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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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On June 18 2010 17:36 clickrush wrote:exactly. I find the new cliff advantage way better than the old one too because its more specific.
Too bad you CAN actually see them, eh?
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Advantage of a choke is now for the one who stands before it and attacks unit traversing it. The attacker can abuse it just as well as the defender once air units are out. It still helps in early game, but it also helps with you getting contained. I didn't miss the mechanic much while playing however...
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Great Post
Well i love the current highground mechanic
On June 18 2010 17:22 Cut[e]Paper wrote:
"You cant hit what you cant see"
I just don't like it being the ONLY highground mechanic.
There needs to be an advantage for the defender on the high ground, even if the attacker has sight.
I don't like the random miss chances from bw, nor does blizzard, but i would definitely like to see something like a 20% percent damage reduction. A percentage in damage reduction isn't random and is more importantly, easy to understand.
However this post makes a great point that it wouldn't be easy to immediately identify what is going on for newer players. I can't really think of a proper solution for this, but I'm pretty sure that any visual indication of this damage reduction would have to come by changing the appearance of the unit on the low ground that is attacking the high ground. Sure we could have a small -20% indication every time an attack hits but i think that might make too much clutter.
Imo, there should be a sort of visual change on the low ground units that are attacking the highground. For example an aura of red could surround each unit that is currently attacking a unit on the highground. This would be turned ON by default but could easily be turned off in the options.
This way newer players would get the red aura and figure out what it means. And if the player then doesn't feel a need for it he can go to the options and switch it off.
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On June 18 2010 17:22 Cut[e]Paper wrote:
"You cant hit what you cant see"
I completly agree with this ^^
Most replies to this post seem to just be repeating the same old arguments we've all heard/read before, so I'll just remake my arguement in defense if SC2's "high ground advantage" system. I was in the US Marine Corps for 5 years so I know how "high ground advantage" works in the real world, and guess what... it works exactly like SC2's does. If you can see your target, you can hit it; if you can't, you can't.(unless, of course, you have an indirect fire weapon--which no SC2 unit has at the moment) Elevation has ABSOLUTELY NO EFFECT on the accuracy of direct fire weapons. I really don't understand why people want Blizzard to cling to an absurd and unrealistic "high ground advantage" system. StarCraft II's new system is far superior.
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Oh, this is so made-up issue does it even worth it's own thread for discussion?
"Hey, look! I can see stuff but my units don't attack 'em! What's going on, I can't even click on them! Is that's a bug?!"
Current high-ground mechanic already has the "issue" you're trying to force on miss percentage. And let's just ignore that there are going to be tool-tips on loading screen, tutorials, single player and all this stuff that is supposed to help to learn game mechanics for new player.
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On June 18 2010 17:55 InRaged wrote:
Oh, this is so made-up issue does it even worth it's own thread for discussion?
"Hey, look! I can see stuff but my units don't attack 'em! What's going on, I can't even click on them! Is that's a bug?!"
Current high-ground mechanic already has the "issue" you're trying to force on miss percentage. And let's just ignore that there are going to be tool-tips on loading screen, tutorials, single player and all this stuff that is supposed to help to learn game mechanics for new player.
you can see them but they're greyed out, it's very obvious why you can't shoot them...
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I feel that the SC2 mechanic is far superior not only from a logistical standpoint, but also from a competitive one. There are so many factors that determine the outcome of a game, and luck should not be one of them.
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On June 18 2010 17:55 Xlancer wrote:I completly agree with this ^^ Most replies to this post seem to just be repeating the same old arguments we've all heard/read before, so I'll just remake my arguement in defense if SC2's "high ground advantage" system. I was in the US Marine Corps for 5 years so I know how "high ground advantage" works in the real world, and guess what... it works exactly like SC2's does. If you can see your target, you can hit it; if you can't, you can't.(unless, of course, you have an indirect fire weapon--which no SC2 unit has at the moment) Elevation has ABSOLUTELY NO EFFECT on the accuracy of direct fire weapons. I really don't understand why people want Blizzard to cling to an absurd and unrealistic "high ground advantage" system. StarCraft II's new system is far superior.
Not to discredit ur service in the US Marine Corps, but wikipedia lists a few more advantages in high vs low ground battle: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_ground
That wiki post actually has a few good suggestions. The following thoughts are for an army that already has sight of the cliff (I think without sight, the current method is perfect).
range -- reduce range of low ground army to simulate reduction of visibility-- this can be shown using the range radius thingy or some other visual cue -- (or longer range for high ground army)
rate of fire -- reduce the firing speed of low ground army to simulate the fatigue of shooting up.
Other things that have been discussed:
miss percentage -- have a miss percentage for low ground army (a la bw)
damage reduction -- have a % damage reduced -- I actually don't like this as much since if you hit something, u would just hit it.
To get at the OPs question -- What else (mechanics) can we play with? A true brainstorm should list out all possibilities no matter how stupid it might seem. Go at it!
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On June 18 2010 18:12 shawabawa wrote:Show nested quote +On June 18 2010 17:55 InRaged wrote:
Oh, this is so made-up issue does it even worth it's own thread for discussion?
"Hey, look! I can see stuff but my units don't attack 'em! What's going on, I can't even click on them! Is that's a bug?!"
Current high-ground mechanic already has the "issue" you're trying to force on miss percentage. And let's just ignore that there are going to be tool-tips on loading screen, tutorials, single player and all this stuff that is supposed to help to learn game mechanics for new player.
you can see them but they're greyed out, it's very obvious why you can't shoot them...
They really should leave it at pitch black instead of showing you the unit
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On June 18 2010 18:12 shawabawa wrote:Show nested quote +On June 18 2010 17:55 InRaged wrote:
Oh, this is so made-up issue does it even worth it's own thread for discussion?
"Hey, look! I can see stuff but my units don't attack 'em! What's going on, I can't even click on them! Is that's a bug?!"
Current high-ground mechanic already has the "issue" you're trying to force on miss percentage. And let's just ignore that there are going to be tool-tips on loading screen, tutorials, single player and all this stuff that is supposed to help to learn game mechanics for new player.
you can see them but they're greyed out, it's very obvious why you can't shoot them...
Obvious for you, because you know this mechanic.
But really, you can't shoot them because game designer said so. You miss them for same reason. There's nothing that makes one less or more obvious than other. Does it makes sense for new player that game says player with high ground has advantage, but in actuality you get steamrolled as if fight was on plain ground?
Being not obvious for new players is one of the worst excuses to not implement miss chance I've ever seen
reprise, luck is always one of them. Getting lucky with starting locations. Being lucky that scout missed your dropship and so on. There are tons of luck inside and outside of the game that affect game results. Besides, high-ground miss chance is a controllable luck - you know that your forces will be at certain disadvantage and you always have a choice of when to attack and whether to attack at all.
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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.
Basically this. WC3 went so far as to thwack users over the head with the fact that their units missed when it happened. Doesn't look great, but we could sit here and brainstorm thousands of ways to do that in a prettier fashion. Really, if that is the issue any competent dev team is going to find a way to overcome it.
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BW DOES play the way it looks...This talk of the high ground mechanic being misleading is nonsense.
The BW high ground mechanic wasn't invisible...you could SEE your shots missing.....
If not that, HP bars anyone? Is it really that pro to notice this sort of thing?
1. A shot landed next to the target
2. Check and notice that target took no damage
3. ?????rocket science?????
Even if you both are noobs and niether of you micro and just fire at each other 1v1 across a cliff, it's not terribly hard to notice that gee, for some reason my unit died and his got away with ~30% hp. I wonder what the hell happened?
Yes, because projectiles curving up a cliff is terribly visually sensible. The protoss stalker lasers are so advanced, they have path correction and homing capabilities as they hug the cliff and bend down or up.
Go out on a battlefield in Somalia with a troupe of trained soldiers with wall hax goggles. Walk down the streets on the lower levels only and tell me the untrained AK-47's hiding in the rooftops don't have an advantage on you.
QED.
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On June 18 2010 17:55 Xlancer wrote:I completly agree with this ^^ Most replies to this post seem to just be repeating the same old arguments we've all heard/read before, so I'll just remake my arguement in defense if SC2's "high ground advantage" system. I was in the US Marine Corps for 5 years so I know how "high ground advantage" works in the real world, and guess what... it works exactly like SC2's does. If you can see your target, you can hit it; if you can't, you can't. (unless, of course, you have an indirect fire weapon--which no SC2 unit has at the moment) Elevation has ABSOLUTELY NO EFFECT on the accuracy of direct fire weapons. I really don't understand why people want Blizzard to cling to an absurd and unrealistic "high ground advantage" system. StarCraft II's new system is far superior.
siege tanks?
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but the guys on high ground r hiding behind a cliff edge and only showing the required parts to attack, a rifle and 2 eyes. the guys down on the ground r revealing their entire bodies. thats why it should be harder to hit on high ground even if u see them
and if someone attacks u from the high ground u can notice it just like u do in bw and u get a short look on his position and might be able to shoot back
if u stand close to cliff in sc1 u can also actually sometimes see the target without him shooting because hes standing on the edge of the cliff
sc1 system was 100% logical and sc2 is just garbage
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There really needs to be a high ground advantage in this game. I mean the game already follows basic war strategies with the importance of supply, flanks, positioning, but having the ground is one of the biggest military advantages out there, I mean seriously just go ask Obi Won Kenobi.
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Don't argue too much about logic in this game... Carriers are way too small anyway
Not seeing the units up the cliff makes no sense as well if you look at it that way... It's not like there are marines lying on the ground shooting at you...
What matters is the gameplay aspect and not so much the realism. There would be lots of things that are not realistic in Starcraft, so don't even start with it.
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the missing system was pretty good in WC3, and you were able to instantanly understand that you're unit missed the shot because there was a little "miss" text above the unit. But i wouldnt like to have "miss" in starcraft2 since it brings a lot of randomeness that was verry ok in WC3, bringing a lot of "OMFG" moments.
I think the way it is now is good even it's to much "all or nothing" in my regard. I'd like to try the attack speed reduction it was good idea that has been throwed down on a previous thread about the same topic, i don't know how it would feel but i'd like to compare the two mechanics and see wich one brings more fun
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On June 18 2010 16:54 Orange Goblin wrote:Show nested quote +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.
Exactly. There are so many as important things that are not "seen", and it's fine.
Example : Dragoons dealing half damage on marines. Either you are a casual player who doesn't know about build orders and would still make dragoons even if there is a visual animation telling they deal half-damage. Either you are a decent player and know about it. Same for stacked storms that do not add up damage. Same for splash damage (except vs protoss units that still have shield).
What I mean is casual players are 95+% of the players, and they will play campaigns, or very low level online games, and will not pay attention to details like people on TL would. I just played a TvP against one of my friend (he played the campaigns and around 1000 games on bnet, told me after I raped him : "god i didnt know mines could detect dark templars...."
So whatever the implementation, casual players don't pay attention to high ground / splash, and other details (actually these are not details, but they are for casual players). Skilled players will know about this even with no visual effects.
I don't want a game with thousands of visual effects that make the fight unclear overall. Please don't turn SC2 in another W3 
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I understand in WC3, units had a billion hp and battles took a day and a half so looking at HP bars was a bit impractical compared to "miss" flashing but this isn't the case in sc/sc2...There's a god damn alt button in sc2 now as well as the "always on hp bars" option. Why the hell would there need to be a flashing comic book "miss"?
It's not that damn hard to look at an HP bar changing or not. I refuse to believe that this is such a gosu thing to deal with.
Does everyone in this thread not notice that in BW, projectiles simply landed off target if they missed? Is it really so hard for you to notice? Did you guys just start your first video game in your life here in sc2?
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Correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't high-ground advantage apply in BW even if you're just shooting up and down a little ramp? The details get so muddled and unintuitive. It definitely doesn't make intuitive sense that guys right at the tip of a smooth little ramp would be harder to hit.
This isn't "guys up in a building shooting down at you in the street." This is just silly.
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As silly as units shooting through buildings and each other totally ignoring friendly fire. This is a game, not a real life war simulator. And lack of adequate high ground advantage makes it inferior game. It reduces map diversity and reduces game's strategy depth.
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On June 18 2010 20:11 InRaged wrote:
As silly as units shooting through buildings and each other totally ignoring friendly fire. This is a game, not a real life war simulator. And lack of adequate high ground advantage make it inferior game. It reduces map diversity and reduces game's strategy depth.
I completely disagree. It just feels wrong. This random-number "mechanic" is unintuitive, unappealing, and uninteresting. Good riddance.
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On June 18 2010 20:11 InRaged wrote:
As silly as units shooting through buildings and each other totally ignoring friendly fire. This is a game, not a real life war simulator. And lack of adequate high ground advantage make it inferior game. It reduces map diversity and reduces game's strategy depth.
I completely agree on everything you have said. I'm not a fan of the miss system and would prefer a damage percentage reduction, but even the miss system would be better then the way it currently is.
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Any player who has not played BW at least to some extent should not even bother voicing their opinion based on what they "think" is better. Posts from new players defending the new system just make me plain sad.
High ground advantage in BW is a huge huge deal in terms of tactical play. I can't bother explaining it in more depth, since there have been a few threads already that this has been discussed extensively. No high ground advantage makes the game ridiculously poorer and this is more than obvious in every experienced player's eyes.
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On June 18 2010 20:14 kajeus wrote:Show nested quote +On June 18 2010 20:11 InRaged wrote:
As silly as units shooting through buildings and each other totally ignoring friendly fire. This is a game, not a real life war simulator. And lack of adequate high ground advantage make it inferior game. It reduces map diversity and reduces game's strategy depth. I completely disagree. It just feels wrong. This random-number "mechanic" is unintuitive, unappealing, and uninteresting. Good riddance.
Who cares how it *feels* for you? Not having high-ground advantage is unintuitive. If it was unappealing people would forget about it long time ago. And uninteresting? Are you kidding me? Lack of adequate mechanic renders wide ramps concept useless. Do I have to count for you how many BW maps had this feature as a key point of the map? Completely throwing such strategic feature for no reason whatsoever doesn't make game more interesting, but quite opposite.
But no, let's not argue this very clear points. Let's just post how it *feels* for us without presenting any support for our feelings whatsoever. That's so much more fitting for internet discussion ;P
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On June 18 2010 20:29 InRaged wrote:Show nested quote +On June 18 2010 20:14 kajeus wrote:On June 18 2010 20:11 InRaged wrote:
As silly as units shooting through buildings and each other totally ignoring friendly fire. This is a game, not a real life war simulator. And lack of adequate high ground advantage make it inferior game. It reduces map diversity and reduces game's strategy depth. I completely disagree. It just feels wrong. This random-number "mechanic" is unintuitive, unappealing, and uninteresting. Good riddance. Who cares how it *feels* for you? Not having high-ground advantage is unintuitive. If it was unappealing people would forget about it long time ago. And uninteresting? Are you kidding me? Lack of adequate mechanic renders wide ramps concept useless. Do I have to count for you how many BW maps had this feature as a key point of the map? Completely throwing such strategic feature for no reason whatsoever doesn't make game more interesting, but quite opposite. But no, let's not argue this very clear points. Let's just post how it *feels* for us without presenting any support for our feelings whatsoever. That's so much more fitting for internet discussion ;P
I guess we could just be overexcited douchebags about it instead.
This BW mechanic sucks, dude. It feels stupid, it looks stupid, and I would prefer a better system. Sorry.
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On June 18 2010 17:55 Xlancer wrote:I completly agree with this ^^ Most replies to this post seem to just be repeating the same old arguments we've all heard/read before, so I'll just remake my arguement in defense if SC2's "high ground advantage" system. I was in the US Marine Corps for 5 years so I know how "high ground advantage" works in the real world, and guess what... it works exactly like SC2's does. If you can see your target, you can hit it; if you can't, you can't.(unless, of course, you have an indirect fire weapon--which no SC2 unit has at the moment) Elevation has ABSOLUTELY NO EFFECT on the accuracy of direct fire weapons. I really don't understand why people want Blizzard to cling to an absurd and unrealistic "high ground advantage" system. StarCraft II's new system is far superior.
Are you for real? You can see and shoot at someone from high ground with a direct fire weapon, but they can't see you? How exactly does this happen?
The only absurd and unrealistic thing here is what you're posting, which makes me seriously doubt you've ever served in the military.
If they have line of sight, so do you. High ground grants cover and guess what if they are firing from cover with a direct fire weapon that makes them hard to hit, not invisible.
Edit: Also, realism for the sake of realism in games, which are unrealistic by default is pretty stupid. Games are about gameplay and any form of realism must be for the sake of gameplay, not the opposite. It would be obviously a bad idea to make marines build in 18 years, instead of 25 seconds.
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On June 18 2010 20:31 kajeus wrote:Show nested quote +On June 18 2010 20:29 InRaged wrote:On June 18 2010 20:14 kajeus wrote:On June 18 2010 20:11 InRaged wrote:
As silly as units shooting through buildings and each other totally ignoring friendly fire. This is a game, not a real life war simulator. And lack of adequate high ground advantage make it inferior game. It reduces map diversity and reduces game's strategy depth. I completely disagree. It just feels wrong. This random-number "mechanic" is unintuitive, unappealing, and uninteresting. Good riddance. Who cares how it *feels* for you? Not having high-ground advantage is unintuitive. If it was unappealing people would forget about it long time ago. And uninteresting? Are you kidding me? Lack of adequate mechanic renders wide ramps concept useless. Do I have to count for you how many BW maps had this feature as a key point of the map? Completely throwing such strategic feature for no reason whatsoever doesn't make game more interesting, but quite opposite. But no, let's not argue this very clear points. Let's just post how it *feels* for us without presenting any support for our feelings whatsoever. That's so much more fitting for internet discussion ;P I guess we could just be overexcited douchebags about it instead. This BW mechanic sucks, dude. It feels stupid, it looks stupid, and I would prefer a better system. Sorry.
R u saying that it sucks because of the randomness of missing percentage? or are u saying that you don't want sc2 to have any advantage for the highground defender besides lack of vision? Give me a little more than "it feels stupid, it looks stupid"
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On June 18 2010 20:39 lololol wrote:Show nested quote +On June 18 2010 17:55 Xlancer wrote:On June 18 2010 17:22 Cut[e]Paper wrote:
"You cant hit what you cant see" I completly agree with this ^^ Most replies to this post seem to just be repeating the same old arguments we've all heard/read before, so I'll just remake my arguement in defense if SC2's "high ground advantage" system. I was in the US Marine Corps for 5 years so I know how "high ground advantage" works in the real world, and guess what... it works exactly like SC2's does. If you can see your target, you can hit it; if you can't, you can't.(unless, of course, you have an indirect fire weapon--which no SC2 unit has at the moment) Elevation has ABSOLUTELY NO EFFECT on the accuracy of direct fire weapons. I really don't understand why people want Blizzard to cling to an absurd and unrealistic "high ground advantage" system. StarCraft II's new system is far superior. If they have line of sight, so do you. High ground grants cover and guess what cover makes a target hard to hit.
Yeah... like when some guys shoot at you from the top of a ramp, it's so much harder to hit them...
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On June 18 2010 20:19 pzea469 wrote:Show nested quote +On June 18 2010 20:11 InRaged wrote:
As silly as units shooting through buildings and each other totally ignoring friendly fire. This is a game, not a real life war simulator. And lack of adequate high ground advantage make it inferior game. It reduces map diversity and reduces game's strategy depth. I completely agree on everything you have said. I'm not a fan of the miss system and would prefer a damage percentage reduction, but even the miss system would be better then the way it currently is.
I find situation quite funny actually. The main reason Blizzard don't implement it according to their own words is because it introduces randomness into competition (and they don't even bother answering about non-random mechanic). And so far, if I'm not mistaken, we had all the cream of the crop competitive players like absolutely unanimously agreeing that having at least random mechanic is better than nothing. So basically we have developers being sort of nanny for competitive players saying what's better for them
On June 18 2010 20:31 kajeus wrote:Show nested quote +On June 18 2010 20:29 InRaged wrote:On June 18 2010 20:14 kajeus wrote:On June 18 2010 20:11 InRaged wrote:
As silly as units shooting through buildings and each other totally ignoring friendly fire. This is a game, not a real life war simulator. And lack of adequate high ground advantage make it inferior game. It reduces map diversity and reduces game's strategy depth. I completely disagree. It just feels wrong. This random-number "mechanic" is unintuitive, unappealing, and uninteresting. Good riddance. Who cares how it *feels* for you? Not having high-ground advantage is unintuitive. If it was unappealing people would forget about it long time ago. And uninteresting? Are you kidding me? Lack of adequate mechanic renders wide ramps concept useless. Do I have to count for you how many BW maps had this feature as a key point of the map? Completely throwing such strategic feature for no reason whatsoever doesn't make game more interesting, but quite opposite. But no, let's not argue this very clear points. Let's just post how it *feels* for us without presenting any support for our feelings whatsoever. That's so much more fitting for internet discussion ;P I guess we could just be overexcited douchebags about it instead. This BW mechanic sucks, dude. It feels stupid, it looks stupid, and I would prefer a better system. Sorry.
Perfect internet warrior. 0 arguments, only name-calling.
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On June 18 2010 20:11 InRaged wrote:
As silly as units shooting through buildings and each other totally ignoring friendly fire. This is a game, not a real life war simulator. And lack of adequate high ground advantage make it inferior game. It reduces map diversity and reduces game's strategy depth.
Agree a thousand times.
This is not an issue with "realism" it's just to make your base defendable and to have something to make maps more unique.
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On June 18 2010 20:44 InRaged wrote:Show nested quote +On June 18 2010 20:19 pzea469 wrote:On June 18 2010 20:11 InRaged wrote:
As silly as units shooting through buildings and each other totally ignoring friendly fire. This is a game, not a real life war simulator. And lack of adequate high ground advantage make it inferior game. It reduces map diversity and reduces game's strategy depth. I completely agree on everything you have said. I'm not a fan of the miss system and would prefer a damage percentage reduction, but even the miss system would be better then the way it currently is. I find situation quite funny actually. The main reason Blizzard don't implement it according to their own words is because it introduces randomness into competition (and they don't even bother answering about non-random mechanic). And so far, if I'm not mistaken, we had all the cream of the crop competitive players like absolutely unanimously agreeing that having at least random mechanic is better than nothing. So basically we have developers being sort of nanny for competitive players saying what's better for them Show nested quote +On June 18 2010 20:31 kajeus wrote:On June 18 2010 20:29 InRaged wrote:On June 18 2010 20:14 kajeus wrote:On June 18 2010 20:11 InRaged wrote:
As silly as units shooting through buildings and each other totally ignoring friendly fire. This is a game, not a real life war simulator. And lack of adequate high ground advantage make it inferior game. It reduces map diversity and reduces game's strategy depth. I completely disagree. It just feels wrong. This random-number "mechanic" is unintuitive, unappealing, and uninteresting. Good riddance. Who cares how it *feels* for you? Not having high-ground advantage is unintuitive. If it was unappealing people would forget about it long time ago. And uninteresting? Are you kidding me? Lack of adequate mechanic renders wide ramps concept useless. Do I have to count for you how many BW maps had this feature as a key point of the map? Completely throwing such strategic feature for no reason whatsoever doesn't make game more interesting, but quite opposite. But no, let's not argue this very clear points. Let's just post how it *feels* for us without presenting any support for our feelings whatsoever. That's so much more fitting for internet discussion ;P I guess we could just be overexcited douchebags about it instead. This BW mechanic sucks, dude. It feels stupid, it looks stupid, and I would prefer a better system. Sorry. Perfect internet warrior. 0 arguments, only name-calling.
I got a great argument. You just don't want to accept it cuz you so angry.
The mechanic does not work very well. It is (i.e., feels) arbitrary, unintuitive, and (most importantly) NOT FUN to a lot of people (perhaps not diehard TL BW fanatics). No one really understands it, even 12 years after the release of BW, as evidenced by, among other things, that thread I posted a link to.
I am all for strategic depth, but this mechanic is half-hearted and ultimately anti-competitive. I always hated it while playing BW, and I'm glad it's gone.
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On June 18 2010 20:44 MaD.pYrO wrote:Show nested quote +On June 18 2010 20:11 InRaged wrote:
As silly as units shooting through buildings and each other totally ignoring friendly fire. This is a game, not a real life war simulator. And lack of adequate high ground advantage make it inferior game. It reduces map diversity and reduces game's strategy depth. Agree a thousand times. This is not an issue with "realism" it's just to make your base defendable and to have something to make maps more unique.
Hey, all anybody is doing is saying it feels stupid and responding to those who defend it by saying it's "realistic".
I think "high ground" in general is a little bit too complicated a concept for SC to handle in a generally satisfying way. Arbitrary miss-percentages are pretty stupid, have rules that are hard to understand, and don't contribute to gameplay in a good way, in my opinion.
There are a million better ways to make bases "defendable" and maps "more unique".
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On June 18 2010 20:51 kajeus wrote:Show nested quote +On June 18 2010 20:44 InRaged wrote:On June 18 2010 20:19 pzea469 wrote:On June 18 2010 20:11 InRaged wrote:
As silly as units shooting through buildings and each other totally ignoring friendly fire. This is a game, not a real life war simulator. And lack of adequate high ground advantage make it inferior game. It reduces map diversity and reduces game's strategy depth. I completely agree on everything you have said. I'm not a fan of the miss system and would prefer a damage percentage reduction, but even the miss system would be better then the way it currently is. I find situation quite funny actually. The main reason Blizzard don't implement it according to their own words is because it introduces randomness into competition (and they don't even bother answering about non-random mechanic). And so far, if I'm not mistaken, we had all the cream of the crop competitive players like absolutely unanimously agreeing that having at least random mechanic is better than nothing. So basically we have developers being sort of nanny for competitive players saying what's better for them On June 18 2010 20:31 kajeus wrote:On June 18 2010 20:29 InRaged wrote:On June 18 2010 20:14 kajeus wrote:On June 18 2010 20:11 InRaged wrote:
As silly as units shooting through buildings and each other totally ignoring friendly fire. This is a game, not a real life war simulator. And lack of adequate high ground advantage make it inferior game. It reduces map diversity and reduces game's strategy depth. I completely disagree. It just feels wrong. This random-number "mechanic" is unintuitive, unappealing, and uninteresting. Good riddance. Who cares how it *feels* for you? Not having high-ground advantage is unintuitive. If it was unappealing people would forget about it long time ago. And uninteresting? Are you kidding me? Lack of adequate mechanic renders wide ramps concept useless. Do I have to count for you how many BW maps had this feature as a key point of the map? Completely throwing such strategic feature for no reason whatsoever doesn't make game more interesting, but quite opposite. But no, let's not argue this very clear points. Let's just post how it *feels* for us without presenting any support for our feelings whatsoever. That's so much more fitting for internet discussion ;P I guess we could just be overexcited douchebags about it instead. This BW mechanic sucks, dude. It feels stupid, it looks stupid, and I would prefer a better system. Sorry. Perfect internet warrior. 0 arguments, only name-calling. I got a great argument. You just don't want to accept it cuz you so angry. The mechanic does not work very well. It is (i.e., feels) arbitrary, unintuitive, and (most importantly) NOT FUN to a lot of people (perhaps not diehard TL BW fanatics). No one really understands it, even 12 years after the release of BW, as evidenced by, among other things, that thread I posted a link to. I am all for strategic depth, but this mechanic is half-hearted and ultimately anti-competitive. I always hated it while playing BW, and I'm glad it's gone.
Your argument is entirely based off of your unsubstantiated feelings. Why is it not fun? Why does it feel arbitrary? Why is it anti-competitive? What evidence do you have that "the mechanic does not work very well" ? BW seems to have a lot of strategic depth* if you ask me..
* lol
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WARNING: The following requires at least 2 degrees in rocket science to understand:
if units are attacking uphill, they may miss.
I must be so smart, if I can grasp such complex and unintuitive concepts!
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On June 18 2010 20:57 space_yes wrote:Show nested quote +On June 18 2010 20:51 kajeus wrote:On June 18 2010 20:44 InRaged wrote:On June 18 2010 20:19 pzea469 wrote:On June 18 2010 20:11 InRaged wrote:
As silly as units shooting through buildings and each other totally ignoring friendly fire. This is a game, not a real life war simulator. And lack of adequate high ground advantage make it inferior game. It reduces map diversity and reduces game's strategy depth. I completely agree on everything you have said. I'm not a fan of the miss system and would prefer a damage percentage reduction, but even the miss system would be better then the way it currently is. I find situation quite funny actually. The main reason Blizzard don't implement it according to their own words is because it introduces randomness into competition (and they don't even bother answering about non-random mechanic). And so far, if I'm not mistaken, we had all the cream of the crop competitive players like absolutely unanimously agreeing that having at least random mechanic is better than nothing. So basically we have developers being sort of nanny for competitive players saying what's better for them On June 18 2010 20:31 kajeus wrote:On June 18 2010 20:29 InRaged wrote:On June 18 2010 20:14 kajeus wrote:On June 18 2010 20:11 InRaged wrote:
As silly as units shooting through buildings and each other totally ignoring friendly fire. This is a game, not a real life war simulator. And lack of adequate high ground advantage make it inferior game. It reduces map diversity and reduces game's strategy depth. I completely disagree. It just feels wrong. This random-number "mechanic" is unintuitive, unappealing, and uninteresting. Good riddance. Who cares how it *feels* for you? Not having high-ground advantage is unintuitive. If it was unappealing people would forget about it long time ago. And uninteresting? Are you kidding me? Lack of adequate mechanic renders wide ramps concept useless. Do I have to count for you how many BW maps had this feature as a key point of the map? Completely throwing such strategic feature for no reason whatsoever doesn't make game more interesting, but quite opposite. But no, let's not argue this very clear points. Let's just post how it *feels* for us without presenting any support for our feelings whatsoever. That's so much more fitting for internet discussion ;P I guess we could just be overexcited douchebags about it instead. This BW mechanic sucks, dude. It feels stupid, it looks stupid, and I would prefer a better system. Sorry. Perfect internet warrior. 0 arguments, only name-calling. I got a great argument. You just don't want to accept it cuz you so angry. The mechanic does not work very well. It is (i.e., feels) arbitrary, unintuitive, and (most importantly) NOT FUN to a lot of people (perhaps not diehard TL BW fanatics). No one really understands it, even 12 years after the release of BW, as evidenced by, among other things, that thread I posted a link to. I am all for strategic depth, but this mechanic is half-hearted and ultimately anti-competitive. I always hated it while playing BW, and I'm glad it's gone. Your argument is entirely based off of your unsubstantiated feelings. Why is it not fun? Why does it feel arbitrary? Why is it anti-competitive? What evidence do you have that "the mechanic does not work very well" ? BW seems to have a lot of strategic depth* if you ask me.. * lol
Why do you like it so much? We're talking about yes/no preferences.
It feels arbitrary because nobody understands why or, mathematically, how shooting up a ramp affects gameplay. It's arbitrary like making boulder doodads on maps give your units fire-breathing abilities. It comes out of nowhere and adds an arbitrary/unreliable layer of "depth".
It's anti-competitive because it's unreliable. No one even knows what the real miss-rate is, so everyone faces a generic "disadvantage" on the low-ground that can't be properly figured out or understood by even the most fanatical of fans. I don't like chance to play a major role in strategy games, especially when it doesn't make intuitive sense when and to what extent chance is playing a role.
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The current system is superior because it actually allows tactical play. The below cliff attacker needs to ensure he gets vision or he will get destroyed. I am reminded of this one game where a terran did an early marauder attack on a protoss base on LT and was getting deterred by a stalker, then scanned and because of this was able to force the stalker back and finally make it up the ramp. Tactical play, sounds exactly what blizzard wants.
On the defenders' side, most vision is given by flying units, so focus fire that medivac/overlord or use detection to get that observer that allows the stalkers to shoot uphill. Alternatively, focus fire down those zealots or zerglings that made it up the ramp to cut vision for the stalkers/hydralisks that are still below. I'm not just theorycrafting here either, this is stuff you actually see in games.
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On June 18 2010 21:00 lololol wrote:
WARNING: The following requires at least 2 degrees in rocket science to understand:
if units are attacking uphill, they may miss.
I must be so smart, if I can grasp such complex and unintuitive concepts!
Why do they miss?
Your answer is: "It doesn't matter."
I'm tellin ya, as a fellow player, that is an unsatisfying answer.
What's definition of "high-ground"? How high up the ramp do you have to be before you're SO HIGH that I can't aim at you?
This isn't so much a question of whether BW was a good game or not. It's a question of whether this mechanic is worthwhile in modern games. My vote is no.
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As why does it show greyed out units, instead of showing nothing: Because it would be even more confusing for players to get pummeled by stuff and see nothing. Blizz did a nice compromise here.
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On June 18 2010 18:26 alphaentity wrote:Not to discredit ur service in the US Marine Corps, but wikipedia lists a few more advantages in high vs low ground battle: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_groundThat wiki post actually has a few good suggestions. The following thoughts are for an army that already has sight of the cliff (I think without sight, the current method is perfect). range -- reduce range of low ground army to simulate reduction of visibility-- this can be shown using the range radius thingy or some other visual cue -- (or longer range for high ground army) rate of fire -- reduce the firing speed of low ground army to simulate the fatigue of shooting up. Other things that have been discussed: miss percentage -- have a miss percentage for low ground army (a la bw) damage reduction -- have a % damage reduced -- I actually don't like this as much since if you hit something, u would just hit it. To get at the OPs question -- What else (mechanics) can we play with? A true brainstorm should list out all possibilities no matter how stupid it might seem. Go at it!
I never said that there wasn't a "high ground advantage," my whole post was about how absurd BW's 50% miss system was. To reiterate, elevation has zero effect on the accuracy(or damage) of direct fire weapons. As far as fatiege goes, I think you bring up a great point about perhaps reducing all units speeds by 50%(or so) as they advance up to the high ground.
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On June 18 2010 20:51 kajeus wrote:No one really understands it, even 12 years after the release of BW, as evidenced by, among other things, that thread I posted a link to.
...
All you need to understand is that if your units are on higher ground than your opponents' units, they stand a better chance at winning an engagement. Aka, inferior number of forces (fewer Siege Tanks for example) may be ok. Alternately, if you are the one assaulting from lower ground, you are going to need a superior force (more Siege Tanks for example).
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On June 18 2010 21:06 TerranUp16 wrote:Show nested quote +On June 18 2010 20:51 kajeus wrote:No one really understands it, even 12 years after the release of BW, as evidenced by, among other things, that thread I posted a link to. ... All you need to understand is that if your units are on higher ground than your opponents' units, they stand a better chance at winning an engagement. Aka, inferior number of forces (fewer Siege Tanks for example) may be ok. Alternately, if you are the one assaulting from lower ground, you are going to need a superior force (more Siege Tanks for example).
So TL.net, home of competitive Starcraft, is not a place where we want to understand the EXACT workings of the high-ground mechanic? 30% or 50% -- who cares? We're ok with just sort of shrugging our shoulders about it? I'm disappointed in you guys. How do I know how many tanks are enough if everything is left to random numbers and math that nobody can understand?
I still don't know how far up the ramp the bad guys need to go before they're so high I can't hit them half the time.
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Reading this thread is one of the most facepalm inducing things I have done in weeks.
I'm not even going to participate in a discussion that has reached these levels of retardation.
This is a bad thread and you should feel bad.
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On June 18 2010 21:13 sob3k wrote:
Reading this thread is one of the most facepalm inducing things I have done in weeks.
I'm not even going to participate in a discussion that has reached these levels of retardation.
This is a bad thread and you should feel bad.
So much angarrrr from the angry nerds.
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On June 18 2010 21:11 kajeus wrote:
So TL.net, home of competitive Starcraft, is not a place where we want to understand the EXACT workings of the high-ground mechanic? 30% or 50% -- who cares? We're ok with just sort of shrugging our shoulders about it? I'm disappointed in you guys. How do I know how many tanks are enough if everything is left to random numbers and math that nobody can understand?
I still don't know how far up the ramp the bad guys need to go before they're so high I can't hit them half the time.
Rather than gratifying that with the response you'll actually want, I'm going to teach you how to fish. Open up the Campaign Editor and go lab it yourself. Do this with Dawn of War 2 all the time with far inferior tools for labbing.
On a side note, you're assuming that if such a mechanic were in SC2 that Blizzard would absolutely refuse to divulge the details of it. Probably a bad assumption, no?
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On June 18 2010 21:03 kajeus wrote:Show nested quote +On June 18 2010 20:57 space_yes wrote:On June 18 2010 20:51 kajeus wrote:On June 18 2010 20:44 InRaged wrote:On June 18 2010 20:19 pzea469 wrote:On June 18 2010 20:11 InRaged wrote:
As silly as units shooting through buildings and each other totally ignoring friendly fire. This is a game, not a real life war simulator. And lack of adequate high ground advantage make it inferior game. It reduces map diversity and reduces game's strategy depth. I completely agree on everything you have said. I'm not a fan of the miss system and would prefer a damage percentage reduction, but even the miss system would be better then the way it currently is. I find situation quite funny actually. The main reason Blizzard don't implement it according to their own words is because it introduces randomness into competition (and they don't even bother answering about non-random mechanic). And so far, if I'm not mistaken, we had all the cream of the crop competitive players like absolutely unanimously agreeing that having at least random mechanic is better than nothing. So basically we have developers being sort of nanny for competitive players saying what's better for them On June 18 2010 20:31 kajeus wrote:On June 18 2010 20:29 InRaged wrote:On June 18 2010 20:14 kajeus wrote:On June 18 2010 20:11 InRaged wrote:
As silly as units shooting through buildings and each other totally ignoring friendly fire. This is a game, not a real life war simulator. And lack of adequate high ground advantage make it inferior game. It reduces map diversity and reduces game's strategy depth. I completely disagree. It just feels wrong. This random-number "mechanic" is unintuitive, unappealing, and uninteresting. Good riddance. Who cares how it *feels* for you? Not having high-ground advantage is unintuitive. If it was unappealing people would forget about it long time ago. And uninteresting? Are you kidding me? Lack of adequate mechanic renders wide ramps concept useless. Do I have to count for you how many BW maps had this feature as a key point of the map? Completely throwing such strategic feature for no reason whatsoever doesn't make game more interesting, but quite opposite. But no, let's not argue this very clear points. Let's just post how it *feels* for us without presenting any support for our feelings whatsoever. That's so much more fitting for internet discussion ;P I guess we could just be overexcited douchebags about it instead. This BW mechanic sucks, dude. It feels stupid, it looks stupid, and I would prefer a better system. Sorry. Perfect internet warrior. 0 arguments, only name-calling. I got a great argument. You just don't want to accept it cuz you so angry. The mechanic does not work very well. It is (i.e., feels) arbitrary, unintuitive, and (most importantly) NOT FUN to a lot of people (perhaps not diehard TL BW fanatics). No one really understands it, even 12 years after the release of BW, as evidenced by, among other things, that thread I posted a link to. I am all for strategic depth, but this mechanic is half-hearted and ultimately anti-competitive. I always hated it while playing BW, and I'm glad it's gone. Your argument is entirely based off of your unsubstantiated feelings. Why is it not fun? Why does it feel arbitrary? Why is it anti-competitive? What evidence do you have that "the mechanic does not work very well" ? BW seems to have a lot of strategic depth* if you ask me.. * lol Why do you like it so much? We're talking about yes/no preferences.
You are talking about yes/no preferences I am talking about how a given element impacts game play.
It feels arbitrary because nobody understands why or, mathematically, how shooting up a ramp affects gameplay. It's arbitrary like making boulder doodads on maps give your units fire-breathing abilities. It comes out of nowhere and adds an arbitrary/unreliable layer of "depth".
You don't need to know the exact value of the gravitational constant to know that if you drop something it accelerates as it falls. Mathematically it's as simple as recognizing your units have a propensity to miss if they fire uphill.
It's anti-competitive because it's unreliable. No one even knows what the real miss-rate is, so everyone faces a generic "disadvantage" on the low-ground that can't be properly figured out or understood by even the most fanatical of fans. I don't like chance to play a major role in strategy games, especially when it doesn't make intuitive sense when and to what extent chance is playing a role.
There is no warrant for your claim that not knowing the miss-rate function creates a generic low ground disadvantage. You are only disadvantaged if you don't know there's a chance to miss in the first place. Players who are ignorant about game play elements should be disadvantaged for their ignorance.
In terms of competition a better high ground would mechanic increase the tactical significance of high ground and by extension army position on a given map. SC2 maps don't offer the strategic diversity that BW maps do b/c of this very reason. Take Heartbreak Ridge as an example...
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On June 18 2010 21:16 TerranUp16 wrote:Show nested quote +On June 18 2010 21:11 kajeus wrote:
So TL.net, home of competitive Starcraft, is not a place where we want to understand the EXACT workings of the high-ground mechanic? 30% or 50% -- who cares? We're ok with just sort of shrugging our shoulders about it? I'm disappointed in you guys. How do I know how many tanks are enough if everything is left to random numbers and math that nobody can understand?
I still don't know how far up the ramp the bad guys need to go before they're so high I can't hit them half the time. Rather than gratifying that with the response you'll actually want, I'm going to teach you how to fish. Open up the Campaign Editor and go lab it yourself. Do this with Dawn of War 2 all the time with far inferior tools for labbing. On a side note, you're assuming that if such a mechanic were in SC2 that Blizzard would absolutely refuse to divulge the details of it. Probably a bad assumption, no?
No, I'm assuming that they have had a game out for 12 years and apparently not divulged the details of it. I'm also asserting that even if you could answer the ramp question, you answer would still be completely absurd.
Why bother to respond if your response is going to be so useless? I'm not going to lab anything because I don't really care how BW works -- I've moved on to newer things.
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On June 18 2010 16:30 USn wrote:Show nested quote +On June 18 2010 16:10 xOchievax wrote: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. Show nested quote +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.
No, that's stupid. You shouldn't expect to know everything about a game without doing ANY research.
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On June 18 2010 21:17 space_yes wrote:Show nested quote +On June 18 2010 21:03 kajeus wrote:On June 18 2010 20:57 space_yes wrote:On June 18 2010 20:51 kajeus wrote:On June 18 2010 20:44 InRaged wrote:On June 18 2010 20:19 pzea469 wrote:On June 18 2010 20:11 InRaged wrote:
As silly as units shooting through buildings and each other totally ignoring friendly fire. This is a game, not a real life war simulator. And lack of adequate high ground advantage make it inferior game. It reduces map diversity and reduces game's strategy depth. I completely agree on everything you have said. I'm not a fan of the miss system and would prefer a damage percentage reduction, but even the miss system would be better then the way it currently is. I find situation quite funny actually. The main reason Blizzard don't implement it according to their own words is because it introduces randomness into competition (and they don't even bother answering about non-random mechanic). And so far, if I'm not mistaken, we had all the cream of the crop competitive players like absolutely unanimously agreeing that having at least random mechanic is better than nothing. So basically we have developers being sort of nanny for competitive players saying what's better for them On June 18 2010 20:31 kajeus wrote:On June 18 2010 20:29 InRaged wrote:On June 18 2010 20:14 kajeus wrote:On June 18 2010 20:11 InRaged wrote:
As silly as units shooting through buildings and each other totally ignoring friendly fire. This is a game, not a real life war simulator. And lack of adequate high ground advantage make it inferior game. It reduces map diversity and reduces game's strategy depth. I completely disagree. It just feels wrong. This random-number "mechanic" is unintuitive, unappealing, and uninteresting. Good riddance. Who cares how it *feels* for you? Not having high-ground advantage is unintuitive. If it was unappealing people would forget about it long time ago. And uninteresting? Are you kidding me? Lack of adequate mechanic renders wide ramps concept useless. Do I have to count for you how many BW maps had this feature as a key point of the map? Completely throwing such strategic feature for no reason whatsoever doesn't make game more interesting, but quite opposite. But no, let's not argue this very clear points. Let's just post how it *feels* for us without presenting any support for our feelings whatsoever. That's so much more fitting for internet discussion ;P I guess we could just be overexcited douchebags about it instead. This BW mechanic sucks, dude. It feels stupid, it looks stupid, and I would prefer a better system. Sorry. Perfect internet warrior. 0 arguments, only name-calling. I got a great argument. You just don't want to accept it cuz you so angry. The mechanic does not work very well. It is (i.e., feels) arbitrary, unintuitive, and (most importantly) NOT FUN to a lot of people (perhaps not diehard TL BW fanatics). No one really understands it, even 12 years after the release of BW, as evidenced by, among other things, that thread I posted a link to. I am all for strategic depth, but this mechanic is half-hearted and ultimately anti-competitive. I always hated it while playing BW, and I'm glad it's gone. Your argument is entirely based off of your unsubstantiated feelings. Why is it not fun? Why does it feel arbitrary? Why is it anti-competitive? What evidence do you have that "the mechanic does not work very well" ? BW seems to have a lot of strategic depth* if you ask me.. * lol Why do you like it so much? We're talking about yes/no preferences. You are talking about yes/no preference, not "we." Show nested quote +
It feels arbitrary because nobody understands why or, mathematically, how shooting up a ramp affects gameplay. It's arbitrary like making boulder doodads on maps give your units fire-breathing abilities. It comes out of nowhere and adds an arbitrary/unreliable layer of "depth".
You don't need to know the exact value of the gravitational constant to know that if you drop something it accelerates as it falls. Mathematically it's as simple as recognizing your units have a propensity to miss if they fire uphill. There is no warrant for your claim that not knowing the miss-rate function creates a generic low ground disadvantage. You are only disadvantaged if you don't know there's a chance to miss in the first place. Players who are ignorant about game play elements should be disadvantaged for their ignorance. In terms of competition a better high ground would mechanic increase the tactical significance of high ground and by extension army position on a given map. SC2 maps don't offer the strategic diversity that BW maps do b/c of this very reason. Take Heartbreak Ridge as an example...
You people refine build orders down to the SECOND, and you're going to tell me that it doesn't matter whether you know if your units are hitting 70% of the time or 50% of the time?
SC2 requires you to build air/gigantic units for vision. It's just a different kind of thing. It's still got depth -- just not the "depth" you're familiar with.
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On June 18 2010 21:23 kajeus wrote:Show nested quote +On June 18 2010 21:17 space_yes wrote:On June 18 2010 21:03 kajeus wrote:On June 18 2010 20:57 space_yes wrote:On June 18 2010 20:51 kajeus wrote:On June 18 2010 20:44 InRaged wrote:On June 18 2010 20:19 pzea469 wrote:On June 18 2010 20:11 InRaged wrote:
As silly as units shooting through buildings and each other totally ignoring friendly fire. This is a game, not a real life war simulator. And lack of adequate high ground advantage make it inferior game. It reduces map diversity and reduces game's strategy depth. I completely agree on everything you have said. I'm not a fan of the miss system and would prefer a damage percentage reduction, but even the miss system would be better then the way it currently is. I find situation quite funny actually. The main reason Blizzard don't implement it according to their own words is because it introduces randomness into competition (and they don't even bother answering about non-random mechanic). And so far, if I'm not mistaken, we had all the cream of the crop competitive players like absolutely unanimously agreeing that having at least random mechanic is better than nothing. So basically we have developers being sort of nanny for competitive players saying what's better for them On June 18 2010 20:31 kajeus wrote:On June 18 2010 20:29 InRaged wrote:On June 18 2010 20:14 kajeus wrote:On June 18 2010 20:11 InRaged wrote:
As silly as units shooting through buildings and each other totally ignoring friendly fire. This is a game, not a real life war simulator. And lack of adequate high ground advantage make it inferior game. It reduces map diversity and reduces game's strategy depth. I completely disagree. It just feels wrong. This random-number "mechanic" is unintuitive, unappealing, and uninteresting. Good riddance. Who cares how it *feels* for you? Not having high-ground advantage is unintuitive. If it was unappealing people would forget about it long time ago. And uninteresting? Are you kidding me? Lack of adequate mechanic renders wide ramps concept useless. Do I have to count for you how many BW maps had this feature as a key point of the map? Completely throwing such strategic feature for no reason whatsoever doesn't make game more interesting, but quite opposite. But no, let's not argue this very clear points. Let's just post how it *feels* for us without presenting any support for our feelings whatsoever. That's so much more fitting for internet discussion ;P I guess we could just be overexcited douchebags about it instead. This BW mechanic sucks, dude. It feels stupid, it looks stupid, and I would prefer a better system. Sorry. Perfect internet warrior. 0 arguments, only name-calling. I got a great argument. You just don't want to accept it cuz you so angry. The mechanic does not work very well. It is (i.e., feels) arbitrary, unintuitive, and (most importantly) NOT FUN to a lot of people (perhaps not diehard TL BW fanatics). No one really understands it, even 12 years after the release of BW, as evidenced by, among other things, that thread I posted a link to. I am all for strategic depth, but this mechanic is half-hearted and ultimately anti-competitive. I always hated it while playing BW, and I'm glad it's gone. Your argument is entirely based off of your unsubstantiated feelings. Why is it not fun? Why does it feel arbitrary? Why is it anti-competitive? What evidence do you have that "the mechanic does not work very well" ? BW seems to have a lot of strategic depth* if you ask me.. * lol Why do you like it so much? We're talking about yes/no preferences. You are talking about yes/no preference, not "we."
It feels arbitrary because nobody understands why or, mathematically, how shooting up a ramp affects gameplay. It's arbitrary like making boulder doodads on maps give your units fire-breathing abilities. It comes out of nowhere and adds an arbitrary/unreliable layer of "depth".
You don't need to know the exact value of the gravitational constant to know that if you drop something it accelerates as it falls. Mathematically it's as simple as recognizing your units have a propensity to miss if they fire uphill. There is no warrant for your claim that not knowing the miss-rate function creates a generic low ground disadvantage. You are only disadvantaged if you don't know there's a chance to miss in the first place. Players who are ignorant about game play elements should be disadvantaged for their ignorance. In terms of competition a better high ground would mechanic increase the tactical significance of high ground and by extension army position on a given map. SC2 maps don't offer the strategic diversity that BW maps do b/c of this very reason. Take Heartbreak Ridge as an example... You people refine build orders down to the SECOND, and you're going to tell me that it doesn't matter whether you know if your units are hitting 70% of the time or 50% of the time? SC2 requires you to build air/gigantic units for vision. It's just a different kind of thing. It's still got depth -- just not the "depth" you're familiar with.
It would be nice to know the exact function but it isn't necessary. Not knowing hasn't destroyed BW at either high or low level play. Even newbies quickly intuit units at a high ground have an advantage. By the time the mid-game hits everyone will have units for high ground vision; my point is the current high ground system reduces the impact maps (and by extension unit positioning) have on game play.
EDIT: clarity
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I like the new mechanic, but i think units on low ground (except Colossi) should get -1 RANGE while shooting uphill (the range they would have to shoot up the cliff, so if it was 2 levels difference there would be a -2 range penalty).
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On June 18 2010 21:26 space_yes wrote:Show nested quote +On June 18 2010 21:23 kajeus wrote:On June 18 2010 21:17 space_yes wrote:On June 18 2010 21:03 kajeus wrote:On June 18 2010 20:57 space_yes wrote:On June 18 2010 20:51 kajeus wrote:On June 18 2010 20:44 InRaged wrote:On June 18 2010 20:19 pzea469 wrote:On June 18 2010 20:11 InRaged wrote:
As silly as units shooting through buildings and each other totally ignoring friendly fire. This is a game, not a real life war simulator. And lack of adequate high ground advantage make it inferior game. It reduces map diversity and reduces game's strategy depth. I completely agree on everything you have said. I'm not a fan of the miss system and would prefer a damage percentage reduction, but even the miss system would be better then the way it currently is. I find situation quite funny actually. The main reason Blizzard don't implement it according to their own words is because it introduces randomness into competition (and they don't even bother answering about non-random mechanic). And so far, if I'm not mistaken, we had all the cream of the crop competitive players like absolutely unanimously agreeing that having at least random mechanic is better than nothing. So basically we have developers being sort of nanny for competitive players saying what's better for them On June 18 2010 20:31 kajeus wrote:On June 18 2010 20:29 InRaged wrote:On June 18 2010 20:14 kajeus wrote:
[quote]
I completely disagree. It just feels wrong. This random-number "mechanic" is unintuitive, unappealing, and uninteresting. Good riddance. Who cares how it *feels* for you? Not having high-ground advantage is unintuitive. If it was unappealing people would forget about it long time ago. And uninteresting? Are you kidding me? Lack of adequate mechanic renders wide ramps concept useless. Do I have to count for you how many BW maps had this feature as a key point of the map? Completely throwing such strategic feature for no reason whatsoever doesn't make game more interesting, but quite opposite. But no, let's not argue this very clear points. Let's just post how it *feels* for us without presenting any support for our feelings whatsoever. That's so much more fitting for internet discussion ;P I guess we could just be overexcited douchebags about it instead. This BW mechanic sucks, dude. It feels stupid, it looks stupid, and I would prefer a better system. Sorry. Perfect internet warrior. 0 arguments, only name-calling. I got a great argument. You just don't want to accept it cuz you so angry. The mechanic does not work very well. It is (i.e., feels) arbitrary, unintuitive, and (most importantly) NOT FUN to a lot of people (perhaps not diehard TL BW fanatics). No one really understands it, even 12 years after the release of BW, as evidenced by, among other things, that thread I posted a link to. I am all for strategic depth, but this mechanic is half-hearted and ultimately anti-competitive. I always hated it while playing BW, and I'm glad it's gone. Your argument is entirely based off of your unsubstantiated feelings. Why is it not fun? Why does it feel arbitrary? Why is it anti-competitive? What evidence do you have that "the mechanic does not work very well" ? BW seems to have a lot of strategic depth* if you ask me.. * lol Why do you like it so much? We're talking about yes/no preferences. You are talking about yes/no preference, not "we."
It feels arbitrary because nobody understands why or, mathematically, how shooting up a ramp affects gameplay. It's arbitrary like making boulder doodads on maps give your units fire-breathing abilities. It comes out of nowhere and adds an arbitrary/unreliable layer of "depth".
You don't need to know the exact value of the gravitational constant to know that if you drop something it accelerates as it falls. Mathematically it's as simple as recognizing your units have a propensity to miss if they fire uphill. There is no warrant for your claim that not knowing the miss-rate function creates a generic low ground disadvantage. You are only disadvantaged if you don't know there's a chance to miss in the first place. Players who are ignorant about game play elements should be disadvantaged for their ignorance. In terms of competition a better high ground would mechanic increase the tactical significance of high ground and by extension army position on a given map. SC2 maps don't offer the strategic diversity that BW maps do b/c of this very reason. Take Heartbreak Ridge as an example... You people refine build orders down to the SECOND, and you're going to tell me that it doesn't matter whether you know if your units are hitting 70% of the time or 50% of the time? SC2 requires you to build air/gigantic units for vision. It's just a different kind of thing. It's still got depth -- just not the "depth" you're familiar with. It would be nice to know the exact function but it isn't necessary. Not knowing hasn't destroyed BW at either high or low level play. Even newbies quickly intuit units at a high ground have an advantage. By the time the mid-game hits everyone will have units for high ground vision; my point is the current high ground system reduces the impact maps have on game play.
So what we're saying is that you prefer an amorphous system with hard-to-understand mechanics, and I prefer a system with clear rules and none of this "magic ramp" junk. Seems like we're talking about preferences to me.
By the way, what you say about SC2 is not true -- people frequently have to build and move units specifically to gain high-ground sight.
NOTE: high ground is still relevant to unit positioning and map design. Just not in the way it used to be.
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On June 18 2010 21:30 kajeus wrote:Show nested quote +On June 18 2010 21:26 space_yes wrote:On June 18 2010 21:23 kajeus wrote:On June 18 2010 21:17 space_yes wrote:On June 18 2010 21:03 kajeus wrote:On June 18 2010 20:57 space_yes wrote:On June 18 2010 20:51 kajeus wrote:On June 18 2010 20:44 InRaged wrote:On June 18 2010 20:19 pzea469 wrote:On June 18 2010 20:11 InRaged wrote:
As silly as units shooting through buildings and each other totally ignoring friendly fire. This is a game, not a real life war simulator. And lack of adequate high ground advantage make it inferior game. It reduces map diversity and reduces game's strategy depth. I completely agree on everything you have said. I'm not a fan of the miss system and would prefer a damage percentage reduction, but even the miss system would be better then the way it currently is. I find situation quite funny actually. The main reason Blizzard don't implement it according to their own words is because it introduces randomness into competition (and they don't even bother answering about non-random mechanic). And so far, if I'm not mistaken, we had all the cream of the crop competitive players like absolutely unanimously agreeing that having at least random mechanic is better than nothing. So basically we have developers being sort of nanny for competitive players saying what's better for them On June 18 2010 20:31 kajeus wrote:On June 18 2010 20:29 InRaged wrote:
[quote]
Who cares how it *feels* for you? Not having high-ground advantage is unintuitive. If it was unappealing people would forget about it long time ago. And uninteresting? Are you kidding me? Lack of adequate mechanic renders wide ramps concept useless. Do I have to count for you how many BW maps had this feature as a key point of the map? Completely throwing such strategic feature for no reason whatsoever doesn't make game more interesting, but quite opposite.
But no, let's not argue this very clear points. Let's just post how it *feels* for us without presenting any support for our feelings whatsoever. That's so much more fitting for internet discussion ;P I guess we could just be overexcited douchebags about it instead. This BW mechanic sucks, dude. It feels stupid, it looks stupid, and I would prefer a better system. Sorry. Perfect internet warrior. 0 arguments, only name-calling. I got a great argument. You just don't want to accept it cuz you so angry. The mechanic does not work very well. It is (i.e., feels) arbitrary, unintuitive, and (most importantly) NOT FUN to a lot of people (perhaps not diehard TL BW fanatics). No one really understands it, even 12 years after the release of BW, as evidenced by, among other things, that thread I posted a link to. I am all for strategic depth, but this mechanic is half-hearted and ultimately anti-competitive. I always hated it while playing BW, and I'm glad it's gone. Your argument is entirely based off of your unsubstantiated feelings. Why is it not fun? Why does it feel arbitrary? Why is it anti-competitive? What evidence do you have that "the mechanic does not work very well" ? BW seems to have a lot of strategic depth* if you ask me.. * lol Why do you like it so much? We're talking about yes/no preferences. You are talking about yes/no preference, not "we."
It feels arbitrary because nobody understands why or, mathematically, how shooting up a ramp affects gameplay. It's arbitrary like making boulder doodads on maps give your units fire-breathing abilities. It comes out of nowhere and adds an arbitrary/unreliable layer of "depth".
You don't need to know the exact value of the gravitational constant to know that if you drop something it accelerates as it falls. Mathematically it's as simple as recognizing your units have a propensity to miss if they fire uphill. There is no warrant for your claim that not knowing the miss-rate function creates a generic low ground disadvantage. You are only disadvantaged if you don't know there's a chance to miss in the first place. Players who are ignorant about game play elements should be disadvantaged for their ignorance. In terms of competition a better high ground would mechanic increase the tactical significance of high ground and by extension army position on a given map. SC2 maps don't offer the strategic diversity that BW maps do b/c of this very reason. Take Heartbreak Ridge as an example... You people refine build orders down to the SECOND, and you're going to tell me that it doesn't matter whether you know if your units are hitting 70% of the time or 50% of the time? SC2 requires you to build air/gigantic units for vision. It's just a different kind of thing. It's still got depth -- just not the "depth" you're familiar with. It would be nice to know the exact function but it isn't necessary. Not knowing hasn't destroyed BW at either high or low level play. Even newbies quickly intuit units at a high ground have an advantage. By the time the mid-game hits everyone will have units for high ground vision; my point is the current high ground system reduces the impact maps have on game play. So what we're saying is that you prefer an amorphous system with hard-to-understand mechanics, and I prefer a system with clear rules and none of this "magic ramp" junk. Seems like we're talking about preferences to me.
Simply b/c you don't understand it doesn't mean its hard to understand; units on low ground will sometime miss when shooting units that are on higher ground. I'll repeat my gravity example: you don't need to know the gravitational constant to know that things accelerate when you drop them. And it's not a preference; you haven't answered my game play argument about maps and unit positioning.
By the way, what you say about SC2 is not true -- people frequently have to build and move units specifically to gain high-ground sight.
Ya but this was already answered in my previous post...
Adding an additional mechanic would increase the complexity of the game. Furthermore there is no reason that the miss chance has to be an unknown function i.e. Blizzard could say units on low ground will have a 10% miss chance. Then you would know what the miss rate is and it would clear and easy to understand.
EDIT: actually I'd be in favor of the miss mechanic over the vision mechanic, having both might not be a good idea...I do think the miss mechanic is more strategically fecund that the vision one b/c you still have vision issues in terms of the units firing only after they've been hit with a miss-system
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i dont know if anyones thrown this out there but would mixing some of these ideas like minor damage reduction and minor hit chance % lowered + units attacking up a cliff have less range than they normally do, think about it, your shooting upwards as well as across. i dont know i think the BW one works just fine
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i have a feeling that people saying that a highground mechanic is unnecessary and horrible either didn't play bw, or simply don't understand how much depth this mechanic adds to the game, or both. I don't want to say that people who didn't play bw shouldn't have an opinion, but please think twice before calling it stupid.
I understand how one can see a random chance factor in a competitive game and say "thats dumb and doesn't fit" but forget about the fact that its a random chance for a sec and try to just think about it as a defenders advantage. Now i hope we can mostly agree on the fact that a defenders advantage on the high ground is a good thing and that it made bw a much deeper game. Now if we can agree on that, we can then argue on HOW this defenders advantage on the ramp should be implemented. Whether it be a missing percentage or a damage reduction or whatever. For example, I favor the damage reduction, because i feel its easier to understand and less luck-based. However the problem SC2 has is that it has NO defenders advantage except sight. This advantage quickly goes away as soon as the attacker has a flying unit or simply charges the ramp and then attacks. In bw the defenders advantage was present throughout the game and allowed for great moves like retreating to a highground position of the map and forcing ur opponent who had an advantage on the low ground to think twice before engaging. SC2 could be a much deeper game if such a highground mechanic were implemented.
We can discuss HOW it should be implemented, but we all should really agree on the fact that it needs a real highground advantage.
And stop talking about modern realism. It's a strategy game, and a highground mechanic besides just sight would add depth.
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On June 18 2010 21:37 space_yes wrote:Show nested quote +On June 18 2010 21:30 kajeus wrote:On June 18 2010 21:26 space_yes wrote:On June 18 2010 21:23 kajeus wrote:On June 18 2010 21:17 space_yes wrote:On June 18 2010 21:03 kajeus wrote:On June 18 2010 20:57 space_yes wrote:On June 18 2010 20:51 kajeus wrote:On June 18 2010 20:44 InRaged wrote:On June 18 2010 20:19 pzea469 wrote:
[quote]
I completely agree on everything you have said. I'm not a fan of the miss system and would prefer a damage percentage reduction, but even the miss system would be better then the way it currently is. I find situation quite funny actually. The main reason Blizzard don't implement it according to their own words is because it introduces randomness into competition (and they don't even bother answering about non-random mechanic). And so far, if I'm not mistaken, we had all the cream of the crop competitive players like absolutely unanimously agreeing that having at least random mechanic is better than nothing. So basically we have developers being sort of nanny for competitive players saying what's better for them On June 18 2010 20:31 kajeus wrote:
[quote]
I guess we could just be overexcited douchebags about it instead.
This BW mechanic sucks, dude. It feels stupid, it looks stupid, and I would prefer a better system. Sorry. Perfect internet warrior. 0 arguments, only name-calling. I got a great argument. You just don't want to accept it cuz you so angry. The mechanic does not work very well. It is (i.e., feels) arbitrary, unintuitive, and (most importantly) NOT FUN to a lot of people (perhaps not diehard TL BW fanatics). No one really understands it, even 12 years after the release of BW, as evidenced by, among other things, that thread I posted a link to. I am all for strategic depth, but this mechanic is half-hearted and ultimately anti-competitive. I always hated it while playing BW, and I'm glad it's gone. Your argument is entirely based off of your unsubstantiated feelings. Why is it not fun? Why does it feel arbitrary? Why is it anti-competitive? What evidence do you have that "the mechanic does not work very well" ? BW seems to have a lot of strategic depth* if you ask me.. * lol Why do you like it so much? We're talking about yes/no preferences. You are talking about yes/no preference, not "we."
It feels arbitrary because nobody understands why or, mathematically, how shooting up a ramp affects gameplay. It's arbitrary like making boulder doodads on maps give your units fire-breathing abilities. It comes out of nowhere and adds an arbitrary/unreliable layer of "depth".
You don't need to know the exact value of the gravitational constant to know that if you drop something it accelerates as it falls. Mathematically it's as simple as recognizing your units have a propensity to miss if they fire uphill. There is no warrant for your claim that not knowing the miss-rate function creates a generic low ground disadvantage. You are only disadvantaged if you don't know there's a chance to miss in the first place. Players who are ignorant about game play elements should be disadvantaged for their ignorance. In terms of competition a better high ground would mechanic increase the tactical significance of high ground and by extension army position on a given map. SC2 maps don't offer the strategic diversity that BW maps do b/c of this very reason. Take Heartbreak Ridge as an example... You people refine build orders down to the SECOND, and you're going to tell me that it doesn't matter whether you know if your units are hitting 70% of the time or 50% of the time? SC2 requires you to build air/gigantic units for vision. It's just a different kind of thing. It's still got depth -- just not the "depth" you're familiar with. It would be nice to know the exact function but it isn't necessary. Not knowing hasn't destroyed BW at either high or low level play. Even newbies quickly intuit units at a high ground have an advantage. By the time the mid-game hits everyone will have units for high ground vision; my point is the current high ground system reduces the impact maps have on game play. So what we're saying is that you prefer an amorphous system with hard-to-understand mechanics, and I prefer a system with clear rules and none of this "magic ramp" junk. Seems like we're talking about preferences to me. Simply b/c you don't understand it doesn't mean its hard to understand; units on low ground will sometime miss when shooting units that are on higher ground. I'll repeat my gravity example: you don't need to know the gravitational constant to know that things accelerate when you drop them. And it's not a preference; you haven't answered my game play argument about maps and unit positioning.
Um... what makes you think I don't get the basic idea of the BW high ground mechanic? I get what you're saying, but this is competitive BW we're talking about. You don't think engineers use the gravitational constant?
I *did* answer your gameplay argument. Gameplay is deep in a different way with the new mechanic. The lack of certainty and the magic ramp problem were not worth the vague "improvements in map complexity and unit positioning" of BW.
Show nested quote +
By the way, what you say about SC2 is not true -- people frequently have to build and move units specifically to gain high-ground sight.
Ya but this was already answered in my previous post... Adding an additional mechanic would increase the complexity of the game. Furthermore there is no reason that the miss chance has to be an unknown function i.e. Blizzard could say units on low ground will have a 10% miss chance. Then you would know what the miss rate is and it would clear and easy to understand.
Yeah, but you still have the magic ramp problem. Moreover, I'm not sure arbitrary complexity is a good thing. And I don't like randomness to play such a large role in my competitive strategy games.
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On June 18 2010 21:40 pzea469 wrote:
i have a feeling that people saying that a highground mechanic is unnecessary and horrible either didn't play bw, or simply don't understand how much depth this mechanic adds to the game, or both. I don't want to say that people who didn't play bw shouldn't have an opinion, but please think twice before calling it stupid.
I understand how one can see a random chance factor in a competitive game and say "thats dumb and doesn't fit" but forget about the fact that its a random chance for a sec and try to just think about it as a defenders advantage. Now i hope we can mostly agree on the fact that a defenders advantage on the high ground is a good thing and that it made bw a much deeper game. Now if we can agree on that, we can then argue on HOW this defenders advantage on the ramp should be implemented. Whether it be a missing percentage or a damage reduction or whatever. For example, I favor the damage reduction, because i feel its easier to understand and less luck-based. However the problem SC2 has is that it has NO defenders advantage except sight. This advantage quickly goes away as soon as the attacker has a flying unit or simply charges the ramp and then attacks. In bw the defenders advantage was present throughout the game and allowed for great moves like retreating to a highground position of the map and forcing ur opponent who had an advantage on the low ground to think twice before engaging. SC2 could be a much deeper game if such a highground mechanic were implemented.
We can discuss HOW it should be implemented, but we all should really agree on the fact that it needs a real highground advantage.
And stop talking about modern realism. It's a strategy game, and a highground mechanic besides just sight would add depth.
I prefer the range suggestion proposed a couple of posts back. That makes tons of sense and would be a fun mechanic.
But I think the current SC2 system is pretty good, as well.
I did play BW, but I am apparently more demanding of it than all of you.
It's not like if you played BW you think every single thing about BW was absolutely perfect. That game had some serious flaws.
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On June 18 2010 21:40 pzea469 wrote:
i have a feeling that people saying that a highground mechanic is unnecessary and horrible either didn't play bw, or simply don't understand how much depth this mechanic adds to the game, or both. I don't want to say that people who didn't play bw shouldn't have an opinion, but please think twice before calling it stupid.
Seriously
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Nobody is saying "a highground mechanic is unnecessary and horrible."
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On June 18 2010 21:45 kajeus wrote:Show nested quote +On June 18 2010 21:40 pzea469 wrote:
i have a feeling that people saying that a highground mechanic is unnecessary and horrible either didn't play bw, or simply don't understand how much depth this mechanic adds to the game, or both. I don't want to say that people who didn't play bw shouldn't have an opinion, but please think twice before calling it stupid.
I understand how one can see a random chance factor in a competitive game and say "thats dumb and doesn't fit" but forget about the fact that its a random chance for a sec and try to just think about it as a defenders advantage. Now i hope we can mostly agree on the fact that a defenders advantage on the high ground is a good thing and that it made bw a much deeper game. Now if we can agree on that, we can then argue on HOW this defenders advantage on the ramp should be implemented. Whether it be a missing percentage or a damage reduction or whatever. For example, I favor the damage reduction, because i feel its easier to understand and less luck-based. However the problem SC2 has is that it has NO defenders advantage except sight. This advantage quickly goes away as soon as the attacker has a flying unit or simply charges the ramp and then attacks. In bw the defenders advantage was present throughout the game and allowed for great moves like retreating to a highground position of the map and forcing ur opponent who had an advantage on the low ground to think twice before engaging. SC2 could be a much deeper game if such a highground mechanic were implemented.
We can discuss HOW it should be implemented, but we all should really agree on the fact that it needs a real highground advantage.
And stop talking about modern realism. It's a strategy game, and a highground mechanic besides just sight would add depth. Show nested quote +
I prefer the range suggestion proposed a couple of posts back. That makes tons of sense and would be a fun mechanic.
But I think the current SC2 system is pretty good, as well. I did play BW, but I am apparently more demanding of it than all of you. It's not like if you played BW you think every single thing about BW was absolutely perfect. That game had some serious flaws.
I'm glad this thread is taking the direction of "how to improve the high ground mechanic" but I think the ranged suggestion might introduce other balance issues and potentially create unassailable positions. I'm going to go with introducing a fixed, albeit small, miss chance or maybe some kind of miss function that decreases as you increase in proximity relative to the target.
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On June 18 2010 20:39 lololol wrote:
Are you for real? You can see and shoot at someone from high ground with a direct fire weapon, but they can't see you? How exactly does this happen?
The only absurd and unrealistic thing here is what you're posting, which makes me seriously doubt you've ever served in the military.
If they have line of sight, so do you. High ground grants cover and guess what if they are firing from cover with a direct fire weapon that makes them hard to hit, not invisible.
Edit: Also, realism for the sake of realism in games, which are unrealistic by default is pretty stupid. Games are about gameplay and any form of realism must be for the sake of gameplay, not the opposite. It would be obviously a bad idea to make marines build in 18 years, instead of 25 seconds.
I wasn't basing my reasoning solely on "realism" because SC2 is, in fact, a game, as you also pointed out,(perhaps I shouldn't of even used real world examples in my post) but also on the fact that a it's just plain absurd for a game to give elevated units 50% dodge(making it suicide to attack). That just promotes stalemates for no reason--forcing players to just contain the other player while expanding their own bases rather than attack. Even though the current system still promotes stalemates for no reason(how can their stalker be shooting at my stalker if mine can't shoot back at theirs?) Now I at least have the ability to break the stalemate with an observer spotting the high ground for me instead of just being forced to contain the other player and expand my own bases. In-other-words, with SC2's new "high ground advantage" system I now have more availible stratagies to choose from... attack or expand.
I think the main reason why Blizzard had the "high ground advantage" system that they had in SC1, was because of the lack of defensive structure options SC has compared to other RTS games such as Supreme Commander. So perhaps Blizzard is planning on including some teir 2 or 3 defensive structures in the coming expansions for SC2. Let's face it, teir 1 defensive structures can't to shit against teir 3 units.
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On June 18 2010 21:45 kajeus wrote:
It's not like if you played BW you think every single thing about BW was absolutely perfect. That game had some serious flaws.
i agree that the game had flaws, and one could argue all day about how scouts should have perhaps been buffed a bit and so forth but i'm 100 percent certain that the highground mechanic that bw had, even if it was flawed and a bit random at times, did a whole lot more good to the game than bad. The idea is to now improve on it and implement it in the game, not to scrap it completely because some feel its too random.
I prefer the range suggestion proposed a couple of posts back. That makes tons of sense and would be a fun mechanic.
this is more of the stuff we need on this thread. Opinions on how it should be implemented.
Nobody is saying "a highground mechanic is unnecessary and horrible."
Sorry for not taking exact quotes from previous posts but cmon, i think u know what i was trying to say. You yourself called the bw mechanic stupid several times. It might not have been perfect, but it certainly wasn't stupid. This hit and miss mechanic added a whole lot more to the game than people give it credit for.
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On June 18 2010 21:56 Xlancer wrote:Show nested quote +On June 18 2010 20:39 lololol wrote:
Are you for real? You can see and shoot at someone from high ground with a direct fire weapon, but they can't see you? How exactly does this happen?
The only absurd and unrealistic thing here is what you're posting, which makes me seriously doubt you've ever served in the military.
If they have line of sight, so do you. High ground grants cover and guess what if they are firing from cover with a direct fire weapon that makes them hard to hit, not invisible.
Edit: Also, realism for the sake of realism in games, which are unrealistic by default is pretty stupid. Games are about gameplay and any form of realism must be for the sake of gameplay, not the opposite. It would be obviously a bad idea to make marines build in 18 years, instead of 25 seconds. I wasn't basing my reasoning solely on "realism" because SC2 is, in fact, a game, as you also pointed out,(perhaps I shouldn't of even used real world examples in my post) but also on the fact that a it's just plain absurd for a game to give elevated units 50% dodge(making it suicide to attack). That just promotes stalemates for no reason--forcing players to just contain the other player while expanding their own bases rather than attack. Even though the current system still promotes stalemates for no reason(how can their stalker be shooting at my stalker if mine can't shoot back at theirs?) Now I at least have the ability to break the stalemate with an observer spotting the high ground for me instead of just being forced to contain the other player and expand my own bases. In-other-words, with SC2's new "high ground advantage" system I now have more availible stratagies to choose from... attack or expand. I think the main reason why Blizzard had the "high ground advantage" system that they had in SC1, was because of the lack of defensive structure options SC has compared to other RTS games such as Supreme Commander. So perhaps Blizzard is planning on including some teir 2 or 3 defensive structures in the coming expansions for SC2. Let's face it, teir 1 defensive structures can't to shit against teir 3 units.
I have to admit this is an intriguing possibility and begs the question what is Blizzard's reasoning for introducing the vision high ground system? As a side note tactical stalemates aren't necessarily bad for game play and often force the game to the next "stage" i.e. both players split the map or one player tech switches or goes for a drop.
EDIT: just for emphasis, tier 2 or tier 3 defensive structures?? very interesting...maybe a topic for another thread
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Range alterations can't work, except if applied to just a few specific units. The problem is that by altering range for everyone, you deeply alter the relationship between units, and SC2 has way too many units to consider all possible interactions.
If applied to just a few units, though, it becomes an unit feature, Then it could work.
Also, even if in BW the units actually missed their targets, it was very hard to see it when bigger troops fought each other. Combine this with SC2's clumping and graphics, and clarity would be even worse.
Blizzard also doesn't seem to like this old system (by this, I mean a damage reduction one, be it through missed shots, slower speed, damage reduction, etc...), so it won't come back. No point in arguing about it, they just want the consistency that if unit X is shot by unit Y Z times, with no heal inbetween, then unit X is dead. Myself, I think that this is a preference thing, as it removes a bit of depth from the game, but allows for better fine-tuning of it, and I have no objections with it.
Now, the problem with the current High-Ground system in SC2 is that from the midgame onwards, it disappears almost completely. The only thing it does is force somewhat the usage of flying units/colossi, and a little bit of micro. But since SC2 has Vikings, Corruptors, Observers, and Watch Towers, this is hardly a great deal.
What I'd like to see is some kind of aerial LoS blocker, maybe some kind of cloud doodad that would block the vision from outside, and reduce vision significantly from inside (and maybe even do some DoT after some cooldown period inside it), all this just for aerial units, of course.
This would make it possible for map makers to create spots where high ground is important all game long.
in a nutshell:
- The old HG system won't come back because it alters damage, and they want damage to be consistent.
- This system has its issues, but they can be used as a feature with good map design.
- We're still missing tools for creating trully great maps. Frankly, the only one that seems really good is Metalopolis, and even this one has its issues. LT works but is a bit meh too. This system requires some way to remove aerial vision mid-late game for HG advantage to have any meaning beyond the eraly game.
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Calgary25996 Posts
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