|
oh, it's that thread again ^.^ haven't seen it in a long while ... let's see if i recall everything correctly:
so, as before stated, the reason why units seem to clumb so badly, is that the pathfinding of sc2 is so good.
Dustin Browder himself stated that the pathfinding will not be "nerfed", the units won't be made retarded on purpose, which i think is a good thing ...
another way to make the units not clumb so excessively would maybe to have some kind of "personal distance" between the units, which iam pretty sure exists already, so it would only have to be made wider than it is now.
there are arguments for and against that of course, as i stated before, i thought already about that, and here's what i came up with so far
pro:
- easier to realize how many units there are in quick glances (because of more space between them)
- battles look 'bigger' and therefore might seem to be more "epic"
now here are some contras too:
- almost all the splashdamage-dealers (and some non-splash-units as well) would have to be rebalanced
- maps would have to be remade in certain cases to fit the new "army sizes", i would hate to have to move a 120 supply army down a now standard ramp when it takes twice as long ..
also, i think that most of the battlesituations on the pro level (and slightly lower) already require enormous micro efforts already (i.e. flanking, splitting and so on), which lead to a non-clumbed army in the battle anyhow ... the only race that avoids those "non-clumbing-micro-actions" (yes, that is a term now^.^) is protoss, and that is because their forcefield mechanic makes it better for them not to spread themselves out.
so, i guess overall iam not really for or against the idea that something is done about that clumbing, because either way i don't think it would change much regarding my enthusiasm for starcraft. ^.^
|
On December 29 2011 13:01 Leviance wrote:Show nested quote +On December 29 2011 12:58 Zarahtra wrote:On December 29 2011 12:36 Leviance wrote:On December 29 2011 12:27 Golgotha wrote:On December 29 2011 12:14 Leviance wrote:On December 29 2011 12:10 SkimGuy wrote:
Bad for the game since it reduces the skill cap as ball armies require significantly less micro while army maneuvering/positioning is less rewarding
It actually rises the skill cap, but nobody has noticed yet because no one is consistently trying to de-clump in battles and use more than 2 control groups for his army. If a death ball a-moved into a perfectly de-clumped and microed army the death ball would melt and leave you O_O stop. this is nonsense. the reason why clumped up units are SO good is because the concentration of units provide maximum firepower at a given point and time. Take for example a group of marines that are tightly packed together. More marines can fire at a given target because everyone is in range to fire their gun. On the other hand we de-clump them so that an invisible marine stands between every marine. This increases the firing range at which some marines can or cannot fire because of their distance apart. Thus, decreasing their DPS at that given time. If you still don't get it, why do you think force fields are used and why do you think they are so powerful in this game? Because it spreads apart the enemy force so that half the force is holding their dicks and the other half is pew pewing. Of course your marine example is right. I apologize that I have spoken too generally. It of course depends on what units are actually used against each other and in the situation where you want to maximize your damage output it's beneficial to clump marines, not if you face for example templars or banes though. My general complaint is that pros currently don't do everything they could do to work against the auto-clumping in situations in which it would be very useful and have still poor army control in general. This can not be applied to all situations, again, sorry for my over-generalization. I really don't agree with that statement. Do they split their units in more than 1 group to spead out? Most don't seem to do. Do you realize why though? It's because they need to manually select their units and de-clump them anyway. Why would you waste control groups on clumping, when you need to do a lot more spreading than simply the 4-6 that you have available to you via control groups? As a terran, especially in TvP, I see terrans all the time make 3-4 balls of units before fights so concave is achieved faster. It is literally a must in TvP to micro the crap out of all your bio, ball formation simply isn't an option. So I ask you, if you have all your units in the same battle, what will splitting your army into more control groups exactly do, when you have to micro fewer units than ~20%(if we assume 5 control groups of units) at a time? As I see it, you are much better off spending your control groups on other things(such as hts/ghosts/infestors etc on a separate control group from your basic combat units) and just be awesome at manual selection + micro. Wait wait, de-clumping micro and using more control groups for your army are two whole different things. I don't mean using more CGs would lead to better splitting micro. It leads to better army control. Two separate things.
So your argument is simply so your armies marching from 1 place to the next is better if you have multiple control groups? Silly me, when your first post was all about combat micro and how bad it was that people weren't using more than 1 CG.
|
|
|
It doesn't actually increase micro potential but in fact lowers it for 2 reasons.
1. Battles are over quicker because of the increased dps giving players less chance to micro individual units.
2. Blizzard is forced to nerf aoe in both area and damage like they did with seige tanks, storm, ghost emp etc making splitting less important.
|
On December 29 2011 13:13 Zarahtra wrote:Show nested quote +On December 29 2011 13:01 Leviance wrote:On December 29 2011 12:58 Zarahtra wrote:On December 29 2011 12:36 Leviance wrote:On December 29 2011 12:27 Golgotha wrote:On December 29 2011 12:14 Leviance wrote:On December 29 2011 12:10 SkimGuy wrote:
Bad for the game since it reduces the skill cap as ball armies require significantly less micro while army maneuvering/positioning is less rewarding
It actually rises the skill cap, but nobody has noticed yet because no one is consistently trying to de-clump in battles and use more than 2 control groups for his army. If a death ball a-moved into a perfectly de-clumped and microed army the death ball would melt and leave you O_O stop. this is nonsense. the reason why clumped up units are SO good is because the concentration of units provide maximum firepower at a given point and time. Take for example a group of marines that are tightly packed together. More marines can fire at a given target because everyone is in range to fire their gun. On the other hand we de-clump them so that an invisible marine stands between every marine. This increases the firing range at which some marines can or cannot fire because of their distance apart. Thus, decreasing their DPS at that given time. If you still don't get it, why do you think force fields are used and why do you think they are so powerful in this game? Because it spreads apart the enemy force so that half the force is holding their dicks and the other half is pew pewing. Of course your marine example is right. I apologize that I have spoken too generally. It of course depends on what units are actually used against each other and in the situation where you want to maximize your damage output it's beneficial to clump marines, not if you face for example templars or banes though. My general complaint is that pros currently don't do everything they could do to work against the auto-clumping in situations in which it would be very useful and have still poor army control in general. This can not be applied to all situations, again, sorry for my over-generalization. I really don't agree with that statement. Do they split their units in more than 1 group to spead out? Most don't seem to do. Do you realize why though? It's because they need to manually select their units and de-clump them anyway. Why would you waste control groups on clumping, when you need to do a lot more spreading than simply the 4-6 that you have available to you via control groups? As a terran, especially in TvP, I see terrans all the time make 3-4 balls of units before fights so concave is achieved faster. It is literally a must in TvP to micro the crap out of all your bio, ball formation simply isn't an option. So I ask you, if you have all your units in the same battle, what will splitting your army into more control groups exactly do, when you have to micro fewer units than ~20%(if we assume 5 control groups of units) at a time? As I see it, you are much better off spending your control groups on other things(such as hts/ghosts/infestors etc on a separate control group from your basic combat units) and just be awesome at manual selection + micro. Wait wait, de-clumping micro and using more control groups for your army are two whole different things. I don't mean using more CGs would lead to better splitting micro. It leads to better army control. Two separate things. So your argument is simply so your armies marching from 1 place to the next is better if you have multiple control groups? Silly me, when your first post was all about combat micro and how bad it was that people weren't using more than 1 CG.
No. Marching from A to B is not "simply my argument" for more Control Groups being more beneficial. It's indeed army control, positioning, casting and micro etc. but not specifically de-clumping micro.
|
It will be a nightmare to try to move marines to defend muta if units don't clump up lol.
Let's accept it, clumped up unit mechanic is a part of sc2 now, you have to rebalance almost all aspect to make it right if units are made to have "personal distance." Just imagining 2stalkers can kite rang- 5 marines indefinitely because only couples of marines on the frontline can reach stalkers make me chill.
I don't have the opinion about this feature of game. If Blizzard decides to tweak it, cool, if not, whatever.
|
I think that clumping is fine as it gives you another thing to micro and show off your skills.In the end the only people who it affects negatively are amovers that amove into aoe units.
|
I'd like to see a size reduction in health bars more than anything. I don't have a problem with the current spacing in terms of gameplay, but my god is it ever a fucking eyesore to see all those units WITH health bars that can obscure a lot of the actual army comp at first glance.
|
I think part of this has to do with the metagame not involving AoE particularly in PvT and TvZ matchups. For instance there's no reason to split your P deathball up against a MMM+viking composition and its only when ghosts get thrown in in the lategame if the game even goes that long that splitting becomes important. And in TvZ against Ling/Bling/Muta until the banelings actually engage you never should split your marines since mutas can pick them off and lings can get a good surround, it's only the banelings in major engagements that force those splits.
But there is a silver lining to clumping there, those baneling landmines and marine splits against banelings would be far less interesting if the marines didn't clump by default, the ability for banelings to abuse it and for a T to spread their marines so elegantly to avoid baneling hits wouldn't exist if the units were already declumped.
Also as an aside, the reason they won't ever change this directly is because it would completely ruin the balance we have now. It would probably be nice if the unit radius for units was a tiny tiny bit bigger but the implications on AoE damage would be enormous and siege tanks , colossus, storm would most definitely need to be buffed, and this would create new imbalances because of how this would affect other scenarios.
|
I think a bigger collision size would be a pretty good compromise. Battles would take longer, as less of the army would be engaging, the units would look more aesthetically pleasing, and splitting would still be rewarded in certain situations. I'm curious how melee units would be affected...
I think adding in a spread-formation button a la Warcraft 3 would be somewhat pointless, unless it would happen instantly (then it would actually reduce the skilll required to split), because as a lot of people are pointing out death ball is optimal for dps with ranged units.
On a side note, clumping really can require some micro. The biggest affect of this I notice as a protoss is zealots getting trapped in the ball.
|
Clumping takes away some micro, adds in micro other places. It's not obviously better or worse micro-wise...it's just different. It's waaaay too soon to tell how things are going to shake out in the end. For now, most pros aren't microing anywhere near optimally. Is this something anyone should be worried about game-wise? I don't think so.
The main valid complaint here, I feel, is from a spectator point-of-view, as a more-spread-out battlefield makes battles and micro more visible and easier to follow for viewers. It's such a major move, though, for so little comparative gain, that I don't see Blizzard implementing it anytime soon; if you're really not able to follow battles or strategy in SC2 now, then you just need to watch more SC2.
Veeeery slightly increasing unit radius, however, might be something BLizzard would want to test at some point, maybe for an expo.
|
a spread-formation button would be horrible. really, any kind of "hold formation while moving" would be problematic because it would massively reduce the value of in-battle micro, which is one of the more exciting parts of the game for spectators, and one of the most skill-intensive parts of the game for pros.
|
I've seen people complain about more spellcasters being introduced in HoTS but I think this addition might make clumping less than ideal. The way clumping works now, as others have mentioned, is that it allows higher dps from a smaller area. The deathball vs. deathball battles are something that are always pointed at as boring and lacking skill. To a certain extent that is true. However, imagine infestors having a stronger fungal without the snare effect and it would be like spreading is against banes. This is where I think the addition of new spellcasters might force progamers to utilize micro on declumping to maintain a cost efficient army. If this were the case, the ball effect would be useful in certain scenarios and spread units in others. Marine splitting was just the tip of the iceberg...go watch SC2 games from the early months and compare them to those of more recent times. Sure there are still deathball engagements but I would argue that their potency has dropped off significantly at the pro level.
|
I've seen people complain about more spellcasters being introduced in HoTS but I think this addition might make clumping less than ideal. The way clumping works now, as others have mentioned, is that it allows higher dps from a smaller area. The deathball vs. deathball battles are something that are always pointed at as boring and lacking skill. To a certain extent that is true. However, imagine infestors having a stronger fungal without the snare effect and it would be like spreading is against banes. This is where I think the addition of new spellcasters might force progamers to utilize micro on declumping to maintain a cost efficient army. If this were the case, the ball effect would be useful in certain scenarios and spread units in others. Marine splitting was just the tip of the iceberg...go watch SC2 games from the early months and compare them to those of more recent times. Sure there are still deathball engagements but I would argue that their potency has dropped off significantly at the pro level.
Between its disruption web ability and its scorpion-get-over-here ability, the Viper seems explicitly designed to allow Zergs to punish deathball play. If that's the approach Blizzard is taking--not removing clumping, but rather adding units which make it less and less optimal--then its one I applaud.
edit: In a reverse way, the Oracle is also an "anti-deathball" unit, in that it is hella expensive and explicitly worthless when accompanying your main army. Adding units which are at their best when microed as individuals, and vastly less useful when placed in a bigass control group with your army, is also a good thing.
|
here are my thoughts
1) unit clumping actually is a good thing,Some people say this game is less skill than broodwar, but i disagree.. Till people start microing like monsters and spreading out their units when the time asks for it removing this will be in fact watering down the game.
2) battles are not over fast because of clumping, but because the gamespeed is set to Faster. I have calculated it and it takes 1.42 seconds of game-time to match 1 second of real time. Which means things actually die almost 50% faster just because of the gamespeed setting. If it was under normal gamespeed it would take almost 50% longer for each battle to be over.
|
On December 29 2011 13:48 jinixxx123 wrote:
here are my thoughts
1) unit clumping actually is a good thing,Some people say this game is less skill than broodwar, but i disagree.. Till people start microing like monsters and spreading out their units when the time asks for it removing this will be in fact watering down the game.
2) battles are not over fast because of clumping, but because the gamespeed is set to Faster. I have calculated it and it takes 1.42 seconds of game-time to match 1 second of real time. Which means things actually die almost 50% faster just because of the gamespeed setting. If it was under normal gamespeed it would take almost 50% longer for each battle to be over.
You never played broodwar have you.
|
![[image loading]](http://4.bp.blogspot.com/--KUABj6XNUc/TckOxQ4kmpI/AAAAAAAAAQU/8odJ6Cd0AfM/s640/1.JPG)
self explanatory pic.
|
I think Blizzard should focus on more creative solutions to the lack of micro problem in sc2. Making the game worse just so that it is harder does not seem like a very good idea. Perhaps buffing AOE to force the spreading of armies?
|
I think Blizzard should focus on more creative solutions to the lack of micro problem in sc2. Making the game worse just so that it is harder does not seem like a very good idea. Perhaps buffing AOE to force the spreading of armies?
aoe is good to an extent because it discourages clumping, but the flipside is that too much aoe gets you into "terrible terrible damage" syndrome where armies melt far too quickly for much micro to take place, which reduces both the skill ceiling and spectator enjoyment.
this is why abilities like the Viper's disruption web ability are good. They're aoe so they'll effect clumps more, but they don't directly deal damage so its not like they'll make armies melt faster, and unlike fungal or something they don't eliminate micro--in fact they encourage it by forcing the opposing player to respond.
|
Thread is pointless. The movement system is fluid and the units move well. The AoE units were designed around current clumping (storm size and tank nerfed relative to BW). So, if anything, Blizzard would just nerf AoE units more instead of redesigning the way all the units move.
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
