People are vaguely saying 'balance' is an issue. From what i see, proponents of this change do not quite understand the ramifications of just how many balance issues this would cause. I will list just some very basic ones, this is NOT a complete list.
1. Terran Mass Marine strategy in TvZ. - Zerg 'counter' Banelings. - Terran 'response' Micro marines to minimize the splash.
-- Result: Zerg has no change, and terran's natural unit position from this would always be good enough to COMPELTELY negate this baneling strategy. However, with marines being spread, the zerg 'counter' to this early game all-in would be mass ling (yes i know that roaches are also possible, but just for illustration of a point). Mass ling will ALWAYS get entire surrounds on INDIVIDUAL marines, picking them off much more efficiently when they cant ball. Roaches would have no change, but lings getting a full surround frankly eat marines, as they will ALWAYS be spread with enough room for lings to get in. Would this be a 'balanced' counter / MU? I have no idea. But this also would allow zerg to forgo all gas, getting an insane economy (ultra fast 3rd, for example) and crush terran lategame. Should this happen? Would this be balanced? How does Terran stop muta/ling/infestor when siege tanks only hit 2-3 lings per shot? That's for you to decide. But please just think how this would change THE ENTIRE MATCHUP, with one simple change.(Note-- This is just one example. I do NOT know if it would work out this way, which is exactly my point, that the entire game would be altered by this.)
That is the basic template on what you should be looking at with something like this. Here are some other just very basic ideas (I will nto go into depth, that is for you to decide)
- PvZ. Lings insta full surrounding, in every nook in cranny of a death ball. Colo splash will be ultra negated. Can Forcefield be enough? Will ling dmg/hp again have to be balanced? Will HT become standard? Mass lot instead?
- PvT-- HT and Colo, with such little splash possible, are they viable, can forcefield still make them viable? Yes i know mass gateway / upgrades does work, but is completely cutting out 2 units from a race something that should be considered?
Again, these are just BASIC FIRST impressions from what this would cause. Please do not turn this topic into a debate about what are the potential counters or what-not, just trying to get people to think about more than "Oh wow this will instantly make starcraft better as it will be better in this one facet!!". SC2 is still very young, remember all the original complaints that it required less skill, as the smaller control groups? Now people complaining it would require too much skill to micro smaller unit groups. Maybe integrate more control groups....? The entire hotkey setup is customizable....
Lastly, I've seen a lot of people adding in 'collission', which will be 'hit boxes'. This would case the game to be glitchy, Period. This would detract from the smooth movements into glitchy animations. Also, would you only have this be for friendly units? Would enemy units be able to pass between as 'normal' in the current game? Would the coding be even possible, or worthwhile? Personally, This will never happen. MAYBE the unit movement, but not collission detection... Please think of how that would detract from the flow of the game.
marines are actually pretty weak against melee units if you spread them, while they are good vs splash then, well if bothcomes together no chance for the poor marines. (which is most of thetimes the case, luckily this seems to be unknown by many so you can get lucky and outmanouver one of the things.)
Anyway yeah the bw mechanics where so nice and worked perfectly. It is really awesome that units formed a line running in one by one. Well until people began to use this mechanic to attack in lines they formed before the engagement, which made armys 100 times more efficient. In sc2 its only 10 times more effecient, which actual so you can attack on 2 sides. without failing a 30 supply side attack against 10 supply of the opponent who will maybe lose one unit in this attack if you don't micro properly.
And i guess everyone saw a 200 supply army run into this wide open ground with 3 entrances for both players and the opponents army comes from every side and there is nothing that will save those 200 clumped supply.
The movement mechanic is fine, they don't force you to run in a clump, like you aren't forced to run in a line in bw (though it forces you into this line)
I actually don't mind the bw mechanics because they would have to nerf zealots lings into the ground and buff aoe units. So since terran is my favorite race i wouldn't mind autoforming lines, weaker melee units and 70 damage vs all siege tanks. oh right and while we are at it 12 max unit selection so i can easily spread my marines, that won't care if meele units can nibble easier on them.
You should play bw again and control your units like you do in sc2 and see how well they can do. And then you can use your units in sc2 like you would use them in bw to actually be worth anything.
good unit control is important if you give it up because the mechanics are to comfy then its not the games fault, that you lose.
The game is well rounded to be able to fight this clumping easily, has mechanics to avoid clumping, forces more then one unit type plays. And is superior to bw if you just a click, while it is still super weak to someone that uses army positioning.
The only unit really abusing this clumping is the colossi. Ranged units form a line when attacking, perfect damage output for the colossi. Melee units form a line when attacking clumped ranged units, perfect damage for the colossi. Well and ther are those force fields as well. So the mechanics really work for the colossi. (and tanks attack the neareast/weakest unit and deal friendly fire, now thats an ai fail) (PS: i don't think the colossi is unfair, then crackling baneling would be as unfair hehe. But it would be better if they wouldn't work so perfectly with the ai, but that would mean the aoe would need a change)
But thats nothing new a bw toss tryed to stay as compact as possible as well, so their damage output was the most effectiv.
All of the 2010 join date posters are rebelling against BW mechanics. Have you guys even played the game? Controlling spread out units takes far more micro than controlling stacked units. Fixing the unit collision won't help, because you'd ideally want to be able to manually unsplit your units when you need less perimeter on your range units against melee units.
@Viperx
You can't throw out ridiculous comments and then say:
Please do not turn this topic into a debate about what are the potential counters or what-not
That just makes you look like an asshole.
1. Ideally you'd still be able to micro your marines to clump together against a cliff or something. You'll even be able to get marauders to block the now scary lings.
2. Bio will be severely nerfed. The reason it's so good right now is because of how good it clumps up. Terrans will be forced to mech in TvP, like the good old days.
3. Solution to PvZ: make zealots clump. Wall of zealots is cost effective against lings. Terran metal sucks against clumped charge zealots anyway so no change there. Buff to storm is obvious. Colossi are the worst units and need a nerf. Sorry protoss, no more 1a.
Balance complaints about non-stacked units aren't that serious. Game would be fairly easy to balance around non-stacked units since we already have an idea of how balance should work. If storm, tanks, emp, ultralisks and fg are significantly radius-buffed then this game will take far more micro than it does now. Besides, BroodWar is balanced. Maybe you should play it sometime?
On May 17 2011 23:08 serge wrote: All of the 2010 join date posters are rebelling against BW mechanics. Have you guys even played the game? Controlling spread out units takes far more micro than controlling stacked units. Fixing the unit collision won't help, because you'd ideally want to be able to manually unsplit your units when you need less perimeter on your range units against melee units.
Guess what: the game we are playing is SC2, so you're actually rebelling against SC2 mechanics. Not the other way around.
Yes I have played BW, but I am against this change simply because it would change absolutely everything about the game balance. The metagame would reset, every unit would most likely need some rebalancing. It's a pipe dream for those who want SC2 to become BW 2.0, but I'd rather see SC2 improve by its own merits.
On May 17 2011 17:20 Horse...falcon wrote: This is something I've thought about too since rewatching the original Zerg reveal trailer
Watch this part at 1 minute 6 seconds.
Doesn't that battle look so much more epic than most of the battles in SC2? Brood war felt so much larger in scope. That's one of the most disappointing parts of the single player too, everything seems shrunk down and squeezed together to a miniature scale.
:edit: To be fair there's probably 300 food worth of zerg in that clip. The game would be very very different if units did not naturally clump together.
What's funny about that video is that you can tell that even Blizzard realized that clumped up units don't look very exciting, because every segment of the video that tries to portray the swarmy feel of the zerg always has the units spread out.
In fact, this is pretty true for Blizzard's advertisement campaign for SC2 as well. Go look at any of your old magazines or internet articles before SC2 came out. You'll rarely see a screenshot of a clumped up army, instead the units will always be positioned so that they look big and imposing (i.e spread out). It's actually quite surprising when you look back on it.
Doesn't that battle look so much more epic than most of the battles in SC2? Brood war felt so much larger in scope. That's one of the most disappointing parts of the single player too, everything seems shrunk down and squeezed together to a miniature scale.
:edit: To be fair there's probably 300 food worth of zerg in that clip. The game would be very very different if units did not naturally clump together.
Holy pumpkins, you're right! That looks SO much better than how SC2 actually looks now. No contest. Sure, some fairly serious balance questions would have to be addressed, but that's what the PTR is for. This would make the game much more interesting and visually appealing for players and spectators alike. Especially spectators who are new to the game, since it's not just that large armies would be more impressive, it's that you could actually see what's going on. I think SC2 suffers heavily from the "hey, a blob over there. blob, move towards that blob! now both blobs disappear" nature of big engagements... (Edit: Also, I did a double take when the lurker showed up in that video, I had forgotten that was going to be included)
On May 17 2011 23:08 serge wrote: All of the 2010 join date posters are rebelling against BW mechanics. Have you guys even played the game? Controlling spread out units takes far more micro than controlling stacked units. Fixing the unit collision won't help, because you'd ideally want to be able to manually unsplit your units when you need less perimeter on your range units against melee units.
Guess what: the game we are playing is SC2, so you're actually rebelling against SC2 mechanics. Not the other way around.
Yes I have played BW, but I am against this change simply because it would change absolutely everything about the game balance. The metagame would reset, every unit would most likely need some rebalancing. It's a pipe dream for those who want SC2 to become BW 2.0, but I'd rather see SC2 improve by its own merits.
The thing is that the "perfect unit movement" is the reason why there are many balance problems. The tight death balls of super efficient units (Colossi supported by Gateway units is the best example, but MM works as well) simply require the game to be perfectly balanced. The imperfect BW movement only gave you that tight concentrations of dps if you microed your units correctly and because of this the units didnt need to be as balanced as in SC2.
An easy example are all the splash damage attacks like Siege Tanks or Psi Storm. They could easily do more damage in BW because the movement AI didnt give you those tightly packed balls which meant 2-3 Tank shots from BW Siege Tanks could annihilate a bunch of 40 SC2 Zealots / Roaches. Zealots never clumped up that much in BW ... and Dragoons? Forget it! Thus in SC2 the Siege Tank and Psi Storm HAD TO be nerfed ...
tl;dr perfect movement AI requires perfect unit balance imperfect movement AI can live with a not so perfect unit balance
yes, this is exactly what i feel like is the biggest problem in sc2. this 'magically clump up' really hurt the game in many aspects, especially, allow me to be biased here, the zerg race. since zerg units are so fragile plus with the 'smart fire AI' of siege, zerg units die too quick and we can never get pass siege line with efficient army compo(blords is so late game).
solution? give this dynamic movement back if you wanna give smart fire AI. or the other way around.
I've fought about it before, long time ago, and realized this was a big issue. However, I just can't imagin Blizzard making such a huge change (although a great one, I would especially appreciate long (bw-like) battles). A change like that would be massive, imo.
They could make it in hots but that's also unlikely as it would change the core feeling of the game. Plus you have to consider it would take some work. Blizzard won't do more work than they have to. They know people will keep playing and even if they thought people would like the change, it's optional really.
So to wrap up my thought: It's a great idea but it won't happen in sc2.
It would be great if they could do something about unit radius or unit pathing like it is shown in the first post, in the upcoming Heart of the Swarm or Legacy of the Void expansions.
It would probably need to be accompanied by some tweaking of stats, though. AOE would be nerfed, for one thing.
Agreed 100 percent... Starcraft 2: Clusterfuck... Unit spacing would look more realistic, play more exciting, and lead to longer battles. Higher damage aoe spells leave the potential for more damage but can also be microed against. All these people talking about marine splitting micro vs banelings... lol. How about one other unit interaction in the game?
I've bitched and moaned about this and the high ground mechanics since beta, and it's one of the main reasons I get sick and tired of SC2 from time to time. Nothing makes me more annoyed than trying to split MM perfectly against things like infestors, only to have everything clump back together when you take three steps forward. Not to mention the stupid deathballs, and how much harder it is to spectate. With dynamic movement, we could perhaps actually see maps properly split in half with many small skirmishes, instead of two blobs chasing and denying eachother movement. At best, you get some tiny drops some other place on the map, but more than that and you decrease the firepower of your almighty blob. They should try it out on the PTR, just see how it works. Nothing lost by trying, eh?
yep this looks awesome. but I think blizzard shouldn't patch this. let the pros learn how to spread/ control the army better. splitting the army into lines instead of balls is for their benefit anyway, getting bigger concave and such.
imo, one of the reason scbw was not a cluster hell is because of the 12 unit per control issues. now that we have pretty much unlimited unit# per control, it becomes cluster hell.
there is no reason for anyone not to put 12 units per control though because you can still do that.
I never throught about it , but now it makes sence. I would agree with this change, or at least some way to make it possible, like group option split or unite, etc. Thx for the translation !
EPT
