EPTDynamic Unit Movements, Your Thoughts? - Page 29
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Shintuku
Canada76 Posts
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SeaSwift
Scotland4486 Posts
On June 15 2011 03:40 QTIP. wrote: Colossus splash would barely hit anything if the bioball was as spread out as the pictures show.. Oh my fucking god... can you actually read? The post just above yours covered that, as did so many others. To be honest if I was a TL admin (thank god I'm not) you would've got a temp ban for not reading OP, or the many other posts about what you just wrote. | ||
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Sandro
897 Posts
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Hexxed
United States202 Posts
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DarkPlasmaBall
United States43756 Posts
On June 15 2011 03:49 stormfoxSC wrote: Tanks had to be nerfed into the ground due to unit clumping. They could be returned to their former glory. Banelings would also have dynamic pathing, reducing their likelihood to get utterly owned by a small group of spread tanks as they move forward and clump together (since they'll no longer clump), so there are both benefits and detriments to that one. As for AoE units, it just means you'll need more than one specialist to cover an opponent's army. I'd like to note that there has been a lot of complaints regarding EMP/Fungal/Storm as being "OP" if used correctly, and I'll take a wager it's because armies tend to clump when they move, consequently increasing the effectiveness of a single AoE ability significantly. Finally, regarding "control during army battles", right now if you even think about moving your army after splitting it, they all clump up again naturally. If you spend all your time constantly splitting your army during an engagement, those units are not fighting -- they're walking around. Basically, you have to pre-split and hope you don't have to move around too much, or have chunks of your army not contributing to DPS as they get repositioned mid-battle. Either way, it's bad. I don't think anyone thinks storm is OP lol. And if spellcaster units don't have decently strong spells, they won't be used. And I think when you see amazing unit control, proper micro, and fantastic army splits, that separates the amazing players from the good ones. Granted, I don't mind these cute "hey, it makes the game easier!" mechanics, but this modification will actually cause obvious imbalances, as pointed out by everyone. Now that the game is really close to balance, I don't see a reason to implement a purely aesthetic change that would utterly destroy half the units in the game simply because some people don't like to get over their "one control group" syndrome- a problem that even I need to work on immensely. | ||
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Th1rdEye
United States1074 Posts
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SxYSpAz
United States1451 Posts
It just changes the game design too much. Maybe it would work in a different RTS or sc3 if they make some major design changes Edit: before anyone says anything, i want to also point out that banelings would suck against rines, so not all would be good for zerg | ||
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Severedevil
United States4830 Posts
On June 15 2011 04:14 stickyickynugz wrote: I don't think this would be good... it's hard enough fitting zerg armies through chokes T_T Why would an army fit through a choke point? One of the weirdest parts of SC2 is how quickly units can move through a tiny space. It's part of why positional play and defender's advantage is much less significant than it was in Broodwar. | ||
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DarkPlasmaBall
United States43756 Posts
On June 15 2011 05:04 Severedevil wrote: Why would an army fit through a choke point? One of the weirdest parts of SC2 is how quickly units can move through a tiny space. It's part of why positional play and defender's advantage is much less significant than it was in Broodwar. It's weird that each unit doesn't need thirty feet of personal bubble space to walk around? | ||
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Lord_J
Kenya1085 Posts
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Rabiator
Germany3948 Posts
On June 15 2011 06:00 Lord_J wrote: It would have been better if they did it that way in the first place, but I think it's too late to make such a fundamental change to game mechanics. Why? Two more expansions will change the game mechanics anyways ... | ||
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Severedevil
United States4830 Posts
On June 15 2011 05:45 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: It's weird that each unit doesn't need thirty feet of personal bubble space to walk around? Have you ever seen a Starcraft game? Have you ever seen human beings walk? Of course people need a bubble of space to move properly. SC2's units pack into formations so tight that they bump into each other, and those bumps cascade throughout the group. Human beings packed so tightly cannot walk properly, let alone sprint into battle wearing powered armor and firing guns. Thirty feet is a worthless exaggeration. Three feet is far more realistic for an unencumbered human (of which the game includes none, except mayyyybe the ghost). Of course, humans can squeeze more tightly together if necessary, but in doing so they are greatly hindered until they spread back out. | ||
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Spawkuring
United States755 Posts
Both SC1 and SC2 essentially require you to fight the AI. You fight SC2's clumping to spread units, and you fight SC1's spreading to keep them in range. I find it hilarious because this thread is filled to the brim with people posting about how horrible it is to fight the AI, and then in the very same breath talk about how amazing it is to watch SC2 pro players fight the AI in order to arrange their troops into concaves or spreading marines out against banelings. SC1 and SC2 may be different games, but they ultimately rely on the same concepts to promote good e-sports play. This thread has less to do with whether you think fighting the AI is bad or not, because both games force you to do it. It has more to do with which AI is more entertaining: death balls or spread army formations. I feel that BW's pathing brought more pros than cons (better visual clarity, battles have a more epic feel, longer fights, more impressive AoE spells, more interesting melee vs. range dynamics), and it's why I feel that changing the pathing for HotS would be a good decision. | ||
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nalgene
Canada2153 Posts
This would satisfy both parties... | ||
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DyEnasTy
United States3714 Posts
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iamcaustic
Canada1509 Posts
On June 15 2011 04:08 DarkPlasmaBall wrote: I don't think anyone thinks storm is OP lol. And if spellcaster units don't have decently strong spells, they won't be used. And I think when you see amazing unit control, proper micro, and fantastic army splits, that separates the amazing players from the good ones. Granted, I don't mind these cute "hey, it makes the game easier!" mechanics, but this modification will actually cause obvious imbalances, as pointed out by everyone. Now that the game is really close to balance, I don't see a reason to implement a purely aesthetic change that would utterly destroy half the units in the game simply because some people don't like to get over their "one control group" syndrome- a problem that even I need to work on immensely. Storm isn't really OP (hence my using quotes around it), but that doesn't stop people from complaining about it and other AoE abilities when the game engine causes their armies to clump into tight little balls. Basically, my point was that the game engine rewards AoE way too much, causing much grief toward any AoE unit -- people whine(d) about ghosts, infestors, HTs, colossus, tanks, occasionally banelings, etc. Tanks got heavily nerfed, HTs and ghosts got nerfed, Blizzard mentioned they might look at the colossus as well if HT nerfs weren't enough, etc. I've seen plenty of amazing unit control, good micro, fantastic army splits (MarineKing TvZ in GSL Open Season 2 anyone?), etc. Those things don't go away with the implementation of dynamic pathing. Just look at Brood War. It's not a cute "hey, it makes the game easier!" mechanic. It's how every Blizzard RTS prior to SC2 worked. If you want to argue that SC:BW had easier mechanics than SC2, I'll let you wear that one. You didn't address any of my points regarding control during army battles, either, instead brushing this off as a "purely aesthetic change". Please read posts you reply to next time. My issue isn't aesthetics, it's about quality of gameplay. Right now, Blizzard's approach to the issue has been to nerf AoE. I just think it'd be better if the system didn't inherently overly-reward AoE thanks to army clumping, then AoE itself wouldn't have to be nerfed. On the flip side, things like the Protoss "death ball" and MMM balls would also be nerfed as a result, since there would be far less DPS in such a tightly compacted space. Right now, you have this lop-sided result where these army balls crush everything with ease, and then AoE evaporates the army balls. It's not good for the game, and not good for e-sports IMO, when the situation completely reverses at the tip of a hat. It's the same reason why people complained about Terran > Protoss early game, while Protoss > Terran late game. Consequently, we saw Terran early game get nerfed a bit, while Protoss late game got slightly nerfed -- the right thing to do. | ||
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iamcaustic
Canada1509 Posts
On June 15 2011 07:05 Spawkuring wrote: Units in SC1 can be clumped up together, but the main difference is that it doesn't happen automatically. In SC2, giving a group of units any kind of order, whether it be to attack or go the bathroom, causes them to tightly pack up no matter what their previous positioning was, whereas BW units maintained formation until they encountered terrain, which then caused them to walk single file. Both SC1 and SC2 essentially require you to fight the AI. You fight SC2's clumping to spread units, and you fight SC1's spreading to keep them in range. I find it hilarious because this thread is filled to the brim with people posting about how horrible it is to fight the AI, and then in the very same breath talk about how amazing it is to watch SC2 pro players fight the AI in order to arrange their troops into concaves or spreading marines out against banelings. SC1 and SC2 may be different games, but they ultimately rely on the same concepts to promote good e-sports play. This thread has less to do with whether you think fighting the AI is bad or not, because both games force you to do it. It has more to do with which AI is more entertaining: death balls or spread army formations. I feel that BW's pathing brought more pros than cons (better visual clarity, battles have a more epic feel, longer fights, more impressive AoE spells, more interesting melee vs. range dynamics), and it's why I feel that changing the pathing for HotS would be a good decision. Completely agree with you on this. I think if you had to err on one side or the other, it's better to err on the side of armies keeping their formation after you spread them. IMO I feel unit clumping in SC2 has brought a lot of problems to Blizzard in terms of both balance and watchability. They've worked hard and managed to tweak the balance issues to a tolerable level, and kudos to them for doing so, but I still have to ask, "Why continue to nerf AoE abilities/units instead of just adding dynamic pathing?" | ||
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RodYan
United States126 Posts
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Glowbox
Netherlands330 Posts
On May 17 2011 18:37 NicolBolas wrote: + Show Spoiler + If you watch SCBW games, units don't push each other around, so the space around each unit is always changning, and this results in a dynamic movement. If you only move with one control group, units show the same dynamic movement. There's nothing more "dynamic" with this than with SC2's standard pathing. Neither is more "dynamic" than the other. 1. (the most important) Unit movements become more dynamic. Even if you hotkey them separately, those small groups will move like a clump of jelly anyways. It doesn't look natural, and your army looks smaller than it actually is. No, having them spread out makes your army look bigger than it actually is. Your army is the size of their collective collision area. No more, no less. Everything else here is a value judgement. 2. It's easier to tell the difference between units. SCBW is in 2-d and it uses less colours, while SC2 is 3-d and uses a variety of colours. So it's easier to differentiate units in SCBW. You can tell this by playing SC2 in the lowest graphic settings. The lowest graphic setting allows you to tell the difference between units and the difference between units and map tiles much more effectively. You seem to be sabotaging your own argument. You say that the lowest graphics setting makes it easier to see the different between units. But the lowest graphics settings does not change the units pathing. So "clumped" units would be perfectly distinguishable if the higher graphics settings didn't do things that made it hard to tell units apart. Therefore, you're saying that you don't need to change pathfinding; you need to get Blizzard to adjust the higher graphics levels to make units more visually distinct. This is something blizzard should definitely just try out on the PTR. You, like many other people, seem to be under the impression that "clumping" is just something that can be taken away. That there's some line of code that they can just excise and presto, units don't "clump" anymore. What you call "clumping" is not something that was deliberately engineered into the game. It is no more deliberately engineered than Muta-stacking or Patrol-micro were deliberately engineered into SC1. "Clumping" is the ultimate and inevitable result of having better pathing. Units go in the most direct path to the designated target. If you tell a large group of units that are relatively close where to go, then they will all go together. As a single group. Because that's the fastest, most optimal way for all of those units to do what the player told them to do. What people are asking for is nothing less than for Blizzard to break pathfinding. You want to take the excellent pathfinding in SC2 and break it so that units do not take the optimal path. Breaking pathfinding would have far reaching implications. Units will, by "design", not go where you tell them to. This could lead to any number of unpleasant emergent properties for unit pathing. Maybe Stalkers start acting like Dragoons from SC1, which is not even remotely like a good thing. If you try to get two Thors down a ramp, will they get stuck on each other and neither be able to progress? What you are asking for is not a simple or trivial thing. It is not something you just do. It fundamentally changes everything. Not just unit balance, but everything. I personally don't know if this would make SC2's overall gameplay better or not. But I do know this: if it is possible for pathfinding to be too good, if it is possible for the game to do what the player told it to too well, then StarCraft-style RTS gameplay is, as a whole, fundamentally broken. If the only way to make good gameplay is to break the interface, then something is dreadfully wrong with StarCraft-style RTS games. I'm gonna requote this excellent post since I get the feeling a lot of people that recently have replied seem to forget that this change would actually break path planning and do more harm than good. Really, this change could have horrible side effects. | ||
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iamcaustic
Canada1509 Posts
On June 15 2011 07:50 Glowbox wrote: I'm gonna requote this excellent post since I get the feeling a lot of people that recently have replied seem to forget that this change would actually break path planning and do more harm than good. Really, this change could have horrible side effects. I actually find that post to be rather misinformed. I wouldn't be surprised if they never played WarCraft 3 before. The idea with dynamic pathing (or at least, what we're referring to as "dynamic pathing"), as the OP and others have mentioned, is to have selected units maintain their formation when given a move command. WarCraft 3 actually had an option that let you turn this feature on or off as you pleased. http://classic.battle.net/war3/basics/specialcommands.shtml Formations Units are automatically placed in formations when units are group selected and moved about the map. Formation behavior ensures groups arrive at destinations together (rather than single file) and has the appropriate units in the front. Melee units are typically placed up front followed by ranged units such as Archers, then spellcasters and Siege Units. Bypassing Formations When a group of units is given the Move command, they will all move in formation, occasionally pausing along the way to let slower units move into position to maintain the integrity of the formation. If you instead want the units to move to a location at best possible speed, you may hold down the Alt button while right-clicking on their destination. In fact, the WarCraft 3 army formation is more sophisticated than what's being asked; WC3 had units slow down or even stop to allow slower units to catch up, just to maintain formation. We're just asking that the selected units you're commanding don't auto-clump when moving as a group, instead maintaining their position to a certain level (as demonstrated in the pictures of the OP). | ||
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