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On June 15 2011 13:45 StarMoon wrote:
"I wish it was like broodwar; because then the gameplay would be more like broodwar in this element"
"I liked the pacing and unit movement in broodwar and the more fluid movement in sc2 seems alien to me and I dislike it, therefore we should change it."
I'm sorry but this is honestly how I read your OP, despite not referencing BW much it really seems to me that you just don't like it because it is different.
I have never had any issue with telling what units were what or what they were doing; the game is designed to be faster-paced; splash units are strong but the game is balanced around that atm (although they still seem to be playing with infestors).
The only thing that really bothered me was that sometimes units would get stuck in a clump and go with it even if you didnt want them to (they weren't ordered to move); I've had my unsieged tanks run along with my marines before for instance. This concern isn't even mentioned in your OP.
Why is this good for e-sports, unless you propose that anything like BW in anyway is good for esports because BW itself is/was? Or maybe longer games = better for esports for some reason?
I don't want to go back to 1990s unit pathing. Hell even the pathing in HoN gets on my nerves sometimes.
This post made my brain hurt. Please refrain from posting in this thread, people are attempting serious discussion here.
On topic. This change would be great for sc2, but the balance of many units would have to be re-worked. Examples: Baneling, Colossus, Tank, Infestor.......
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I don't think people get it, perhaps its too hard to imagine that units having dynamic movement doesnt mean they have to be retarded. It just means that if you spread them out beforehand they would stay spread out, units would still clump up on chokes only because they are forced to.
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This brings the question of whether or not we should delegate unit formation to the game or for players to micro.
I'm not sure. Someone needs to make a custom map with formations and see how the game experience changes overall.
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On June 16 2011 04:45 Aggnog wrote:
I don't think people get it, perhaps its too hard to imagine that units having dynamic movement doesnt mean they have to be retarded. It just means that if you spread them out beforehand they would stay spread out, units would still clump up on chokes only because they are forced to.
Well said. Then again, most of the people who post on these forums are brain dead I think...
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On June 16 2011 00:46 Sakray wrote:
That's kinda cool, but it will make some units to become useless.
Like colossus : it'll be able to hit only one, maybe 2 units, nearly the same for tanks. But it will drastically increase the effectivness of banelings, 'cause it'll be easier to send them in the middle of the other army, so they will splash more units.
This change would force huge balancing patch, I think it's the major problem.
Then they shouldnt release HotS. Now THAT would recquire some balance patches.
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On June 16 2011 04:28 stormfoxSC wrote:
Blizzard certainly knows how to design a good game, but that doesn't mean they get everything perfect out of the starting gates. It also certainly would be a monumental change, but that's why people are recommending it for Heart of the Swarm. All those things you listed (balance tweaks, pro scene, etc.) are going to happen anyway once the expansion comes out, as players adjust to added/adjusted/removed units, new maps, etc. People will have to re-learn the game at the pro level, and Blizzard will almost guaranteed have to come out with new patches to balance these changes.
There is a huge difference between adding in a small amount of units and upgrades and completely changing how all units function from the ground up - while also adding in new units and upgrades. Though even the expansions themselves will not be good for the game at the pro level, unless they new units are just that good in terms of skill ceiling and entertainment value.
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Russian Federation4295 Posts
What about simply change?
* Increase distance between units by 50%
* Increase all splash weapons 50% too
So with that, we will have same picture, but better picture instead death balls. And lings will be more useful in some situations.
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On June 16 2011 05:03 Treemonkeys wrote:Show nested quote +On June 16 2011 04:28 stormfoxSC wrote:
Blizzard certainly knows how to design a good game, but that doesn't mean they get everything perfect out of the starting gates. It also certainly would be a monumental change, but that's why people are recommending it for Heart of the Swarm. All those things you listed (balance tweaks, pro scene, etc.) are going to happen anyway once the expansion comes out, as players adjust to added/adjusted/removed units, new maps, etc. People will have to re-learn the game at the pro level, and Blizzard will almost guaranteed have to come out with new patches to balance these changes. There is a huge difference between adding in a small amount of units and upgrades and completely changing how all units function from the ground up - while also adding in new units and upgrades. Though even the expansions themselves will not be good for the game at the pro level, unless they new units are just that good in terms of skill ceiling and entertainment value.
You're over-exaggerating how much of a change dynamic pathing is in terms of balance. It's not changing how units function from the ground up. Some other people have mentioned exactly what is being asked here. Let me quote one such post for you:
On June 16 2011 04:45 Aggnog wrote:
I don't think people get it, perhaps its too hard to imagine that units having dynamic movement doesnt mean they have to be retarded. It just means that if you spread them out beforehand they would stay spread out, units would still clump up on chokes only because they are forced to.
Having spread-out armies retain their spread until terrain forces them to clump (e.g. funnelling into choke points) isn't a devastating from-the-ground-up restructuring of core unit function. In the OP are screenshots of a simple Galaxy Editor mod that managed to pull it off.
The benefits for implementing this have already been listed numerous times in this thread. The detriments are minimal, especially when you consider that top-level pro players currently babysit their armies to manually de-clump them after moving them 5 feet, yet that hasn't broken game balance. Doing nothing will just see AoE in SC2 continue to get get nerfed, like it consistently has since release.
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It was just so discouraging to hear Dustin Browder's response to a question from Sen regarding this issue to the effect of "Go back to Brood War."
I didn't even watch any BW before SC2 started popping up on my radar, but I still overwhelmingly support this change.
Without it, I question the longevity of SC2 as a spectator ESPORT.
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On June 16 2011 05:25 sc2olorin wrote:
It was just so discouraging to hear Dustin Browder's response to a question from Sen regarding this issue to the effect of "Go back to Brood War."
I didn't even watch any BW before SC2 started popping up on my radar, but I still overwhelmingly support this change.
Without it, I question the longevity of SC2 as a spectator ESPORT.
Do you have a link for this??
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It certainly looks prettier from the screenshot in the OP.
The player being able to have formations like in Age of Empires sounds pretty cool. I always liked that element in the series. Would destroy some of the in-battle micro possibilities in favour of advance preparation, though.
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Wow this would be so cool in many ways....
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i have a question.
say i wanted my army to acutally clump together, the way this works, would it actually let me do that?
for example, i have a few marines, which are being attacked by zerglings, and i want my marines to clump up to reduce the surface area at which the zerglings are attacking, would this let me do that. or the same with zerlings attacking roaches?
and wouldn't protoss need massive buffs and changing since the way the race is played would need to change?
right now, players have the option of de-clumping their army and it requires immense micro to do that. i like this idea more than attacking an army and microing an army which is already split up. i think it takes something out of this game, and microing an army in this way i feel is a core component of how SC2 works.
i also feel a large army would take up way too much screen real estate and battles would feel like a coin flip. as of right now, the person with better army shape in relation to whether they're at a choke point or anything along those lines, determines who win the battles, and i would not want the skill requires to manage splitting and organizing an army in this manner to go away, since the micro required to do this is skill which can be infinitely improved upon.
this is how i feel, and i didn't play BW so this is my opinion on how i feel SC2 as a game would change. forgive any spelling and grammar mistakes, or any repetion in the points i make.
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On June 14 2011 23:47 RemrafGrez wrote:
Leave it alone obviously. Would take the game back to beta for years.
No it wouldnt.. even then the first expansion hasn't even hit and for a game so young players could adapt. It's what we say after every patch and every expansion.
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On June 16 2011 06:11 starmeat_ wrote:
i have a question.
say i wanted my army to acutally clump together, the way this works, would it actually let me do that?
for example, i have a few marines, which are being attacked by zerglings, and i want my marines to clump up to reduce the surface area at which the zerglings are attacking, would this let me do that. or the same with zerlings attacking roaches?
and wouldn't protoss need massive buffs and changing since the way the race is played would need to change?
right now, players have the option of de-clumping their army and it requires immense micro to do that. i like this idea more than attacking an army and microing an army which is already split up. i think it takes something out of this game, and microing an army in this way i feel is a core component of how SC2 works.
i also feel a large army would take up way too much screen real estate and battles would feel like a coin flip. as of right now, the person with better army shape in relation to whether they're at a choke point or anything along those lines, determines who win the battles, and i would not want the skill requires to manage splitting and organizing an army in this manner to go away, since the micro required to do this is skill which can be infinitely improved upon.
this is how i feel, and i didn't play BW so this is my opinion on how i feel SC2 as a game would change. forgive any spelling and grammar mistakes, or any repetion in the points i make.
The coin flip comes with the current implementation of army clumping. I go in more detail in one of my previous posts:
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.
Also of concern is the level of micro necessary to de-clump your army. There's nothing wrong with having amazing micro and unit control, but the current army clumping forces you to babysit your army to de-clump them after moving every 5 feet. It makes it a lot harder to move your army around the map, since if you look away for half a second to attend to other things (such as macroing at home) you can suddenly receive an auto-loss because your army decided to clump and you got hit by some sick AoE damage, either incidentally or intentionally done by your opponent.
I'm going to use Brood War for an example, since it's clearly a successful e-sport that Blizzard wants SC2 to exceed. In pro-level games, you'll see armies move around the map constantly, looking for opportunities to bypass or flank their opponent. They can do this because they know when they receive that "we're under attack!" notification, their army won't be evaporated (or even near-evaporated) by the time they shoot back over to attend it.
Even SC2 pro games are okay in this regard until the AoE units come out. Then movement comes to a near-stand still aside from the occasional drop/harass, until one player decides to commit to an engagement. It's at that point where you'll see players stay put and spread out their armies, but don't dare to move around too much. As HawaiianPig put it on page 1: " I've always maintained that blob on blob action is a big part of why SC2 is... the way it is".
I never got into the SC:BW pro-scene, and only played the game casually. However, this past weekend I decided to watch Flash vs. ZerO in the ABC Mart MSL finals and I have to say... it was extremely entertaining. I really had to sit down and think what was so different from SC2, when it finally dawned on me: it was the army engagements, 100%. Nothing else is really different; you have your early game, Terran wall-off vs. Z, Z takes fast expo, etc. Maps aren't too far different in style anymore. Strategy concepts aren't wildly different, either.
I then go back and think on the most entertaining SC2 games I've watched. Games like MarineKing defeating Kyrix in the GSL Open Season 2. MVP vs. Bomber in the GSTL. These games featured armies being spread, army movement throughout the game, flanking, harass, etc. However, they still had occasional clumping fumbles that overly-rewarded AoE, be it siege tanks simply existing or banelings on a-move.
That's why I'm really putting an effort arguing in favour of the OP.
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On June 16 2011 04:37 TheFisherman wrote:
This would decrease the skill cap imo. Because the way things are now players have to split the units themselves, which gives the potential of very fun micro games. Just take the game where we saw real marinesplitting in the GSL (MKP vs some zerg) - that was darn awesome to watch. And as the players continues to develop we'll see more and more of this. Escpecially in TvT you'll see that players have become alot better at avoiding splash damage, which makes the games more fun to play/watch.
Buttomline, keep it as it is.
I already said this before but that's not what this is addressing.
If units clump less, then of course AoE will be increased, so you will still need to manually split your units up even more in order to not get owned. We're just talking about the "default".
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Dynamic pathing is not formationed movement.
On June 16 2011 06:11 starmeat_ wrote:
i have a question.
say i wanted my army to acutally clump together, the way this works, would it actually let me do that?
for example, i have a few marines, which are being attacked by zerglings, and i want my marines to clump up to reduce the surface area at which the zerglings are attacking, would this let me do that. or the same with zerlings attacking roaches?
and wouldn't protoss need massive buffs and changing since the way the race is played would need to change?
right now, players have the option of de-clumping their army and it requires immense micro to do that. i like this idea more than attacking an army and microing an army which is already split up. i think it takes something out of this game, and microing an army in this way i feel is a core component of how SC2 works.
i also feel a large army would take up way too much screen real estate and battles would feel like a coin flip. as of right now, the person with better army shape in relation to whether they're at a choke point or anything along those lines, determines who win the battles, and i would not want the skill requires to manage splitting and organizing an army in this manner to go away, since the micro required to do this is skill which can be infinitely improved upon.
this is how i feel, and i didn't play BW so this is my opinion on how i feel SC2 as a game would change. forgive any spelling and grammar mistakes, or any repetion in the points i make.
In BW marines could clump up even more than in SC2, if you moved in small increments they would stay that way, though after a long journey they will start to spread out, making them extremely susceptible to zergling flanks.
You clump your army when you see an incoming zergling flank.
You declump when you see banelings.
You can only move in formation if they are in a magic box.
If they are bigger than the magic box they will spread out a lot especially after a long journey, so you have to keep an eye out for flanking. Lurkers still did tonnes of damage regardless, you had to line them up perfectly to stop them from getting owned by lurkers.
So instead of splitting micro, you now have clumping and splitting micro depending on the situation. However because of this you can make the radius even smaller allowing for more tactical choices. You can make your marines even more effective vs zerglings, but then banelings would become even more effective than they are now.
So basically the potential for both zerglings and banelings to do tonnes of damage is higher, but you have to be smarter about it. Marines are too strong early game, but they are too weak late game. This has a lot to do with the balling effect, mass early marines in BW could be killed off easily with zergling flanks, this is impossible because of auto-clumping in sc2.
Watching pros with just zerglings do three times as much damage as they should because they caught a bio army completely off guard is awesome to watch. This just doesn't happen in sc2 and sc2 really needs it. Its the exact reverse of marine vs baneling, where its cool to see the counter being "countered" by good control.
Now you will have marine split vs baneling, but ALSO zergling flanks vs marine.
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Think about BW pathing like traffic lights and cars. When there's a red light, they stop and clump together, but when the light turns green, the cars don't move in sync. The first car moves, and then the second car starts moving once there's enough space etc...
So if you control your zerglings right you can tell them to fit in the spaces between the cars....
SC2 unit movement should be something like this, except of course with better AI. Cars won't suddenly glitch themselves. I wouldn't know though since units push each other out of the way....
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i hope blizzard fix MOVMENT of the unites... conteps of BALL MMM deth ball is wery boring to whatch and to play... simply game dont look like strategy when unites are grouped in ball....
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Wow SC2 people sure like their balls.
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EPT
