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On December 29 2011 18:17 Lavi wrote:Show nested quote +On December 29 2011 15:29 WCX wrote:
dustin browder already answered the question about clumping in various interviews at several different points in time. it is basically a result of sc2's improved pathfinding, and it's not going away. to paraphrase him, blizz has no intentions of gimping their pathfinding just so it can unclump units. In that same interview, which is linked in this thread, he also states that they are looking into other alternatives to address it so they might be working on something still... though its been a long time so if HOT's doesn't address it, it probably means they haven't come up with anything.
He did talk a little about how they're going to address the issue.
Indirectly though, which I'm sure isn't going to satisfy a lot of people.
The example for Terran is the Shredder, a unit that by design cannot work in proximity with other Terran units, hence you have to use it elsewhere. Either on defense or harassing or covering flanks.
They talked about finding unit roles that are all about taking units *out* of the deathball, the much hated Oracle is another example. So we'll see how far they push this design philosophy...
And since it's indirect, units will still clump, there will just be less of them to clump together if it works (Shredders, Oracles, ect being worth using). If.
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On December 29 2011 11:56 DibujEx wrote:Show nested quote +On December 29 2011 11:54 PhiliBiRD wrote:
its intended because it forces micro, otherwise the game would be even easier. and ive never heard much about this ever being an issue o_O. seems fine to me I gotta say, In BW they didnt clump up.. and it was So much hard than SCII to micro...
Because in SC:BW you could control 12 units max, so, you had to micro sooo much more for the same result
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On December 29 2011 12:17 deadmau wrote:
SC2 Unit clumping sucks balls. Anyone that thinks otherwise well, is an SC2 fanboi that sucked balls at BW and only played NR15 BGH/fastest. If these individuals followed the proscene, they'd have seen how awesome and spectacular true display of skill was.
Worst post ever . Did you even read the posts prior to get the opinions of others?
Clumping is good cause it forces the player to micro his army and what exactly did broodwar have for micro that you can no emulate in sc2? watching micro at the highest level in sc2 is still quite awesome
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IMHO, it validates specific units and nerfs tp specific units from BW to SC2. I'm specifically thinking of banelings and tanks. Colossus also very much benefit from clumping. In fact, if you think about it, it almost looks like Blizz made a lot of units in SC2 BECAUSE of the unit clumping mechanic.
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On December 29 2011 18:31 ShakAttaK wrote:Show nested quote +On December 29 2011 12:17 deadmau wrote:
SC2 Unit clumping sucks balls. Anyone that thinks otherwise well, is an SC2 fanboi that sucked balls at BW and only played NR15 BGH/fastest. If these individuals followed the proscene, they'd have seen how awesome and spectacular true display of skill was. Worst post ever . Did you even read the posts prior to get the opinions of others? Clumping is good cause it forces the player to micro his army and what exactly did broodwar have for micro that you can no emulate in sc2? watching micro at the highest level in sc2 is still quite awesome
"because the new pathing made the game easier, it is in fact, actually harder"
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Clumping in of itself is not a problem. The problem is that SC2 doesn't punish players enough for leaving their units clumped up. I've seen terran players opt to leave their marauder balls sitting in a psi storm and zerg players leaving thier clumps of roaches to eat colossus shots so many times. I think the problem is that if you try to unclump your units during a battle you lose so much dps it isn't worth it. That's why with the exception of marine splitting vs banelings most unit splitting is done before the battle even starts. Leaving your infestors/templar clumped up to get emp'd by ghosts is not the game's fault though. That's just sloppy play on the part of the gamer.
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Canada1800 Posts
On December 29 2011 18:11 Daozzt wrote:Hahaha, classic 100 supply army on 1 hotkey, taking up the total area of 1 gateway. Whether or not it requires skill to spread or micro, SC2 unit clumping looks like shit and is incredibly unrealistic how units stand on top of each other and push others out of the way.
8 stimmed marines take out a battlecruiser, but this game would be more realistic if units didn't clump.
Also, why is it ok for ground units in bw to not clump, but when you go mutalisks in bw and stack them so it looks like 1 mutalisk, thats ok? ground units seem to only get this treatment.
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I like how all the Broodwar "fanboys" instantly jump on any chance to bash on anything in SC2. Units not clumping in BW is a design FLAW, the engine is so old and so bad that what they got was the best it could manage.
Splitting your army properly in SC2 is a skill that only the best will have. Marching a Deathball against a well split concave will be doom to the deathball, we have seen this happen plenty of times in games there is no discussion about this to be had.
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On December 29 2011 18:44 OrangeSoda wrote:Show nested quote +On December 29 2011 18:11 Daozzt wrote:On December 29 2011 14:31 OopsOopsBaby wrote:![[image loading]](http://4.bp.blogspot.com/--KUABj6XNUc/TckOxQ4kmpI/AAAAAAAAAQU/8odJ6Cd0AfM/s640/1.JPG) self explanatory pic. Hahaha, classic 100 supply army on 1 hotkey, taking up the total area of 1 gateway. Whether or not it requires skill to spread or micro, SC2 unit clumping looks like shit and is incredibly unrealistic how units stand on top of each other and push others out of the way. 8 stimmed marines take out a battlecruiser, but this game would be more realistic if units didn't clump. Also, why is it ok for ground units in bw to not clump, but when you go mutalisks in bw and stack them so it looks like 1 mutalisk, thats ok? ground units seem to only get this treatment.
You completely missed the point, but whatever. The problem with clumping is you can have an 200/200 supply army on one control group that forms a tiny death ball, and is actually effective 80% of the time without needing to split, and looks like a clusterfuck where you can't see what's going on. How is that not a problem? Actually tell me how the picture I quoted looks remotely fine, in any way.
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This whole discussion has been done over and over. Do we really need to repeat the same old arguments and turn this into SC2 vs BW again?
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I dislike it...a lot. At one point it is almost impossible to differentiate from what is what.
I would have no problem with it if they at first clump up, then you, for instance split & a-move and they stay for a longer time relative to each other. This is where Brood War was a lot better. It makes for a better area attack but in SC2 they move together so fast you can only run in formation in a very short time.
HTs are the best example. How many times you split them and after a few moves they stand together again.
A Zerg would look and feel a lot better when you see this real wall of units running at you.
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As a newbie to the world of Starcraft ( I never got into BW much when it was released) I prefer watching BW games to SC2 atm, and this is purely down to clumping and deathball mechanics in SC2.
BW games simply have much action going on with multiple engagements all over the map, as a spectator its simply more exciting to watch
Protoss suffers from it the worst of the 3 races played in SC2 imho, and any game that involves that race is almost an instant turn off for me with the exception of LiquidHero vs Zerg.
If SC2 wants to be a spectator sport this needs to be addressed, watching players sit in their bases for 10 mins then watching the game be won or lost based on one large battle is not going to win the masses over.
Blizz can do 1 of two things.
1/ reduce clumping to induce multiple battles across the map area and limit AOE strength
or
2/ give Protoss and Zerg the Units required for micro by the pros to make exciting games, as at the moment only Terran has flexible units that are exciting to watch. Almost all the Terrans units can be microed to take the unit past its basic design.
This is not a balance thing, its a game design issue
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Some of you guys are retarded. Even if pros learn how to keep their armies spread out do you really think Blizzard is going to rebalance aoe damage just for them? When 70 damage tanks were wrecking everyone's shit Blizzard didn't tell people to get better, they just reduced the damage. It's the same thing with blue flame, fungal, and emp. Even as top Zergs were learning how to scatter their drones so they wouldn't all die to 2 hellions Blizzard nerfed the damage anyway because skill of top players isn't a factor they take into account when balancing their game.
User was temp banned for this post.
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Clumping makes splash damage truly painful. Or is the idea of dropping a fungal and getting 90% of a deathball unpleasant? Or having tanks destroy an army completely due to being clumped? Or stormed? Part of what makes these mechanics as powerful as they are is the clumping of units. If you make the units auto-spread or increase their collision radius, it is a bit of a stealth nerf to any area of effect damage. And Blizz has already made some adjustments on the basis of the tight unit movements (EMP radius reduction - you can't quite get all of the protoss army anymore.)
I agree, visually it is not the best look. And mechanics wise, if you get some mech accidentally in the middle of a clump of bio, the mech moving is either silly, annoying, or worse will shove a bunch of that bio with them until they get where they are going. (I've lost units this way, but then, I'm not at the high end of the skill curve.) But to preserve the relative balance mechanics in place, if you de-clump units by software fiat you'd also have to alter the splash damage radius for AOE units, and I don't think anyone is really happy with that idea. (To preserve current effectiveness, the splash would have to take into account the new enforced spreading.) I think the idea of manually dispersing and splitting units is probably about right - it gives pros something else to do with their very high apm that will distinguish them further from us schlubs in the lower ladders.
Of course, Blizzard could also adopt a feature from StarWars: Galactic battlegrounds. An otherwise mediocre RTS (which I enjoyed anyways) which allowed unit groups to be commanded into a simple set of formations. (Tight ranks, looser dispersed ranks, single files, and IIRC, a "box" which would put light infantry on the outside and heavier units in the middle.) While I think that would make things interesting for those of us with sub 100 APM, I can't see it being widely accepted among the upper levels of play.
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well really a few shreders and a few other new microable units are not going to change the core concept of having those big clumps of units as your main army and really 6-9 less supply aren't going to do much.
I think i agree that the clumping is kind of an issue since it rarely (at my not very high level) is actually rewarding to micro if i split my army i lose more than i gain except in those rare occations, micro should be something where you feel rewarded for doing and not punished (which it feels like sometimes in sc2 as per this example spreading out your ball of units, posesioning pre battle seems to really be the only waty to get that advantage.
going back to th bw style doesent seem at good option either, so how to actually do this is kinda hard since the game alreddy have established a feel and you cnat really change this to much once its realeased so i Think Blizzard is forced to do these "smaller" changes like introduce new micro oriented units as they are in hots but as i said i don't think they will nesesarily change that much in the large svcale but changing the space between units and those kind of changes after release would really feel awkward
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On December 29 2011 14:35 GhandiEAGLE wrote:
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?
So removing automine and MBS will do the game worse? No.
edit: missread macro @ micro, lol >_>
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I dont think it is a problem at all, the problem is that players are still too "bad" to not micro and control their army apart. For example toss need to start splitting up their army wwaaaaaayyy more in some situations. I think if you compare the army movements and clumping from a year ago with today, you'll find that player work with much more spread out and "smaller" army size. And not just sitting back and maxing a 200 clump and then going.
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I think sc2 unit clumping is somewhat of a tradeoff with limited size control groups. If they didn't clump and control groups were still "infinite" splash damage in the game would be useless. I think there's a massive unexplored skill cap available to players who can work out how to constantly spread their units in game. E.g. -- Polt beating MMA in the super tournament had a lot to do with his shit spreading near perfectly against siege tanks.
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why would anyone want to make this game easier? everyone drools over the skill involved in broodwar, people whine sc2 isnt as hard, yet they want to make it easier? ...
Clump is a perfect mechanic because it's useful, intuitive, and nice for noobs to control while also greatly increasing the skill cap required by pros to get full use of units (hint: skill).
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EPT
