate slightly more fair random numbers + Show Spoiler + read this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Random_encounter "The problem with this algorithm is that random encounters occur "too" randomly for the tastes of most players, as there will be "droughts" and "floods" in their distribution. It's possible to have an encounter, take a step, and have another encounter, leading to the player's perception of getting "bogged down". A more elaborate random encounter algorithm (and similar to those used in many games) would be the following: Set X to a random integer between 64 and 255. For each step in plains, decrement X by 4. For each step in forest, swamp, or desert, decrement X by 8. When X < 0, a fight ensues. Go to step 1." Formula's like this keep it random, but not tooooo random. Can probably be worked into something to apply to SC for low ground unit firing accuracy. step 1: pick integer between 5 and 11. step 2: low ground unit shoots step 3: if integer is above 0, unit hits. decrease integer by 3. step 4: if integer is below/equal to 0, unit misses. go to step 1. Some shit like that. | ||
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theqat
United States2856 Posts
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avilo
United States4100 Posts
On March 05 2010 05:42 Bill307 wrote: I think the random miss idea is good. But imo they should tweak the random number distribution so that if you approach an extreme situation (e.g. a dragoon missing 5 shots in a row against a marine), then the probability of the situation becoming even more extreme is lower. Example: suppose (for simplicity) units have a 50% chance of hitting units on higher ground. Then the probability of missing 5 shots in a row is 1 / 2^5 = 1 / 32. At that point, you have a 50% chance of missing the 6th shot in a row. I'm suggesting that the probability of missing the 6th shot should be less, say 25%. The nice thing about random numbers is that, if you fired a large # of shots uphill, then 45% to 55% of them would hit (assuming you have a 50% chance). But, for a small # of shots, you can easily get hit %s anywhere from 0% to 100%. And SC has a lot of small yet important battles with a small # of shots fired. This is why it is useful to bring the actual hit % closer to the average % for a small # of shots. Ultimately, it's all about controlling the variance of the random distribution. I agree that no variance -- no randomness -- is bad, but I think that SCBW has too much variance, i.e. you're too likely to end up with a 0% or 100% hit rate when a small # of shots is fired. I think something in between would be best. E.g. "If I attack up this ramp, I can expect 40% to 60% of my shots to miss. Am I willing to accept that risk?" (As opposed to exactly 50%, or 20% to 80%.) that idea is pretty damn good, it pretty much combines the two ideas of what incontrol is describing + what idra described. Keeps the depth of the high ground advantage, but reduces the chance that you'll end up missing every shot or hitting every shot. | ||
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Vasoline73
United States7816 Posts
high ground worked totally fine in SCBW. Was it random? Sure. But people bringing up stuff like "Oh man what if you miss 10 times in a row?!" would be terrible poker players. It's not random, the disadvantage of fighting from the low ground is always 30% shot miss. You know what you're getting into before you engage from the low ground... | ||
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StorrZerg
United States13919 Posts
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Jyvblamo
Canada13788 Posts
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intrigue
Washington, D.C9934 Posts
the old ramp mechanic not only made a shitload of sense, but also added SO much to the game. even still, it's not so much that it was brilliant but how little sense there is in taking it out | ||
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lololol
5198 Posts
On March 05 2010 06:35 Jyvblamo wrote: IMO, putting a simple % reduction on damage taken by high ground units is a much better solution that reintroducing randomness. It looks like this thread is looping over and over with the same posts repeating. It's clearly not a good solution, because in some cases it wouldn't matter at all(if there's enough overkill anyway), or very little, while in others it will make a big difference and this wouldn't be, because of design intended to make unit X good at attacking unit Y on/from a cliff, but because the combination from the numbers for attack, hp and % damage reduction would result in the best case scenarion for unit X againt unit Y, which is practically random and completely unfair and unlike randomness, it will be unfair all the time. | ||
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DefMatrixUltra
Canada1992 Posts
On March 05 2010 05:18 Card5harko6 wrote: If units are balanced without high ground adv they should be balanced with it implemented. [1] Beta is not there to allow us to start designing build orders. It is meant to balance the game as best as possible before a full release. [2] Attempting to balance with a terrain advantage in place brings up a very important question that not only makes the balancing process much harder, it will also take much longer to make good improvements. [3] All in all I think blizzard is trying to avoid 1 simple question during this process, just as any other logical person would want to avoid it. Given a said result, was it due to imbalance or terrain advantage? [1] This is almost certainly not true. Remove high ground advantage from BW and see if the game balance is the same. [2] These two sentences put together simply do not mean anything. You're suggesting that Blizzard just have everyone make a bunch of units and then stand them next to each other and call the mathematical analysis of the result 'unit balance'. This is not how Starcraft works. Terrain, build orders, maps, and even metagame things such as what builds people are using right now in general - all of these things have an enormous effect on game balance. You cannot balance units in a vacuum. [3] Unit balance does not exist separately from things like map balance, racial balance, and so on. They are all interdependent. They are all irreducibly related. On March 05 2010 05:42 Bill307 wrote: I think the random miss idea is good. But imo they should tweak the random number distribution so that if you approach an extreme situation (e.g. a dragoon missing 5 shots in a row against a marine), then the probability of the situation becoming even more extreme is lower. [1] Example: suppose (for simplicity) units have a 50% chance of hitting units on higher ground. Then the probability of missing 5 shots in a row is 1 / 2^5 = 1 / 32. At that point, you have a 50% chance of missing the 6th shot in a row. I'm suggesting that the probability of missing the 6th shot should be less, say 25%. The nice thing about random numbers is that, if you fired a large # of shots uphill, then 45% to 55% of them would hit (assuming you have a 50% chance). But, for a small # of shots, you can easily get hit %s anywhere from 0% to 100%. And SC has a lot of small yet important battles with a small # of shots fired. This is why it is useful to bring the actual hit % closer to the average % for a small # of shots. [2] Ultimately, it's all about controlling the variance of the random distribution. I agree that no variance -- no randomness -- is bad, but I think that SCBW has too much variance, i.e. you're too likely to end up with a 0% or 100% hit rate when a small # of shots is fired. I think something in between would be best. E.g. "If I attack up this ramp, I can expect 40% to 60% of my shots to miss. Am I willing to accept that risk?" (As opposed to exactly 50%, or 20% to 80%.) [1] I'd just like to say that in my opinion, the regular statistics already makes this pretty true. Looking at 5 shots and then looking at a sixth as a new one is just the same as looking at 6 shots, and the probability of missing 6 in a row is a lot less than the probability of missing 5 in a row. [2] I think in BW, most situations like this would end up with the attacker retreating. If you've got a couple of dragoons at the bottom of a ramp and a tank at the top, it can get very tense, but the Protoss player should understand that the odds are against him and fall back before falling into the trap of relying on a longshot. Your suggestion is interesting, though. However, where do you start and stop counting shots? This question arises for the same reason that firing 5 shots then 1 shot is the same as firing 6 shots (from a statistics point of view). You'd have to make each set of 5 dependent on the previous set of 5, I guess. That actually sounds reasonably low maintenance as far as programming is concerned. | ||
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