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This thread isn't about balance problems with the current high ground system - if you believe there are any - it's about problems implementing a different one.
Anyway, I believe I've figured out why Blizzard changed it. Aside from the questionable value of introducing RNG, probably it's primarily an interface issue.
Consider what somebody new to brood war sees when he attacks from low ground: exactly what he sees when he attacks from anywhere else. There is absolutely no in-game indicator that his units are missing, except that for some reason he loses the fight. He'll probably think he's getting outmicroed, and actually won't ever learn what's going on unless he watches a cast and hears the miss chance mentioned, or goes to some website purporting to teach sc and stumbles upon the truth. The learning process has been effectively randomized.
Now imagine him trying to do the same thing in SC2. His units get shot, he can't fire back because, intuitively, he cannot see up a cliff, and the mechanic is instantly and clearly understood.
I want you to put aside any prejudices, this person is not necessarily a 'casual gamer'. This is not about 'making the game easier for noobs' or 'dumbing it down." It's about making the game work the way it appears to work.
Now I'm not saying the current system is a good one. I'm also not saying it's a bad one. I'm not even close to being a good enough player to qualitatively state that. What I can say is that if you really want blizzard to change it, you need to stop being lazy and asking for the old system, because
A) It has problems and they're not going to use it.
B) A new game is an opportunity to do new things. You know you can come up with something better than a miss chance if you really try. As any good game designer from miyamoto to rosewater can tell you, restrictions breed creativity. If you can't just fall back on the easy option it forces you to come up with the best one.
So your assignment is to come up with a mechanic that satisfies your ideals of balance but also doesn't have interface problems. Put is this way, it's the only way you're going to get what you want.
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I agree very much with the philosophy of trying to make a game that plays the way it looks. I didn't even know about the BW high ground mechanic until learning about it during the SC2 controversy.
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I doubt they would change it, even if someone were to come up with a better system. At this point, its too late in the game to change such a fundamental part of the game.
However, if by some miracle they did decide to change it, it seems like units on the low ground doing only 50% damage would be the easiest and most logical way to do things.
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Consider what somebody new to brood war sees when he attacks from low ground: exactly what he sees when he attacks from anywhere else. There is absolutely no in-game indicator that his units are missing, except that for some reason he loses the fight.
This is incorrect. Attacks in BW have an animation on the target the attack is hitting. If the attack misses the animation is off of the unit. If it hits the animation is on the unit.
He'll probably think he's getting outmicroed, and actually won't ever learn what's going on unless he watches a cast and hears the miss chance mentioned, or goes to some website purporting to teach sc and stumbles upon the truth. The learning process has been effectively randomized.
If this were a problem it could be:
1. Explained in the helpfull tips thing at the bottom of the screen before games.
2. Be explained in part of a tutorial.
3. Be explained in part of the campaign introduction.
Now imagine him trying to do the same thing in SC2. His units get shot, he can't fire back because, intuitively, he cannot see up a cliff, and the mechanic is instantly and clearly understood.
This does make the game slightly more user friendly, although it would not be hard to explain that units can miss attacking up a cliff.
Having a miss percentage is not a interface problem. It would only be confusing to low level play, and those players are the same ones who would be likely to play a tutorial or the campaign. Combine this with a little hint about it on the loading screen (like the ones already there) and this becomes a non-problem.
Edit: please note that I know they will not change the high ground advantage and I honestly dont know if that will turn out to be good or bad. Im just addressing his argument against it.
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Well, you know...
you can sorta just add it as a tooltip or something, y'kno? During the 'training missions' or whatever, it can be mentioned. And then there's those tips during loading screens...
but yes, even being one who's been playing StarCraft sine I was like 8, I didn't have any idea about the 33%(?) miss rate until the shitstorm XD
EDIT: Shit, he beat me to it ;x
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I believe the miss attack animation was of them hitting a cliff.
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I believe the miss attack animation was of them hitting a cliff.
Hitting a cliff? What do you mean. It is pretty subtle and most players wouldnt notice it, but with some units like the dragoon it is easier to see. Instead of the animation triggering right on the target it triggers a bit off of it. Same thing for trees and such.
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@ unburrowed Lurker
I thought the same thing as u for a while. But if u think about and crunch the number (which im not going to do in this post) a miss chance and damge reduction is very different. for instance if u have a marine fireing up a cliff at another cliff. doing 50% less damge it mite take for instance 10 shots to kill every time, but if it was a 50% miss chance it mite be like 11 shots ON AVERAGE. This is because with a 50% damge reduction there is less 'overhit' (damge done to a unit that doesn't count becuase its dead, like nuking a zergling) makeing the marine fireing up hill more effecient at last hitting than a marine with a miss chance.
PS: numbers are not right or even close, just showing a point
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I would probably suggest a combination of the 2 games. So, I'll just throw this out for fun. If units were able to see up higher ground, they would only see half the range of sight when approaching it. However if a flying units comes by, they will get the whole view of course. However, even though you have sight, there will be a slight/miss chance OR a percentage decrease in damage with another percentage chance of it happening. I agree with the 50% as mentioned. Personally, I do not have a problem with the current SC2 mechanic of having to bring a flying unit to see higher ground. All the games I have played and viewed makes it seem this mechanic fits well with the gameplay.
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On June 18 2010 16:10 xOchievax wrote:Show nested quote +Consider what somebody new to brood war sees when he attacks from low ground: exactly what he sees when he attacks from anywhere else. There is absolutely no in-game indicator that his units are missing, except that for some reason he loses the fight. This is incorrect. Attacks in BW have an animation on the target the attack is hitting. If the attack misses the animation is off of the unit. If it hits the animation is on the unit.
Considering how much uncertainty has already been expressed in this thread about how the old mechanic worked I think it's clear that wasn't serving it's function.
If this were a problem it could be:
1. Explained in the helpfull tips thing at the bottom of the screen before games.
2. Be explained in part of a tutorial.
3. Be explained in part of the campaign introduction.
This really misses the point. You shouldn't have rely on crutches like tutorials, the manual, or tips screens to make your game work as it appears to... instead, you should make it work as it appears to.
I also really question the effectiveness of these methods. People rely on what's on the screen when they're playing, that's the center of their learning experience. When you fight human nature, nature wins, especially when you're fighting it with text.
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Do you all remember the article explaining how using damage reduction instead of miss percentage would have numerous unforseen effects, as it would affect some units far far more than others? It was a good read, and also explained how people arent going to lose a game just because of the "bad luck" some people fear with any RNG.
Edit:
This really misses the point. You shouldn't have rely on crutches like tutorials, the manual, or tips screens to make your game work as it appears to... instead, you should make it work as it appears to.
Ok I see where your coming from, but what if blizzard were to improve the subtle mechanic implemented in BW in order to make it more noticable and therefore more user friendly. Then a mentioning of a miss percentage on the tool tips or tutorial would not be a crutch as much as a reminder of something that is also evident within the game.
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This really misses the point. You shouldn't have rely on crutches like tutorials, the manual, or tips screens to make your game work as it appears to... instead, you should make it work as it appears to.
Games are mechanical systems with abstract visual and/or interface layers on top. You will always have things that aren't explained in the arbitrary visual layering.
You might say that it is preferable to have most of the information readily available, but if you don't want the said system to be too abstract, or be a mismatch with the general visual design, some things will be subtle, no amount of game design will remedy this. It's just the way games work.
High ground mechanics are completely fine in BW. The design choice in this case is do I or do I not tell the player things outside of the visuals (i.e. in the manual or in tutorials)? How forward do I want to be with the information?
With a game like SC2, the obvious choice would be to be very forward with all kinds of information like this, and if Blizzard decided to implement something like the old system, it would be no problem whatsoever to incorporate this information into a tutorial or the manual.
Seriously. If you play a strategy game of any sort and neglect to read the manual, and expect to win, or even understand the game fully; you're in dire need of more braincells. Yes, streamlining is all fine and dandy up to a point, but with gaming in general, that point swooshed by a few years ago. Catering to people with the attention-span of three-year-olds isn't ideal by any stretch of the imagination.
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It wouldn't even have to be a tutorial just 5 sec of mission briefing would be enough.
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On June 18 2010 16:54 Orange Goblin wrote:
Seriously. If you play a strategy game of any sort and neglect to read the manual, and expect to win, or even understand the game fully; you're in dire need of more braincells. Yes, streamlining is all fine and dandy up to a point, but with gaming in general, that point swooshed by a few years ago. Catering to people with the attention-span of three-year-olds isn't ideal by any stretch of the imagination.
Seriously, this. If you expect to win at all you should not bitch about things that you can easily find if you read the manual. Sometimes I think I'm the only who even reads game's manuals anymore.
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It's very clear visually, when a unit misses in BW. The only exception is non-homing attacks against a moving target(and the vulture attack is the only one that comes to mind).
They can also use the "miss" sign above unit heads that's in WC3 to make it even more obvious.
Just because some people can't pay attention to anything or are too lazy to learn to play a strategy game, doesn't mean they have to dumb down the game especially for them.
Why is missing suddenly a problem, when it's not even possible to make unit counters obvious visually. They should definitely remove counters and make it so it doesn't matter which units you build, right?
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On June 18 2010 17:10 lololol wrote:
It's very clear visually, when a unit misses in BW. The only exception is non-homing attacks against a moving target(and the vulture attack is the only one that comes to mind).
They can also use the "miss" sign above unit heads that's in WC3 to make it even more obvious.
Just because some people can't pay attention to anything or are too lazy to learn to play a strategy game, doesn't mean they have to dumb down the game especially for them.
Why is missing suddenly a problem, when it's not even possible to make unit counters obvious visually. They should definitely remove counters and make it so it doesn't matter which units you build, right?
I personally do not like the popups for damage, numbers, words or whatever. It's cluttering and stupid. A good player paying attention doesn't need this anyways.
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"You cant hit what you cant see"
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It makes sense to me why people would think that, and it could actually be why blizzard implemented the new system, but i really don't see the problem in the old one. I've never met someone that is completely oblivious to high ground advantage in sc1, even if they don't thoroughly understand it. Sure they couldn't tell you the miss chance, but they new that if they attacked units on high ground with equal forces, chances are they weren't gonna win the fight.
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On June 18 2010 17:20 CharlieMurphy wrote:Show nested quote +On June 18 2010 17:10 lololol wrote:
It's very clear visually, when a unit misses in BW. The only exception is non-homing attacks against a moving target(and the vulture attack is the only one that comes to mind).
They can also use the "miss" sign above unit heads that's in WC3 to make it even more obvious.
Just because some people can't pay attention to anything or are too lazy to learn to play a strategy game, doesn't mean they have to dumb down the game especially for them.
Why is missing suddenly a problem, when it's not even possible to make unit counters obvious visually. They should definitely remove counters and make it so it doesn't matter which units you build, right? I personally do not like the popups for damage, numbers, words or whatever. It's cluttering and stupid. A good player paying attention doesn't need this anyways.
Of course, a good player does not need them, so there could be an option to turn it off, but the feature is intended for the apparently huge amount of people that can't see the projectiles are not hitting their target. In WC3 it was also used, because there were spells and abilities that can make a unit miss and not just high ground, which is static and obvious.
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On June 18 2010 17:22 Cut[e]Paper wrote:
"You cant hit what you cant see"
exactly. I find the new cliff advantage way better than the old one too because its more specific.
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EPT
