I am not one of those guys going around "imbalance!" or "This is so bad!" etc.. I fucking love this game so far. Sure it has issues and those will most likely be dealt with. But one of the issues I fear will NOT get dealt with is the damage calculus for high ground.. or more specifically: The lack of.
In SCBW it was random. With direct vision or not, you shot at something that was up a ramp or over a cliff you were probably going to miss a few times. I liked this. I think it is close to "reality" in that there IS an advantage with high ground. The advantage is that sometimes, you are going to miss. I think this rewarded defensive positions but it gave MORE thought to the game.
In SC2 they removed this. Instead, if you have "direct vision" you do full damage. Blizz waves it's fingers at nay-sayers and says "THAT IS OUR RESPONSE!" But that is a load of crap. Seeing up a cliff doesn't make them the same as being on equal ground.. And NO I am not making this argument simply because it isn't "most likely to occur in real life" I am making this argument because it was a HUGE part of SCBW and it made the game great. This will HELP make SC2 a greatER game as well.
Why remove it?
1. It is more noob friendly. If unit A does X damage ALL the time it is far more simple to understand. Cliffs, close range, far.. etc.. same is good for MOST people.
2. Direct site change is "good": Rewards players who "scout" the vision.
3. Lack of foresight.
Why they need to implement it?
1. Competitors NEED things like this to make the game deeper and more strategical. If I have a smaller force but I can position them better up a ramp this changes virtually every aspect of the game. Did I cut my army to gain an economic advantage? Did I survive a conflict with an inferior force but better positioning? Did I scrap out that amazing battle because I was minding my units? These are all things that allow the COMPETITIVE gamers to divide themselves from the casual gamers.
B. It ADDS micro to the game. Ramp micro and cliff management is a huge skill barometer. Seems simple but it is there! If you remove it the game becomes THAT much simpler. And if this continues to be the trend across the board the SC2 that is simpler than what it could be will have a shallower experience that produces a shorter life span. And don't get me started on how the competitive scene is integral to a games lifespan.. without the community feeding the fire you will have a sc3, sc4 and sc5 within a few years JUST to try and recreate the event that was SC->SCBW.
2. This is a bad answer. It has no basing in reality and functions on a lower level in the game. It is also a small reward and something that is pretty intuitive beyond the ramp/cliff management which means it will happen MORE often on accident than anything with some brain power.
3. LET THIS THREAD be your foresight!
I will play this game until it dies with or without this fix. But I would be infinitely more impressed if blizzard had the balls to read a thread like this, and give me some answers. I am not the God of SC, I do not know everything that is best/good for it. But I feel really strongly about this. I would love to hear reasons why the way it was, is worse, than the way it is.
Randomness has no place in starcraft, never has and never will. This change is a big improvement over the original in my opinion, and gives you more options as a defender if you can take out the units giving your opponent vision uphill
On March 04 2010 19:55 StormsInJuly wrote: Randomness has no place in starcraft, never has and never will. This change is a big improvement over the original in my opinion, and gives you more options as a defender if you can take out the units giving your opponent vision uphill
Spoken like a guy who doesn't know sc very well.
Randomness has ALWAYS had a HUGE ROLE in sc/scbw/sc2.
Scarabs? Spawn locations? BO's? etc etc... It isn't like the randomness of shooting up a ramp or cliff makes no sense either.. it is a positional reward that completely alters the game IN A GOOD WAY. Should a guy standing up on a cliff be treated like a guy standing right in your face in a gun fight? Absolutely NOT.
On March 04 2010 19:59 {88}iNcontroL wrote: Randomness has ALWAYS had a HUGE ROLE in sc/scbw/sc2.
Scarabs? Spawn locations? BO's? etc etc... It isn't like the randomness of shooting up a ramp or cliff makes no sense either.. it is a positional reward that completely alters the game IN A GOOD WAY. Should a guy standing up on a cliff be treated like a guy standing right in your face in a gun fight? Absolutely NOT.
randomness isnt a good thing, but the old way was better than this
it should be every 4th shot misses or something that provides the same effect without having the situations arise where 20 goons are shooting uphill at a tank and take 3 volleys to kill it/2 goons are shooting uphill at a tank and dont miss once in 4 volleys.
On March 04 2010 20:10 IdrA wrote: randomness isnt a good thing, but the old way was better than this
it should be every 4th shot misses or something that provides the same effect without having the situations arise where 20 goons are shooting uphill at a tank and take 3 volleys to kill it/2 goons are shooting uphill at a tank and dont miss once in 4 volleys.
Or simply a % dmg reduction for the low ground units.
On March 04 2010 20:10 IdrA wrote: randomness isnt a good thing, but the old way was better than this
it should be every 4th shot misses or something that provides the same effect without having the situations arise where 20 goons are shooting uphill at a tank and take 3 volleys to kill it/2 goons are shooting uphill at a tank and dont miss once in 4 volleys.
You couldn't show me a situation where 20 goons shoot 3 volleys to kill 1 tank.
I get your point but the exaggeration detracts from what is being discussed here. Random is an integral part of the game.. I know for you greg this doesn't compute.
I'm sorry but "every 4th shot" is garbage. What if they shoot 3? Does the 4th shot from "anything" MISS 100% for the span of the rest of the game? Is there a clock on the miss? How do you calculate the 4th shot when everything is firing at once? Where is the reward in that anyways?
Random has to be a part of this game greg. Sorry. It has to. If it isn't you will be left with an inferior version of the game.
Imo it should not be random. It should be a set percentage of damage reduction, like most ranged units have a 30% damage decrease when firing from low to high ground, with exceptions like the colossus and siege tank and something for zerg (lurkers if they were in the game).
The same idea could possibly be applied with a smaller reduction to those line of sight "bushes" too but I think gameplay-wise they shouldn't. Firing with ranged units behind those bushes should be strategic enough by itself.
The best way to do this is have a 50 % damage reduction because if you use 30% it gets sketchy on the amount of shots required from each unit but with 50 % you know it will just take 2 times as many shots as you would before
While I know this is lame, I've always thought a good compromise would be to remove the miss chance, and just have a % damage reduction. That way there is no randomness, and gives high ground an advantage.
I don't really have a problem with a miss chance for it is fairly predictably random. In wc3 (not a wc3 hater, this is just the way it is) items are not predictably random, and do favor one side which is not a good thing.
High ground was definitely too strong in sc1. High ground does seems stronger than I thought it would be in sc2, but perhaps it should be a little better. Just basing this on streams.
I'm not sure if misses exist in StarCraft II altogether, probably not, as shots follow targets literally to the other side of the map like they do in WarCraft III with teleport, you can test this, - get a goon to shot at a zerg unit entering Nydus, come out on the other side and bam )))
What they could do, however is just decrease damage to 75% on every 2nd shot up the ground.
As for randomness there shouldn't be such thins as scarab glitch, worker glitch or anything like that. If you're working BOs to the point of a single second the success should only depend on the maths of skill vs. skill and BO vs. BO, not poor mechanics design.
On March 04 2010 20:10 IdrA wrote: randomness isnt a good thing, but the old way was better than this
it should be every 4th shot misses or something that provides the same effect without having the situations arise where 20 goons are shooting uphill at a tank and take 3 volleys to kill it/2 goons are shooting uphill at a tank and dont miss once in 4 volleys.
agree, it removes randomness, but gives the defender the little advantage that had in bw, in fact makes it safer for the defender, and more understandable for the new players (if that is what blizzard wants)
anyway I agree with incontrol in the point: it most be fixed.
On March 04 2010 19:55 StormsInJuly wrote: Randomness has no place in starcraft, never has and never will. This change is a big improvement over the original in my opinion, and gives you more options as a defender if you can take out the units giving your opponent vision uphill
Spoken like a guy who doesn't know sc very well.
Randomness has ALWAYS had a HUGE ROLE in sc/scbw/sc2.
Scarabs? Spawn locations? BO's? etc etc... It isn't like the randomness of shooting up a ramp or cliff makes no sense either.. it is a positional reward that completely alters the game IN A GOOD WAY. Should a guy standing up on a cliff be treated like a guy standing right in your face in a gun fight? Absolutely NOT.
Should a guy with a gun be able to shoot down a battlecruiser? Should a neural parasite work on a robot? Should units sometimes just go in random directions, or run from battle because they are scared? Should vehicles break down? Need fuel?
There comes a time when you need to accept that it is a game.
I agree that the current method is kind of lame. As far as the whole 'realism' and all that junk goes, I really don't think it should be considered WHATSOEVER in this argument.
As far as actually producing quality gameplay goes, I can see the strengths/weaknesses in both versions.
I think the current method creates some really cool tactics when it comes to disallowing your opponent sight. Sniping air units, blocking ramps, etc. But when the person on low ground actually has sight, it becomes stupid that both parties are now on an equal field of play.
I'd like to see sight still being required, but add an additional ~20% chance for low-ground units to miss. It's a lot lower than that of SC1, but I feel it's still significant in combination with the required sight.
I dislike the randomness too. It's alright if you have a lot of units or just rapid attack speed because the hits and misses even out fairly quickly and in essence become a damage reduction but with fewer units it can even decide games which just shouldn't be possible.
As someone else already suggested, just put in some disadvantage for units fighting uphill (whether it be nerfing attack damage or attack speed or even reducing their range) and we get both high ground advantage and get rid of the randomness.
Yes scarabs are shit, this is a bad thing, not a good thing. I don't think anyone would argue that chess would be better if your next move was determined by the roll of a dice. You can argue that chance/randomness happens a lot in a game but something being very occurrent in a game is not an argument for it being very good. Quite the contrary, I think it is the things that a player can be sure about (non-random) that make the game good. It is these non-random gaurantees that players base all of their decisions around. Chance can add some interesting dynamics, no doubt, but a LACK of chance in a game is in no way going to detract from it.
Just my two cents.
P.S. I don't get excited when 4 goons take forever to get up a ramp against some rines one game and then take half a second to get up the ramp the next game. I don't find that fun at all.
If you give units a -50% damage reduction, fully upgraded Ultra's would be ridiculously hard to kill on high ground.....same with other high armor units.
On March 04 2010 20:17 Gliche wrote: Imo it should not be random. It should be a set percentage of damage reduction, like most ranged units have a 30% damage decrease when firing from low to high ground, with exceptions like the colossus and siege tank and something for zerg (lurkers if they were in the game).
The same idea could possibly be applied with a smaller reduction to those line of sight "bushes" too but I think gameplay-wise they shouldn't. Firing with ranged units behind those bushes should be strategic enough by itself.
Agree with this 100%. It really was super annoying to see the dragoon vs tank example idra brought up over and over again BW matches. Using a system like this, you can still reward good positioning on maps with a lot of height differentiation but you can do so with consistency. More predictable and possible to learn/understand the benefits and drawbacks of high ground without completely removing the advantage altogether. With how mobile units are in SC2, and with observers, overlords, scans, and more, height really doesn't seem like it will make much of a difference at all at the high-level of play if line of sight is literally the only damning factor of being on the low ground.
On March 04 2010 20:24 Mikilatov wrote: I agree that the current method is kind of lame. As far as the whole 'realism' and all that junk goes, I really don't think it should be considered WHATSOEVER in this argument.
As far as actually producing quality gameplay goes, I can see the strengths/weaknesses in both versions.
I think the current method creates some really cool tactics when it comes to disallowing your opponent sight. Sniping air units, blocking ramps, etc. But when the person on low ground actually has sight, it becomes stupid that both parties are now on an equal field of play.
I'd like to see sight still being required, but add an additional ~20% chance for low-ground units to miss. It's a lot lower than that of SC1, but I feel it's still significant in combination with the required sight.
Replace ~20% miss chance with the already discussed ~20% damage reduction and you know my opinion on this. I don't like the way it is currently that units on the cliff are equal to those on the ground just because they can see each other...
But I'm pretty sure there is a good reason why it is the way it is currently in SC2 and I would really like to know that reason.
On March 04 2010 20:27 Rothbardian wrote: If you give units a -50% damage reduction, fully upgraded Ultra's would be ridiculously hard to kill on high ground.....same with other high armor units.
and how is a 50 % reduction different than miss chance? It's the same thing ..what are you talking about?
On March 04 2010 20:27 Rothbardian wrote: If you give units a -50% damage reduction, fully upgraded Ultra's would be ridiculously hard to kill on high ground.....same with other high armor units.
and how is a 50 % reduction different than miss chance? It's the same thing ..what are you talking about?
It's not the same thing. With the miss chance, when you land a hit you deal full damage. As we know having a 50% chance, doesn't mean that hit/miss will be 50%, only that you have a 50% chance each roll of the dice to either hit or miss.
I dont like randomness. And i dont see the purpose of damage reduction.
If they really want to improve the gameplay with cliffs, they might add a bonus RANGE for units up. (and maybe even a dead zone for units too close, down the cliff.)
On March 04 2010 20:27 Rothbardian wrote: If you give units a -50% damage reduction, fully upgraded Ultra's would be ridiculously hard to kill on high ground.....same with other high armor units.
50% would be pushing it, and it certainly doesn't have to be a straight damage reduction all around. And anyways, weren't Ultras already hard as hell to kill when they were up a ramp in BW? Same with Lurkers, or Tanks, or Marines, or whatever else. Usually it resulted in more exciting and risky play to either make use of or work around that advantage. I'm all for that. Would you rather watch 6 Stalkers stand up against a cliff and shoot down 2 tanks with observer support, or would you rather them be forced to blink up that cliff just to win that battle?
On March 04 2010 20:27 Rothbardian wrote: If you give units a -50% damage reduction, fully upgraded Ultra's would be ridiculously hard to kill on high ground.....same with other high armor units.
and how is a 50 % reduction different than miss chance? It's the same thing ..what are you talking about?
It's not the same thing. With the miss chance, when you land a hit you deal full damage. As we know having a 50% chance, doesn't mean that hit/miss will be 50%, only that you have a 50% chance each roll of the dice to either hit or miss.
How can someone not get the diffrence between 50% miss and 50% less damage?
50% miss: Get lucky and hit 10 times in a row totally ignoring that you should have a disadvantage. 50% miss: Get unlucky and miss 10 times in a row totally getting raped by something you should have been able to take whiteout much problems.
The current situation is far too all-or-nothing, either you cannot see, you have zero chance to attack and MUST retreat, or you can see and the cliffed units has ZERO advantage.
People always spout stuff about "randomness has no place in SC", but in the original did anyone feel that the winner of a highground/lowground battle was random? No, it gave the units on high ground a very quantifiable advantage, a much more subtle and strategic advantage than the black and whhite "system" put into play in Sc2 currently.
On March 04 2010 20:34 Velr wrote: How can someone not get the diffrence between 50% miss and 50% less damage?
50% miss: Get lucky and hit 10 times in a row totally ignoring that you should have a disadvantage. 50% miss: Get unlucky and miss 10 times in a row totally getting raped by something you should have been able to take whiteout much problems.
50% less dmg = 50% less damage.
yeah im arguing for damage reduction because its predictable. Whats the problem here exactly?
On March 04 2010 20:37 thunk wrote: There's no high ground advantage of being on a cliff? That's like not having an advantage at all. It needs to be put back into the game.
Pretty sure units don't reveal on shots anymore. You need a flying spotter, and you have to keep it alive.
On March 04 2010 20:10 IdrA wrote: randomness isnt a good thing, but the old way was better than this
it should be every 4th shot misses or something that provides the same effect without having the situations arise where 20 goons are shooting uphill at a tank and take 3 volleys to kill it/2 goons are shooting uphill at a tank and dont miss once in 4 volleys.
You couldn't show me a situation where 20 goons shoot 3 volleys to kill 1 tank.
I get your point but the exaggeration detracts from what is being discussed here. Random is an integral part of the game.. I know for you greg this doesn't compute.
I'm sorry but "every 4th shot" is garbage. What if they shoot 3? Does the 4th shot from "anything" MISS 100% for the span of the rest of the game? Is there a clock on the miss? How do you calculate the 4th shot when everything is firing at once? Where is the reward in that anyways?
Random has to be a part of this game greg. Sorry. It has to. If it isn't you will be left with an inferior version of the game.
there any particular reason you're more of a condescending douchebag than normal whenever you reply to me on here?
figuring out acceptable answers to those questions is a hell of a lot better than leaving in randomness for the sake of randomness. some random things are unavoidable. we deal with that because we have to. but randomness is TERRIBLE for competitive gaming. you want games to be decided by things that are out of your control?
ya, theres problems with having the 4th shot miss. but there is no ideal solution here and randomness is a very bad thing that can be easily eliminated. if a unit only fires 3 shots while downhill, then it hits 3 times. oh well. a clock seems perfectly reasonable, 3 shots hit, next uphill shot misses if fired in the next x seconds. battles do not take that long, chances are its gonna reset before you manage to engage in another uphill battle. what do you mean calculate 4 shot when everythings firing at once? just have it be 4th shot per unit.
the reward is that its not random. when the hit percentage can vary alot from battle to battle you dont know when to engage and when not to, whether you'll be safe or not. the version with unnecessary randomness is the inferior version.
The current mechanic is too swingy. First the units on high ground are invincible, and then a single spotter nullifies the high ground advantage completely. I'd like something that lets players estimate the high ground advantage beforehand. Be it damage, range or armor modifiers, or even the good old miss chance. I also want units shooting from high ground to reveal themselves briefly, thus enabling the defender to assess the situation better and let him cast spells semi-blindly. It is an important skill to know when to charge and when not to, and the current mechanic prevents that due to the uncertainty of your spotter's survival.
I wouldn't even mind a nice mixed system. Maybe lower the %miss rate (or even preferably %damage reduction) to something like 10-20 or so, but retain the line of sight requirement. I feel like there needs to be something, even if minor, that will keep players fighting for high ground. It made a huge difference in a lot of maps because expansions so often tended to be on high ground which helped push players to be even greedier and play more risky. For example, using only 2 lurkers to defend a third because you know its damn difficult to push up a ramp with 2 lurkers on top of it. It also helped to encourage more air play, including dropships which is certainly not a bad thing in terms of exciting gameplay.
On March 04 2010 20:33 Icks wrote: I dont like randomness. And i dont see the purpose of damage reduction.
If they really want to improve the gameplay with cliffs, they might add a bonus RANGE for units up. (and maybe even a dead zone for units too close, down the cliff.)
I like this solution the best. A: It's not random. B: It's not broodwar for the sake of broodwar. C: It'll bring a lot of skill into the game, even more so than before. Now you can position your units so they can't be hit from below.
I think I like a damage reduction option better than a miss chance. Either a set damage reduction or a percentage. It not only gives a more predictable outcome but it also becomes an incentive to choose armour upgrades. It seems to me choosing attack upgrades are the default right now. Props to incontrol for bringing it up, although I feel the video does not really illustrate the point he tries to make.
On March 04 2010 20:33 Icks wrote: I dont like randomness. And i dont see the purpose of damage reduction.
If they really want to improve the gameplay with cliffs, they might add a bonus RANGE for units up. (and maybe even a dead zone for units too close, down the cliff.)
I like this solution the best. A: It's not random. B: It's not broodwar for the sake of broodwar. C: It'll bring a lot of skill into the game, even more so than before. Now you can position your units so they can't be hit from below.
lol what how is damage reduction random or unskillful. Your units are twice as hard to kill, its very simple and works the same way miss chance does.
Idra's idea of a kind of internal clock per unit that resets after a certain time sounds like a good idea. If the exact timing for the miss and reset get figured out, players will know exactly when to attack and when to back off.
If it encourages positional play which is seriously lacking in SC2, I'm all for it.
On March 04 2010 20:51 {88}iNcontroL wrote: calm down greg. Sorry I used the word "compute" and called out your exaggeration.
btw apparently "random" isn't terrible for competitive gaming -> SCBW ^_^ seemed to do ok with it.
it would do better without it. why did you even point this out? SCBW has many things it can improve on and it seems to do ok without them
Because my point is that it wouldn't do better without it.. and I made that point. Don't need to continue to rehash it. He said that it is "bad for competitive" gaming. But SCBW has been shown to do BETTER than any other RTS EVER with random elements. In fact I would argue the randomness of a reaver, spider mine, spawning location, bo and uphill/ramp (to name a few examples) is what has MADE scbw so great.
Games need X factor elements that go beyond "I did the math better so I won" luck, randomness and chaos make things better.. of course in moderation. My OP argues that this is one of those cases where a mere "X always happens" be it a missed shot, damage or whatever is bad because it makes the game more predictable and bland. SCBW gave a potential reward that varied in impact when it came to ramps/cliffs.. that randomness IN THAT APPLICATION was exciting and awesome.
It also didn't "ruin" the game or "make it worse" because each player knew approximately what they were getting into when they fought on ramps. That advantage was enough to turn tides or NOT from time to time.. and not knowing or having the impact felt on hand was really really cool.
I allways liked the randomness. It affected your playstyle in that you either attacked with slightly stronger force than your enemy but there was that risk of loosing to the effect OR you only attacked when you could overpower the highground units anyway.
I agree with %dmg reduction. It will atleast allow you to make the decision to go up the hill if you feel you have a stronger force. I.E more proper decision making.
The random factor is producing the same thing, but in some cases no matter how good or bad your decision making is, luck can decide your fate completely, which I think is bad for a competitive game. And no I dont think SC1 is a bad game, but I feel improvements can be done where it is due.
On March 04 2010 20:33 Icks wrote: I dont like randomness. And i dont see the purpose of damage reduction.
If they really want to improve the gameplay with cliffs, they might add a bonus RANGE for units up. (and maybe even a dead zone for units too close, down the cliff.)
I like this solution the best. A: It's not random. B: It's not broodwar for the sake of broodwar. C: It'll bring a lot of skill into the game, even more so than before. Now you can position your units so they can't be hit from below.
lol what how is damage reduction random or unskillful. Your units are twice as hard to kill, its very simple and works the same way miss chance does.
you quoted the wrong person. I agree with you, dmg reduction is fine. I like the range solution more, since it'll add another dimension to cliff play.
New high ground mechanic was good on paper but in game it totally failed
In SC1 i can go 2 zeals, 2 goons of 1 base and tech to something interesting
In SC2 i must build mass-zealots or mass early units because my opponent can attack me any second and i will not have any positional advantage even if i'm on my own base
SC2 force u to do some things that dont give u a chance to play creative. Thats a big problem!
On March 04 2010 20:10 IdrA wrote: randomness isnt a good thing, but the old way was better than this
it should be every 4th shot misses or something that provides the same effect without having the situations arise where 20 goons are shooting uphill at a tank and take 3 volleys to kill it/2 goons are shooting uphill at a tank and dont miss once in 4 volleys.
You couldn't show me a situation where 20 goons shoot 3 volleys to kill 1 tank.
I get your point but the exaggeration detracts from what is being discussed here. Random is an integral part of the game.. I know for you greg this doesn't compute.
I'm sorry but "every 4th shot" is garbage. What if they shoot 3? Does the 4th shot from "anything" MISS 100% for the span of the rest of the game? Is there a clock on the miss? How do you calculate the 4th shot when everything is firing at once? Where is the reward in that anyways?
Random has to be a part of this game greg. Sorry. It has to. If it isn't you will be left with an inferior version of the game.
there any particular reason you're more of a condescending douchebag than normal whenever you reply to me on here?
figuring out acceptable answers to those questions is a hell of a lot better than leaving in randomness for the sake of randomness. some random things are unavoidable. we deal with that because we have to. but randomness is TERRIBLE for competitive gaming. you want games to be decided by things that are out of your control?
ya, theres problems with having the 4th shot miss. but there is no ideal solution here and randomness is a very bad thing that can be easily eliminated. if a unit only fires 3 shots while downhill, then it hits 3 times. oh well. a clock seems perfectly reasonable, 3 shots hit, next uphill shot misses if fired in the next x seconds. battles do not take that long, chances are its gonna reset before you manage to engage in another uphill battle. what do you mean calculate 4 shot when everythings firing at once? just have it be 4th shot per unit.
the reward is that its not random. when the hit percentage can vary alot from battle to battle you dont know when to engage and when not to, whether you'll be safe or not. the version with unnecessary randomness is the inferior version.
Just reduce attack speed by 25%. You still get three hits in the time four attacks should be fired without having to deal with some ridiculous cooldowns and individual unit attack counters. It deals the same damage over time as a miss chance but without being unpredictable.
On March 04 2010 20:27 Rothbardian wrote: If you give units a -50% damage reduction, fully upgraded Ultra's would be ridiculously hard to kill on high ground.....same with other high armor units.
and how is a 50 % reduction different than miss chance? It's the same thing ..what are you talking about?
It's not the same thing. With the miss chance, when you land a hit you deal full damage. As we know having a 50% chance, doesn't mean that hit/miss will be 50%, only that you have a 50% chance each roll of the dice to either hit or miss.
They are two totally different entities.
If you were to take infinity shots, 50% damage reduction and 50% miss chance are actually identical. But in the short term they are quite different.
if you imagine damage done over time as a straight line for 50% damage reduction, 50% miss chance will be a curve (piecewise linear really) that bounces above and below that straight line, adding an element of randomness. For example, if a unit does 10 damage against a unit with 30 hit points, the number of shots required to kill it for 50% miss chance ranges between 3 and very very large. In the same scenario, 50% damage reduction will always take 6 shots to kill.
My personal opinion on this is that % damage reduction is the way to go. It gives an advantage to high ground but does not add an necessary random element to the game.
On March 04 2010 20:33 Icks wrote: I dont like randomness. And i dont see the purpose of damage reduction.
If they really want to improve the gameplay with cliffs, they might add a bonus RANGE for units up. (and maybe even a dead zone for units too close, down the cliff.)
I like this solution the best. A: It's not random. B: It's not broodwar for the sake of broodwar. C: It'll bring a lot of skill into the game, even more so than before. Now you can position your units so they can't be hit from below.
lol what how is damage reduction random or unskillful. Your units are twice as hard to kill, its very simple and works the same way miss chance does.
you quoted the wrong person. I agree with you, dmg reduction is fine. I like the range solution more, since it'll add another dimension to cliff play.
range would be the absolute hardest solution to implement and wouldnt help a zealot hold off stalkers.
Because my point is that it wouldn't do better without it.. and I made that point. Don't need to continue to rehash it. He said that it is "bad for competitive" gaming. But SCBW has been shown to do BETTER than any other RTS EVER with random elements. In fact I would argue the randomness of a reaver, spider mine, spawning location, bo and uphill/ramp (to name a few examples) is what has MADE scbw so great.
Games need X factor elements that go beyond "I did the math better so I won" luck, randomness and chaos make things better.. of course in moderation. My OP argues that this is one of those cases where a mere "X always happens" be it a missed shot, damage or whatever is bad because it makes the game more predictable and bland. SCBW gave a potential reward that varied in impact when it came to ramps/cliffs.. that randomness IN THAT APPLICATION was exciting and awesome.
It also didn't "ruin" the game or "make it worse" because each player knew approximately what they were getting into when they fought on ramps. That advantage was enough to turn tides or NOT from time to time.. and not knowing or having the impact felt on hand was really really cool.
Nice argument, you've convinced me. Perhaps it could be summed up to: "Surprises and the potential for them creates suspense."
On March 04 2010 20:37 thunk wrote: There's no high ground advantage of being on a cliff? That's like not having an advantage at all. It needs to be put back into the game.
Pretty sure units don't reveal on shots anymore. You need a flying spotter, and you have to keep it alive.
Getting a spotter is pretty trivial. As long as you have a spotter, then if you have more forces your should be able to break up ramps or what not, greatly putting an emphasis back on micro based play rather than macro/tech based play.
Because my point is that it wouldn't do better without it.. and I made that point. Don't need to continue to rehash it. He said that it is "bad for competitive" gaming. But SCBW has been shown to do BETTER than any other RTS EVER with random elements. In fact I would argue the randomness of a reaver, spider mine, spawning location, bo and uphill/ramp (to name a few examples) is what has MADE scbw so great.
Games need X factor elements that go beyond "I did the math better so I won" luck, randomness and chaos make things better.. of course in moderation. My OP argues that this is one of those cases where a mere "X always happens" be it a missed shot, damage or whatever is bad because it makes the game more predictable and bland. SCBW gave a potential reward that varied in impact when it came to ramps/cliffs.. that randomness IN THAT APPLICATION was exciting and awesome.
It also didn't "ruin" the game or "make it worse" because each player knew approximately what they were getting into when they fought on ramps. That advantage was enough to turn tides or NOT from time to time.. and not knowing or having the impact felt on hand was really really cool.
Nice argument, you've convinced me. Perhaps it could be summed up to: "Surprises and the potential for them creates suspense."
% dmg reduction is just about the dumbest thing you could do, if a guy on low ground is shooting at a guy on a roof or a cliff, hitting him is not going to hurt less.. LOL, how about instead of 50% dmg reduction, the attack only hits 50% of the time, that would make sense, be more realistic and it would still do the same amount of damage over 100 shots...... oh wait, thats what incontrol is saying and thats what the "randomness" is in BW..... Seriously.. 50% dmg reduction LOL
On March 04 2010 21:25 duckhunt wrote: % dmg reduction is just about the dumbest thing you could do, if a guy on low ground is shooting at a guy on a roof or a cliff, hitting him is not going to hurt less.. LOL, how about instead of 50% dmg reduction, the attack only hits 50% of the time, that would make sense, be more realistic and it would still do the same amount of damage over 100 shots...... oh wait, thats what incontrol is saying and thats what the "randomness" is in BW..... Seriously.. 50% dmg reduction LOL
i agree with incontrol 100% here
by your logic marines shouldnt be dealing 6 damage, isntead they should do 0-100 and sometimes straight up kill a hydra in one hit. talk about dumb things to suggest...
On March 04 2010 21:25 duckhunt wrote: % dmg reduction is just about the dumbest thing you could do, if a guy on low ground is shooting at a guy on a roof or a cliff, hitting him is not going to hurt less.. LOL, how about instead of 50% dmg reduction, the attack only hits 50% of the time, that would make sense, be more realistic and it would still do the same amount of damage over 100 shots...... oh wait, thats what incontrol is saying and thats what the "randomness" is in BW..... Seriously.. 50% dmg reduction LOL
i agree with incontrol 100% here
except you can achieve the same effect without the short term problems the randomness causes
On March 04 2010 21:02 Audiohelper123 wrote: so youre saying the game is better because a worse player can get lucky shots in and beat a better player
Exactly that. I hate it when people miss this point. In all sports people who are weaker should be able to win with a bit of luck some of the time. It's called unpredictability, and it makes a game exciting to watch. There should be a limit to it obviously, but it is definitely not a bad thing. I don't know how much Starcraft you watched, but Starcraft had many, many things like this in it, and still, the top players consistently win, the bad players consistently lose, and the number of games that have been ruined by "bad luck" are insanely small.
Something like this will not make the game luck based. If you want to calculate the probabilities you can, but in each game each player shoot hundreds of shots up and down ramps. The higher the number of shots, the closer the probability moves to the mean. The chance that anyone misses or hits 75% of his shots over the period of a single game, much less a series of games or a career, is negligible.
That said, I don't particularly care if it's a damage reduction or a miss chance, although I think that it should be about 25%, unless the sight mechanic is removed. You can't have it 50% and have the non-reveal mechanic used. 25% + the mechanic seems like a reasonable compromise to me.
Also, as Inc has said and people have ignored, there are tons of strategic reasons for including it. Lots of people have been complaining about the lack of positional strategy in the game, and they've mostly blamed it on increased mobility. I would say that this has the same impact as increased mobility. In SC, armies had to dance around each other, because you couldn't kill an equal force if that army had position. This made FE more feasible, it made strategic battles that weren't just charge in an engage common, and it added to the strategy of SC immensely.
In SC2, much of this is lost because a few spotters, or a scan, or a floating building, anything can be used to completely nullify a positional advantage. (possible technically incorrect example, but the point works) For example, if you FE in a TVT then you are 400 minerals behind. In SC1, you could try to hold it with tanks on the higher ground. In SC2, a barracks floated over your higher ground nullifies your advantage, and you end up being 250 resources behind, making it very difficult to survive. The longer the game goes on, the worse these problems get because spotting becomes cheaper and cheaper, and you end up just having two armies run into each other instead of trying to outmaneuver each other.
I was wondering if there is something like "miss when shooting uphill" when watching streams. I automatically assumed there is because its Starcraft but now i must hear theres not. And is dislike it. The only reason I can think of is that it'll be too hard to push up a ramp in early game with for example roaches when there is a wall. This would make early harass too difficult.
And btw probs to OP, nice opening post and funny title, all I can hope for.
On March 04 2010 21:02 Audiohelper123 wrote: so youre saying the game is better because a worse player can get lucky shots in and beat a better player
Exactly that. I hate it when people miss this point. In all sports people who are weaker should be able to win with a bit of luck some of the time. It's called unpredictability
spider mines, reaver shots, burrowed lurkers, getting caught off guard, build order. Is that not enough? A worse player can do a ton of things to win. blizz can always add boxes that spawn at random locations on the map and unlock xelnaga units to the lucky son of a gun who finds them.
Imagine how exciting it would be to watch backho beat flash with a xelnaga warp templar rush !
On March 04 2010 19:55 StormsInJuly wrote: Randomness has no place in starcraft, never has and never will. This change is a big improvement over the original in my opinion, and gives you more options as a defender if you can take out the units giving your opponent vision uphill
Is there an icon for "most idiotic statement from someone who clearly doesn't play much"? Please give it to this guy.
Meanwhile - IIRC, the "low ground vs high ground" calculation was 1 in 3 will miss for the warcraft 3 engine right? Something along those lines? Now, I'm not a massive fan of the way SC1 made it a very random calculation, however I think that the wc3 version was a nice compromise. I would really like that to be implemented in sc2 as OP clearly states; it brings a strategic element to positional fortification/attacking stances in Starcraft.
The current method is a very modern Blizzard "casualisation" of strategy - whilst not a total cop-out, it's still pretty bad.
This seems almost counter-intuitive. In fact I had no idea that this was the case. I'd just assumed that If I was on high ground I had an advantage. Without this advantage why would they even put different ground levels in the game. They could just use choke points instead of ramps and barriers instead of cliffs with everything being flat. Kinda boring don't you think? They added "depth" to the game and removed it at the same time!
On March 04 2010 21:02 Audiohelper123 wrote: so youre saying the game is better because a worse player can get lucky shots in and beat a better player
Exactly that. I hate it when people miss this point. In all sports people who are weaker should be able to win with a bit of luck some of the time. It's called unpredictability, and it makes a game exciting to watch. There should be a limit to it obviously, but it is definitely not a bad thing. I don't know how much Starcraft you watched, but Starcraft had many, many things like this in it, and still, the top players consistently win, the bad players consistently lose, and the number of games that have been ruined by "bad luck" are insanely small.
Wanting things to be interesting is not the same as wanting them to be random. In situations like Korea where people rely on these results as a career, there is no room for leaving open the statistical probability that someone will lose merely because of a bad roll of the dice.
I said this before, months ago. But the solution is to adjust the range of units down by 1 when firing at a unit up hill. This makes a huge difference, without randomness, and it's simple implement as well. They could do it next patch if they wanted.
The current mechanic sucks. One colossus and you might as well be on open ground. The only time it makes any difference whatsoever is at the very beginning of the game. But one roach squeezes up the ramp and burrows before you can stop it, and again, your high ground is completely nullified and there's likely nothing you can do about it.
On March 04 2010 20:10 IdrA wrote: randomness isnt a good thing, but the old way was better than this
it should be every 4th shot misses or something that provides the same effect without having the situations arise where 20 goons are shooting uphill at a tank and take 3 volleys to kill it/2 goons are shooting uphill at a tank and dont miss once in 4 volleys.
Or simply a % dmg reduction for the low ground units.
This is 2 players probability of winning the game (PPW): Player A PPW: -------------------------------|------------ Player B PPW: -----------|--------------------------------
This is high ground "randomness" (HGR): HGR: |-----|
So, if Player B achieved HGR by luck, their PPW will be this: Player A PPW: -------------------------------|------------ Player B PPW: ----------------|---------------------------
As u can see Player B will lose anyway lol
But if skill of Player A is slightly higher than skill of Player B: Player A PPW: -------------------------------|------------ Player B PPW: ----------------------------|---------------
HBR can help Player B to win the game: Player A PPW: -------------------------------|------------ Player B PPW: --------------------------------|-----------
But this doesnt ruin the game, it makes the game even more interesting!
On March 04 2010 20:22 ejac wrote: While I know this is lame, I've always thought a good compromise would be to remove the miss chance, and just have a % damage reduction. That way there is no randomness, and gives high ground an advantage.
I have to agree here, i realy dont like proc chances so a direct damage reduction while firing from lowground seems like the best solution. (stupid procs remind me of why i quit wc3, damn Blademaster getting 4crits in a row from a 15% proc ability made me rage so hard)
I am realy enjoying the game thus far but im missing the territorial battle, getting controll of key locations and holding them with less units than you opponent while you expand or use some cute techbuild like you could in bw.
On March 04 2010 21:02 Audiohelper123 wrote: so youre saying the game is better because a worse player can get lucky shots in and beat a better player
Exactly that. I hate it when people miss this point. In all sports people who are weaker should be able to win with a bit of luck some of the time. It's called unpredictability, and it makes a game exciting to watch. There should be a limit to it obviously, but it is definitely not a bad thing. I don't know how much Starcraft you watched, but Starcraft had many, many things like this in it, and still, the top players consistently win, the bad players consistently lose, and the number of games that have been ruined by "bad luck" are insanely small.
Wanting things to be interesting is not the same as wanting them to be random. In situations like Korea where people rely on these results as a career, there is no room for leaving open the statistical probability that someone will lose merely because of a bad roll of the dice.
No randomnes for Starcraft 2 please. This is one reason why the removal of reavers was a good thing (i like the unit overall, but scarabs going off or not being almost totally random just SUCKED). On the other hand i think there should be more high ground advantage than there is now. But please no random miss stuff, make it 20% less damage all the time or something, otherwise its just gambling...
@papaz: This sort of high ground advantage was already in Starcraft Brood War. It's not a new concept...
And the fact that you thought there wasn't already a positional dimension to Starcraft 2 before this is just sad. Just highlights how diminished the role of positioning is in Starcraft 2.
On March 04 2010 19:55 StormsInJuly wrote: Randomness has no place in starcraft, never has and never will. This change is a big improvement over the original in my opinion, and gives you more options as a defender if you can take out the units giving your opponent vision uphill
Dragoons. They bugged out so much for it to be random.
On March 04 2010 21:02 Audiohelper123 wrote: so youre saying the game is better because a worse player can get lucky shots in and beat a better player
Exactly that. I hate it when people miss this point. In all sports people who are weaker should be able to win with a bit of luck some of the time. It's called unpredictability
spider mines, reaver shots, burrowed lurkers,
none of these things are in starcraft 2 heh
Imagine how exciting it would be to watch backho beat flash with a xelnaga warp templar rush !
I got it folks: there should be a random amount of damage reduction, that has the same estimated value as the original brood war concept, but with lower variance! :p So it could be like 15 - 35% damage reduction per hit, equaling to the EV of 25% chance to miss.
I fully agree with In-Control as I already stated in one of my previous threads (which unfortunately degraded immensely as I also wrote about WC3 which created lots of flames).
Additionally, I would like to add that in SC2 air is so strong (in SC1 it was only Mutas) and for air units, terrain doesnt matter which decreases the strategical depth.
I think it should be like this: No vision - no damage (like it is; tho on a second thought I'm not sure how I feel about this, haven't played the beta) vision - like it was in BW
Randomness provides for so much tensity in BW and if Blizzard want to be smart, they'll transfer the good concepts to SC2. Randomness surely must have some place in the game.
Think how much great moments were caused by reaver's scarab bringing in that feeling of uncertainty. Or how boring poker would be without the showdowns when players have already played their moves and are all-in.
Of course, the game shouldn't become a huge luckbox-fest, but having the luck element is such a great thing to add to the game.
I agree with the OP, randomness adds another layer of complexity to the game. The randomness should be marginal though, but units on higher ground should have an advantage, for sure. Dmg reduction should be the variable though, and it should go between 15-25% , make that value in between random imo.
On March 04 2010 22:06 Error Ash wrote: No randomnes for Starcraft 2 please. This is one reason why the removal of reavers was a good thing (i like the unit overall, but scarabs going off or not being almost totally random just SUCKED). On the other hand i think there should be more high ground advantage than there is now. But please no random miss stuff, make it 20% less damage all the time or something, otherwise its just gambling...
I'm a bit on the fence about this comment.
Scarabs to me where a love or hate part of sc1, and it's wasn't a consistant love or hate, it was a situational love or hate.
As fans/viewers of games, you cannot tell me that a classy reaver drop by movie/stork/beesuit/etc that involves scarabs that claw their way around is not something that brings you to the edge of your seat. You cannot tell me that when the scarab gets stuck... then slips out and smashes 5 scvs that it's not a "HOLY SHIT YEAH" moment when you're watching.
Obviously this does lead to the "but it sucks as a player when the sticking happens" but to me, once you finish that game it's behind you, and if you were relying on a reaver winning the game for you then you have deeper issues.
I was actually quite devastated when I heard that reavers were out for SC2, mainly for the former reason; as a spectator, and a big theorycraft person, not having the "flawed yet fun" randomness of reaver/scarab in the game was a big hit to me.
I would have even been happy if some "polished casualised" version of the reaver had of been kept in the game, as long as that unpredictabile element of the scarab was kept in play - it's a huge thing for spectators - and if SC2 wants to survive as a big time, long lasting "scene creating" game like sc1 did, elements like the scarab need to be in the game.
Sure there are tonnes and tonnes of other things in SC1 that we as spectators love, but to me (and I'm sure most of you) scarabs were a great thing to watch - when they hit, and when they didn't.
I am not sure randomness is necessary (although I think mines and scarabs are cutting it close; they aren't truly random in the same sense shooting uphill is.)
However, I agree completely that position needs to mean something. SC1 allowed you to retreat and attempt to recoup your losses, but I get the sense that SC2 is less forgiving in this regard due to there being little in the way of natural defenses. I've also heard that any kind of greedy build is insanely difficult to keep alive in the face of rushes, forcing pretty much everyone to play the same way.
I can't vouch for how true these are, but I would hope for these concepts to be avoided.
The Reaver's scarab example is old. It has nothing to do with "randomness" it was simply glitchy pathing AI and the fact that Reaver scarabs deal damage in a certain way. It's not "random" that a scarab blows up three or four SCVs instead of one, the Reaver is target fired that way by the player.
I honestly don't think something like having a random chance of uphill attacks hitting will mess with gameplay too much.
On March 04 2010 22:06 LunarC wrote: @papaz: This sort of high ground advantage was already in Starcraft Brood War. It's not a new concept...
And the fact that you thought there wasn't already a positional dimension to Starcraft 2 before this is just sad. Just highlights how diminished the role of positioning is in Starcraft 2.
I know it was in BW. I meant it was a good suggestion for this kind of positional dimension in SC2.
Sorry if I have missed some good positional dimension already existing in SC2 but I havent seen anything of this sort, that is the unit dmg/miss chance is difference depending on your position on map.
Simply implement a dmg reduction percentage for units fighting "uphill" .. theres not even anything random about it, but it awards positional advantage.
Damage reduction percentage doesn't scale linearly with amount of damage dealt. An overall chance of missing is more uniform in distribution, and is actually better for gameplay in the long run.
Just slam in 30% miss-chance. I always assumed this was already in the game, though this explains alot of wierd things i've seen on streams where ramp-defense just get run over.
On March 04 2010 22:10 Essence wrote: I got it folks: there should be a random amount of damage reduction, that has the same estimated value as the original brood war concept, but with lower variance! :p So it could be like 15 - 35% damage reduction per hit, equaling to the EV of 25% chance to miss.
The EV of chance to miss in BW was actually somewhere around 46%, according to people who did extensive tests, I'm too lazy to search for the corresponding topics, though.
I'd really prefer damage reduction (a fixed ratio somewhere between 25% and 50%, applied after armor) over random chance to miss. Imo there are enough elements of luck, especially with all the cliff-ignoring units/abilities you can really get lucky and catch your opponent in a bad spot.
I also don't like the current system because there really is barely ever a lack of spotters. Observers come out quickly, Colossi are spotters, too. Any bio army has medivacs, also scan obviously. Zerg has overlords and mutas. Really the only time when you don't have a spotter readily available is in the very early game, and it doesn't seem like it would make a real difference there.
On March 04 2010 22:29 LunarC wrote: Damage reduction percentage doesn't scale linearly with amount of damage dealt. An overall chance of missing is more uniform in distribution, and is actually better for gameplay in the long run.
What? Care to explain how it doesn't scale linearly? Reduction by x percent is a linear function, after all.
Whole heartedly agree. I was going to make a post like this but I'm glad you did. The lack of static defense and battle for high ground is a strategic element that is sorely missing from SC2. For the love of the game please bring it back.
On March 04 2010 20:10 hugman wrote: Could people stop adding "noob friendly" to every argument they make against something they don't like in SC2?
Would you argue the point that it's "noob friendly" face to face with a Blizzard designer? If not then leave it out because it's just internet blabble
Yes I would and have. Why?
I also miss the old mechanic, but I think calling the new one noob friendly is a bit silly, when they probably changed it to cater to... the hardcore community ("Randomness does not have a place in competitive games").
The new one is meh tho, it means you either fight with NO disadvantage or you don't fight at all because you can't fucking shoot back.
The issue isn't really about "unpredictability" or anything. The issue is that right now, holding a high-ground advantage is basically useless when someone can spot you (may as well fight on even ground). This problem is compounded with the fact that it's a lot easier get vision of cliffs than in SC1.
As for the solutions to this problem, there really isn't a perfect solution for it - I'm sure everyone's figured that out already.
My vote goes with Incontrol though. Having a hit-rate% reduction (ie. 75% hit-rate instead of 100%), when there is vision, is something that can deter any good player. While damage% reduction also does that, it just ends up being a "who can do math better" situation. Basically, there is no risk at all as long as you have enough to compensate for that, whereas for a hit-rate% reduction, there is the risk that it might not work.
That is the pivotal thing about holding and/or attacking high-ground, it's not just about who has more units, there's a risk involved. The lack of risk will just force the game into a "Player A builds lots of units and therefore Player B must also build lots of units to fill up the difference or else he loses". A damage% reduction doesn't stop that but pushes it forward - since it is still just a numbers game (unless of course you nerfed the damage to some stupid percentage ie. - 50% damage).
All-in-all, I feel that a hit-rate% reduction is the best way to go. Sure there are times where this system really backfires (ie. where almost all your shots will miss), where a lesser player can end up beating a better player. But if you think about it, there's so much more that can tip the scales in a battle than just high-ground vs low-ground. The better player will always try to do subtle things to gain himself a slight advantage that the lesser player will not. There's a reason why the better player, even if they lose that important "shuttle with two reavers", can still win.
On March 04 2010 21:25 duckhunt wrote: % dmg reduction is just about the dumbest thing you could do, if a guy on low ground is shooting at a guy on a roof or a cliff, hitting him is not going to hurt less.. LOL, how about instead of 50% dmg reduction, the attack only hits 50% of the time, that would make sense, be more realistic and it would still do the same amount of damage over 100 shots...... oh wait, thats what incontrol is saying and thats what the "randomness" is in BW..... Seriously.. 50% dmg reduction LOL
i agree with incontrol 100% here
by your logic marines shouldnt be dealing 6 damage, isntead they should do 0-100 and sometimes straight up kill a hydra in one hit. talk about dumb things to suggest...
Yeah that would be called 'hitting the person in a vital area versus not hitting them". Kind of happens when people fire weapons at each other.
Damage reduction is a better solution imo since it will achieve the same thing as a miss% would - Create a advantage of highground and open up for more indepth tactical plays.
I just dont understand the argument that it is "better" for the sport that there is a chance that an absolutly correct decision of attacking high ground because of a larger army can be completely punished by a random factor. It doesnt make much sense at all imo.
Beating certain odds should involve nice/better micro, nice tactical play and decison making etc, not a roll of a dice. Imho.
Damage reduction is simply a bad idea and it greatly affects cases where units normally die in 1-3 hits. For example: a sieged tank kills a marine in 1 shot, but the same tank with damage reduction would result in a 2 hit kill, and even if it's a random amount of reduction the chance to 2 hit kill would be disproportionally high, since it would happen even with a low % reduction.
If they want to reintroduce miss chances then using pseudorandom distribution like some skills did in wc3, would be the best case. For example: the chance to miss would be 10% on the first attack, 20% on the second attack, 30% on the third, e.t.c. until the unit misses an attack and then the chance will reset back to 10% and repeat the pattern. It would still be random, but with a greatly reduced chance for lots of hits or misses in a row.
On March 04 2010 22:55 lololol wrote: If they want to reintroduce miss chances then using pseudorandom distribution like some skills did in wc3, would be the best case. For example: the chance to miss would be 10% on the first attack, 20% on the second attack, 30% on the third, e.t.c. until the unit misses an attack and then the chance will reset back to 10% and repeat the pattern. It would still be random, but with a greatly reduced chance for lots of hits or misses in a row.
Let's spam this idea to Blizzard.
One possible counter-argument could be that units in StarCraft are now trained to project their attacks accurately as long as they have sight. Anyway, I am all for the random high ground mechanic. Defending ramps are close to non-existent in SC2 currently.
Personally, I think the system we had for highgrounds in SC1 was about as good as its going to get for competitive gaming and highground advantage. And to those saying that damage reduction is a better idea, I disagree - it simply doesn't feel right / make sense. Imagine if in counter-strike, when you ran and sprayed your ak, it did 50% of its damage instead of being less accurate. I think randomness can be acceptable in small quantities in competitive gaming (spawn positions, chance to hit), but in large quantities (think orc WC3, or getting random items that can give your ridiculous advantages) it isn't acceptable/ideal.
On March 04 2010 22:58 Audiohelper123 wrote: not killing the marine with the tank in 1 hit is exactly the high ground advantage so it would work as intended
Actually not. For example. Unit A has 30 HP. Unit B has 70 damage. With 50% damage Unit B 100% kill unit A. With 50% probability of making damage Unit B can miss unit A and unit A will stay alive!
On March 04 2010 23:05 Comeh wrote: Personally, I think the system we had for highgrounds in SC1 was about as good as its going to get for competitive gaming and highground advantage. And to those saying that damage reduction is a better idea, I disagree - it simply doesn't feel right / make sense. Imagine if in counter-strike, when you ran and sprayed your ak, it did 50% of its damage instead of being less accurate. I think randomness can be acceptable in small quantities in competitive gaming (spawn positions, chance to hit), but in large quantities (think orc WC3, or getting random items that can give your ridiculous advantages) it isn't acceptable/ideal.
On March 04 2010 22:58 Audiohelper123 wrote: not killing the marine with the tank in 1 hit is exactly the high ground advantage so it would work as intended
Actually not. For example. Unit A has 30 HP. Unit B has 70 damage. With 50% damage Unit B 100% kill unit A. With 50% probability of making damage Unit B can miss unit A and unit A will stay alive!
Enough units will get an advantage from this to make this type of situation not even matter
Gotta say I completely agree that there should be something in there, dunno if it should be random miss though (I really hate any RNG mechanics in any game), maybe like a % damage reduction as others have also suggested.
Right now it's like the combination of the improved AI and the lack of upper ground advantage makes fighting up a ramp into someone's base almost as if you were just fighting on an open field. There's almost no advantage to holding the upper ground of a ramp.
On March 04 2010 22:29 LunarC wrote: Damage reduction percentage doesn't scale linearly with amount of damage dealt. An overall chance of missing is more uniform in distribution, and is actually better for gameplay in the long run.
How so? 10 % chance of missing means you would expect that every tenth shot the unit misses. A unit which deals 10 damage and fights uphil would just do 9 damage on average (or 90 damage out of ten volleys). A unit which deals 100 damage would instead do 90 damage on average uphill. On average it is exactly the same to deduct 10 % each time it shoots (after all bonuses are applied). It thus seems to me you got it backwards. A damage reduction is much more uniform and avoids (un)lucky series of hits(misses) since its variance is zero.
On March 04 2010 22:58 Audiohelper123 wrote: not killing the marine with the tank in 1 hit is exactly the high ground advantage so it would work as intended
Actually not. For example. Unit A has 30 HP. Unit B has 70 damage. With 50% damage Unit B 100% kill unit A. With 50% probability of making damage Unit B can miss unit A and unit A will stay alive!
Enough units will get an advantage from this to make this type of situation not even matter
Yeah, but you don't have only big scale battles..
Just play WC3.. Pick a Blademaster and see how his DMG varies depending on your Crit-Luck and DMG-Luck...
In almost all cases a % chance won't be skewed over to one side (it will nearly never be completly fair)... The problem is that sometimes it will be completly off and decide entire games on it's own whiteout either player having done anything for it.
I have to say at first I didn't think it was a big deal but really I have to say that they need to implement the broodwar way. It made having the high ground a much bigger deal then it is now as when I see someone on the high ground if the other player as vision its not a big deal anymore which is kind of sad as in broodwar you would run away .
As of now in the mid stages of any game, having vision up the ramp is basically a given. At this point, it is far too easy to just send some units and bust the ramp. This removes the entire purpose of having a ramp there. If the only thing that distinguishes low ground and high ground after the early game is whether Reapers need to jump up or down, then something is seriously wrong.
High ground needs to have an explicit advantage over low ground. I could yap all day about reasons why, but anyone that has watched a significant amount of BW should know the strategic and tactical difference that high ground makes - and I would argue that this difference is an incredible thing that SC2 would benefit greatly from.
If they want to leave randomness entirely out of the game, there are ways to do that. They could give high ground forces +3-4 armor or something - I mean, they are clever guys and can figure something out. It's just so strategically unsatisfactory to watch some hydralisks bust up a ramp and decimate stuff behind a wall.
/edit - Just wanted to add that whenever someone breaks a player's natural, there's almost no reason not to immediately bust into the main as well - there's just not enough punishment for attacking up a ramp.
On March 04 2010 20:10 hugman wrote: Could people stop adding "noob friendly" to every argument they make against something they don't like in SC2?
Would you argue the point that it's "noob friendly" face to face with a Blizzard designer? If not then leave it out because it's just internet blabble
Yes I would and have. Why?
I also miss the old mechanic, but I think calling the new one noob friendly is a bit silly, when they probably changed it to cater to... the hardcore community ("Randomness does not have a place in competitive games").
The new one is meh tho, it means you either fight with NO disadvantage or you don't fight at all because you can't fucking shoot back.
I have to agree that Blizzard was probably taking away the randomness more for the hardcore players than for newbies. I don't think any casual player is going to even THINK about ramps and positioning on top of a ramp, as most casual players just like to sit in their bases for 35 minutes and tech to super powerful air units.
Though I also have to agree that the 30% miss chance does add skill, even if Blizzard's mentality might be that it doesn't want "luck" to play a factor. I feel that's why Blizzard took it away any way. The miss chance is present in Warcraft III and I doubt Blizzard had hardcore or casual fans in mind with programming the ramp firing.
But I think most hardcore players would rather have that miss chance than have a situation where a Scan or Observer makes it ridiculously easy to break through a ramped choke.
Being a person who typically hates an element of randomness in a game, I completely agree that attacking up cliffs in SC2 should be penalized. Whether it is by decreasing the amount of damage done, or giving players a chance to miss their targets like in the original Starcraft there absolutely needs to be a reason to control high ground.
100% agree cause if uphills does not mean anything strategical positioning would be totally meaningless( siege tanks placed at cliff's choke can mean something else entirely if there was such a thing that would happen)
On March 04 2010 22:55 lololol wrote: If they want to reintroduce miss chances then using pseudorandom distribution like some skills did in wc3, would be the best case. For example: the chance to miss would be 10% on the first attack, 20% on the second attack, 30% on the third, e.t.c. until the unit misses an attack and then the chance will reset back to 10% and repeat the pattern. It would still be random, but with a greatly reduced chance for lots of hits or misses in a row.
Let's spam this idea to Blizzard.
One possible counter-argument could be that units in StarCraft are now trained to project their attacks accurately as long as they have sight. Anyway, I am all for the random high ground mechanic. Defending ramps are close to non-existent in SC2 currently.
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.
So far I like the 50% miss chance or the range disadvantage (see one post above mine) the most, I expect 50% dmg reduction to be too much of an advantage.
Even in WC3 there was a high ground advantage in the form of a chance to miss if you're shooting from lower ground. Completely not being able to attack back if you don't have vision, and being able to attack 100% with vision is kinda ridiculous. You can't even storm higher ground if you don't have vision.
i agree totally that high ground should hold a advantage. i dont really care that much if its random,pseudorandom or even a flat dmg reduce.
but i think blizzard wont change this. imho they wanted to reduce "turtle play" ,macro wars and similar as much as possible. look at how the game changed when it comes to positioning and midgame. they did EVRYTHING possible to shift away from defensive play ,pushes,macro games etc
evryone has massive mobility and ways to backstab(warping,dropping,cliffwalking/jumping,new nydus etc etc) while nerfing or plain removing the "defensive" and "positionial" units. lurkers are gone, tanks are nerfed and have million counters, mines are gone, static defenses are weak,high ground advantage is gone. really this be cant just a coincidence. they wanted to shift the whole gameplay.
maybe they wanted to focus the game more on early action packed micro battles. which failed.
instead people get overun at their choke when barely behind,cant leave their base cause they get backstabbed instantly and fights instead of constant fights for position and mapcontrol are 2 big blobs of supply aclickin each other to death. and the winner walks in the enemy base and wins.
so yes, bring back high ground advantage. bring back units which require great positioning. bring back pushes and the micro involved in breaking them.
but i doubt it will happen. but well, sc1 sucked too at the start and only got great with broodwar. so maybe we just have to endure 2 years of cheese play and aclick battles till the addon comes and we get our lurkers,mines,highground and all the other stuff back ;P
Totally agree. Its not about randomness, it about rewarding positioning and having to actually think twice where to fight and where not to. I mean even wc3 had this, why it got removed from sc2 -.-
On March 04 2010 23:05 Comeh wrote: Personally, I think the system we had for highgrounds in SC1 was about as good as its going to get for competitive gaming and highground advantage. And to those saying that damage reduction is a better idea, I disagree - it simply doesn't feel right / make sense. Imagine if in counter-strike, when you ran and sprayed your ak, it did 50% of its damage instead of being less accurate. I think randomness can be acceptable in small quantities in competitive gaming (spawn positions, chance to hit), but in large quantities (think orc WC3, or getting random items that can give your ridiculous advantages) it isn't acceptable/ideal.
that would be the same thing as missing 50 %
No it wouldn't. For example: a unit with anywhere between 51 and 75 hp against a 50 damage attack, 2 attacks to kill normally, 3 attacks to kill with 50% damage reduction, 4 attacks to kill(on average) with a 50% chance to miss.
I completely agree with all points made by incontrol . The random factor brings a lot more excitement to the game , and besides i like studying theory of probabilities .
Agree on the miss chance, like warcraft 3, but stop using "you're a noob if you disagree" argument. People have different opinions, learn to respect them.
On March 04 2010 23:26 Xlancer wrote: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.
On March 04 2010 20:33 Icks wrote: I dont like randomness. And i dont see the purpose of damage reduction.
If they really want to improve the gameplay with cliffs, they might add a bonus RANGE for units up. (and maybe even a dead zone for units too close, down the cliff.)
I like this solution the best. A: It's not random. B: It's not broodwar for the sake of broodwar. C: It'll bring a lot of skill into the game, even more so than before. Now you can position your units so they can't be hit from below.
Yeah and the nerfed tank will be back to it's former glory . This will be hard to balance .
I don't really consider it random, I just consider it a cliff advantage, its not like shooting a scarab and wondering if its going to hit, its ok I know he has high ground and I only have a 75% chance of hitting him.
I would imagine they bump it up to 80-85% though if they put it in SC2, but I agree with incontrol and it needs to go in. High ground is basically useless in SC2.
Random or pseudo-random events in games are AWFUL. I've played many other games than starcraft, and starcraft is actually probably my worst. In all the games I've played there's a little element of luck and it drives players insane because sometimes little things can spiral out of control and turn the tide of a game.
For instance, in counterstrike source, sometimes you can kill a person with 3 deagle shots through armor. Sometimes it only does 99 damage in 3. I would not argue that that variance has anything to do with skill. There is no doubt in my mind that randomness in that game is a massive pain in the ass.
Another example: HoN (or DoTA for those of you who haven't migrated yet) has a miss uphill chance. Often fights and ganks and laning come down to a 1 hit difference in that game. I can't even count the number of times I had a great play and launched that beautiful finishing attack to watch it land on the ground with the fat letters "miss" as my enemy just barely escapes. It's clear that I'm getting shafted here as the better player. Often 1 kill can mean the difference of lane control and even game control for the rest of the game.
Warcraft III, being the base engine for DoTA, had so many problems with random effects. Critical strikes and bashes are the most bullshit things in the game. To those who have played it, have you ever had a blademaster get a critical strike with his final hit? How about that MK who gets only 1 free hit on your DH but it bashes so you end up getting killed? So much about that game is random luck and it's no good.
This high ground mechanic is SO much better than the old one in terms of fairness and predictability. I would say that it does not adequately give an advantage to someone trying to hold a ramp, for instance. I think just making range reduced for units below the cliff might be a big boost. I don't like the idea of a range boost for high ground units, since the way it affects structures and melee units above the ramp is different. You really want everything on the high ground more protected, not things below less protected. I think that'd be a very viable and reasonable change. It'd allow units on high ground to either abuse range (which can be micro heavy which is good) or get free shots (which forces the player attacking to have more units, which is also good) and protect buildings/workers/melee on high ground better (once again, good).
Idra's idea is unfortunately not the best answer because we end up with an imbalance between slow attacking and fast attacking units (slow units may simply kill their target in 3 hits, so effective damage reduction is 0, while fast targets will shoot 16-20 times and have nearly ideal reduction). Damage reduction also is not the best answer as it honestly doesn't make a damn bit of sense. It'd be more of a patch up with duct tape than a real solution.
I totally agree with inc here. This is yet another attempt of blizzard to try to appease a community they simply don't understand. This is also probably one of the reasons why fast expanding is so risky. Because even if you get all in rushed and you might pull back workers to your ramp, you still can't hold that ramp without a superior army.
i really think it should be a set damage reduction. the whole randomness reduction really pissed me off, but with a set percentage reduction, a strategical advantage is still gained from having the high ground
I think that if a unit fires from the low ground, That a 25 percent damage reduction should be applied. It seems to just make sense for me, especially because I always imagined in a true Starcraft battle, that there would be far more than 200 supply of units per side. Masses of tanks and bunkers, huge sprawling bases, 200/200 of carriers supported by arbiters, hundreds of mutalisks. Thus if some of the shots "Miss" from low to high ground, then the overall damage output is reduced. Of course, that requires a huge stretch of imagination from some, so i also think that it would make gameplay better, due to the fact that the SC:BW miss chance was doing the same thing, just implemented in a way that, by definition creates more variance.
Secondly, I liked how in Brood War, if a unit fired at you from the high ground, you could see it momentarily through the fog of war. Of course, you'd miss a good part of the time, but it makes sense that a unit in a futuristic world would be able to gauge angle and return fire. Terran and Protoss are full of computers and Zerg were basically bred for war. I think that this should be in the new game as well. It just kind of makes sense.
Alternatively, Ewan McGregor should come and cut their legs off and dump them into lava. The advantage of high ground.
I agree that random elements make the game more interesting to watch, but that's the problem here. It's only more interesting for those who watch. Everyone has their opinions and priorities of course, but personally I think we should think of the players before the spectators. It's like saying Flash's style is boring because when he's focused on defense, it might not be as entertaining for some, but if that's what he thinks he needs to win, then it's valid. Also, speaking of Flash and random factors, I'm sure he wasn't pleased in the MSL finals when the power outage occurred. Nobody playing seriously for money and a title enjoys losing to some random chance. So I'd go with damage reduction thinking of progaming, though I don't think I would mind that too much in my own games.
I think the perfect solution would be to give a damage reduction to the person on the high ground. High ground should be a BIG deal in my opinion. My idea would add to the effectiveness of ramps in the late game since by then you almost always have a way to get vision (any air unit, colossus, scan).It would also not add randomness to the game. (oh crap they are on higher ground than me I will only do X damage instead of the normal Y.
Has everyone forgotten the reason for making high ground advantageous in the first place.. it's not the randomness so much as the fact that units on lower ground are at a disadvantage makes those on the lower ground think twice before engaging units that are on the high ground.
Getting caught up in randomness and nonrandomness and pseudorandomness makes people lose sight of the bigger picture: positional advantage.
On March 05 2010 00:42 LunarC wrote: Getting caught up in randomness and nonrandomness and pseudorandomness makes people lose sight of the bigger picture: positional advantage.
I dislike both the "noob friendly" and random arguments as well, but this is huge. This kind of big positional advantage definitely adds depth to the game on both the high and low levels of play. This isn't a case of something being artificially difficult or trying to copy brood war, this is a case of a feature somewhat lacking in the current build.
It also makes mapmaking much more stale if high ground is less of an important deal, a lot of BW maps have very interesting play in part because of the use of repeated hills (HBR and chupung come to mind immediately) and with high ground being less important its going to make a map pool less diverse.
I'm not sure what to make of high ground in SC2 yet though.
Without vision, it seems much more powerful than it was in SC1, but with vision, it becomes entirely useless by itself (holding your ramp is still important, but that's due to the fact that your enemy is funneled through a choke, not fighting against high ground)
On March 04 2010 20:10 IdrA wrote: randomness isnt a good thing, but the old way was better than this
it should be every 4th shot misses or something that provides the same effect without having the situations arise where 20 goons are shooting uphill at a tank and take 3 volleys to kill it/2 goons are shooting uphill at a tank and dont miss once in 4 volleys.
You couldn't show me a situation where 20 goons shoot 3 volleys to kill 1 tank.
I get your point but the exaggeration detracts from what is being discussed here. Random is an integral part of the game.. I know for you greg this doesn't compute.
I'm sorry but "every 4th shot" is garbage. What if they shoot 3? Does the 4th shot from "anything" MISS 100% for the span of the rest of the game? Is there a clock on the miss? How do you calculate the 4th shot when everything is firing at once? Where is the reward in that anyways?
Random has to be a part of this game greg. Sorry. It has to. If it isn't you will be left with an inferior version of the game.
I Agree completly. We need more strategic positioning in the game.
On one hand, I can understand the logic behind the arguments that there has to be some sort of advantage other then vision for holding the high ground. This would promote positional play and create strategic points on the map.
On the other, however, I always felt that the high ground advantage in Brood War was perhaps a bit too generous. This greatly favoured positional warfare units, which ended up limiting gameplay options (particularly as far as Terrans were concerned).
So while I do understand the concern and agree that something must be done about it, I do not think the Brood War way is necessarilly the best. Just beacuse something "worked" does not mean it cannot be better or be improved upon.
A flat 3/4 or 2/3 effective power when attacking uphill should do, though honestly, having units miss makes more of an impact. Remember that if a unit dies, it doesn't matter if it took 3 damage or 300 damage to kill it.
I love how the majority complains about things like, wow its 2090 (or whatever) and been like 50 years(or whatever) since Broodwar and Overlords lost the ability to detect(something along those lines), they're getting worse? And now apparently people in the years of space travel and fighting giant robots and mind controlling aliens can't even have the technology to shoot uphill and hit every time. Hypocrits lol.
That being said, randomness does not belong in video games. Yes teehee, Reavers Scarabs were completely random, but I can remember my first Reaver shot, it got stuck behind my gateway and I was like wtf. Everyone got used to it, it doesn't mean it's a good thing.
On March 05 2010 00:10 Floophead_III wrote: Random or pseudo-random events in games are AWFUL. I've played many other games than starcraft, and starcraft is actually probably my worst. In all the games I've played there's a little element of luck and it drives players insane because sometimes little things can spiral out of control and turn the tide of a game.
For instance, in counterstrike source, sometimes you can kill a person with 3 deagle shots through armor. Sometimes it only does 99 damage in 3. I would not argue that that variance has anything to do with skill. There is no doubt in my mind that randomness in that game is a massive pain in the ass.
Another example: HoN (or DoTA for those of you who haven't migrated yet) has a miss uphill chance. Often fights and ganks and laning come down to a 1 hit difference in that game. I can't even count the number of times I had a great play and launched that beautiful finishing attack to watch it land on the ground with the fat letters "miss" as my enemy just barely escapes. It's clear that I'm getting shafted here as the better player. Often 1 kill can mean the difference of lane control and even game control for the rest of the game.
Warcraft III, being the base engine for DoTA, had so many problems with random effects. Critical strikes and bashes are the most bullshit things in the game. To those who have played it, have you ever had a blademaster get a critical strike with his final hit? How about that MK who gets only 1 free hit on your DH but it bashes so you end up getting killed? So much about that game is random luck and it's no good.
This high ground mechanic is SO much better than the old one in terms of fairness and predictability. I would say that it does not adequately give an advantage to someone trying to hold a ramp, for instance. I think just making range reduced for units below the cliff might be a big boost. I don't like the idea of a range boost for high ground units, since the way it affects structures and melee units above the ramp is different. You really want everything on the high ground more protected, not things below less protected. I think that'd be a very viable and reasonable change. It'd allow units on high ground to either abuse range (which can be micro heavy which is good) or get free shots (which forces the player attacking to have more units, which is also good) and protect buildings/workers/melee on high ground better (once again, good).
Idra's idea is unfortunately not the best answer because we end up with an imbalance between slow attacking and fast attacking units (slow units may simply kill their target in 3 hits, so effective damage reduction is 0, while fast targets will shoot 16-20 times and have nearly ideal reduction). Damage reduction also is not the best answer as it honestly doesn't make a damn bit of sense. It'd be more of a patch up with duct tape than a real solution.
TL;DR units below should have reduced range.
Unfortunately, this thread has now become a discussion about 'randomness' instead of a discussion about how high ground needs to have a clear advantage over low ground. Also I think there is a lot of misunderstanding in this thread as far as what 'randomness' means. Saying that something is 'random' can mean a LOT of things.
I am a physicist, and we deal with the idea of randomness all the time. When you physically roll a die, the outcome is actually NOT random - it is 100% predetermined by the initial conditions of the throw (discounting effects from quantum mechanics, which have a negligible effect here). So why can't you reproduce the same roll every time? It's because the motion is something called chaotic - a very small change in the initial conditions can result in a drastic difference in the outcome. So for a die-throwing robot with 16 digits of precision, throwing a die is not random. But for a human, throwing a die is random.
The other thing about randomness is the perception of the outcome of random events. For a single random event (a hydralisk fires one shot uphill), you cannot accurately predict the outcome. However, for a large number of random events, you can accurately predict the outcome with a great deal of certainty.
So let's say that firing at high ground causes 33% of shots to miss (I just grabbed this number because the math is easy to do).
a) If 1 hydralisk fires one shot, you cannot accurately predict what will happen (you only know the probability of the outcomes). Any prediction you make will come with a huge uncertainty.
b) If 1 hydralisk fires 900 shots up the ramp, you can very accurately (within a small error) predict that 600 shots will hit, and 300 will miss. In fact, you can show that hitting more than 650 times or less than 550 times is almost 0%. Those higher and lower numbers are only 8% different than your prediction.
c) If 10 hydralisks fire 30 shots (so 3 totaly volleys equalling 300 total shots), you can still accurately predict that they will hit 200 times and miss 100 times, with hitting over 230 times or under 170 times approaching 0%. These numbers are only 10% different than your prediction - so you can almost bet your life that (if the RNG actually works) you will hit 200 shots plus or minus 10% (so plus or minus 30 shots).
This is the kind of calculation that experienced BW players do without realizing it. The fact is that, given a strong force on top of a ramp, any good BW player can tell you the numbers you need to break it with some certainty (but more importantly, they'd probably tell you not to try).
So yes, in CS and WC3 and HoN and other games that deal with very small numbers of random events, randomness is a mechanic that is averse to skill (I'm gonna toss 2v2 WoW arena in here as well). In these games, randomness can be the difference between winning and losing.
In SC, it just isn't the case. There's not an 11% chance that your CC is gonna implode while you're building it, instantly costing you the match. There's not a 14% chance that a scouting probe's attack will disable your hatchery for 30 seconds, instantly costing you the game. The randomness is used ONLY as a mechanism to make high ground stronger - that is it! It's also predictably random - you can bet your life on the outcome plus or minus a few percent. The only 'randomness' that really makes a somewhat negative difference in SC is reaver scarab AI. And this is not something that the developers were like 'oh hay guys let's make scarabs random' this is just poor pathing - it's not intentionally random, it's just effectively random.
For those of you that care, I just did these numbers at a glance.
Also, arguing over the mechanism used to make high ground strong is in some cases silly. No disrespect to anyone's profession or skills, but this game is not a Marine sniper simulation. Any way that they make high ground stronger will be unrealistic. Having a random miss chance or reduced damage will effectively be the same thing within a few percent. Messing with ranges and so on might be a way to discourage people from attacking ramps, but we know for a fact that miss chances and reduced damage will work as expected (from BW).
I think people are underestimating Blizzard's designers a bit.
I'm a pretty inexperienced game designer, but not a complete neophyte. If I were working on WoL, one of the points of emphasis would be that the game should be more dynamic and aggressive than BW. TvT is the obvious example, but in general defensive advantages allow a player in a weaker position to prolong the game, but rarely to win it (given map control issues). Another point would be to limit the power of early aggression, cutting down on the number of 7-minute microfests (4-pool, bunker rush, etc.). A final point would be to reduce pseudo-random effects, in a nod towards competitive/professional play. I'm not saying this is "right", and I'm not saying Blizzard's designers agree, but I don't think it's unreasonable.
If Blizzard were to have these goals, the current mechanic makes a fair amount of sense. A wall of melee units to block a ramp, with ranged units behind them, is more powerful for early defense (0% chance to hit ranged units instead of 50%), while less powerful late (100% chance to hit instead of 50%). That discourages ultra-early aggression, while encouraging less late-game turtle-play. It also removes a random element, satisfying all three of the points of emphasis above.
Does this mean things are great as they are? Not necessarily. But I suspect there are multiple designers at Blizzard with a quite specific (and quite long!) list of goals who carefully considered this, and continue to carefully consider it. I don't think a couple weeks into the beta is the right time to say "Screw it, it's horrible, back to the BW system!"
Consider this less a suggestion of a solution, and more a plea for patience. Blizzard has good game designers, and I think they deserve a chance to refine things throughout the beta.
I don't this k its should be random like in sc1 but I do think it should be more similar. It should be if you are fighting up hill all damage is reduced by 10% (or maybe in sc2 terms fighting up hill, units on top all have +1 or +2 armor). J think this would be a fine change that takes out 'chance' but adds a similar mechanic as sc1.
The only recent game I could think of where the miss chance made all the difference:
Flash's vulture barely slips by on the ramp and gives him the intel he needs to decide to do a timing push to punish Stork's greedy build.
Some of you will look at this and say, "See? Pure randomness and luck let Flash win that crucial ace match. It doesn't belong in Starcraft." Others will say, "See? The crowd and commentators held their breath in utter suspense when that vulture was about to be taken out. This is what watching Starcraft is all about." And then others will say, "See? Stork ignored a fundamental strategical element of the game, didn't react fast enough or guard his front better, and paid the price. Things like this are why Starcraft is such a strategically deep game."
Of course, the people in the live thread just said, "2400!! FLASH BONJWA!!!"
On March 04 2010 20:10 IdrA wrote: randomness isnt a good thing, but the old way was better than this
it should be every 4th shot misses or something that provides the same effect without having the situations arise where 20 goons are shooting uphill at a tank and take 3 volleys to kill it/2 goons are shooting uphill at a tank and dont miss once in 4 volleys.
Alternatively they could just make a penalty or 75% or 80% damage only and, why not, reducing the range, which would also makes sense. I don't really like the idea that the 4th shoot will miss, because it makes it predictible and you would just avoid to shoot 4 time something which is on a cliff.
I started a thread on this matter on the beta forums. Hoping to get some more discussion going on the matter and...who knows? Maybe even a blue response.
I agree the random misses kind of suck BUT the -1 range to low ground sounds like it's the best fix for positional army placement and defending. I enjoy this idea.
I think 4-player maps should be removed from the game because whether people spawn at cross or side positions is a random effect that can have a large effect on the game.
On March 05 2010 00:10 Floophead_III wrote: Another example: HoN (or DoTA for those of you who haven't migrated yet) has a miss uphill chance. Often fights and ganks and laning come down to a 1 hit difference in that game. I can't even count the number of times I had a great play and launched that beautiful finishing attack to watch it land on the ground with the fat letters "miss" as my enemy just barely escapes. It's clear that I'm getting shafted here as the better player.
It looks more to me like you got shafted because your opponent had the high ground advantage.
Another vote for a range adjustments rather than damage reduction. % chance to miss is the best imo but I can understand Blizzard wanting to eliminate as many random elements as possible.
I'd actually like to see high-attacks-low get a +1 range and low-attacks-high get -1 range combined with the current spotter mechanic. A more extreme the high ground advantage gives the game more depth, which will lengthen the game's longevity and raise the ceiling for competitive performance.
Unpredictability (a random event) is key to making something enjoyable to watch. Prime example? March Madness. Would it be nearly as fun if an 11 seed didn't come out and upset a 1 seed every once in a while? No.
Without the threat of an upset, what is the point of watching, unless you're a fan of the favorite? If every win is a build order win, why don't players just declare their BO at the beginning and then decide who wins? The fact that randomness can overcome superior skill and strategy is a good thing, not a bad thing.
I believe SC2 needs that bit of high ground adv and randomness. Lower ground units could have a higher chance of missing if firing on units with indirect vision, then a lower chance of missing when firing on direct vision.
On March 05 2010 02:32 Rho_ wrote: Unpredictability (a random event) is key to making something enjoyable to watch. Prime example? March Madness. Would it be nearly as fun if an 11 seed didn't come out and upset a 1 seed every once in a while? No.
Without the threat of an upset, what is the point of watching, unless you're a fan of the favorite? If every win is a build order win, why don't players just declare their BO at the beginning and then decide who wins? The fact that randomness can overcome superior skill and strategy is a good thing, not a bad thing.
An 11 seed beating a 1 seed is not a random event. It has low probability, but it is not determined by uncontrollable factors.
Poll should be added to OP imo. something with options like: - No change - Randomness (chance to miss) - Reduced damage % - Every nth hit misses
personally i'm a fan of reduced damage. It may not be the most realistic thing in the world, but it properly rewards cliff advantages and imo does it in the most concrete and suitable way.
On March 05 2010 02:32 Rho_ wrote: Unpredictability (a random event) is key to making something enjoyable to watch. Prime example? March Madness. Would it be nearly as fun if an 11 seed didn't come out and upset a 1 seed every once in a while? No.
Without the threat of an upset, what is the point of watching, unless you're a fan of the favorite? If every win is a build order win, why don't players just declare their BO at the beginning and then decide who wins? The fact that randomness can overcome superior skill and strategy is a good thing, not a bad thing.
Starcraft is, for the most part, about execution. The vernacular is "micro" and "macro". Even a "build-order win" can be lost if the other player is simply a superior player. The idea that eliminating pseudo-random effects would create a solved game is absurd on its face.
On March 05 2010 02:32 Rho_ wrote: Unpredictability (a random event) is key to making something enjoyable to watch. Prime example? March Madness. Would it be nearly as fun if an 11 seed didn't come out and upset a 1 seed every once in a while? No.
Without the threat of an upset, what is the point of watching, unless you're a fan of the favorite? If every win is a build order win, why don't players just declare their BO at the beginning and then decide who wins? The fact that randomness can overcome superior skill and strategy is a good thing, not a bad thing.
An 11 seed beating a 1 seed is not a random event. It has low probability, but it is not determined by uncontrollable factors.
It's not? How can you control if a player has a cold or hot night shooting? Even the best shooters have ups and downs, and at the college level you see it all the time. Guard X will be a 30% 3 point shooter on the season, but will be hitting 50% in the tournament. Or some other player will be a 90% FT shooter, and brick one to stay in the game. How can you control the bounces on rebounds?
It's just like the high ground advantage. Sure, over the course of thousands of shots, a player will have a predictable average, but in any given single game, he can go hot or cold.
On March 05 2010 02:32 Rho_ wrote: Unpredictability (a random event) is key to making something enjoyable to watch. Prime example? March Madness. Would it be nearly as fun if an 11 seed didn't come out and upset a 1 seed every once in a while? No.
Without the threat of an upset, what is the point of watching, unless you're a fan of the favorite? If every win is a build order win, why don't players just declare their BO at the beginning and then decide who wins? The fact that randomness can overcome superior skill and strategy is a good thing, not a bad thing.
so you want 2 ppl to announce their BO and then we have them pick a ticket out of a hat to see the extra % they get for their build to win and we have refs decide if thats enough for the worse bo to win. Either that or we can have macro/macro/strategy come into play after both players do their BO
I'd take things a step further. The high ground mechanic needs to be changed -- absolutely, and for me to agree so strongly with InControl is a bit jarring -- but in general, SC2 lacks the all-important defender's advantage you see in pretty much all strategy games. Static defense is too weak, buildings fall too quickly, unit AI and bunching are so good that choke points and ramps have little tactical significance, and too few units have abilities that reward a defensive posture, with the most obvious example being the siege tank. Lurkers and spider mines, reavers and high templar added a major tactical element to SC1 because of their distinct lack of mobility.
We're seeing Starcraft 2 reduced to a lot of one-base play because it only takes the most minute of opportunities to win a game. A meaningful defender's advantage would open up a wealth of new, viable openings and make the game vastly more competitive and fun.
On March 05 2010 02:32 Rho_ wrote: Unpredictability (a random event) is key to making something enjoyable to watch. Prime example? March Madness. Would it be nearly as fun if an 11 seed didn't come out and upset a 1 seed every once in a while? No.
Without the threat of an upset, what is the point of watching, unless you're a fan of the favorite? If every win is a build order win, why don't players just declare their BO at the beginning and then decide who wins? The fact that randomness can overcome superior skill and strategy is a good thing, not a bad thing.
so you want 2 ppl to announce their BO and then we have them pick a ticket out of a hat to see the extra % they get for their build to win and we have refs decide if thats enough for the worse bo to win. Either that or we can have macro/macro/strategy come into play after both players do their BO
No, I'm saying that that is exactly what I don't want. I'm saying that there needs to be an element of unpredictability in addition to macro/micro/strategy. Sick mine drags, reaver shots, etc make the game more exciting, and they add another dimension to the game.
On March 05 2010 02:32 Rho_ wrote: Unpredictability (a random event) is key to making something enjoyable to watch. Prime example? March Madness. Would it be nearly as fun if an 11 seed didn't come out and upset a 1 seed every once in a while? No.
Without the threat of an upset, what is the point of watching, unless you're a fan of the favorite? If every win is a build order win, why don't players just declare their BO at the beginning and then decide who wins? The fact that randomness can overcome superior skill and strategy is a good thing, not a bad thing.
so you want 2 ppl to announce their BO and then we have them pick a ticket out of a hat to see the extra % they get for their build to win and we have refs decide if thats enough for the worse bo to win. Either that or we can have macro/macro/strategy come into play after both players do their BO
No, I'm saying that that is exactly what I don't want. I'm saying that there needs to be an element of unpredictability in addition to macro/micro/strategy. Sick mine drags, reaver shots, etc make the game more exciting, and they add another dimension to the game.
I know but you made it sound like without randomness its just BO vs BO which might actually be true in sc2 since they removed the majority of what was skill in bw
On March 05 2010 02:55 Pyrrhuloxia wrote: Taking out randomness is fine with me. Why can't they make things do 70% damage uphill instead of hitting 70% of the time?
The problem is that because of the armor system units with lower damage could become a lot more weakened than units with higher damage.
On March 04 2010 19:55 StormsInJuly wrote: Randomness has no place in starcraft, never has and never will. This change is a big improvement over the original in my opinion, and gives you more options as a defender if you can take out the units giving your opponent vision uphill
The random element regarding cliffs worked fine in BW, I can't believe people would argue against this. And, as DefMatrixUltra mentioned, the randomness is something anyone who have played BW for some time will be able to take into consideration and adapt to; players with any experience will be able to know just how many goons are needed to take out a bunch of tanks on a cliff and when they should retreat. The amount of casualties may vary, but making an estimate isn't that hard.
Randomness can be gamebreaking of course, as with random items in WC3, but considering positional advantage in SC is all about the players getting in that situation in the first place, it really can't be compared to random things that really do break the game. Hit% or some similar mechanic should be in the game - not rewarding positional advantage more than it currently does really takes away a lot of the strategic elements.
On March 05 2010 02:53 DJEtterStyle wrote: I'd take things a step further. The high ground mechanic needs to be changed -- absolutely, and for me to agree so strongly with InControl is a bit jarring -- but in general, SC2 lacks the all-important defender's advantage you see in pretty much all strategy games. Static defense is too weak, buildings fall too quickly, unit AI and bunching are so good that choke points and ramps have little tactical significance, and too few units have abilities that reward a defensive posture, with the most obvious example being the siege tank. Lurkers and spider mines, reavers and high templar added a major tactical element to SC1 because of their distinct lack of mobility.
We're seeing Starcraft 2 reduced to a lot of one-base play because it only takes the most minute of opportunities to win a game. A meaningful defender's advantage would open up a wealth of new, viable openings and make the game vastly more competitive and fun.
This post pretty much sumarize the biggest issues with starcraft 2 at this point.
In WoW pvp they took steps have RNG take less effect. I think that's what they were going for. Maybe instead of making shots miss uphill they should just reduce damage by the % of what the miss should be. Say if miss rate was 50% shooting uphill, instead of shots missing just reduce damage by 50%.
On March 05 2010 02:53 DJEtterStyle wrote: I'd take things a step further. The high ground mechanic needs to be changed -- absolutely, and for me to agree so strongly with InControl is a bit jarring -- but in general, SC2 lacks the all-important defender's advantage you see in pretty much all strategy games. Static defense is too weak, buildings fall too quickly, unit AI and bunching are so good that choke points and ramps have little tactical significance, and too few units have abilities that reward a defensive posture, with the most obvious example being the siege tank. Lurkers and spider mines, reavers and high templar added a major tactical element to SC1 because of their distinct lack of mobility.
We're seeing Starcraft 2 reduced to a lot of one-base play because it only takes the most minute of opportunities to win a game. A meaningful defender's advantage would open up a wealth of new, viable openings and make the game vastly more competitive and fun.
This post pretty much sumarize the biggest issues with starcraft 2 at this point.
Yeah this is exactly what I've been thinking as I watch SC2.
On March 05 2010 03:22 stormtemplar wrote: TO the person worried about extremes such as 20 goons not killing a tank in three shotss each the chances of this even in 1 out of over a trillion or nigh impossible if I calculate correctly.
It was Idra and he gave extreme examples to illustrate his case and not because there's a problem with the highly unlikely and extreme situations, the problem is that in fairly even situations luck will decide the outcome.
On March 05 2010 03:22 stormtemplar wrote: TO the person worried about extremes such as 20 goons not killing a tank in three shotss each the chances of this even in 1 out of over a trillion or nigh impossible if I calculate correctly.
This. Realize that there will be more "randomness" when there are only a few units firing a few shots, but in a large army engagement the miss percentage will probably be very close to whatever miss chance they set it at.
I really like that this forces you to approach attacking with a small number of units and a large army up high ground differently. And this avoids the issues with damage reduction that others already brought up. That's why I say keep the miss chance mechanic (but maybe tinker with the actual percentage).
On March 05 2010 03:22 stormtemplar wrote: TO the person worried about extremes such as 20 goons not killing a tank in three shotss each the chances of this even in 1 out of over a trillion or nigh impossible if I calculate correctly.
It was Idra and he gave extreme examples to illustrate his case and not because there's a problem with the highly unlikely and extreme situations, the problem is that in fairly even situations luck will decide the outcome.
It depends on the situation. If you have a 1 on 1 goon tank battle, then yeah there will be a lot of "luck," or deviation from the miss chance. In an even engagement of lots of units firing lots of shots, "luck" will probably play a very small role. Think about flipping a coin 5 times as opposed to 50 times.
On March 05 2010 02:55 Pyrrhuloxia wrote: Taking out randomness is fine with me. Why can't they make things do 70% damage uphill instead of hitting 70% of the time?
The problem is that because of the armor system units with lower damage could become a lot more weakened than units with higher damage.
You can easily fix that by reducing the damage after armor was subtracted.
On March 05 2010 03:16 Undisputed- wrote: In WoW pvp they took steps have RNG take less effect. I think that's what they were going for. Maybe instead of making shots miss uphill they should just reduce damage by the % of what the miss should be. Say if miss rate was 50% shooting uphill, instead of shots missing just reduce damage by 50%.
This keeps popping up in the thread over and over.
These two things you describe have equivalent outcomes unless you are talking about some silly situation where you have 1 hydralisk shooting at one marine. As soon as there are 10 or more units involved, doing 50% less damage (how does that work with the armor system?) is equivalent to missing 50% of the time.
On March 05 2010 03:16 Undisputed- wrote: In WoW pvp they took steps have RNG take less effect. I think that's what they were going for. Maybe instead of making shots miss uphill they should just reduce damage by the % of what the miss should be. Say if miss rate was 50% shooting uphill, instead of shots missing just reduce damage by 50%.
This keeps popping up in the thread over and over.
These two things you describe have equivalent outcomes unless you are talking about some silly situation where you have 1 hydralisk shooting at one marine. As soon as there are 10 or more units involved, doing 50% less damage (how does that work with the armor system?) is equivalent to missing 50% of the time.
Not if it's siege tanks shooting lings/rines as opposed to rines shooting siege tanks.
Here is an idea. How about we use the same mechanic as in Brood War, but make the hit chance really 50% (as it was intended to be) instead of the actual 33%?
The thing that concerns me the most about using the Brood War mechanic is that we will end up with the extreme opposite with positional units being favoured too much, thus limiting the options players have in terms of units. In fact, that is what happened with Brood War. Since a positional advantage was such an enormous factor, Lurkers and Tanks ended up playing a substantial role, thus very frequently overshadowing other options. So if the Brood War miss chance is to be implemented, then the chance to hit should at least be somewhat increased.
On March 05 2010 03:44 Tom Phoenix wrote: Here is an idea. How about we use the same mechanic as in Brood War, but make the hit chance really 50% (as it was intended to be) instead of the actual 33%?
The thing that concerns me the most about using the Brood War mechanic is that we will end up with the extreme opposite with positional units being favoured too much, thus limiting the options players have in terms of units. In fact, that is what happened with Brood War. Since a positional advantage was such an enormous factor, Lurkers and Tanks ended up playing a substantial role, thus very frequently overshadowing other options. So if the Brood War miss chance is to be implemented, then the chance to hit should at least be somewhat increased.
I am in 80% agreement with this, with a 10% chance to disagree and 10% agreement reduction.
On March 05 2010 03:16 Undisputed- wrote: In WoW pvp they took steps have RNG take less effect. I think that's what they were going for. Maybe instead of making shots miss uphill they should just reduce damage by the % of what the miss should be. Say if miss rate was 50% shooting uphill, instead of shots missing just reduce damage by 50%.
This keeps popping up in the thread over and over.
These two things you describe have equivalent outcomes unless you are talking about some silly situation where you have 1 hydralisk shooting at one marine. As soon as there are 10 or more units involved, doing 50% less damage (how does that work with the armor system?) is equivalent to missing 50% of the time.
No 50% miss chance is not the same as 50% damage reduction. This is due to how units cannot attack anymore once they are dead. If two hydralisks are battling in out on two different levels, a 50% damage reduction means that the one on bottom will certainly lose, while a 50% chance of missing will give the unit on the top a higher chance of winning.
Now, in the long-run, results will be more or less similar. However, battles last a few seconds in Starcraft 2. The difference between a flat 50% damage reduction and a 50% chance of missing will show.
On March 05 2010 03:16 Undisputed- wrote: In WoW pvp they took steps have RNG take less effect. I think that's what they were going for. Maybe instead of making shots miss uphill they should just reduce damage by the % of what the miss should be. Say if miss rate was 50% shooting uphill, instead of shots missing just reduce damage by 50%.
This keeps popping up in the thread over and over.
These two things you describe have equivalent outcomes unless you are talking about some silly situation where you have 1 hydralisk shooting at one marine. As soon as there are 10 or more units involved, doing 50% less damage (how does that work with the armor system?) is equivalent to missing 50% of the time.
No 50% miss chance is not the same as 50% damage reduction. This is due to how units cannot attack anymore once they are dead. If two hydralisks are battling in out on two different levels, a 50% damage reduction means that the one on bottom will certainly lose, while a 50% chance of missing will give the unit on the top a higher chance of winning.
Now, in the long-run, results will be more or less similar. However, battles last a few seconds in Starcraft 2. The difference between a flat 50% damage reduction and a 50% chance of missing will show.
It's not about how long battles last per se, but about many many shots are fired within that time frame. I can see quite a few shots fired in a 10-20 sec battle.
Some cool statistics dude needs to come in here and make a few standard deviation graphs or whatever and we can get a better idea of what amount of randomness we're dealing with (I can't do it cause I suck at math).
Most people seem to agree that the current system should be scrapped, but I'm not understanding the arguments about why bringing back the chance to miss is bad.
Why is the randomness a bad thing? "Because it's random!" Okay, that seems slightly circular, but whatev-- "Luck is terrible and lets worse players win!" I don't really see why the better player is attacking uphill in the first place.. "Why should someone win the game by getting lucky a few times, then?" Because it's a game of imperfect information to begin with and luck will always be a factor, and games won't be completely decided by miss chance anyway. "Well if you want randomness so much, why don't you just make the players roll some dice on the side too!" I'm not following you here. "Damage reduction would be pretty much functionally identical." So why change to that, again? "Because it's random!" You know, I'm really starting to hate you, voice in my head.
Maybe it's frustrating if you're a player, but it's certainly more entertaining for spectators than the other alternatives.
1. The high ground mechanic clearly needs to be changed from what it is. Right now you have one of two extreme situations, (a) substantial advantage to high-ground units, and substantial disadvantage to low-ground units, and (b) complete even footing between high-ground and low-ground. As others have said, this basically makes fighting uphill impossible or too easy, when it should be somewhere in the middle.
2. Straight damage reduction could have some serious issues because of the way unit armor factors in. I'm no good at the math of SC2, but it seems like there could be situations where some high armor units could become practically unkillable by anything but the hardest-hitting units because most units' damage output her shot would be practically nothing. If this isn't true, then I'm all for straight damage-reduction because it would provide a non-random high-ground advantage.
3. Random miss % isn't as bad as it seems, nor is randomness in general in a strategic game. As long as the randomness is predictable, i.e. randomness of getting cards in poker, then superior skill would still win almost every time. Players would deal with it the same way they did during SC/BW, by gauging whether they're unit advantage is strong enough, or the potential gain from succeeding in killing a high-ground unit is great enough, to risk the chance that the shot(s) may miss. There wouldn't be certainty, but there would be a reasonable amount of it to make an informed and strategic/tactical decision.
Note: I don't think SC2 is intended to be as pure a strategic game as possible. It's a RTS, not a turn-based strategy game, so there can be a certain amount of non-strategic elements to it as well. Sacrificing a relatively insignificant amount of predictability for a significant amount of suspense and fun in both playing and watching the game is well worth it in my opinion. We don't need anything as crazy as the SC/BW reaver scarab mechanic, but a miss % wouldn't cause us to lose too much while giving us a lot more.
On March 05 2010 03:56 Chill wrote: Agreed and the randomness argued is ridiculous. Controlled randomness is great in competitive games.
I would agree with this only if it's more prevalent throughout the game, e.g. if there was some element of randomness to the amount of damage on every attack. But in BW you have everything else in the whole game governed by very specific exact damage values, except for this one positional situation.
Oh, and something to consider would be to make the miss % go down with successive shots, i.e. 50% with first shot, 30% with second or third shot, and 10% for all shots thereafter. Defenders would still get a significant advantage for having the high-ground advantage, but attackers would be able to slowly overcome that advantage to some degree, while never eliminating it entirely.
All that factors into it is that as the number of shots in a given fight grows, 50% miss aproaches 50% damage reduction (if you ignore armor in the calculations).
In a fight involving a small number of shots (i.e just a few units with normal attackspeed (think ~2v2 hydras) or some more units with slower attackspeed (think ~5v5 tanks)) the randomness of 50% miss has a chance to affect the outcome, the chance increases as the numbers of shots needed to kill the enemy goes down.
Before, I always felt that randomness was a bad thing for competetive gaming, but then I realized that a perfectly predictable game is much less entertaining to watch, as others have stated.. The reaver scarab is a great example of this.
I always thought that the way blizzard balanced this out was with the line of sight. As mentioned before, other games give different bonuses for high ground, plus range, plus damage, etc. Personally I don't mind the change, I haven't played sc2 yet though.
One question, does the trees still provide cover like they did in sc??
btw, I haven't seen episode III, thanks for the spoiler XD
Randomness, if not necessary, shouldn't be used. That said, the cliff miss mechanic in SCBW was quite necessary and it worked out quite fine. Although sometimes I'd be pulling out my hair when my goons take forever and then some to kill a single rine standing on a cliff, it generally wasn't so randomly unlucky that it was game-breaking. The only real random factors that I really didn't like from BW was the stupid scarab mechanic (stop humping the mineral patch dammit!) and how goons would randomly get stuck on air or take the longest route possible or something.
On March 05 2010 04:22 gaizka wrote: I always thought that the way blizzard balanced this out was with the line of sight. As mentioned before, other games give different bonuses for high ground, plus range, plus damage, etc. Personally I don't mind the change, I haven't played sc2 yet though.
One question, does the trees still provide cover like they did in sc??
btw, I haven't seen episode III, thanks for the spoiler XD
On March 05 2010 04:19 XaI)CyRiC wrote: Oh, and something to consider would be to make the miss % go down with successive shots, i.e. 50% with first shot, 30% with second or third shot, and 10% for all shots thereafter. Defenders would still get a significant advantage for having the high-ground advantage, but attackers would be able to slowly overcome that advantage to some degree, while never eliminating it entirely.
And how would that work? Each unit would get first shot 50%, and second 30%? It would make stronger units much better then mass or weaker units. Also units with slower attack speed would be gimped.
On March 05 2010 03:56 Chill wrote: Agreed and the randomness argued is ridiculous. Controlled randomness is great in competitive games.
I would agree with this only if it's more prevalent throughout the game, e.g. if there was some element of randomness to the amount of damage on every attack. But in BW you have everything else in the whole game governed by very specific exact damage values, except for this one positional situation.
That's fair. I think it fits for this one particular situation so we shouldn't disqualify it because of that. However, I do think there are more solutions to this problem than random miss.
I think that adding 25% chance to miss along with the current mechanic would be good. I think the current mechanic makes more sense and I like it more, except it doesn't give the defender enough advantage, so adding 25% miss would balance it out - the ~52% chance to hit that SC1 had would be too harsh with the current mechanic, which I'd like to keep.
On March 05 2010 03:16 Undisputed- wrote: In WoW pvp they took steps have RNG take less effect. I think that's what they were going for. Maybe instead of making shots miss uphill they should just reduce damage by the % of what the miss should be. Say if miss rate was 50% shooting uphill, instead of shots missing just reduce damage by 50%.
This keeps popping up in the thread over and over.
These two things you describe have equivalent outcomes unless you are talking about some silly situation where you have 1 hydralisk shooting at one marine. As soon as there are 10 or more units involved, doing 50% less damage (how does that work with the armor system?) is equivalent to missing 50% of the time.
No 50% miss chance is not the same as 50% damage reduction. This is due to how units cannot attack anymore once they are dead. [1]
If two hydralisks are battling in out on two different levels, a 50% damage reduction means that the one on bottom will certainly lose, while a 50% chance of missing will give the unit on the top a higher chance of winning. [2]
Now, in the long-run, results will be more or less similar. However, battles last a few seconds in Starcraft 2. [3]
The difference between a flat 50% damage reduction and a 50% chance of missing will show.
[1] I'm not quite sure what you mean. There are few units that die in 1 hit in SC, so I don't see how this would matter except in the most extreme situations like tanks vs. Zerglings. In any battle with >10 units, the statistics even out.
[2] If no micro is taking place, the attacker has a .4% chance to do the same damage as the defender. That's not 4%, that's .4 < 1. Even in this ridiculously small unit count situation, you can bet your life savings on the defender not doing equal damage.
[3] The amount of time does not matter. The only thing that matters is this:
How many random events took place in that battle (i.e. how many shots were fired up the ramp)?
If the answer is large enough (as I showed in my earlier post), then the statistical variance is almost completely negligible. This variance being very small is the reason that the miss chance works so well when dealing with high ground.
@Tom Pheonix Someone on TL did a very good set of measurements that showed the hit chance in BW is IIRC 53%.
Has anyone thought that they removed the terrain advantage for the beta for simple unit balancing purposes? This way things will get done faster and they don't have to contemplate whether someone got raped because of unit imbalance or terrain adv.
Actually, I was just thinking why I PREFER the random factor in BW to the alternatives. It's because it makes you on edge. If I'm charging up a ramp and I know my dragoons do 0.75 (20) = 15 because they're firing up a cliff, then I can easily figure out if it's a winning or losing battle. The randomness not only makes players consider worst possible outcomes, it also differentiates players by their acceptance to risk. If I'm proxy gating Boxer and he's got 2 tanks up there, fuck it, I'm going in. But if it's some D level game, I'll probably just wait it out. If we eliminate that randomness, I'm going to go in or not in both scenarios, whichever is the optimal move.
That's also why I like scarabs. Because not only does it build tension, it also shows a lot about a player's sensitivity to risk again. Safe players are going to retreat, while gutsy players will make a sacrifice for a chance at damage.
Getting rid of randomness doesn't eliminate this, as you can still make gambles, but the margins are a lot smaller.
This isn't an argument about why we need or don't need randomness in the game, it's just me bleeding onto paper about why I like it
Man, I'm sure glad a good player brought this issue up. I've been worried about this change to the high ground mechanics since I first heard about it but because of the relative silence in the forums I assumed I was a relative minority as most just seemed to accept it as 'OK'.
I think the best and most direct fix is a simple damage % reduction to units being hit on high ground from those on low ground.
Also, even if the high ground mechanics were identical to BW high ground has already been devalued by: Cliff Jumping Units Stronger Air Units New Mechanics (Warp-In & Nydus Worm)
How can we make a strong enough case to get Blizzard to do something? Is it best to just get as many players as possible to write them emails or what?
Man I hate to post again.... But seriously guys the more I think about it the more it makes sense that this isn't a problem! It just fits that they did this for sole balancing purposes. We will see terrain advantages back before its all said and done.
I'm still not sure whether units with vision below the cliff should have the % damage reduction or the % miss chance. On the one hand, the % damage reduction is much more predictable and eliminates unfair/unrealistic situations due to just having bad luck. On the other hand, though, the % miss chance adds a unique, exciting aspect to the game that makes it even more fun to watch - it's one of the reasons I love watching toss players go reaver harass.
Although, now that I think about it, reaver scarab duds were more an issue with pathing and the time it took to get to the targeted unit, so in theory that's not exactly random… so it may not be the best example. Somehow, there needs to be a mechanic that is at the same time consistent and exciting to watch. I definitely agree that the current SC2 mechanic where you're on equal ground if you have sight and no chance to fight back at all if you don't is not the best solution.
Personally, I have no beef with the miss chance mechanic from SC1. But if you have to get rid of it, my thought is to split the mechanic into two situations: 1. Without vision and being attacked: your units can attack blindly at what they think is attacking them. 35-50% chance of hitting; I'm thinking on the lower end of the range. 2. With vision: Cliffside units have longer range and units below the cliff have shorter range, in order to reward the army with a better position and the player with more foresight. I also like Icks' suggestion of a "dead zone" beneath the cliff where a unit would again gain a miss chance due to proximity/angle of the shot. I think this provides a fair way of rewarding the positional advantage.
I still think, as a spectator sport, SC2 still needs something along the lines of spider mines and reaver scarabs though.
Taking the random factor out of the game is great, however I also agree that increasing the effeciency of units that are positioned at a high ground gives the game a lot of FUN depth. My solution would be that instead of low ground units hitting 70% of their shots they would simply do 70% damage. Problem solved.
On March 05 2010 04:37 Deviation wrote: How can we make a strong enough case to get Blizzard to do something? Is it best to just get as many players as possible to write them emails or what?
We don't have a case. We don't even have agreement on if it's a problem, nor possible solutions. It just bothers me a little seeing posts like "we need Blizzard to deal with this ASAP!!!" (I'm not implying you did that).
On March 05 2010 04:39 prOxi.Beater wrote: Taking the random factor out of the game is great, however I also agree that increasing the effeciency of units that are positioned at a high ground gives the game a lot of FUN depth. My solution would be that instead of low ground units hitting 70% of their shots they would simply do 70% damage. Problem solved.
Congrats on reading the thread. /sarcasm
@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.
only new and low level people would whine about cliff advantage.
You provide no explanation, no research, no examples, no reason, nothing as to why no high ground sight is bad. Only few personal opinions as to why it should be in the game.
On March 05 2010 04:35 Chill wrote: Actually, I was just thinking why I PREFER the random factor in BW to the alternatives. It's because it makes you on edge. If I'm charging up a ramp and I know my dragoons do 0.75 (20) = 15 because they're firing up a cliff, then I can easily figure out if it's a winning or losing battle. The randomness not only makes players consider worst possible outcomes, it also differentiates players by their acceptance to risk. If I'm proxy gating Boxer and he's got 2 tanks up there, fuck it, I'm going in. But if it's some D level game, I'll probably just wait it out. If we eliminate that randomness, I'm going to go in or not in both scenarios, whichever is the optimal move.
That's also why I like scarabs. Because not only does it build tension, it also shows a lot about a player's sensitivity to risk again. Safe players are going to retreat, while gutsy players will make a sacrifice for a chance at damage.
Getting rid of randomness doesn't eliminate this, as you can still make gambles, but the margins are a lot smaller.
This isn't an argument about why we need or don't need randomness in the game, it's just me bleeding onto paper about why I like it
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.
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.
On March 05 2010 04:37 Deviation wrote: How can we make a strong enough case to get Blizzard to do something? Is it best to just get as many players as possible to write them emails or what?
We don't have a case. We don't even have agreement on if it's a problem, nor possible solutions. It just bothers me a little seeing posts like "we need Blizzard to deal with this ASAP!!!" (I'm not implying you did that).
My bad, It just seemed the threads general direction was that some advantage should be given to units on high ground when fighting those on low ground. I guess I jumped the gun.
On March 05 2010 04:22 gaizka wrote: I always thought that the way blizzard balanced this out was with the line of sight. As mentioned before, other games give different bonuses for high ground, plus range, plus damage, etc. Personally I don't mind the change, I haven't played sc2 yet though.
One question, does the trees still provide cover like they did in sc??
btw, I haven't seen episode III, thanks for the spoiler XD
Personally I like how the current mechanic is implemented. If you don't have the spotter units to assault a cliff you shouldn't do it. Seems intuitive and realistic to me.
That said the argument against randomness in professional competition as having no place makes no sense to me. Show me any successful competitive franchise and I will show you that it includes some randomness, but that the randomness is minimized and can be taken advantage of by the superior team/person from poker to football to water polo. The only downfalls to randomized behaviour in a competition if its so prevalent as to determine the winner despite Large differences in skill, and if it can not be taken advantage of with skill when it happens.
For my part, knowing I may not have the units to spot up a cliff when I assault determines whether I attack that position at that time. This is quickly and easily understood. As the cliff defender I understand that killing spotter units even if they aren't the normally optimal units to focus at first could give me a large advantage, again quickly and easily understood. Yet both sides to the engagement require planning and good micro due to the current mechanic. So yeah, I like how it is currently, although I didn't dislike the BW way of doing it either.
On March 05 2010 04:35 Chill wrote: Actually, I was just thinking why I PREFER the random factor in BW to the alternatives. It's because it makes you on edge. If I'm charging up a ramp and I know my dragoons do 0.75 (20) = 15 because they're firing up a cliff, then I can easily figure out if it's a winning or losing battle. The randomness not only makes players consider worst possible outcomes, it also differentiates players by their acceptance to risk. If I'm proxy gating Boxer and he's got 2 tanks up there, fuck it, I'm going in. But if it's some D level game, I'll probably just wait it out. If we eliminate that randomness, I'm going to go in or not in both scenarios, whichever is the optimal move.
That's also why I like scarabs. Because not only does it build tension, it also shows a lot about a player's sensitivity to risk again. Safe players are going to retreat, while gutsy players will make a sacrifice for a chance at damage.
Getting rid of randomness doesn't eliminate this, as you can still make gambles, but the margins are a lot smaller.
This isn't an argument about why we need or don't need randomness in the game, it's just me bleeding onto paper about why I like it
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.
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.
On March 05 2010 02:53 DJEtterStyle wrote: I'd take things a step further. The high ground mechanic needs to be changed -- absolutely, and for me to agree so strongly with InControl is a bit jarring -- but in general, SC2 lacks the all-important defender's advantage you see in pretty much all strategy games. Static defense is too weak, buildings fall too quickly, unit AI and bunching are so good that choke points and ramps have little tactical significance, and too few units have abilities that reward a defensive posture, with the most obvious example being the siege tank. Lurkers and spider mines, reavers and high templar added a major tactical element to SC1 because of their distinct lack of mobility.
We're seeing Starcraft 2 reduced to a lot of one-base play because it only takes the most minute of opportunities to win a game. A meaningful defender's advantage would open up a wealth of new, viable openings and make the game vastly more competitive and fun.
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.
@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?
On March 04 2010 22:55 lololol wrote: If they want to reintroduce miss chances then using pseudorandom distribution like some skills did in wc3, would be the best case. For example: the chance to miss would be 10% on the first attack, 20% on the second attack, 30% on the third, e.t.c. until the unit misses an attack and then the chance will reset back to 10% and repeat the pattern. It would still be random, but with a greatly reduced chance for lots of hits or misses in a row.
Let's spam this idea to Blizzard.
One possible counter-argument could be that units in StarCraft are now trained to project their attacks accurately as long as they have sight. Anyway, I am all for the random high ground mechanic. Defending ramps are close to non-existent in SC2 currently.
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 totally agree that being on a cliff should give you a significant advantage, however, I also believe that RANDOM = BAD.
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.
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.
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%.)
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.
Blizzard is trying to avoid RNG like the plague now. Blame WOW arenas. I like the SC1 system, partly because is made sense, but mostly because you usually had enough units where you wouldn't get lucked out of a winnable fight.
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
"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.
Incontrol, you should really post this in the suggestions forum on bnet as well. Post it as many places as possible. Pretty sure this change would make SC2 a million times better after discussing it with some people
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.
The SC2 forum makes my brain hurt. I read Incontrol's OP and was like "sweet something most people can agree with" but NUUUUU. It just seems like everyone has to disagree with him cause "omgz that's like SCBW no way"
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...
agree ramps have absolutely no role atm. other than you can't build stuff on them. Hope they put something in to make high ground something you would want to take control of
i strongly, strongly agree with inc here 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
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.
@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. [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.
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%.)
This would make sense if the point of a 50% miss rate is primarily to halve the damage done. IMO, it's less about how much damage is done and more about injecting quick critical thinking into the game. If the distribution was skewed after x misses in a row, it's like the game is trying to make up the negative effects of the risk the player took. If the distribution stays the same after, say, 5 missed shots in a row, you still have to sit there thinking "crap, I already missed 5 times, is it worth staying?" as opposed to "oh i missed 5 times, the next shot is definitely going to hit, that's how the random number generator works." If you still have to make that critical decision with a 50% miss chance, on-the-fly no less, it lets better players who have a better understanding of the risks involved differentiate themselves from lesser players.
If you have probability sets that are dependent on previous sets, you'll have this never-ending cycle of overcorrection. You're trying to reach 50%, but you accidentally go 70% in one cycle, so you compensate by going (for example) 35% in the next cycle, and then compensate by going 65% in the next cycle...
You can see where I'm going with this, you have alternating high and low cycles which will just be WEIRD if nothing else. I think the straight 50% by itself would do a better job and have a better spread of results rather than dips and peaks (and it would require no extra maintenance on top either).
I agree with Incontrol and Chill (especially about the good implications of randomness in this particular case), and i want to point out that most people still regard miss chance in BW as 30% or 1/3 wich is incorrect, it is actually a lot worse but people dosn't even seem to realize this while playing.
It is actually ~52% chance to hit vs high ground, wich is almost a coinflip each shot. So if you can't tell the difference between 50% and 70% to hit (it means you get only ~2/3 of hits you would with 70% wich is huge) you think you should call randomness bad just because you feel like it, without even considering it's implications ?
People arguing about randomness = bad also seem to not realize in how many sports and games randomness is and that it also take skill to get along with it. Poker is big example, but even with sports like motorsports like WRC or F1, where tire choice is important when there is chance for rain - (even with best forecasters you cant be shure about track condition), racers make gambles on tires and win or loose just because of it, best ones have not only driving skill but also dare to gamble in tight situations.
I wholly support bringing the miss chance into cliffs.
Damage reduction skews with damage vs. armor stuff. And someone proposed some static "every 4th shot misses", which sounds ridicoulous - I take 3 shots and then retreat, how cool is that...
On March 05 2010 07:35 Card5harko6 wrote: @DefMatrixUltra "[1] This is almost certainly not true. Remove high ground advantage from BW and see if the game balance is the same."
I believe this was removed to get rid of as much of the negatively viewed luck factor as possible. But the fact of the matter is luck plays a huge role in many skill based games. That's what makes them so fun, overcoming that luck. (poker)
I never really understood Anakin's disadvantage from being on the low ground... which I guess the video beautifully points out. -__- Plot holes for the win! :D
I strongly agree with incontrol. I read the rest of the thread, and I'm pretty sure that the strongest arguments is the strong prevalence of the lack of defenders advantage.
Some things to think about with this argument; the kind of flash/savior style of playing with the defenders advantage was something that was developed over several years, and it required some very tight timings, build orders, and reactions to pull off. In starcraft 1, there was a large amount of 1 base play with no expansions early on as well. We won't start to see macro/expansion based play until we start seeing tighter timings and build orders.
One other factor in the one base argument is that the current map pool is heavily weighted towards certain strategies (yes, the maps are different, an and they're probably better than what was included with the orginal starcraft, but they're still not amazing).
that being said, there are certain advantages to having ramps. It makes it so that there's an earlygame defenders advantage, especially since walling off is so much easier....the game would be more complex if there was a damage decrease while shooting uphill.
definitely agreed with inc. some slight randomness is not bad. if the best player always wins then both playing and watching is a lot less entertaining.
For those arguing that straight % damage reduction is inferior to random % miss because it makes high armor units too strong vs low damage units, couldn't this be solved by applying the %dmg reduction after armor has been applied?
From a mathematical standpoint, these two alternatives provide the same effect given an infinitely large sample size of 'shots', whilst the former being 'fairer' given low sample sizes, i.e. in real games.
Edit:
Of course, an argument is that % damage reduction screws up unit attack / hp ratios, so that for some combination of units, the balance of power between the units is shifted. Example from SC1: Marine vs Vulture On normal ground, marine kills the vulture in 14 hits, Vulture kills the marine in 2 hits. The ratio between the number of hits required is 7:1.
Given 50% dmg reduction, marine does 3 damage to the vulture, and vulture does 10 damage to the marine. Marine kills the vulture in 27 hits, Vulture kills the marine in 4 hits. The ratio between the number of hits required is now 27:4, or slightly less than 7:1.
So the marine actually improves vs vulture with % damage reduction, since there is less wasted overkill damage on its last hit.
Personally, I would rather tolerate this slight imbalancing of unit relationships than deal with random chance deciding which unit wins the battle, but I suppose other people will feel differently.
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.
All you'd need to do to deal with that is treat the RNG here as a deck of cards, instead of a dice roll. If you wanted it at 50% after exactly X attacks you'll have hit a 50/50 ratio. The more cards you put in this "hit/miss" deck the more stringy it can possibly be. Anywhere from 8-20 would probably fit well with how fast the SC rate of fire is.
I really do not think the luck factor of the high ground in SC1 was that significant because the odds were so ridiculously in the favor of the high ground that it conveyed such an overwhelming advantage that you simply don't attack up high ground unless you are absolutely certain you can break through. In all the games I've ever played I don't think I've ever once considered, "hmm, there's a slight chance that I'll get lucky and be able to barely break through if this the stars totally align for me", I'll set up a contain and wait until it's safe to push in.
you know how there's an attacker/defender dynamic in sc.. The miss factor lends itself very nice to this concept. one player can hold off a hoard because he has the high ground and wants to defend while he gets an economic advantage but the opponent can double expand.. It adds a Really interesting dynamic to the game. Imagine for a moment both players expanded equally and had armies that were of the same strength.. you now have something much more similar to wc3.. not sc2 and not the next best e sport in the world..
InControl is a professional gamer.. and out of all the controversial topics in SC2. he chose this one to write a thread and express his concerns.. obviously there is something that needs to be addressed.
Hm, I wasn't aware that high ground advantage was taken away. It certainly made things a LOT more interesting in sc:bw. Players shouldn't have equal footing if you're fighting from low to high ground as long as they have vision. Just the sight advantage isn't enough. Without a distinct damage advantage from the high ground player, there would be less fighting over strategic positions. This is a strategy game after all, and players should definitely be rewarded for taking strategic positions.
I'm in favour of bringing back the decreased accuracy of low ground vs high ground. The lower accuracy against high ground also added a degree of realism to the game. I thought that the advantage was great in both the observer and the player's perspective because it added more nail-biting situations like when a defender just barely holds his ramp to a rush.
The range solution is interesting, but it might give too much of an advantage to high ground. Imagine you have TvT, where it's a battle of millimeters. If you give the high ground group extra range, you kinda force the low ground group to charge up.
Damage reduction would work too I guess, but I wouldn't want to see that some units suddenly get an additional hit in some match up on high ground vs low ground. In the decreased accuracy only some units will be able to take an extra hit while others won't. If all the units get an extra hit on high ground, that seems a little strong.
In any case, I hope blizzard implements and tests some of these solutions in beta. I really hope that high ground advantage isn't limited to vision.
On March 05 2010 07:17 DefMatrixUltra wrote: Gontech reminds me of another point as well:
If you have probability sets that are dependent on previous sets, you'll have this never-ending cycle of overcorrection. You're trying to reach 50%, but you accidentally go 70% in one cycle, so you compensate by going (for example) 35% in the next cycle, and then compensate by going 65% in the next cycle...
You can see where I'm going with this, you have alternating high and low cycles which will just be WEIRD if nothing else. I think the straight 50% by itself would do a better job and have a better spread of results rather than dips and peaks (and it would require no extra maintenance on top either).
I like how you just assume it has to be implemented in a stupid overcorrecting way like that.
Maybe try asking yourself if it can be done in a good way instead of just trying to prove me wrong?
I really liked the way ramps worked in terms of tactical decision making. It just create options to be exploited by the intelligent player who could correctly analyse all their assets and combine them effectively.
]On March 05 2010 07:04 gontech wrote: This would make sense if the point of a 50% miss rate is primarily to halve the damage done. IMO, it's less about how much damage is done and more about injecting quick critical thinking into the game. If the distribution was skewed after x misses in a row, it's like the game is trying to make up the negative effects of the risk the player took. If the distribution stays the same after, say, 5 missed shots in a row, you still have to sit there thinking "crap, I already missed 5 times, is it worth staying?" as opposed to "oh i missed 5 times, the next shot is definitely going to hit, that's how the random number generator works." If you still have to make that critical decision with a 50% miss chance, on-the-fly no less, it lets better players who have a better understanding of the risks involved differentiate themselves from lesser players.
I'm pretty sure most people would think their 6th shot has a higher chance of hitting when it doesn't. But you do make a good point.
On the other hand, if you just missed 5 shots in a row, then you're already a lot worse off than you expected, so you've already suffered for taking that risk.
My personal preference is, I'd trade some of the sharpness of making that 50/50 decision in order to have a lower probability of ending up in an extreme case like that.
I think that they should implement it again, it definitely took away from strategic placement of troops, and as well as the importance of you positioning your army. It hurt defenses as well alot, as sieged tanks on a ridge in SC2 will not strike the same fear as it did in SC1.
In regards to the issue of some units gaining an 'extra' hit if damage reduction is implemented, one could argue that this would add to the strategy involved when deciding to attack up a ramp. Except in cases like siege tanks where an extra hit might be very important (in which case random miss % can be very frustrating), factoring in an extra hit shouldn't make a decision to attack a ramp suddenly more obvious.
On March 05 2010 08:02 Zanno wrote: All you'd need to do to deal with that is treat the RNG here as a deck of cards, instead of a dice roll. If you wanted it at 50% after exactly X attacks you'll have hit a 50/50 ratio. The more cards you put in this "hit/miss" deck the more stringy it can possibly be. Anywhere from 8-20 would probably fit well with how fast the SC rate of fire is.
A small detail to add is that any bias should be done on a per-unit basis, preferably per-defending-unit.
It's pretty easy to come up with cases where the bias won't be effective if it's not per-defending-unit.
It might be a pain in the ass to add that kind of commmunication between the weapon and the defender, though.
Hmm, it appears I was wrong. The hitchance in Brood War is somewhere around 50%, give or take.
So how about reimplementing the high ground hit chance penalty, but raise the hit chance to the intended 70% as opposed to BW`s actual 50%? That would return the importance of high ground without making that high ground too strong.
On March 05 2010 07:17 DefMatrixUltra wrote: Gontech reminds me of another point as well:
If you have probability sets that are dependent on previous sets, you'll have this never-ending cycle of overcorrection. You're trying to reach 50%, but you accidentally go 70% in one cycle, so you compensate by going (for example) 35% in the next cycle, and then compensate by going 65% in the next cycle...
You can see where I'm going with this, you have alternating high and low cycles which will just be WEIRD if nothing else. I think the straight 50% by itself would do a better job and have a better spread of results rather than dips and peaks (and it would require no extra maintenance on top either).
I like how you just assume it has to be implemented in a stupid overcorrecting way like that.
Maybe try asking yourself if it can be done in a good way instead of just trying to prove me wrong?
Sorry if I offended you, but I was trying to do exactly that.
You want to remove variance by making sets dependent on previous information. If in your first set, you get 70% hits instead of 50%, the next set has to go down. You have basically two choices.
1. You can make the next set above 50%. This choice doesn't conceptually make sense because you're trying to keep everything in general AT 50%. So going 70% and then 55% for your first two sets is already at odds with your goal. If you wanna do something like go 70->55->51->50, that defeats any overcorrection problem, but you're now hitting higher than 50%.
2. You can make the next set below 50%. This choice makes sense conceptually. You had too good a run earlier on (70%), so you set it back by some.
Now using the idea from 2 over and over, you are trying to get the sets to converge towards 50% as fast as possible (to make it better than just everything is 50%). So you need to consider your 70% first run and ask yourself, what's the way to take this back down so that the 70% set and the next set will add to 50%? The only way to do that is to dip low under 50% (like the 35 I used earlier).
But there is a problem that has been subtly introduced. Each set of 'x' shots has its own variance, so even though you set things up so that you go 70 -> 35 -> (hopefully) 50, you are less sure about the end result than you would be if you had just set every interval to 50. If you increase the size of 'x', you decrease this variance, but the more you increase the size of 'x', the more closely you resemble just setting everything to 50 to begin with.
The oscillation problem is something that comes up in a limiting case where x is 'small' so that it has a medium-large variance. And that's the problem I was describing.
TL:DR
It doesn't seem like it's possible to defeat statistics by making the variance artificially better without introducing oscillation or closely resembling no additions to the process.
On March 05 2010 08:24 Jyvblamo wrote: In regards to the issue of some units gaining an 'extra' hit if damage reduction is implemented, one could argue that this would add to the strategy involved when deciding to attack up a ramp. Except in cases like siege tanks where an extra hit might be very important (in which case random miss % can be very frustrating), factoring in an extra hit shouldn't make a decision to attack a ramp suddenly more obvious.
This is a good point that damage reduction may add strategy. But like you said, in many cases, extra hits will not be proportional. If the units can take 1-3 hits, increasing the critical hit for a mass number of units gives much more of an advantage than increasing the critical hit for a portion of units. Hopefully these solutions will be tested in beta.
id like to see blizzard try a 20% chance of miss uphill when ur on the ramp or half way up the ramp make it a 10% chance to miss .. but also keep the line of sight advantage in the game also soo its slightly leans to the strategic side of sc and keeps it slightly fair for all if thats not enough or to much well tis beta.. play around with balance~! duh lol
Perhaps Blizzard will give all these suggestions a shot and see what works. Personally, I'm liking the range penalty suggestion people have mentioned before.
On March 04 2010 22:55 lololol wrote: If they want to reintroduce miss chances then using pseudorandom distribution like some skills did in wc3, would be the best case. For example: the chance to miss would be 10% on the first attack, 20% on the second attack, 30% on the third, e.t.c. until the unit misses an attack and then the chance will reset back to 10% and repeat the pattern. It would still be random, but with a greatly reduced chance for lots of hits or misses in a row.
Let's spam this idea to Blizzard.
One possible counter-argument could be that units in StarCraft are now trained to project their attacks accurately as long as they have sight. Anyway, I am all for the random high ground mechanic. Defending ramps are close to non-existent in SC2 currently.
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.
Aiming upwards is a good deal harder than aiming downwards, this is just one reason why height has always been an advantage. But this is what it sounds like you're describing:
Which admittedly would be the ramp to a base, but not all encounters happen at ramps, sometimes they look more like this:
Now you can clearly see how it would make it a great deal harder to hit someone who is on higher ground. This is how I've always pictured high ground in SC at least, I'm sure many people agree with me that a 40% miss rate is justified due to high ground always being an advantage.
On March 05 2010 10:24 WaveMotion wrote: maybe just have units on hill have 4 times the damage. that would be fair i think.
no, that is by far the worst idea in this thread, i would rather the mechanic be left alone than this. one thing i've noticed is that because your army is getting funnelled so narrowly, if you're going to crack a ramp, it will take a long time, no matter how overwhelming your army is. damage amps will end battles too quickly making high ground totally insurmountable, your zeals/lings will never even get to the wallin.
As a player every action I give should have a predictable outcome. Missing is fucking annoying. Those rare games where you cant break a ramp that you normally could break is really annoying. I do agree that units up a hill/ramp should be given more of an advantage then they currently have, but going back to the bw way is not an acceptable solution imo.
The mechanic right now is fine. It is more powerful in sc1 (100% can't hit > 50% miss). The problem may be that people havn't found effective methods of denying vision. The problem could be with the air units themselves. They may have too much vision range/hp. It could be a problem with ground units vs air, or the range of defensive structures. It could be a lack of "blind" spells. It may be an issue that ramps grant vision of higher ground too low on them..
Imo attempt to use the current mechanic effectively. If there are serious problems putting it into use let blizzard know.
Rather than trying to implement a chance based system, why not simply have it so that a unit on the high ground has +X armor factored into any damage calculations? The number can be tweaked for balance of course, but this gives a very predictable advantage to having the high ground.
Instead of a chance to miss they should reduce the damage units do when attacking units on higher elevation. Like instead of having a 70% chance to hit you would just do 70% damage with 100% accuracy.
You couldn't show me a situation where 20 goons shoot 3 volleys to kill 1 tank.
Once I had 3 tanks in siege mode shooting up at 2 lurkers on on a cliff. There were a total of about 14 shots and the last lurker never died because I had to bring my army back to defend my nat which was under attack. I feel it lost me the game. I don't think games should be decided this way. I agree with a mechanic like 1/2 of all shots always missing when firing upward. I don't like it being random, and I don't care if that's less realistic. It's the future, baby, it can work anyway we want it to, we can fill the plot holes later.
random is better then consistent in terms of dramatic play in games. imo random just for the ESPORTS nothing stirs up the crowd more when someone wins a fight that they shouldn't have
Also then what stops someone say putting a thor i think thors have high armor up their hill to dmg soak with the dmg reduction so they take like 0 dmg.
On March 05 2010 11:42 Lysdexia wrote: Instead of a chance to miss they should reduce the damage units do when attacking units on higher elevation. Like instead of having a 70% chance to hit you would just do 70% damage with 100% accuracy.
Seriously, does no one read anymore? If you would have read just one post at random from this thread, there's less than a 10% miss chance for this being mentioned in it.
I love TL, but this is increasingly frustrating. This is why we can't have nice things/discussions.
On March 04 2010 20:10 IdrA wrote: randomness isnt a good thing, but the old way was better than this
it should be every 4th shot misses or something that provides the same effect without having the situations arise where 20 goons are shooting uphill at a tank and take 3 volleys to kill it/2 goons are shooting uphill at a tank and dont miss once in 4 volleys.
Or simply a % dmg reduction for the low ground units.
On March 04 2010 20:17 Gliche wrote: Imo it should not be random. It should be a set percentage of damage reduction, like most ranged units have a 30% damage decrease when firing from low to high ground, with exceptions like the colossus and siege tank and something for zerg (lurkers if they were in the game).
The same idea could possibly be applied with a smaller reduction to those line of sight "bushes" too but I think gameplay-wise they shouldn't. Firing with ranged units behind those bushes should be strategic enough by itself.
On March 04 2010 20:22 ejac wrote: While I know this is lame, I've always thought a good compromise would be to remove the miss chance, and just have a % damage reduction. That way there is no randomness, and gives high ground an advantage.
I don't really have a problem with a miss chance for it is fairly predictably random. In wc3 (not a wc3 hater, this is just the way it is) items are not predictably random, and do favor one side which is not a good thing.
High ground was definitely too strong in sc1. High ground does seems stronger than I thought it would be in sc2, but perhaps it should be a little better. Just basing this on streams.
On March 04 2010 20:22 Go0g3n wrote: I'm not sure if misses exist in StarCraft II altogether, probably not, as shots follow targets literally to the other side of the map like they do in WarCraft III with teleport, you can test this, - get a goon to shot at a zerg unit entering Nydus, come out on the other side and bam )))
What they could do, however is just decrease damage to 75% on every 2nd shot up the ground.
As for randomness there shouldn't be such thins as scarab glitch, worker glitch or anything like that. If you're working BOs to the point of a single second the success should only depend on the maths of skill vs. skill and BO vs. BO, not poor mechanics design.
On March 04 2010 20:26 ven wrote: I dislike the randomness too. It's alright if you have a lot of units or just rapid attack speed because the hits and misses even out fairly quickly and in essence become a damage reduction but with fewer units it can even decide games which just shouldn't be possible.
As someone else already suggested, just put in some disadvantage for units fighting uphill (whether it be nerfing attack damage or attack speed or even reducing their range) and we get both high ground advantage and get rid of the randomness.
On March 04 2010 20:53 Radiomouse wrote: Maybe they can reduce damage done when shooting up a cliff (this way you can have cliff advantage and you don't introduce randomness.).
On March 04 2010 20:54 stenole wrote: I think I like a damage reduction option better than a miss chance. Either a set damage reduction or a percentage. It not only gives a more predictable outcome but it also becomes an incentive to choose armour upgrades. It seems to me choosing attack upgrades are the default right now. Props to incontrol for bringing it up, although I feel the video does not really illustrate the point he tries to make.
On March 04 2010 22:01 papaz wrote: First I thought "this just sounds stupid" but then I realized it would be fun to add a positional dimension to the game like this.
In this way like your example someone being down in army size still could have a chance to counter the stronger army by positioning.
But it shouln't be some random thing. It should be a straight forward dmg % reduction.
Good suggestion.
On March 04 2010 22:06 Error Ash wrote: No randomnes for Starcraft 2 please. This is one reason why the removal of reavers was a good thing (i like the unit overall, but scarabs going off or not being almost totally random just SUCKED). On the other hand i think there should be more high ground advantage than there is now. But please no random miss stuff, make it 20% less damage all the time or something, otherwise its just gambling...
On March 04 2010 22:11 iG.Zeep wrote: % dmg reduction plz
On March 04 2010 22:27 Senx wrote: Simply implement a dmg reduction percentage for units fighting "uphill" .. theres not even anything random about it, but it awards positional advantage.
On March 04 2010 23:06 mawno wrote: Random miss chance is horrible. Keep it the way it is or have a static damage reduction.
On March 05 2010 00:18 da_head wrote: i really think it should be a set damage reduction. the whole randomness reduction really pissed me off, but with a set percentage reduction, a strategical advantage is still gained from having the high ground
On March 05 2010 00:27 LightRailCoyote wrote: I think that if a unit fires from the low ground, That a 25 percent damage reduction should be applied. It seems to just make sense for me, especially because I always imagined in a true Starcraft battle, that there would be far more than 200 supply of units per side. Masses of tanks and bunkers, huge sprawling bases, 200/200 of carriers supported by arbiters, hundreds of mutalisks. Thus if some of the shots "Miss" from low to high ground, then the overall damage output is reduced. Of course, that requires a huge stretch of imagination from some, so i also think that it would make gameplay better, due to the fact that the SC:BW miss chance was doing the same thing, just implemented in a way that, by definition creates more variance.
Secondly, I liked how in Brood War, if a unit fired at you from the high ground, you could see it momentarily through the fog of war. Of course, you'd miss a good part of the time, but it makes sense that a unit in a futuristic world would be able to gauge angle and return fire. Terran and Protoss are full of computers and Zerg were basically bred for war. I think that this should be in the new game as well. It just kind of makes sense.
Alternatively, Ewan McGregor should come and cut their legs off and dump them into lava. The advantage of high ground.
On March 05 2010 00:42 Zack1900 wrote: I think the perfect solution would be to give a damage reduction to the person on the high ground. High ground should be a BIG deal in my opinion. My idea would add to the effectiveness of ramps in the late game since by then you almost always have a way to get vision (any air unit, colossus, scan).It would also not add randomness to the game. (oh crap they are on higher ground than me I will only do X damage instead of the normal Y.
Does anyone have thoughts on this idea?
On March 05 2010 01:23 aRod wrote: Agreed, shooting up a cliff should reduce the chance of doing full damage.
On March 05 2010 01:37 Dr.Frost wrote: I don't this k its should be random like in sc1 but I do think it should be more similar. It should be if you are fighting up hill all damage is reduced by 10% (or maybe in sc2 terms fighting up hill, units on top all have +1 or +2 armor). J think this would be a fine change that takes out 'chance' but adds a similar mechanic as sc1.
On March 05 2010 02:55 Pyrrhuloxia wrote: Taking out randomness is fine with me. Why can't they make things do 70% damage uphill instead of hitting 70% of the time?
On March 05 2010 03:16 Undisputed- wrote: In WoW pvp they took steps have RNG take less effect. I think that's what they were going for. Maybe instead of making shots miss uphill they should just reduce damage by the % of what the miss should be. Say if miss rate was 50% shooting uphill, instead of shots missing just reduce damage by 50%.
On March 05 2010 03:43 KungKras wrote: Damage reduction is the obvious choice. It gives a positional advantage without randomness.
I have no idea how blizzard could come up with the system that they have now and think it's better than just having damage reduction.
On March 05 2010 04:39 prOxi.Beater wrote: Taking the random factor out of the game is great, however I also agree that increasing the effeciency of units that are positioned at a high ground gives the game a lot of FUN depth. My solution would be that instead of low ground units hitting 70% of their shots they would simply do 70% damage. Problem solved.
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.
On March 05 2010 05:30 starcraft911 wrote: I totally agree that being on a cliff should give you a significant advantage, however, I also believe that RANDOM = BAD.
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.
On March 05 2010 11:21 RisingTide wrote: Rather than trying to implement a chance based system, why not simply have it so that a unit on the high ground has +X armor factored into any damage calculations? The number can be tweaked for balance of course, but this gives a very predictable advantage to having the high ground.
On March 05 2010 11:42 Lysdexia wrote: Instead of a chance to miss they should reduce the damage units do when attacking units on higher elevation. Like instead of having a 70% chance to hit you would just do 70% damage with 100% accuracy.
Apparently, the difficulty of redding has been underestimated.
Hey, guys, I just thought of this idea that will fix all of the problems. Just add damage reduction.
On March 05 2010 00:06 Teejing wrote: just make every 2nd shot a miss and we are good to go
On March 05 2010 10:54 Teejing wrote: 1 miss every 2nd shot and done,
I think blizzard lost sight of what's competitive randomness and what isn't. lol. x_X. There's calculated risk... Then there's what happened with brawl where you trip for dashing at random...
I don't really mind if Blizzard doesn't bring back the 30% miss chance, but I do think there should be something more for being on high ground. A range bonus or penalty depending on whether the ground ranged unit is firing uphill or downhill is probably a good way to go about it. For example, in a battle between marines on high ground vs low ground, the ones on high ground will have range 6 vs marines on low ground and the ones on low ground have range 4 vs marines on high ground. Marines on high ground will have 50% more range than ones on low ground when engaging in a fight. That's a fairly substantial advantage in my eyes. Melee units should probably just have one more armor when taking attacks from lower ground, or nothing at all.
I don't think a percentage damage reduction is the right direction to go especially after how damage bonuses and such are made such that you'll never have fractions anymore.
(Sorry if someone else already suggested all this, I couldn't bring myself to read the entire thread.)
On March 04 2010 19:55 StormsInJuly wrote: Randomness has no place in starcraft, never has and never will. This change is a big improvement over the original in my opinion, and gives you more options as a defender if you can take out the units giving your opponent vision uphill
Whaaaaaat. I didn't even realize they removed the miss chance! Please bring it back. The point of high ground is not to look pretty. It should serve an actual tactical purpose.
On March 04 2010 22:55 lololol wrote: If they want to reintroduce miss chances then using pseudorandom distribution like some skills did in wc3, would be the best case. For example: the chance to miss would be 10% on the first attack, 20% on the second attack, 30% on the third, e.t.c. until the unit misses an attack and then the chance will reset back to 10% and repeat the pattern. It would still be random, but with a greatly reduced chance for lots of hits or misses in a row.
Let's spam this idea to Blizzard.
One possible counter-argument could be that units in StarCraft are now trained to project their attacks accurately as long as they have sight. Anyway, I am all for the random high ground mechanic. Defending ramps are close to non-existent in SC2 currently.
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.
Aiming upwards is a good deal harder than aiming downwards, this is just one reason why height has always been an advantage. But this is what it sounds like you're describing:
..snip..
Now you can clearly see how it would make it a great deal harder to hit someone who is on higher ground. This is how I've always pictured high ground in SC at least, I'm sure many people agree with me that a 40% miss rate is justified due to high ground always being an advantage.
Its just a game for fucks sake. Slap a 40% miss rate on units and call it a day.
You can't try to argue logic with real-life situations, or you'll have to argue that all units should miss merely based on range, or giving these bonuses to air units, or that units should have ammo/reload, etc..
The current implementation works best within the system. Why not argue for more creative map elements, instead of just trying to make SC2 into SCBW as hard as you can.
On March 04 2010 22:55 lololol wrote: If they want to reintroduce miss chances then using pseudorandom distribution like some skills did in wc3, would be the best case. For example: the chance to miss would be 10% on the first attack, 20% on the second attack, 30% on the third, e.t.c. until the unit misses an attack and then the chance will reset back to 10% and repeat the pattern. It would still be random, but with a greatly reduced chance for lots of hits or misses in a row.
Let's spam this idea to Blizzard.
One possible counter-argument could be that units in StarCraft are now trained to project their attacks accurately as long as they have sight. Anyway, I am all for the random high ground mechanic. Defending ramps are close to non-existent in SC2 currently.
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.
Aiming upwards is a good deal harder than aiming downwards, this is just one reason why height has always been an advantage. But this is what it sounds like you're describing:
..snip..
Now you can clearly see how it would make it a great deal harder to hit someone who is on higher ground. This is how I've always pictured high ground in SC at least, I'm sure many people agree with me that a 40% miss rate is justified due to high ground always being an advantage.
Its just a game for fucks sake. Slap a 40% miss rate on units and call it a day.
You can't try to argue logic with real-life situations, or you'll have to argue that all units should miss merely based on range, or giving these bonuses to air units, or that units should have ammo/reload, etc..
The current implementation works best within the system. Why not argue for more creative map elements, instead of just trying to make SC2 into SCBW as hard as you can.
Why not read his entire post? He was being facetious.
I'm always expecting a smaller but still powerful defensive force to hold in SC2 and I always get surprised at how easily it breaks even with perfect positioning.
It's like you always have to scout and match/counter the enemy army to stay alive..kinda like an arms struggle...Can't just build some sunkens or sim city with perfect positioning and a few key defensive units anymore.
Doesn't WC3 have a system where units have a 1 in 10 chance to miss, but it only happens once every 10 attacks? Could work like that, just tweak the number a little.
You'd be better off bringing this topic over to blizzard's forums if you really want them to notice it and maybe try and implement it in the next patch.
lol I was talking to my sc friends (we're pretty recreational) the other day about fighting on different elevation and I told them "of course you want higher elevation...units on a lower elevation can miss," and none of them knew *GASP*
I then said something like "wtf you guys don't know that? That's key for placement"
Anyways I completely agree, units on lower elevation should definitely not be able to fire at units on higher elevation without penalty
EDIT: on a side note.... what would happen in the case where a unit is halfway up a cliff and is being shot at? Half the penalty applies?
On March 05 2010 12:38 Anther wrote: I think blizzard lost sight of what's competitive randomness and what isn't. lol. x_X. There's calculated risk... Then there's what happened with brawl where you trip for dashing at random...
I agree on the issue, but rather than blizzard i think it's all those "damage reduction" people like DefMatrixUltra quoted several posts elier.
I think it's very important to distinguish randomness in situations you are forced to (bad) and in situations of your choice (good).
By going up a defended ramp without some siege/drop/distraction/air support units it's your choice to accept the random chance, (wich also is less radnom with more units). Defender also makes the choice to cut corners and try getting away with smaller army, he can also scout if his opponent is massing for an attack.
The bad randomnes in games are when you are forced to it, like guns jamming, lightning stike damanging units, general miss or critical chance (bad erly game where there is few units - few attacs decide the outcome), random artifacts from creeps (implemented in WC3, but still it's a good game) etc..
Somethings to note that people still arent getting.
a) The game loses a lot in terms of defense and correct positioning with the loss of the mischance. Yes early game the defender has a strong point since their position isnt revealed but by early-midgame you absolutely have a spotter on the high ground, nullifying any advantage.
Thusly, positioning matters a whole lot less. In a strategy game there is always an aspect of defender advantage. You can point to real life examples (knowing the terrain better than your opponent, being able to fortify your position.) But i think defender advantage doesnt entirely encompass what is going on here.
Cliffsides are presumably some level of steepness. You on the bottom of the cliff will have a harder shot then they will. Someone drew a diagram 2-3 pages back of what this means. Unless you are on a steadily slopped ramp their line of fire is not as clear.
b) In SC1 the miss change from low vs. high elevation was around 50%. (TL tests says 53%, Moletrap tested and said 50% - in this youtube video and I've also heard 47%). In any event you can see that the mischance was rather high and the defensive posturing was important.
Have you heard the outcry from the progamer community about this 'high' percent chance of a miss? No! It is just a factor of the game you had to incorporate into your play.
Does this mean you dont attack into a mass of high elevation sieged tanks? Yes. To counter this drops occur away fortified defense positions.
c) Blizzard understands the thinking that mischance 'is bad because its random' - No! It is just a factor that you have to take into account. People have talked about poker and that example works.
There are Odds, and you have to taken into account your forces and the natural advantage and troops you are going against. People have been referring to WC3 and such for why Blizzard would remove a 'random' element from gameplay.
d) This isnt random! This game is not WC3 where hero characters cast a single spell that misses and costs the game. I can hear that it would be frustrating for that event to happen, but over the course of a game the amount of attacks between different elevations greatly minimize the chance of catastrophic misfires.
After saying that, I will admit that a ~50% chance of misfire is probably too high for SC2.
But having some high elevation advantage adds a strategy and positional element currently dearly lacking in the SC2 games i have played and seen being played.
On March 04 2010 19:55 StormsInJuly wrote: Randomness has no place in starcraft, never has and never will. This change is a big improvement over the original in my opinion, and gives you more options as a defender if you can take out the units giving your opponent vision uphill
the randomness is sc is what makes it sc. scarab shots and mine drags turn this game from something fun to watch to something exciting to spectate.
+1 to range when firing at a target on a lower elevation seems pretty solid to me. No added randomness, no damage reduction, just a solid, realistic bonus for holding the high ground. Range 7 marauders seem just the right amount of scary.
You know what I loved about SC? The fact that you could get a misschance from placing tanks behind trees as well as on the high ground. Not many people knew that.
I would sign the petition to have units deal 80% damage from low ground.
On March 04 2010 22:55 lololol wrote: If they want to reintroduce miss chances then using pseudorandom distribution like some skills did in wc3, would be the best case. For example: the chance to miss would be 10% on the first attack, 20% on the second attack, 30% on the third, e.t.c. until the unit misses an attack and then the chance will reset back to 10% and repeat the pattern. It would still be random, but with a greatly reduced chance for lots of hits or misses in a row.
Let's spam this idea to Blizzard.
One possible counter-argument could be that units in StarCraft are now trained to project their attacks accurately as long as they have sight. Anyway, I am all for the random high ground mechanic. Defending ramps are close to non-existent in SC2 currently.
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.
Aiming upwards is a good deal harder than aiming downwards, this is just one reason why height has always been an advantage. But this is what it sounds like you're describing:
..snip..
Now you can clearly see how it would make it a great deal harder to hit someone who is on higher ground. This is how I've always pictured high ground in SC at least, I'm sure many people agree with me that a 40% miss rate is justified due to high ground always being an advantage.
Its just a game for fucks sake. Slap a 40% miss rate on units and call it a day.
You can't try to argue logic with real-life situations, or you'll have to argue that all units should miss merely based on range, or giving these bonuses to air units, or that units should have ammo/reload, etc..
The current implementation works best within the system. Why not argue for more creative map elements, instead of just trying to make SC2 into SCBW as hard as you can.
I'll stop arguing to bring back elements of SC into SC2 when I become convinced that SC is no longer the greatest RTS of all time. So far I'm not impressed by SC2 except by its flashy graphics.
I honestly expected a little more love for my idea, but perhaps it's too buried that nobody noticed it. This thread is huge, which pretty much says that no matter what blizz does, it better be something.
I said that units on low ground should have -range vs high ground. This would be a predictable downside, and units on high ground would get the first shot, so a siege tank below is never going to be able to kill a siege tank above. No randomness = better gameplay. Distinct advantage = positional game. I don't see a single downside to this mechanic so please somebody point one out or give it some goddamn attention =D
There needs to be a high ground bonus in my opinion. What it should be I don't know. I honestly never had much of an issue with the chance to miss in SC. People knew what could happen if they attacked units from below ground. Some calculated risks add to the excitement of the game
On March 05 2010 15:59 rally_point wrote: lol I was talking to my sc friends (we're pretty recreational) the other day about fighting on different elevation and I told them "of course you want higher elevation...units on a lower elevation can miss," and none of them knew *GASP*
I then said something like "wtf you guys don't know that? That's key for placement"
Anyways I completely agree, units on lower elevation should definitely not be able to fire at units on higher elevation without penalty
EDIT: on a side note.... what would happen in the case where a unit is halfway up a cliff and is being shot at? Half the penalty applies?
you solve the halfway problem the same way that they solved vision. Not quite sure what that is, but if you have vision of the high ground, then the computer must think that you've made it...
I also really liked the creativity the high ground advantage gave to map makers. Being able to create extremely wide ramped 'plateaus' and have them convey a strategic advantage was more than just interesting for the player it was interesting to the spectator as well (imo). Maps like Heartbreak ridge and Geometry. A choke-point should be different than high ground, not just aesthetically but in it's implications.
It isn't really like the height advantage from SC1 was really random, you (probably) know that you have about a 50% chance to hit the enemy from low ground, and in what areas on the map. There are chances the height advantages may not play a role at all in a game. Having positional differences adds more to the depth and actual strategy ideas.
And no, I haven't read the entire thread, just 4 pages.
I'm not a fan of RNG in competitive play at all, so I feel removing the chance to miss was a step in the right direction.
I do feel that the high ground advantage was a good mechanic that encouraged interesting play, most notably watching the Mantoss break some terran's walled ramp. That stuff was pure excitement.
A damage reduction mechanic is probably the best way to retain the SC1 feel of the high ground advantage, since it is the most direct incarnation with the RNG removed. I believe range mechanics would feel too quirky, and a bit hard to analyze in the middle of a fight to break your way up your opponent's ramp.
Although a straight damage reduction wouldn't really work the same as a mischance even if you took a large sample size. This is due to units 1 hitting others. If a unit kills another unit in 1 hit even after the damage reduction this creates a difference than if a mischance were in effect as then he might not kill the unit even if he could normally 1 hit it. Is it a big a difference, I dunno.
On March 06 2010 00:20 Floophead_III wrote: I honestly expected a little more love for my idea, but perhaps it's too buried that nobody noticed it. This thread is huge, which pretty much says that no matter what blizz does, it better be something.
I said that units on low ground should have -range vs high ground. This would be a predictable downside, and units on high ground would get the first shot, so a siege tank below is never going to be able to kill a siege tank above. No randomness = better gameplay. Distinct advantage = positional game. I don't see a single downside to this mechanic so please somebody point one out or give it some goddamn attention =D
Yea, this idea of range change can be potentially game-breaking. A good player can position their units just out of range of the opponent's units but still able to fire on them. With a good wall-in (which basically any race can do now) it would be impossible to break a choke w/out drops or air support of some kind.
On March 06 2010 00:25 Velr wrote: The range thing would be bad, in a game with SC2 lethality rate having garuanted 1-2 Hits more than your enemy is very, very huge.
I never actually thought of this, but it is actually a very good point. If you have a tonne of tanks, colossuses or something else on high ground, the opponents army would get destroyed because those extra range hits are guaranteed.
To really fix this I'm going to have to say that putting the randomness factor back in (at 50% or something) would work really well. As many people have mentioned, randomness and the ability to accept risk and go out on a limb in the right situations is a good skill. It is different to definitely knowing whether or not you will come out of that battle on top.
I was more of a fan of the sight rule before they tossed in that you can see what's firing at you, just not fire back. When a unit is firing on one of yours, you'll see it slightly grayed out. Can't fire back, but you can see what's pegging you and where it is located. That part is lame.
Wait, I dont have any advantage on the highground ?
Why have I been move-shoot-move-shooting up large ramps then when I can just fire away, and why have I been using my highground so excessively on LT. >.<
I don't think Blizzard is going to make such a big change this far into development. That is, they'd probably have to do a lot of balance adjustments if they implemented a high ground advantage since they've been balancing the game up to this point without it.
I was more of a fan of the sight rule before they tossed in that you can see what's firing at you, just not fire back. When a unit is firing on one of yours, you'll see it slightly grayed out. Can't fire back, but you can see what's pegging you and where it is located. That part is lame.
yeah same here. I hate that they added that. They should remove vision completely and also take away a % of damage of range attacks from low to high ground
EPT
.
. This will be hard to balance .
) and which ones are "bad" (cliff miss chance? :r)?
![[image loading]](http://i110.photobucket.com/albums/n99/chuiu/ramp.png)
![[image loading]](http://i110.photobucket.com/albums/n99/chuiu/cliff.png)
