Slow day at work and looks like most of exciting drama here have died down too, so here is a question for everyone to ponder and chip in: What is everyone's opinion on how SC2 units clump tightly together?
There is a pretty good debate over at PlayXP on this for those who understand Korean. Click here
Some argue that this is an intended design mechanism by Blizzard while others say that it's a design flaw. But, most agree that this unit clumping limits the strategic part of this game because of the impact of one giant death ball. (Maybe someone is willing to translate some key points... I'll admit that I'm way too lazy )
Some are even saying that the success of SC2 lies on how Blizzard deals with this unit clumping issue with their next expansion.
I personally think that units are clumping too tight and unrealistically, and I agree that it's not good for the game to develop on its own like how BW did.
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
A quick thought regarding the topic is that it forces the pros to either split their units or position them better so it is circumventable with better controls.
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...
It is intended. It is also something that could force micro in ways that brood war didn't need. More micro avoiding your units clumping up is something those with the highest APM can take advantage of.
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...
Well SCII units have smarter pathings and control groups consisting of more than 12 units.
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...
harder to micro because the units were retarded (dragoon)
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...
And unclumping them seems more useful than having them clumped so you can avoid AOE... just because bad mechanics forced you to click each dragoon 30 times so it didnt wander off on its own doesn't make it a better thing. Microing small groups of units to unclump them can be every bit as hard.
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
Micro happens regardless of how much units are clumped up together. BW requires about the same level of micro as SC2. I would agree with you if you are saying that micro is harder in SC2 because units are clumped up so tight.
Unit clumping is good. An army should stay in the formation that maximises its fighting ability. What blizzard should do is give disincentive to clump units, for example, with aoe, so it becomes a skill to manage a spread formation. Also, another thing to note is that currently, a concave formation is stronger than a ball.
From a spectator point of view I think it looks worse if you compare it to BW. It gets harder to get a good idea of the actual size and composition of an army while the observers blaze past it, and the general "so many x units" is not really helpful. This is especially bad for Protoss when they have colossus that cover the whole army. Or/and hallucinated colossus. With healthbars on...
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...
Well SCII units have smarter pathings and control groups consisting of more than 12 units.
There is also a difference in how the unit pathing works. In BW, units avoid other stationary units. But in SC2, units seem to push through other stationary units which adds to more clumping.
The first true SC2 bonjwa will actually train and be able to de-clump his units, everyone is gonna be shocked how one-sided battles will go in his favour. I don't get how even now, a year after release, the majority of the pros (Koreans included) only use 1-2 hotkeys for their armies. The best Zergs in the world still run all their lings clumped into a siege line instead of separating a few at the start to completely negate splash, Collossi attacks are still devastating because everyone is too lazy to split intelligently so that most of the splash is avoided, far too often a group of 4-6 templars get hit by ONE emp because lazy players (pros!!!) keep them so vulnerably together. The new UI allows for being more lazy, and the pros atm are showing just that: being lazy (on their level) I know it'd be fucking hard to constantly de-clump and so on, but that's exactly the work a wannabe-bonjwa has to do, if it wasn't hard as shit, everyone could do it. But right now everyone (GSL winners included) just keeps suffering from the 1-2 control group syndrome and the many disadvantages that come with it. frustrating to watch, but leaves hope for Jaedong, Flash etc. switching and showing the rest how it's done.
As noted before, it is not visually appealing when you see a ball of units, clumped together, trying to do something.
I absolutely adore watching broodwar, and honestly wish that I could have enjoyed the time that broodwar was popular. Course, I'm stuck with SC2 now, so I guess I'll just have to deal.
I agree with the notion that the unit collision be bigger.
Only partially though, as I think it would even just make micro too easy, and only aid the visual aspect of the game. The pathing would still be really good, and then you have almost every reason to try and keep your units in one hotkey, just because it would be hilariously easy to micro a already slightly spread ball.
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
Unit clumping is bad, it makes armies look like giant furballs which are ugly as hell. I remember a thread a while back where a guy posted pictures of a moving ball vs a spread out moving army and the latter was 10 times better to look at.
On December 29 2011 11:57 mrtomjones wrote: It is intended. It is also something that could force micro in ways that brood war didn't need. More micro avoiding your units clumping up is something those with the highest APM can take advantage of.
My head really hurts right now.
Broodwar has every form of micro SC2 has, including splitting (bio vs lurkers, muta vs irradiate), plus 10x more micro techniques, it even has an advanced form of splitting known as cloning to make scourge more efficient (scourge vs vessel/corsair).
and split up armies are worse against clumped armies WTF o_O
Its half the reason mutalisks are so bad against marines, and the Protoss deathball is so powerful.
Why do you think in BW Terran always tried to ball up their army as close together as possible? Even though this meant a lurker flank could 1 shot the entire Terran army. So Terran had to constantly be on guard and split like crazy as soon as he sees lurkers.
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.
On December 29 2011 12:07 Leviance wrote: The first true SC2 bonjwa will actually train and be able to de-clump his units, everyone is gonna be shocked how one-sided battles will go in his favour. I don't get how even now, a year after release, the majority of the pros (Koreans included) only use 1-2 hotkeys for their armies. The best Zergs in the world still run all their lings clumped into a siege line instead of separating a few at the start to completely negate splash, Collossi attacks are still devastating because everyone is too lazy to split intelligently so that most of the splash is avoided, far too often a group of 4-6 templars get hit by ONE emp because lazy players (pros!!!) keep them so vulnerably together. The new UI allows for being more lazy, and the pros atm are showing just that: being lazy (on their level) I know it'd be fucking hard to constantly de-clump and so on, but that's exactly the work a wannabe-bonjwa has to do, if it wasn't hard as shit, everyone could do it. But right now everyone (GSL winners included) just keeps suffering from the 1-2 control group syndrome and the many disadvantages that come with it. frustrating to watch, but leaves hope for Jaedong, Flash etc. switching and showing the rest how it's done.
Well, the problem is that SC2 leaves a very little room for a mistake in your game and limits strategies that can be deployed to win the match because of the power of one giant death ball. I don't believe that successful unclumped units will always hard counter a giant death ball (I've seen it many times especially in PvZ). The problem is that if you lose a center battle in SC2, all of certain you are really far behind because it's that much harder to stop the remaining death ball. There is not much of a way to "buy time" after you lose a center battle.
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
this goes both ways, is purely speculation and might be completely wrong. stop stating it as fact. one of the main reasons people say it raises skill cap in brood war is because your army is spread out along a thin line most of the time. like lambs to the slaughterhouse. you have to constantly pull the front ones back and the middle ones to the side and make your own arc. you can't 1a and let them do it themselves. even if 12 unit group was removed.
your right tho. clumped units adds micro because you want to seperate them to mitigate splash damage. but just now thinking about it. one of the reasons people love using the ball. is the concentrated damage effect. for example a protoss army with colossus. the death ball. the damage output from that army is incredible and because the units are so stacked. it can't be flanked or caught off guard. from the moment an enemy unit engages 50-70% of the army can start firing immediately (this ignores long range units like broodlords etc) why would you want to declump that army. you could argue the zerg would want to which is true in that regard.
yea just wait for super gosu players to split like a boss. Foxer showed us that marines counter banelings vs Kyrix. I'm sure one day someone will split marines so well that collosi and storm are significantly less effective than they currently are now. having units clump so much and splash be so devastating means there is a lot of incentive for someone to train to split like a mad man. I mean we already see players (was watching polt last night ) split his marines into like 4-5 groups vs tanks tvt. Only a matter of time until he( or someone else) doubles ( and eventually triples) the number of groups he can split off in X amount of time
I agree that this is, bar none, the biggest problem with SC2.
In SC1 space was much easier to control because of the ease of defending passes/ramps with a few units *Lurkers/SiegeTanks*
Day9 has a great talk about this. In SC1 you're more of an Architect building a structure, in SC2 you're more of an Alchemist, trying to make the correct mix. It, to me, is inferior in a lot of ways.
Mix this with the smaller armies, the need for more drones/scv/probes, and better pathing, you're seriously limiting the available diversity for MU's. Anyone who followed BroodWar a lot would not disagree I'm sure.
With all that said, SC2 is a great game. Stand alone, its freaking amazing. Think if it that way. It's just a shame it has to follow after Broodwar.
A lot of people will say that it is good, since it forces micro and raises the skill ceiling. As a spectator, I find it however terrible, since it games can be lost way to easily, just by switching to that macro mode for 1 sec at the wrong time.
On December 29 2011 12:07 Leviance wrote: The first true SC2 bonjwa will actually train and be able to de-clump his units, everyone is gonna be shocked how one-sided battles will go in his favour. I don't get how even now, a year after release, the majority of the pros (Koreans included) only use 1-2 hotkeys for their armies. The best Zergs in the world still run all their lings clumped into a siege line instead of separating a few at the start to completely negate splash, Collossi attacks are still devastating because everyone is too lazy to split intelligently so that most of the splash is avoided, far too often a group of 4-6 templars get hit by ONE emp because lazy players (pros!!!) keep them so vulnerably together. The new UI allows for being more lazy, and the pros atm are showing just that: being lazy (on their level) I know it'd be fucking hard to constantly de-clump and so on, but that's exactly the work a wannabe-bonjwa has to do, if it wasn't hard as shit, everyone could do it. But right now everyone (GSL winners included) just keeps suffering from the 1-2 control group syndrome and the many disadvantages that come with it. frustrating to watch, but leaves hope for Jaedong, Flash etc. switching and showing the rest how it's done.
do you really think with so much at stake and practicing 10+ hours a day that the only reason pros don't spread their armies is because they're lazy?
Like many other things it has both good and bad sides. It's good in the sense that it seperates those with ok micro with those with impeccable control. It's bad in the sense that an entire army can be crushed in matter of seconds without proper care. Sure this forces people to play better, but when they don't, it's ugly as hell.
I personally want to see the unit spacing increased a little just to make the standard quality games a little less unattractive without being too forgiving to those with subpar multitasking and micromanagement.
I hate the clumping in SC2. Blizz designed the path-finding and allowed the units to clump so much to allow the ai to handle somewhat effective fighting formations to occur for newb 1a players.
For a simple experiment, clump up a group of 24 marines in SC2 and in BW. 1a the marines in SC2 to take out a building, and 1a2a the same marines to do it in BW. The marines in SC2 will automatically fan-out and surround the building quite efficiently. Not as efficient as if you manually split parts of the army before engaging, but it does hold your hand to some degree. Compare this to BW: The marines will spaz out completely and it is entirely up to the player to manually place them into an effective formation.
As a byproduct of this clumping and path-finding, blizz has had to nerf every single AOE ability compared to BW. Siege tanks do less damage (and cost more resources and supply), storm is less potent with reduced AOE, ditto for EMP, and lurkers were completely scrapped due to an inability to meaningfully place them into the game (blizz tried extremely hard but eventually gave up). Massive damage abilites like reaver and spider mines are completely gone.
In HoTS, blizz is experimenting with the swarm lord, a poor-mans lurker. If blizz made the path-finding a little bit stupider, and didn't make units clump so much unless you manually put them into a clump formation, I feel a lot of these previously nerfed AOE abilities could be restored to their former glory, and abilities which completely deprive your opponent of micro (force field, fungal) can be buried in the dust.
BW units and strategy involved exerting map control. Many (not all) of SC2 unit compositions are basically 1a and smash your opponent (provided you established some economic lead earlier on). The classic example of this is the colossus-stalker-sentry death ball pvz, but there are many other examples too. Such an approach to victory in BW would never work; even with an early advantage, 1a2a3a4a would always be punished by a superior player's use of abilities and unit positioning even if the defending army was vastly inferior in terms of cost.
I could go off on many other tangents, such as how the supply cap of SC2 makes things feel 'small' in comparison to BW, the diminished importance of defenders advantage (in terms of high ground mechanic and warpin for mu involving protoss). One of the only changes in SC2 compared to BW which I feel was for the better (but still contentious in regard that it "wastes" supply) is the presence of 2 geysers per base instead of 1. It's good because it diversifies the economic decisions that you make, however it's bad because it means more workers are 'wasted' to collect gas, hence less supply is available for an army.
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.
On December 29 2011 12:07 Leviance wrote: The first true SC2 bonjwa will actually train and be able to de-clump his units, everyone is gonna be shocked how one-sided battles will go in his favour. I don't get how even now, a year after release, the majority of the pros (Koreans included) only use 1-2 hotkeys for their armies. The best Zergs in the world still run all their lings clumped into a siege line instead of separating a few at the start to completely negate splash, Collossi attacks are still devastating because everyone is too lazy to split intelligently so that most of the splash is avoided, far too often a group of 4-6 templars get hit by ONE emp because lazy players (pros!!!) keep them so vulnerably together. The new UI allows for being more lazy, and the pros atm are showing just that: being lazy (on their level) I know it'd be fucking hard to constantly de-clump and so on, but that's exactly the work a wannabe-bonjwa has to do, if it wasn't hard as shit, everyone could do it. But right now everyone (GSL winners included) just keeps suffering from the 1-2 control group syndrome and the many disadvantages that come with it. frustrating to watch, but leaves hope for Jaedong, Flash etc. switching and showing the rest how it's done.
Well, the problem is that SC2 leaves a very little room for a mistake in your game and limits strategies that can be deployed to win the match because of the power of one giant death ball. I don't believe that successful unclumped units will always hard counter a giant death ball (I've seen it many times especially in PvZ). The problem is that if you lose a center battle in SC2, all of certain you are really far behind because it's that much harder to stop the remaining death ball. There is not much of a way to "buy time" after you lose a center battle.
It is very much true that there is not much of a way to buy time after you lose a center battle, that's why you have to win it or at least trade equally. And players will fight more efficiently if they start to minimize the splash, minimize the effectiveness of opponent's spells and get your fucking basic army positioning right - god I hate watching GSL where zealots are stuck behind stalkers and don't get to the enemy while 5 templars are emp'd at once and half of the death ball is already destroyed by siege splash....it still happens all the fucking time because it is so convenient to just put everything in one control group. I'm convinced better army control would make the game AS IT IS RIGHT NOW feel ten times more exciting suddenly. Another factor of why the first big battle often decides the outcome of the game is because players have the whole army in one control group and therefore either overcommits everything into death or tries to run away with everything at once and in the same fucking direction resulting in just getting raped bit by bit.
On December 29 2011 12:07 Leviance wrote: The first true SC2 bonjwa will actually train and be able to de-clump his units, everyone is gonna be shocked how one-sided battles will go in his favour. I don't get how even now, a year after release, the majority of the pros (Koreans included) only use 1-2 hotkeys for their armies. The best Zergs in the world still run all their lings clumped into a siege line instead of separating a few at the start to completely negate splash, Collossi attacks are still devastating because everyone is too lazy to split intelligently so that most of the splash is avoided, far too often a group of 4-6 templars get hit by ONE emp because lazy players (pros!!!) keep them so vulnerably together. The new UI allows for being more lazy, and the pros atm are showing just that: being lazy (on their level) I know it'd be fucking hard to constantly de-clump and so on, but that's exactly the work a wannabe-bonjwa has to do, if it wasn't hard as shit, everyone could do it. But right now everyone (GSL winners included) just keeps suffering from the 1-2 control group syndromfoe and the many disadvantages that come with it. frustrating to watch, but leaves hope for Jaedong, Flash etc. switching and showing the rest how it's done.
do you really think with so much at stake and practicing 10+ hours a day that the only reason pros don't spread their armies is because they're lazy?
Not lazy, but not good enough. For instance, one of the latest defensive techniques in TvP in holding early allins is a concave formation with bunkers protecting the centre of the army. This is more effective than the previous technique of making many bunkers. This concave technique only really came to about 3 months ago, showing that many pros don't have the skill to implement many advanced formations.
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.
On December 29 2011 12:07 Leviance wrote: The first true SC2 bonjwa will actually train and be able to de-clump his units, everyone is gonna be shocked how one-sided battles will go in his favour. I don't get how even now, a year after release, the majority of the pros (Koreans included) only use 1-2 hotkeys for their armies. The best Zergs in the world still run all their lings clumped into a siege line instead of separating a few at the start to completely negate splash, Collossi attacks are still devastating because everyone is too lazy to split intelligently so that most of the splash is avoided, far too often a group of 4-6 templars get hit by ONE emp because lazy players (pros!!!) keep them so vulnerably together. The new UI allows for being more lazy, and the pros atm are showing just that: being lazy (on their level) I know it'd be fucking hard to constantly de-clump and so on, but that's exactly the work a wannabe-bonjwa has to do, if it wasn't hard as shit, everyone could do it. But right now everyone (GSL winners included) just keeps suffering from the 1-2 control group syndrome and the many disadvantages that come with it. frustrating to watch, but leaves hope for Jaedong, Flash etc. switching and showing the rest how it's done.
Well, the problem is that SC2 leaves a very little room for a mistake in your game and limits strategies that can be deployed to win the match because of the power of one giant death ball. I don't believe that successful unclumped units will always hard counter a giant death ball (I've seen it many times especially in PvZ). The problem is that if you lose a center battle in SC2, all of certain you are really far behind because it's that much harder to stop the remaining death ball. There is not much of a way to "buy time" after you lose a center battle.
It is very much true that there is not much of a way to buy time after you lose a center battle, that's why you have to win it or at least trade equally. And players will fight more efficiently if they start to minimize the splash, minimize the effectiveness of opponent's spells and get your fucking basic army positioning right - god I hate watching GSL where zealots are stuck behind stalkers and don't get to the enemy while 5 templars are emp'd at once and half of the death ball is already destroyed by siege splash....it still happens all the fucking time because it is so convenient to just put everything in one control group. I'm convinced better army control would make the game AS IT IS RIGHT NOW feel ten times more exciting suddenly. Another factor of why the first big battle often decides the outcome of the game is because players have the whole army in one control group and therefore either overcommits everything into death or tries to run away with everything at once and in the same fucking direction resulting in just getting raped bit by bit.
Two things.
1) You can't always maintain your army composition the way you want it to because the game clumps all your units so easy and everytime your army 1a moves. The only way this can be done is if your entire focus is on your army movement all the time. But it doesn't work like that. The game requires you to a great deal of multitasking - building supplies, controlling workers...etc. The game must allow some room for mistakes and allow other players to get back in with clever use of strategy (this is a RTS, you know) or else the outcome becomes too random.
2) The one center battle must not decide the complete outcome of the game, or else the game becomes too dull and stale. This game cannot be all about one giant battle. It has to be about overall game play and strategy vs strategy, not micro vs micro.
I don't think it's intended, but rather the result, or side-effect of Blizzard's pathing decision toward having units surround their targeted opponents, which as a result involves "clumping".
On December 29 2011 12:07 Leviance wrote: The first true SC2 bonjwa will actually train and be able to de-clump his units, everyone is gonna be shocked how one-sided battles will go in his favour. I don't get how even now, a year after release, the majority of the pros (Koreans included) only use 1-2 hotkeys for their armies. The best Zergs in the world still run all their lings clumped into a siege line instead of separating a few at the start to completely negate splash, Collossi attacks are still devastating because everyone is too lazy to split intelligently so that most of the splash is avoided, far too often a group of 4-6 templars get hit by ONE emp because lazy players (pros!!!) keep them so vulnerably together. The new UI allows for being more lazy, and the pros atm are showing just that: being lazy (on their level) I know it'd be fucking hard to constantly de-clump and so on, but that's exactly the work a wannabe-bonjwa has to do, if it wasn't hard as shit, everyone could do it. But right now everyone (GSL winners included) just keeps suffering from the 1-2 control group syndromfoe and the many disadvantages that come with it. frustrating to watch, but leaves hope for Jaedong, Flash etc. switching and showing the rest how it's done.
do you really think with so much at stake and practicing 10+ hours a day that the only reason pros don't spread their armies is because they're lazy?
Not lazy, but not good enough. For instance, one of the latest defensive techniques in TvP in holding early allins is a concave formation with bunkers protecting the centre of the army. This is more effective than the previous technique of making many bunkers. This concave technique only really came to about 3 months ago, showing that many pros don't have the skill to implement many advanced formations.
but if it were effective players would still be implementing formations to try make their armies more effective (even if by just a little bit), then some players would be better at it than others and they would win the battle
On December 29 2011 12:43 Flamingo777 wrote: I don't think it's intended, but rather the result, or side-effect of Blizzard's pathing decision toward having units surround their targeted opponents, which as a result involves "clumping".
Agree, but also think about how the game went from 2D to 3D which adds to the clumping as well.
On December 29 2011 12:07 Leviance wrote: The first true SC2 bonjwa will actually train and be able to de-clump his units, everyone is gonna be shocked how one-sided battles will go in his favour. I don't get how even now, a year after release, the majority of the pros (Koreans included) only use 1-2 hotkeys for their armies. The best Zergs in the world still run all their lings clumped into a siege line instead of separating a few at the start to completely negate splash, Collossi attacks are still devastating because everyone is too lazy to split intelligently so that most of the splash is avoided, far too often a group of 4-6 templars get hit by ONE emp because lazy players (pros!!!) keep them so vulnerably together. The new UI allows for being more lazy, and the pros atm are showing just that: being lazy (on their level) I know it'd be fucking hard to constantly de-clump and so on, but that's exactly the work a wannabe-bonjwa has to do, if it wasn't hard as shit, everyone could do it. But right now everyone (GSL winners included) just keeps suffering from the 1-2 control group syndrome and the many disadvantages that come with it. frustrating to watch, but leaves hope for Jaedong, Flash etc. switching and showing the rest how it's done.
Well, the problem is that SC2 leaves a very little room for a mistake in your game and limits strategies that can be deployed to win the match because of the power of one giant death ball. I don't believe that successful unclumped units will always hard counter a giant death ball (I've seen it many times especially in PvZ). The problem is that if you lose a center battle in SC2, all of certain you are really far behind because it's that much harder to stop the remaining death ball. There is not much of a way to "buy time" after you lose a center battle.
It is very much true that there is not much of a way to buy time after you lose a center battle, that's why you have to win it or at least trade equally. And players will fight more efficiently if they start to minimize the splash, minimize the effectiveness of opponent's spells and get your fucking basic army positioning right - god I hate watching GSL where zealots are stuck behind stalkers and don't get to the enemy while 5 templars are emp'd at once and half of the death ball is already destroyed by siege splash....it still happens all the fucking time because it is so convenient to just put everything in one control group. I'm convinced better army control would make the game AS IT IS RIGHT NOW feel ten times more exciting suddenly. Another factor of why the first big battle often decides the outcome of the game is because players have the whole army in one control group and therefore either overcommits everything into death or tries to run away with everything at once and in the same fucking direction resulting in just getting raped bit by bit.
Two things.
1) You can't always maintain your army composition the way you want it to because the game clumps all your units so easy and everytime your army 1a moves. The only way this can be done is if your entire focus is on your army movement all the time. But it doesn't work like that. The game requires you to a great deal of multitasking - building supplies, controlling workers...etc. The game must allow some room for mistakes and allow other players to get back in with clever use of strategy (this is a RTS, you know) or else the outcome becomes too random.
2) The one center battle must not decide the complete outcome of the game, or else the game becomes too dull and stale. This game cannot be all about one giant battle. It has to be about overall game play and strategy vs strategy, not micro vs micro.
1) In BW you couldn't even 1a move your army, why would it suddenly be too hard in SC2 to group all your zealots in 1, stalkers in 2 etc.? And you still had all the stuff you mentioned to do. That's how Code S players stood out from the rest.
Me as more of a Starcraft watcher than player, think that it looks ugly and boring. I found it more entertaining back in BW when the whole screen was filled with units and having a 200/200 army was something impressive to look at. While now in sc2 its just a big boring blob, everytime, with every race, even with 200/200.
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.
no worries, and I do understand what you are saying about unit splitting micro.
I don't like the clumping. Mainly because it makes it almost impossible to come back from behind to have a chance of winning the game. In BW, there was more of a chance that, even if behind, you could win a skirmish due to the fact that the whole army was not engaging at once and the player had to use a little more strategy, unit position, etc. This meant that you could possibly change the tide of the game. Now, it is just ball vs. ball and the fact that you can put infinity units on 1 hot key exasperates the situation.
I know this is besides the point, but it also makes it much more unrealistic. Imagine a group of 20 real marines tightly clumped in a ball stutter stepping and hitting the target with every shot fired. Ridiculous, IMHO. Anyone who has fired a gun knows its more likely they would be dying of friendly fire at every shot.
On December 29 2011 12:07 Leviance wrote: The first true SC2 bonjwa will actually train and be able to de-clump his units, everyone is gonna be shocked how one-sided battles will go in his favour. I don't get how even now, a year after release, the majority of the pros (Koreans included) only use 1-2 hotkeys for their armies. The best Zergs in the world still run all their lings clumped into a siege line instead of separating a few at the start to completely negate splash, Collossi attacks are still devastating because everyone is too lazy to split intelligently so that most of the splash is avoided, far too often a group of 4-6 templars get hit by ONE emp because lazy players (pros!!!) keep them so vulnerably together. The new UI allows for being more lazy, and the pros atm are showing just that: being lazy (on their level) I know it'd be fucking hard to constantly de-clump and so on, but that's exactly the work a wannabe-bonjwa has to do, if it wasn't hard as shit, everyone could do it. But right now everyone (GSL winners included) just keeps suffering from the 1-2 control group syndromfoe and the many disadvantages that come with it. frustrating to watch, but leaves hope for Jaedong, Flash etc. switching and showing the rest how it's done.
do you really think with so much at stake and practicing 10+ hours a day that the only reason pros don't spread their armies is because they're lazy?
Not lazy, but not good enough. For instance, one of the latest defensive techniques in TvP in holding early allins is a concave formation with bunkers protecting the centre of the army. This is more effective than the previous technique of making many bunkers. This concave technique only really came to about 3 months ago, showing that many pros don't have the skill to implement many advanced formations.
but if it were effective players would still be implementing formations to try make their armies more effective (even if by just a little bit), then some players would be better at it than others and they would win the battle
The best players already are. That's why we saw so many "bad" games in the gsl up-and-downs. Many of the mediocre pros are not good enough but the best pros produce great games.
I thought blizzard said they didnt want to add in difficulty due to the engine...units clumping naturally is just that. You move your units even a little and it undoes all your micro and becomes ridiculous to sustain really for any long period of time especially for zerg which has to be constantly moving across the map since it has few space controlling units it can just sit in one spot and forget.
On December 29 2011 11:52 jellyjello wrote: Slow day at work and looks like most of exciting drama here have died down too, so here is a question for everyone to ponder and chip in: What is everyone's opinion on how SC2 units clump tightly together?
There is a pretty good debate over at PlayXP on this for those who understand Korean. Click here
Some argue that this is an intended design mechanism by Blizzard while others say that it's a design flaw. But, most agree that this unit clumping limits the strategic part of this game because of the impact of one giant death ball. (Maybe someone is willing to translate some key points... I'll admit that I'm way too lazy )
Some are even saying that the success of SC2 lies on how Blizzard deals with this unit clumping issue with their next expansion.
I personally think that units are clumping too tight and unrealistically, and I agree that it's not good for the game to develop on its own like how BW did.
So, what does everyone think?
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'm not sure if clumping forces more micro per se. In certain situations a tightly packed clump of units is more powerful than units being spread out-- terran bio vs. melee for eg. or in certain cases of bio or a group of stalkers etc. vs. a very widely, loosely spread arc, having a tight clump attack into a loose arc will force partial focus fire if parts of the arc are out of range of the ball, especially if the range of units in the ball is greater (i.e. if for some reason someone spread out roaches in such a fashion).
Obviously it is disadvantageous in any type of splash situation, and arcs are generally better in many engagements because it maximizes the surface area and thus dps.
It's true that unit clumping forces micro in certain situations, but it also reduces micro requirements for an optimum engagement in others. This is probably why you see people complaining about terran stutter step micro. Especially in early game, with small army sizes and the types of units that are out, its a pretty optimum army configuration in the vast majority of micro situations (except I guess vs stalkers before conc is out)
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.
I think it's a symptom of subpar play more than anything. I'm waiting for some future gosu to expose the 'death ball style' for the rubbish that it is. Unfortunately players seem to embrace it. It feels lazy. Perhaps i should be directing my ire toward the designers, but i feel the players are at fault here. I guess if it wasn't so effective they wouldn't do it. But i'm not gonna blame Blizzard for marine SCV all ins too.
As an example i see so often players sending ther entire armies into the base to defend a drop. Such play should be exposed more often but it isn't. I think the skill level here isn't where it needs to be, and players are getting away with things they shouldn't.
It makes the deathball stronger as the game automatically allows for tight clumped formations , meaning all units can fire at the same time, as opposed to if units were forced to spread out more and only having a portion of your army fight.
Clumped armies is actually a GOOD thing and should be a skill to pull off properly. Having units clump by default dumbs down the game down as it allows everyone to engage in perfect engagements, take this away and micro and army management would allow for another area where players can outplay their opponent with better engagements.
In terms of spells its good and bad, aoe could hurt more, but it can also help you use forcefield more effectively.
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.
Blizzard can fix this easily, but they don't want too. They believe this is a much better design. Only way to at least make them put it in HotS beta is if we get a massive bnet thread (think this is how paid name change came to WoW) or protest outside Blizzard HQ lol.
Unit clumping is good. An army should stay in the formation that maximises its fighting ability. What blizzard should do is give disincentive to clump units, for example, with aoe, so it becomes a skill to manage a spread formation. Also, another thing to note is that currently, a concave formation is stronger than a ball.
This. Having units' baseline ai be fucking retarded ala Dragoons is silly--units should have a baseline level of effectiveness, that can then be increased exponentially with good micro. Clumps are not a horrible formation the way "walk randomly all over the map" the way Goons did was, and in a few cases clumping can be optimal. But in most cases, concaves and spreading will greatly increase army effectiveness.
The ideal should be "easy to learn, hard to master", and thats what I feel unit clumping does. Even a complete noob won't have units that act like drunken retards, but even a pro will struggle to spread and control their army in a way that gets the absolute maximum effectiveness out of them.
Unit clumping is good. An army should stay in the formation that maximises its fighting ability. What blizzard should do is give disincentive to clump units, for example, with aoe, so it becomes a skill to manage a spread formation. Also, another thing to note is that currently, a concave formation is stronger than a ball.
This. Having units' baseline ai be fucking retarded ala Dragoons is silly--units should have a baseline level of effectiveness, that can then be increased exponentially with good micro. Clumps are not a horrible formation the way "walk randomly all over the map" the way Goons did was, and in a few cases clumping can be optimal. But in most cases, concaves and spreading will greatly increase army effectiveness.
The ideal should be "easy to learn, hard to master", and thats what I feel unit clumping does. Even a complete noob won't have units that act like drunken retards, but even a pro will struggle to spread and control their army in a way that gets the absolute maximum effectiveness out of them.
I'll give you a BW example that explains why clumping is Bad
This example is the Progamer Fantasy - Jung Myung Hoon
Most of you know this guy as a guy who loves to abuse vultures, but a lot less known is that is worst match-up is TvZ - Why you ask? It is because he isn't as good as other Terrans using SK Terran builds - Which require a lot of micro for your marines, medics and science vessels. A lot of other terrans can micro their MM better than Fantasy can (although Fantasy does use mech somewhat successfully xd) but he's obviously not as skilled in microing infantry.
Why is this important you ask? Lets say hypothetically Fantasy and a bunch of other S-class progamers switched over. Do we want a player like Fantasy and Flash for example, to be on the same skill level due to unit clumping? I certainly hope not.
Or take another example - Stork. He's a solid player but has undoubtedly good dragoon control. Wouldn't you want to see a player like Stork win a game because of his better micro of his goons over another lesser skilled protoss player? It's little things like these that make the pathing so much more intricate in BW - You had to know it all and be able to execute in order to be considered the best of the best.
if units didnt clump..it wud be RIP infestors and RIP destiny.... also I think RIP archons.... but unit clumping is somewhat good somewhat bad..its a two edged sword..on one hand it necessitates good micro skills.. on the other hand..physics wise and space distribution wise, units can never clump...vikings clumping wud lead to their own crash!! in real life
On December 29 2011 13:00 Lavi wrote: It's Horrible. It looks aesthetically bad.
It makes the deathball stronger as the game automatically allows for tight clumped formations , meaning all units can fire at the same time, as opposed to if units were forced to spread out more and only having a portion of your army fight.
Being able to clump units tighter should be a skill not something automatic as it maximizes the most amount of units attacking at once.
In terms of spells its good and bad, aoe could hurt more, but it can also help you use forcefield more effectively.
auto clumping does make a deathball with splash stronger, but it makes a deathball without splash vs. another army with similar range weaker, rewarding micro that spreads out units.
Everything firing at the same time cuts both ways-- all other things being equal, in a ranged vs. ranged situation, a perfectly well placed arc will beat a ball every time since all of the arc units will fire at some of the ball units as the ball moves into position.
So in Broodwar you couldn't actually control your Dragoon. It was like a retarded child. The reaver attack was glitched as fuck. Units came out of the same corner of the building so they'd get stuck if you didn't place them correctly. Not many people complained.
In Starcraft 2, units clump up in a ball and all you have to do is make two boxes and click twice. People freak out.
On December 29 2011 13:07 Kluey wrote: So in Broodwar you couldn't actually control your Dragoon. It was like a retarded child. The reaver attack was glitched as fuck. Units came out of the same corner of the building so they'd get stuck if you didn't place them correctly. Not many people complained.
In Starcraft 2, units clump up in a ball and all you have to do is make two boxes and click twice. People freak out.
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 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 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.
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.
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.
I think it's just a basic nature of SC2; without it, the game would have to be dramatically reworked because otherwise marines would be terrible in large numbers due to issues with getting in range, for instance, so they'd have to buff marines greatly to make them useful later on, which would make them overpowered in the early game so they'd have to either buff other race's early games or change the entire Terran economy system which in turn...
On December 29 2011 12:13 CampinSam wrote: As noted before, it is not visually appealing when you see a ball of units, clumped together, trying to do something.
I absolutely adore watching broodwar, and honestly wish that I could have enjoyed the time that broodwar was popular. Course, I'm stuck with SC2 now, so I guess I'll just have to deal.
No one is forcing you to watch SC2, it's not something you're stuck with... especially since Brood War is still living and the PL is ongoing.
On December 29 2011 14:49 Carmine wrote: 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.
Non-issue. If clumping is reduced we can easily rebalance AoE back to their original values (storm radius was massively nerfed exactly because of this -- emp too recently).
Plenty of examples already provided in this thread and the previous one that show why less clumping looks so much better.
Each unit has a dotted circle under them. Those circles shouldn't be overlapping each other. That would make the clumping more realistic in visual way.
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 Age of Empires, you have different formation options for your armies. I think that if blizzard added a similar idea, where you could select if you wanted a tightly packed (Clumpy) ball or if you wanted a more spaced out (Split) ball. The clumpy option would make the units form a deathball like they do currently, and the spaced option would cause the units to double their spacing or some such. that way, for zerglings for example, you would be able to reduce (albeit however slightly) the damage a siege line would do as you were running up, or reduce the amount of marines killed by a baneling landmine.
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...
harder to micro because the units were retarded (dragoon)
Easy solution: Force players to micro and spread their units against strong aoe spells. Problem: People bitch and moan about aoe spells when their death ball gets wrecked. Aoe gets nerfed. Clumped deathballs persist. Quite a vicious circle we've got going on.
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...
And unclumping them seems more useful than having them clumped so you can avoid AOE... just because bad mechanics forced you to click each dragoon 30 times so it didnt wander off on its own doesn't make it a better thing. Microing small groups of units to unclump them can be every bit as hard.
But it obviously isn't because everyone is in consensus that SC: BW is a much harder game to master.
On December 29 2011 13:07 Kluey wrote: So in Broodwar you couldn't actually control your Dragoon. It was like a retarded child. The reaver attack was glitched as fuck. Units came out of the same corner of the building so they'd get stuck if you didn't place them correctly. Not many people complained.
In Starcraft 2, units clump up in a ball and all you have to do is make two boxes and click twice. People freak out.
Reavers were never glitched.
If they hit 100% of the time with full damage the game wouldve been horrible. There was a micro aspect to choosing where to attack with your reaver and micro/reaction time to avoiding taking full damage on the other side.
Also, dragoons werent retarded, you just needed a lot of practice to get the most out of them.
Also,
I dont agree with people saying BW is harder to master necessarily. I think SC2 is plenty hard enough because it seems like the game is pretty much based on decision making.... I am actually quite amazed some guys such as MVP can have incredibly high win rates.
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...
And unclumping them seems more useful than having them clumped so you can avoid AOE... just because bad mechanics forced you to click each dragoon 30 times so it didnt wander off on its own doesn't make it a better thing. Microing small groups of units to unclump them can be every bit as hard.
But it obviously isn't because everyone is in consensus that SC: BW is a much harder game to master.
False Statement. Disproven by logic statements and parameterizing.
The only true statement lies in that they are both different games, and you can apply various different functions to come out with either SC2 being harder or SC:BW being harder.
One could easily say SC2 is so much harder because units die so easy that the amount of micro you could do in SC may be higher, but skillwise, it might be "harder" to micro in SC2 because events happen so fast. See this problem with human beings?
It is bad, but somehow Blizzard actively works against the breaking of death balls: First they nerf Fungal that really punished the a-moving Protoss ball, and then they nerf the area of EMP that also punished the clumped Protoss ball. I think the ball and clumpyness really turns to the bizarre when you have Voidrays _inside_ of Colossus that are standing on the heads of Stalkers, Sentries, Zealots. All of these that basically has the same speed aswell. Throw in some tempests aswell for good non punishable splash.
mmm in bw you microed to keep your deathball together especially as toss. in sc2 you micro to keep it apart from each other. I think keeping it apart is harder. Thats why many people don't do it, which is like a consent between players, to not play optimal, because its easier.
But i think its neither good nor bad. It was a choice they did and i think it was the best matching the overall game. Since there is magic boxing, and all the other stuff, you aren't forced to clump at all anyway. Overall i like this, and they balanced it around it. My only issue is that ranged instant hit units are pretty good, while ranged non instants are pretty bad, because they overkill terribly due to the ai. If people would get their wish and units would be unclumped, melee units would become weaker(slower zerglings), ranged units stronger(marine, range upgrade *-*) and aoe units would become stronger as well (colossi, their old attack maybe). And then again players would try to clump their units instead of trying to unclump them. So i guess it is what you prefer, do you want to have unclumped units on noob level, which means you will see deathballs in high level. Or do you want deathballs at noob level and unclump micro at high level.
I want the later. And imo bw unit micro was easy against sc2 unit micro, it just felt hard because you had to commit most of your time to reproduce units while the fight was going on. But thats debatable.
PS: i don't find unit clumping less unrealistic then what was up in bw if you didn't kept your units together. Line of doom ... Bumping into each other for 3 hours, ht dances when morphing archons ... Of course the sc2 thing has its issues, but its better then bw. And thats why i doubt the unit clumping will have a negative impact on sc2. At the end this is one of the things that makes sc2 hard, and people yet again want to remove the hard parts of the game.
it's intentional and it isn't going anywhere. Blizzard has been asked this question in past interviews and said that it will be forever part of SC2. It's not a bad thing, it's just that many players aren't utilizing their extra APM that they've lost from BW into controlling their units better. Some of the best moments have been players like MMA splitting units in the blink of an eye, something that didn't happen so gracefully in BW.
I always go back to this argument because I feel like it's true, but it's that BW was a game that players had a lot of time to master and unit control was one of those. This game I feel will have an unlimited ceiling as far as unit control goes because of how precise and responsive the AI is and we've only been at this for a year.
The only pathing type problem I have are colossus, not how they move but how they shoot. You could dodge lurker spines in BW, I think you should be able to dodge colossus volleys but you can't because the damage is instant. Definitely would be cooler if you could micro units to not take splash but with the the way the colossus is currently programmed it isn't possible.
On December 29 2011 15:47 SilverLeagueElite wrote: Easy solution: Force players to micro and spread their units against strong aoe spells. Problem: People bitch and moan about aoe spells when their death ball gets wrecked. Aoe gets nerfed. Clumped deathballs persist. Quite a vicious circle we've got going on.
good idea.
make AOE stronger and force the babies to split their armies.
On December 29 2011 12:07 Leviance wrote: The first true SC2 bonjwa will actually train and be able to de-clump his units, everyone is gonna be shocked how one-sided battles will go in his favour. I don't get how even now, a year after release, the majority of the pros (Koreans included) only use 1-2 hotkeys for their armies. The best Zergs in the world still run all their lings clumped into a siege line instead of separating a few at the start to completely negate splash, Collossi attacks are still devastating because everyone is too lazy to split intelligently so that most of the splash is avoided, far too often a group of 4-6 templars get hit by ONE emp because lazy players (pros!!!) keep them so vulnerably together. The new UI allows for being more lazy, and the pros atm are showing just that: being lazy (on their level) I know it'd be fucking hard to constantly de-clump and so on, but that's exactly the work a wannabe-bonjwa has to do, if it wasn't hard as shit, everyone could do it. But right now everyone (GSL winners included) just keeps suffering from the 1-2 control group syndrome and the many disadvantages that come with it. frustrating to watch, but leaves hope for Jaedong, Flash etc. switching and showing the rest how it's done.
You're right. I am disappointed. But it's only been 1 year ish. So I think what will happen is that eventually, like you say, someone will break out among the others because he isn't lazy and micros well. Eventually people will (hopefully!) start needing to do that to keep up. Either that or just the players now aren't quite capable of doing that along with staying on top of macro and such, and a new wave of better players will rise up, and the old players (now) will phase out. Sort of like in BW. Players got better and better.
On December 29 2011 15:47 SilverLeagueElite wrote: Easy solution: Force players to micro and spread their units against strong aoe spells. Problem: People bitch and moan about aoe spells when their death ball gets wrecked. Aoe gets nerfed. Clumped deathballs persist. Quite a vicious circle we've got going on.
good idea.
make AOE stronger and force the babies to split their armies.
As soon as all the abilities that limit in-battle micro are gone, that would be an idea.
They have to clump up cuz in SCII the screen solutions are much bigger => harder to select a single unit like BW. Secondly would you imagine how could you control a bunch of lings and banelings with fewer hotkeys? Overall the skill caps of SC2 has risen a lot more. They need to micro and spread out more to avoid splash damage and spell casters.
I do no believe that unit clumping should change, I prefer not having to fight the "UI' And rather make correct descions and fight the opponent. In SC2 I feel that I win games because of descions more than micro. I think it is one of the reasons that i enjoy playing zerg the most, the mechanics are not overly impossible to master (although i have not managed it yet), but the feel of crushing your opponent when you out think them with things like baneling land mines and nydus play/ling runby's is a thing of beauty in my mind. I can understand why people want the unit size changed but why would you not go watch broodwar for the broodwar feel? Starcraft 2 has its own unique feel going for it at the moment and changing this to drastically would alienate a huge population of the player base.
I was thinking what a nothing response, but my goodness. Those pictures. The spread out units actually makes SC2 armies look cool. Unit clumping has really not much to do with balance and everything to do with making the game look good visually. However, spread out units actually provides better options in my opinion.
I think we can get rid of unit clumping without the fritzed out dragoons. But visually and competitively, I think I'd take fritzed out dragoons over players always fighting deathballs. Even simply moving armies across the map is visually unappealing with unit clumping. And pro's will NEVER spread out units in long transit. It's just a waste of time.
There are two things that are balanced, but have resulted in substantial nerfing and therefore nerfing of mastery/ player ability. Unit clumping and smart casting. When you combine those two, what you have is every unit is guaranteed (almost) to hit every single time. Deathball with protoss works because it is maximum DPS over least amount of surface area. Unit clumping is the main thing, but collosi is just the icing on the top. It's not imba, because Blizzard has balanced it based on it.
But the damage of the stalkers and the collosi has to be based on the premise that they are all going to be in a ball and will absolutely wreck anything that touches it. Every hit, hits everytime. Vs spread out troops in BW. You had some control groups attacking while others were moving in position. The ball is still present (Terran deathball.) But because it was much harder it was balanced on the idea that not all units would be firing at the exact same time. Tanks would overkill and be inefficient unless you spread them out. Because of this inefficiency, individual units to be more powerful. I don't think this will change anytime soon because it will always be the most efficient ball of firepower.
Same thing with smart casting. Psionic storm and emp HAVE to be balanced on the idea that the player can hold t down and spam click and cover the entire field with storms. And it has to be balanced based on the idea that units clump very easily. What this results in is extremely weak AoE compared to its BW counterpart- storm, tanks splash. (Another poster said something to this effect.) Because BW was balanced on the idea that you probably wouldn't get every single storm off and tanks will over kill. This allows individual spells and AoE to be more powerful.
How does the SC2 nerf mastery then? While BW is balanced on the idea that not every single storm, suddenly you have someone like Jangbi that can throw a ton of them down and kill off a tank force. It's freaking hard, but it's also freaking awesome because it is freaking hard. In addition, it's awesome because it's so visually amazing- things die like crazy.
Back to unit clumping. You get some like Bisu who can micro his dragoons that don't normally fire all at once, but if he can micro more into position, he gains an advantage. A very powerful advantage because the units are allowed to be individually powerful because it's assumed they won't all be firing at once. And it's very visual. The difference between a moving dragoons in and Bisu dragoon micro is insane. Battles also take longer because not everything is firing at the same time.
I just think a lot of abilities get nerfed and the game becomes not imbalanced, but bland rather.
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...
harder to micro because the units were retarded (dragoon)
I read this a lot and I dont know where this came from. Every person with IQ over 60 after 20-30 games could understand the specifics of the dragoon`s movement.
On December 29 2011 12:43 Flamingo777 wrote: I don't think it's intended, but rather the result, or side-effect of Blizzard's pathing decision toward having units surround their targeted opponents, which as a result involves "clumping".
Agree, but also think about how the game went from 2D to 3D which adds to the clumping as well.
SC2 is not 3D, its fancy 2D.
all internal engine treatment is as if the map was flat, the proof of this is that you cannot make a bridge in the editor such that it is possible to pass the bridge on the top and also be able to pass below it.
the only reason that sc2 looks like its 3D is because different units (such as air units) have their models rendered above where they are supposed to be, the way it looks has no internal effect on anything.
On December 29 2011 17:05 kofman wrote: clumping is good. that would eliminate marine splitting, which i think is one of the most fun parts of the game.
Actually an easy fix. Just make the baneling splash bigger. And it's allowed to be bigger, because the marines are probably more spread out. However, if the Terran player, did manage to manually clump his marines together through sheer micro skill, then the newly improved baneling splash is all the more epic. Spread out units that can be brought together through micro allows more powerful OH MY GOODNESS moments.
Inefficient troop movement/ dps that has no solution is frustrating (SupCom2). Inefficient troop movement/ dps that can be overcome by micro skills is awesome because there are more tools available to do more things. And the results are more impressive because the abilities are balanced without the idea that Jangbi is going to pull some sick micro every single game. Flashes of genius rather than carpet bombing every. single. game.
I also wonder if better muta micro would be possible with more spread out units. The entire idea of muta micro is that you could catch units by themselves. For all this talk about better ui will allows us more time to do more things... muta micro has been pretty paltry compared to what can be done with BW. (I suspect game mechanics are more at fault though.)
It kinda depends on the matchup. I feel like the vP matchups suffer because Protoss units tend to do better while clumped, as there aoe isn't particularly threatening to them (emp and fungal compared to banelings vs marines or thors vs clumped mutas) This definitely promotes "deathball" style play vs as (and against) Protoss, which I would say is a bad thing. In other matchups though, the natural clumping can raise the skill cap. If there were less/no natural clumping the damage marines take from banelings would be much more uniform, and the payoff for splitting well would be lower.
On December 29 2011 12:07 Leviance wrote: The first true SC2 bonjwa will actually train and be able to de-clump his units, everyone is gonna be shocked how one-sided battles will go in his favour. I don't get how even now, a year after release, the majority of the pros (Koreans included) only use 1-2 hotkeys for their armies. The best Zergs in the world still run all their lings clumped into a siege line instead of separating a few at the start to completely negate splash, Collossi attacks are still devastating because everyone is too lazy to split intelligently so that most of the splash is avoided, far too often a group of 4-6 templars get hit by ONE emp because lazy players (pros!!!) keep them so vulnerably together. The new UI allows for being more lazy, and the pros atm are showing just that: being lazy (on their level) I know it'd be fucking hard to constantly de-clump and so on, but that's exactly the work a wannabe-bonjwa has to do, if it wasn't hard as shit, everyone could do it. But right now everyone (GSL winners included) just keeps suffering from the 1-2 control group syndrome and the many disadvantages that come with it. frustrating to watch, but leaves hope for Jaedong, Flash etc. switching and showing the rest how it's done.
You're right. I am disappointed. But it's only been 1 year ish. So I think what will happen is that eventually, like you say, someone will break out among the others because he isn't lazy and micros well. Eventually people will (hopefully!) start needing to do that to keep up. Either that or just the players now aren't quite capable of doing that along with staying on top of macro and such, and a new wave of better players will rise up, and the old players (now) will phase out. Sort of like in BW. Players got better and better.
You two summed up how I feel about it.
The default clumping of units is bad for both the player and the spectator, but adds de-clumping as a skill good players will eventually need to develop. When pros all begin to de-clump, it will benefit both the player and the spectator.
On December 29 2011 12:07 Leviance wrote: The first true SC2 bonjwa will actually train and be able to de-clump his units, everyone is gonna be shocked how one-sided battles will go in his favour. I don't get how even now, a year after release, the majority of the pros (Koreans included) only use 1-2 hotkeys for their armies. The best Zergs in the world still run all their lings clumped into a siege line instead of separating a few at the start to completely negate splash, Collossi attacks are still devastating because everyone is too lazy to split intelligently so that most of the splash is avoided, far too often a group of 4-6 templars get hit by ONE emp because lazy players (pros!!!) keep them so vulnerably together. The new UI allows for being more lazy, and the pros atm are showing just that: being lazy (on their level) I know it'd be fucking hard to constantly de-clump and so on, but that's exactly the work a wannabe-bonjwa has to do, if it wasn't hard as shit, everyone could do it. But right now everyone (GSL winners included) just keeps suffering from the 1-2 control group syndrome and the many disadvantages that come with it. frustrating to watch, but leaves hope for Jaedong, Flash etc. switching and showing the rest how it's done.
This is my opinion exactly. Too many things can be done better...hell consider this. ZvP. Muta into baneling drops on the toss deathball. Get overlord drop and speed early so that you can drop lings out with your muta harass at all bases and get probe kills and make mutas harder to deal with. This could be ZvT too. Why don't zergs drop lings so they get a perfect surround always? It's all kinda silly. And blizz does balance by pros skill...which isnt tip top of the game
Bad for the game because it's a pain to balance. AOE in bw was largely dependent on units clumping up, when a reaver is dropped in an scv line for example. In SC2 you have brain dead stuff like hellions.
Bad for the game because it makes spectating a battle very difficult. It really takes you out of the experience, when you just have to wait until the battle is over for you to grasp the outcome. In BW you watched most of the fight in real time, and could concentrate on an individual units life/death.
Bad for the game because just like terrible unit pathing in BW. It's just a tedious thing to micro a large army. I don't really see the skill in it, since you're just fighting a bad design to begin with. Even without unit clumping it would still require micro to separate your units, but it would be easier to select them when they're spaced out. Yes mechanics that require micro skill are welcome, however this one is just lazy.
On December 29 2011 15:57 HowardRoark wrote: It is bad, but somehow Blizzard actively works against the breaking of death balls: First they nerf Fungal that really punished the a-moving Protoss ball, and then they nerf the area of EMP that also punished the clumped Protoss ball. I think the ball and clumpyness really turns to the bizarre when you have Voidrays _inside_ of Colossus that are standing on the heads of Stalkers, Sentries, Zealots. All of these that basically has the same speed aswell. Throw in some tempests aswell for good non punishable splash.
You can add the tempest to the deathball clutterfuck if it makes the final cut.
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.
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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"
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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).
It's not a problem. More skill can be shown this way. Manually splitting units of the clump, stopping a cluster of units before they clump up, splitting small packs away from a ball--all these are observed at the top level. I'm not going to philosophize on how much thought went into preserving unit formations on move command at Blizzard. I like how it ended up.
I'd have to agree that units clump up too much, there has been nerfs to AOE attacks and spells since release to try and deal with it. Yes it's more micro intensive because you have to split your army which is a good thing but i think they are still just a little too close together.
Also instead of having all units move in a straight line can't characteristics be added to units, like lings weaving a little as they run? They have these things when they arn't moving so why not when they are moving?
Each unit has a dotted circle under them. Those circles shouldn't be overlapping each other. That would make the clumping more realistic in visual way.
On December 29 2011 12:07 Leviance wrote: The first true SC2 bonjwa will actually train and be able to de-clump his units, everyone is gonna be shocked how one-sided battles will go in his favour. I don't get how even now, a year after release, the majority of the pros (Koreans included) only use 1-2 hotkeys for their armies. The best Zergs in the world still run all their lings clumped into a siege line instead of separating a few at the start to completely negate splash, Collossi attacks are still devastating because everyone is too lazy to split intelligently so that most of the splash is avoided, far too often a group of 4-6 templars get hit by ONE emp because lazy players (pros!!!) keep them so vulnerably together. The new UI allows for being more lazy, and the pros atm are showing just that: being lazy (on their level) I know it'd be fucking hard to constantly de-clump and so on, but that's exactly the work a wannabe-bonjwa has to do, if it wasn't hard as shit, everyone could do it. But right now everyone (GSL winners included) just keeps suffering from the 1-2 control group syndrome and the many disadvantages that come with it. frustrating to watch, but leaves hope for Jaedong, Flash etc. switching and showing the rest how it's done.
it always amazes me how many people are perfectly content to let 50 zerglings and ten banelings roll into a siege line, where all 10 banes are together. I always try to at least split my banelings into two groups at either side before attacking to offer just a little bit of safety from the sieges
I don't understand when people say clump increases skill? BW has spaced out unit and the micro seems at least on par of sc2. Units not clumping as much does not mean aoe is less effective to the point that one no longer have to split (increase splash size of aoe etc).. ppl probably thinking of marine king vs banes in ZvT but not every matchup is like like that .. .how about vikings+bio ball versus colossus ball where its mostly a-moving viking and concave with stimmed bio, and colossus ball is mainly a move and forcefields... If units are spread out more then terran cant just a-move the viking into a pack of colossus which are conveniently hugging shoulder to shoulder right on top of each other, and you cant just press "t" and try to brute force it like most pvt is like now. You see the clumping promotes brute strength tactics like this, but if they were spread out you need more positioning of your units to get in the battle, which will require more actions not less.
It will also prolong the actual battle... How many time have you seen people menace around with their little clump balls and when they engage, the battle and game is decided in 5-10 seconds. If SC2 is focused around engagements then max food army clashing should be epic and exciting, not anti-climatic instant battle... but clumping and powerful aoe unit makes it so battles actually ends faster as the game goes on in some matchups.
And anyways a max food army should not look like a tiny compact blob.. it should look like a large epic army >.>
On December 29 2011 12:07 Leviance wrote: The first true SC2 bonjwa will actually train and be able to de-clump his units, everyone is gonna be shocked how one-sided battles will go in his favour. I don't get how even now, a year after release, the majority of the pros (Koreans included) only use 1-2 hotkeys for their armies. The best Zergs in the world still run all their lings clumped into a siege line instead of separating a few at the start to completely negate splash, Collossi attacks are still devastating because everyone is too lazy to split intelligently so that most of the splash is avoided, far too often a group of 4-6 templars get hit by ONE emp because lazy players (pros!!!) keep them so vulnerably together. The new UI allows for being more lazy, and the pros atm are showing just that: being lazy (on their level) I know it'd be fucking hard to constantly de-clump and so on, but that's exactly the work a wannabe-bonjwa has to do, if it wasn't hard as shit, everyone could do it. But right now everyone (GSL winners included) just keeps suffering from the 1-2 control group syndrome and the many disadvantages that come with it. frustrating to watch, but leaves hope for Jaedong, Flash etc. switching and showing the rest how it's done.
it always amazes me how many people are perfectly content to let 50 zerglings and ten banelings roll into a siege line, where all 10 banes are together. I always try to at least split my banelings into two groups at either side before attacking to offer just a little bit of safety from the sieges
its because most of them only uses like 2 control group max for army... just splitting them of course will not work the pathfinding is so good that it will reclump them .. so best is like you said use different control groups to try minimize that way. Maybe you can also try that patrol move trick to spread out a little too if it works for banes.
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
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
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
when you "declump" and than attack again they will clump again(and again and again), notice how much of your forces are alive after 4 sec of fight to notice that its marginal gain. When you are referring to "perfectly de-clumped and microed army" i think you mean the things that Automaton bot was doing, sadly its not humanly possible. Pathing/auto-clumping kinda destroys the purpose of declumping, because microing your units decreases your DPS (every movements while in range). I would trade every AI buff SC2 got for "retarded" system from BW when micro mattered and was no deathball. I call it bullshit what most people say, D players micro their units in BW while masters in SC2 leave it as it is many times. Why? Because late-game fights in BW are few times longer than in SC2, there is always much more options to change the outcome.
SC2 has only few moments of micro battles, and maybe few builds that relly heavily on micro, large battles are mostly microless besides storm dodging, baneling/marine, muta press "h" above thor or attack tank, fungal/FF/emp/storm thats the biggestr outcomes you can get from micro, clumping/declumping moving 5 marines there or there means nothing because they got auto-concave/auto- surrounds and forcefully changing that in most cases decrease dps. There are reasons people arent doing something after 1.5 y after release if they had no problems doing that in BW. If you would decrease dps of all units by 50% you would notice more micro same as in bw. Cant wait when people start playing like this!: (facepalm)
On December 29 2011 20:20 papaz wrote: If splash damage is an issue Blizzard will nerf splash damage (which they've already done). They don't need to remove clumping.
Also remove clumping and the game will look alot worse and for some of us the looks are actually important.
1) groups of banelings/templars/stuff getting hit happens often because units just don't hold formation. you separate your units but if you attack move them somewhere they clump up again in a second or two because that's just the shortest path. Holding of formation would be awesome. Also same units clump together because they have same speed. (except when you have a few of them in front since they can't catch up). You could magicbox units in BW to hold formation. You can't do that here really (only thing wher you can see it is mutas)
2) the problem with clumping is many units get to shoot at the target at same time. like this you can have what.. 5-6 lines of marines attacking same target? or even more? But I guess you get the point. If they weren't clumping so much, you'd have to spread them more so you cover bigger surface around the target. Clumping is also the reason why AoE attacks/spells had their effect area reduced. If they decrease clumping, the AoE radius can be increased again.
The problem is IMHO that unit clumping isn't really descouraged: yes, there are blings/storms/tank/colossus, but the AOE in SC2 is just a joke compared to BW AOE. Look at siege tanks: SC2's are like crap compared to their BW counterpart. SO declumping units is useful (and hard sometimes, like the split puma did against a protoss), but only in certain situations. During the big engagements it's pretty obvious who will win the battle: who has the biggest ball and the better concave. IMHO declumping isn't rewarded enough, because it makes the ball smaller and less "surface efficient"
It is a symptom of the problem of the decade in terms of video games. In order to sell the game even to the worst possible gamer, developers make every compromise they can with the gameplay.
On December 29 2011 21:07 Bleak wrote: It is a symptom of the problem of the decade in terms of video games. In order to sell the game even to the worst possible gamer, developers make every compromise they can with the gameplay.
Luckily deus ex human revolution doesn't suffer such compromisation.
I guess it would have been nice had they slightly increased collision size in beta. It would have also allowed for a micro mechanic from Warcraft 3, blocking a unit's path by having a zergling in front of it, or so. Currently units are too fast for their size to allow that, combined with the pathfinding. Blizzard is never going to change the latter, and even the former seems like a very big step. They would need to rebalance all area of effect attacks - and I'm not sure they can make it as equally conductive to micro as the current mechanics have it. Having to spread your units is one of the few important micro aspects of this game, changing it should only be done when there's a very certain benefit as the risk is quite high.
I think a better approach, which still can be done pre-Heart of the Swarm is to just address protoss. Zerg doesn't really have death balls. Their units still clump up, as do all, but they all have different speeds, some are used for flanking, others for harass, and so on. Their ground units like the roach and the ultralisk do have a high-ish collision size too. Protoss on the other hand, tends to have the small, similar speed zealot and sentry stand in formation with a colossus on top and void rays in between. It clumps to a level that's not just unrealistic, but looks a bit silly in-game. Like I said, I'm not even sure about the gameplay effects of the clumping as much as the effect on spectators who like the epic feeling of Brood War's army clashes. Another effect is that clumping does not necessarily remove micro in-battle, but it does remove problems with positioning. Zerg and even terran require you to spread out your units in various concave formations or prepare surrounds and such, but with protoss the game does it for you, since the race works well enough if clumped up. Fungal Growth and EMP are supposed to help with this, but both spells have been nerfed and outside of fungal, I'm not sure if they ever outright stopped these sort of formations.
I find some stuff said in this thread completely rediclous.
One is that "pros" in general are bad and dont declump to bypass the problem and the other is that clumping somehow benefits the overall skill of the game.
Last time i checked "pros" have been declumping for over a year now, pretty much in every game, by "pros" im talking specificly about terran pros tough. I am pretty sure you have to declump even in gold as a terran, even if its minimum splitting, otherwise a baneling, a tank or a storm will kill half of your army. Yes, currently terran pros havent yet achieved those perfect splits and "formations" however i dont think we will see this perfect "individual" marine micro that some people here expect, till either enough time pass for the current players develop that skill in maybe a year or two or till the likes of flash move over to sc2. But this brings us to the problem that clumping only "benefits" the skill of terran players, doesnt it ? Pretty much the only situation were a protoss had to make heavy "declumping" is when facing EMP (wich btw none did anyway) but even then papa blizzard swooped in and nerfed the ability, so now the only declumping needed is not having those 4 high templars right on top of each other.
Also clumping looks like shi
So yeah i think units clump way way too much in sc2, and like it was said in some posts before mine, a simple way to do it is to simply dont allow the circles under the unit to overlap.
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.
Well that isn't correct: a concave/surround formation gives the most opportunity for all friendly units to hit the enemy target. The minute you put one marine 'clumped' behind another you're making the first marine get closer to the target so the ones behind can be within range. This drastically reduces the number of units you can have within range at any time.
Spreading means more friendly units can be next to each other on the front line within range. Force fields are powerful because they force enemy armies out of range, but it should be obvious that the size of a forcefield splitting an army is completely different to organising things so your units are next to each other.
+ with high damage ranged units it's better to have them behind and protected, but smart focus fire and spreading is the best method, not clumping units around them.
DPS comes from focus fire, not clumping.
I feel like I should draw a picture. See how spreading units out keeps the most in range? the big circles are forcefields.
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.
Well that isn't correct: a concave/surround formation gives the most opportunity for all friendly units to hit the enemy target. The minute you put one marine 'clumped' behind another you're making the first marine get closer to the target so the ones behind can be within range. This drastically reduces the number of units you can have within range at any time.
Spreading means more friendly units can be next to each other on the front line within range. Force fields are powerful because they force enemy armies out of range, but it should be obvious that the size of a forcefield splitting an army is completely different to organising things so your units are next to each other.
+ with high damage ranged units it's better to have them behind and protected, but smart focus fire and spreading is the best method, not clumping units around them.
DPS comes from focus fire, not clumping.
I feel like I should draw a picture. See how spreading units out keeps the most in range? the big circles are forcefields.
Imagine 200 marines clumped in 1 single point attack moving against 200 marines spread evenly all over antiga shipyard. it would basically be 200 vs 1 a lot of times over and over and clumped up would win
I definitely agree the unit clumping is a problem, especially from a spectator perspective. However I wonder if it should be solved by increasing the radius of certain units OR decreasing the amount of units that can be selected at once. I'm not saying reduce the groups back down to 12 units only but just reduce the total selectable amount of stuff to what can be displayed on the bottom command tab (which is like 28 or something units isn't it? maybe make it a bit more).
Higher density of units = more firepower per area. Valid even for melee units, indeed. It's probably the only aspect "for" keeping units clumped as they are. However, on a second thought, do we really need lots of firepower? Blizzard certainly does. They've made all kinds of basic changes towards faster games with quicker conclusions. More concentrated firepower helps them with this goal. Meanwhile, we, who have experienced the pure epic brilliance of BW battles, still feel somewhat dissatisfied with how battles are in SC2 (fortunately they are improving slowly).
Agreed with the above post, the real problem in sc2 is dps/area occupied. 10 marines can clump and occupy the same place as 2 stalkers. you can compare dps of 10 marines vs 2 stalkers and you'll quickly realise that dps/area is a ignored but absolutely important concept to understand why the clumping can't stay like it is.
It forces micro but at the same time, it's a bit boring. But I think, in a 2010 game, this is normal. In Brood War it was really interesting just because the pathfinding sucked. I recommend the Day9 daily on game design where he exposes his opinion about what is interesting in old games, and he talks about the old games that need skill rather than the new games that need less skill but decision making.
its because most of them only uses like 2 control group max for army... just splitting them of course will not work the pathfinding is so good that it will reclump them .. so best is like you said use different control groups to try minimize that way. Maybe you can also try that patrol move trick to spread out a little too if it works for banes.
so you deny the existence of magic box, because magic boxing is part of the pathfinding to exactly negate this. I always laugh if a 200 apm zerg loses all his banelings clumped on one spot to 2 siege tanks. I mean every 30 apm person can make banelings ignore siege tank shots. All you have to do is autofollow half of them on your lings. and done split up banelings that will act perfectly like you want banelings to act, even if the ling they follow dies. Same goes for emp on sentries or templars that are moved around with the main army on one spot. And a basic splitting mechanic that works wonderfully even for attack move, have a few units on hold position the units will not push them away (same goes for attacking units they don't get pushed away), okay it ends up in a line formation, but thats okay against splash units (except hellions). It seems we are still far away from where people actually try to use the pathing ai to their favor. even terrans still use attack move after they split their marines up, so they will clump together instead of move them around splitted. Atleast i am pretty slow when it comes to apm, only around 200 apm during a fight, 100 average. Apm not anything blizzard things will show ^^; . And i love to use the pathing ai to buff up my unit formation pre battle. Okay units on autofollow look horrible funny. But for example hellions that autofollow a thor, lings on attack will surround the thors and get grilled by perfectly positioned hellions. Instead of running ahead and get fungaled. Want the viking flower back in tvt, just autofollow the vikings on another air unit and turn it around. Magic boxing, autofollow. The difference of pushing units away when attacking or idle. All mechanics that allow you to play around with the pathfinding as much as you like, and there are probably more out there.
Right now it would be bw without the knowledge of the patrol moves, or how to stack mutas properly. And alot of strategies rely on that stacking right now in bw. Well some knowledge is there just no need to experiment with it, since it will only turn into nerfs. (banelings controlled right against terran would surely be followed with a nerf lol)
People who think unit clumping is the problem of sc2 and the difference between sc2 and bw doesn't understand the game. THe reason why these games are different micro wise is that sc2 has collosus, mauruders and roaches. If sc2 had more units that required good control like tanks, marines, HT, the game would reward much more micro.
if they make unit clumping less on lets say marines you would break the baneling since you would have to increase baneling explosion radius then aswell and then its alot easier to micro marines since everytime u box and click away you ahve less marines selected that you would usually have. Same for lets say collosus and other splash damage units would have to be completely rebalanced
Units act differently in SC2. That's just how it is. Dustin Browder has talked about this many times. His team has talked about it many times. Teamliquid has talked about it many times. Stop making new posts about the same old stuff !
What is interesting is some of the points people have brought up with what happens with SC2 when people learn to master the unit behavior of sc2 ! Speaking from a Zerg Standpoint, there is absolutely no reason why we don't have 5-6 control groups of units since we don't need half as many hotkeys for production. Would be amazing to see the first pro with perfect flanks and splitting of 5-6 control groups ;D
Will probably force myself to do it once my macro reaches a higher level
Actually I think the problem is just with the protoss race. It's a boring race and is the problem of the deathball syndrome.
Terrans are never allowed to a-move and ball-up their units at the pro level. Banes/infestors/colossi/HTs/tanks will just rape you all day. They have to split/kite/etc. along with using spellcasters and babying their tanks.
Zergs micro mostly comes before the battle; getting the flank up, making sure the roaches/ultras are in the front to tank damage, making sure units move in at the right time (e.g. the tanking units move in, and then your muta/infestor come in afterwards), etc. They do a-move the majority of their army, but that's somewhat excusable as they require the most multitasking for their macro anyway (injects, creep spread, overlord spread, constant scouting because they are the reactive race, etc).
Toss on the other hand, the only unit that requires significant micro that isn't a spellcaster is the stalker with blink. Zealots have no micro, colossi is "move away if anti-air units are firing at them", sentries and HTs are smartcasted and "don't clump these up if there are ghosts". Then you couple in the fact that toss units by themselves are laughably weak, and you get the toss army balling together.
Also, some people think that tvz is the closest mu to its BW counterpart, in that it doesn't revolve around one big fight in the middle of 2 a-moved balls. Terrans do constant drops and the zergs have to fend them off. And when the big battle in the middle happens, the winner can't just a-move to the opponents base, but they do gain an advantage they have to capitalize on. Honestly the mu is perfectly fine other than ghosts being OP. And notice how tvz... doesn't involve protoss!
I recently watched an old GSL game on i think "Bel Shir Beach". Both players had 3+ bases on diagonal opposites of the map pulling in tonnes of income. Both players had 200 units and both had giant death balls that were chasing each other around a centre island for 10 minutes.
The 2 death balls looked like 2 Giant Warcraft Monsters each with their own set of unique spells and special abilities and arms and legs and other appendages appearing and disappearing.
On December 29 2011 12:54 Mossen wrote: Anyone who has fired a gun knows its more likely they would be dying of friendly fire at every shot.
This can not be count as an argument, sorry. If it would, you could also say zerg and protoss does not exist so the games does not make any sense.
And I do not know anyone who has ever fired a gun, we can not buy them in a supermarket, governments arround here would not enjoy us killing each other... That makes sense.
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...
I agree, but macroing is totally different now. Back than it was focused on keeping things together and now it's keeping things apart and spread.
I guess you can't really say micro was harder because you can always micro better. You can always spread your marines more cost efficiently (except 1:1, but we aren't going to see that unless it's AI), but micro is a lot less effective in SC 2. What I'm trying to say is that there isn't as big a difference if you micro and if you don't.
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...
I agree, but macroing is totally different now. Back than it was focused on keeping things together and now it's keeping things apart and spread.
I guess you can't really say micro was harder because you can always micro better. You can always spread your marines more cost efficiently (except 1:1, but we aren't going to see that unless it's AI), but micro is a lot less effective in SC 2. What I'm trying to say is that there isn't as big a difference if you micro and if you don't.
Marines splitting against banelings comes to mind as game deciding micro...
Simple question not so simple but very clear answer: clumping > spreading but both get beaten by well done formation moves, which I havent seen in any RTS yet.
let's think about what we (usually) want: Units should go as fast as we want and as close as we want to the spot we command them. Units should fight as tightly as possible to maximize "snipingfire" and protect each other. Units should attack in fights, so we want maximum surface (assuming limited range) Units should be organized by function
So optimally we want our units to be as ballsy as possible until a battle starts. Then we want them in (thightly) organized lines. The one thing that really messes with this is AoE-dmg. For that we need a more specific approach. F.e if the unit has slow firerate (tank, colossus, baneling) we want our units to be semispread--> we want to be able to rush in between shots and take the unit out (concentrated firepower) but dont want to get splashed to heavily. Splas units with rather high firerate (ultralisk) should be fought spread all the time and dmg over time (storm) as well or dodged.
In the end it is always a matter of balancing the game around it's mechanics. broodwar with clumping AI but the same stats would be as much of a joke as sc2 without it. RA3 water battles could become interesting if the units would clump while total war games without clumping would be really dumb.
From a skill Point of view I guess the less the game does itself, the easier it is for good people to win vs bad people. the downside is that (assuming limited human ressorces such as apm) the further away we get from "optimal" fights (and therefore "optimal" strategies as people evolve their stratehoes around their capabilities) and also the less people will play it, due to its skillrequirements.
Lol, the majority of people here actually think clumping adds skill to the game.
Clumping is ideal in most match-ups. Having every single unit dpsing instead of sitting at the back walking into the fight even if you get hurt more by aoe is going to be superior alot of the time. It undoubtedly takes away skill not having to force units to clump when they automatically do it. Makes me sad and also makes me chuckle a bit, watching the rampant stupidity soar in these threads.
Also it looks like shit and having deathblob fights that decide the match in seconds is terrible imo.
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...
I agree, but macroing is totally different now. Back than it was focused on keeping things together and now it's keeping things apart and spread.
I guess you can't really say micro was harder because you can always micro better. You can always spread your marines more cost efficiently (except 1:1, but we aren't going to see that unless it's AI), but micro is a lot less effective in SC 2. What I'm trying to say is that there isn't as big a difference if you micro and if you don't.
Marines splitting against banelings comes to mind as game deciding micro...
On December 29 2011 21:55 figq wrote: Higher density of units = more firepower per area. Valid even for melee units, indeed. It's probably the only aspect "for" keeping units clumped as they are. However, on a second thought, do we really need lots of firepower? Blizzard certainly does. They've made all kinds of basic changes towards faster games with quicker conclusions. More concentrated firepower helps them with this goal. Meanwhile, we, who have experienced the pure epic brilliance of BW battles, still feel somewhat dissatisfied with how battles are in SC2 (fortunately they are improving slowly).
If they removed auto surround and auto concaving it would be much superior spectaror-wise game, and they could keep current dps values, units melt so fast because the concaves/surrounds happen in 1-2 secs due to smart AI, also i find it ridiculously funny how hard is to trap zerglings with zerglings, its almost impossible, thats what happens when you have both fast , small, with smart AI unit, 0.5 CM hole is enough for 20 zergling to avoid trap.... I would also love if they would bring more physical traits to units (larger models/collisions), automatically it would make them more spread and micro battles would occur and there would be less need for force-field fest. But i guess its already to late
To all the nay-sayers that require a unit to be addle-brained with no sense of motor-control (dragoon), just play zerg late game! You'll find the BW dragoon in the new Ultralisk!!!
At least the dragoon was ranged, you'd be lucky if these beasties actually made it into melee range without a hitch.
Maybe it needs to be tweaked slightly but some people are suggesting that blizzard basically worsen the pathing and AI of units.
To fix deathball syndrome you have to make toss units stronger by themselves. Because in cost-for-cost even matches with their counterparts almost all toss units lose.
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...
I agree, but macroing is totally different now. Back than it was focused on keeping things together and now it's keeping things apart and spread.
I guess you can't really say micro was harder because you can always micro better. You can always spread your marines more cost efficiently (except 1:1, but we aren't going to see that unless it's AI), but micro is a lot less effective in SC 2. What I'm trying to say is that there isn't as big a difference if you micro and if you don't.
Marines splitting against banelings comes to mind as game deciding micro...
What?
See if terran happens to lose all his marines to banelings because he doesn't do any micro, not only he loses marines to but all the siege tanks that was with him, which then pretty much forces terran to be on defensive for next few minutes until he gets his marine + tank count up so that he can defend his expansions safely and proceed to harass the zerg so he can get to the equal ground with him. So I am saying that you are wrong in the fact that micro doesn't make big difference when in fact it does especially in TvZ.
On December 29 2011 23:13 Nymbul wrote: Maybe it needs to be tweaked slightly but some people are suggesting that blizzard basically worsen the pathing and AI of units.
To fix deathball syndrome you have to make toss units stronger by themselves. Because in cost-for-cost even matches with their counterparts almost all toss units lose.
The problem with that is if you make individual toss units stronger, you also inadvertently make the deathball stronger.
On December 29 2011 23:13 Nymbul wrote: Maybe it needs to be tweaked slightly but some people are suggesting that blizzard basically worsen the pathing and AI of units.
To fix deathball syndrome you have to make toss units stronger by themselves. Because in cost-for-cost even matches with their counterparts almost all toss units lose.
The problem with that is if you make individual toss units stronger, you also inadvertently make the deathball stronger.
Remove the Colossus, there, deathball solved.
You can't make toss units stronger because of warpgate.
On December 29 2011 23:13 Nymbul wrote: Maybe it needs to be tweaked slightly but some people are suggesting that blizzard basically worsen the pathing and AI of units.
To fix deathball syndrome you have to make toss units stronger by themselves. Because in cost-for-cost even matches with their counterparts almost all toss units lose.
The problem with that is if you make individual toss units stronger, you also inadvertently make the deathball stronger.
Sorry, I posted on the assumption that the mechanics were to change to break the deathball. Then toss units would have to be stronger individually
I'm not sure removing the colossus is the idea, i'm liking the warp prism colossus tricks that pros are doing these days.
We still have to remember that the brood war we compare SC2 to is 10 years in the making. Who knows what things will look like 4 years down the line with 2 expansions on top of it
No one can micro properly just now, in a few years people will be chopping their death balls up to minimise the effects of AoE/Forcefields and get position advantages. Right now people are just focused on macroing perfectly because y'know, who cares about micro when you can just keep 1a-ing until someone slips up and a supply gap starts to appear.
We are already seeing it with stalker blink micro and the occassional lift micro, but once people get better at the game I reckon we will see fights where people are doing death ball splitting, consistant focus firing and stuff like roach burrow micro. Pros will eventually overturn big supply gaps because they are getting the most out of their units and SC2 will be so much better to watch because of it.
Artosis said something along the lines of: "no one is playing the game well just now" and I'd agree with him.
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.
Well that isn't correct: a concave/surround formation gives the most opportunity for all friendly units to hit the enemy target. The minute you put one marine 'clumped' behind another you're making the first marine get closer to the target so the ones behind can be within range. This drastically reduces the number of units you can have within range at any time.
Spreading means more friendly units can be next to each other on the front line within range. Force fields are powerful because they force enemy armies out of range, but it should be obvious that the size of a forcefield splitting an army is completely different to organising things so your units are next to each other.
+ with high damage ranged units it's better to have them behind and protected, but smart focus fire and spreading is the best method, not clumping units around them.
DPS comes from focus fire, not clumping.
I feel like I should draw a picture. See how spreading units out keeps the most in range? the big circles are forcefields.
Imagine 200 marines clumped in 1 single point attack moving against 200 marines spread evenly all over antiga shipyard. it would basically be 200 vs 1 a lot of times over and over and clumped up would win
It would be like 50 attacking 10 for the clumped side(those 10 exactly at the point of impact of the 2 armies), while it would be 200 attacking 50 for the concave(those in the front lines of the ball). If we ignore micro, the concave would decimate the ball. + Show Spoiler +
With micro(and the marine especially) you can micro to one side increasing your clumped ball's effectiveness and decreasing the concaves, but that's still dangerous if your opponent has aoe.
For people saying that clumped units are preferable because they can nearly all shoot at the target it is not necessarily true. It depends on the topology of armies. 10 marines against one marine scenario shows that 10 clumped marines are worse than 10 marines spread in a circle around the enemy marine. And there are many more complex scenarios where clumped units do less damage. So it in fact rises skill cap as ideal player would always choose best solution, sometimes clumped ball, but often times perfectly split and arranged shapes. Of course realistically there is no way any human can do it as SC2 is too fast, so if you are counting realistic skill cap, it is quite possible that clumping reduces it as all the benefits of unclumping your units are far beyond human possibilities.
I dont think that the unit clumping in SC2 increases nor decreases the skill level particularly much, it’s just the way the game works. That being said, I think that it’s a big flaw since it creates dull blob vs. blob battles. In BW, battles can stretch over several screens which create a much more epic feeling compared to two blobs trying to deal as much DPS as possible. The clumping also makes it harder to see whats going on, which is a big no-no for a game that aspires to be an eSport.
Also, the comments about how unit clumping creates so much micro are just ridiculous. There is less micro in SC2 period, and it has nothing to do with clumping, but with auto surround, smart target, smart cast, unlimited unit selection etc. SC2 is an excellent game but anyone saying that is has more micro than broodwar needs a reality check.
You can try to spread clumped units at high levels but it is quite dangerous because if you mismicro even a bit it may cause your units to skip volleys and thus not attack optimally. I think it's much more important in battles to get each shot off optimally than risk it to get that small edge.
On December 29 2011 23:39 gn0m wrote: I dont think that the unit clumping in SC2 increases nor decreases the skill level particularly much, it’s just the way the game works. That being said, I think that it’s a big flaw since it creates dull blob vs. blob battles. In BW, battles can stretch over several screens which create a much more epic feeling compared to two blobs trying to deal as much DPS as possible. The clumping also makes it harder to see whats going on, which is a big no-no for a game that aspires to be an eSport.
Also, the comments about how unit clumping creates so much micro are just ridiculous. There is less micro in SC2 period, and it has nothing to do with clumping, but with auto surround, smart target, smart cast, unlimited unit selection etc. SC2 is an excellent game but anyone saying that is has more micro than broodwar needs a reality check.
As micro in bw and sc2 is limited by apm and not by possibilities it is simply impossible for one of those 2 games to have "more micro". the difference is how the micro looks like.
On December 29 2011 23:39 gn0m wrote: I dont think that the unit clumping in SC2 increases nor decreases the skill level particularly much, it’s just the way the game works. That being said, I think that it’s a big flaw since it creates dull blob vs. blob battles. In BW, battles can stretch over several screens which create a much more epic feeling compared to two blobs trying to deal as much DPS as possible. The clumping also makes it harder to see whats going on, which is a big no-no for a game that aspires to be an eSport.
Also, the comments about how unit clumping creates so much micro are just ridiculous. There is less micro in SC2 period, and it has nothing to do with clumping, but with auto surround, smart target, smart cast, unlimited unit selection etc. SC2 is an excellent game but anyone saying that is has more micro than broodwar needs a reality check.
As micro in bw and sc2 is limited by apm and not by possibilities it is simply impossible for one of those 2 games to have "more micro". the difference is how the micro looks like.
It's great as long as the game doesn't encourage success by clumping.
In the example of Protoss, it does. With Terran and lesser extent Zerg spreading out your units is encouraged, as otherwise you will get wrecked by AoE. Spreading units that automatically clump adds to the skill of the game.
On December 29 2011 12:07 Leviance wrote: The first true SC2 bonjwa will actually train and be able to de-clump his units, everyone is gonna be shocked how one-sided battles will go in his favour. I don't get how even now, a year after release, the majority of the pros (Koreans included) only use 1-2 hotkeys for their armies. The best Zergs in the world still run all their lings clumped into a siege line instead of separating a few at the start to completely negate splash, Collossi attacks are still devastating because everyone is too lazy to split intelligently so that most of the splash is avoided, far too often a group of 4-6 templars get hit by ONE emp because lazy players (pros!!!) keep them so vulnerably together. The new UI allows for being more lazy, and the pros atm are showing just that: being lazy (on their level) I know it'd be fucking hard to constantly de-clump and so on, but that's exactly the work a wannabe-bonjwa has to do, if it wasn't hard as shit, everyone could do it. But right now everyone (GSL winners included) just keeps suffering from the 1-2 control group syndrome and the many disadvantages that come with it. frustrating to watch, but leaves hope for Jaedong, Flash etc. switching and showing the rest how it's done.
Couldn't have said it better myself, once we get a pro with the ability to unclump effectively they will dominate the scene.
well when units were retarded in bw you actually had to control your units and cant just 1a to attack. of course its a little easier against splash but you cant just 1 a or your units go in a single file line and you wont do any damage
On December 29 2011 23:13 Nymbul wrote: Maybe it needs to be tweaked slightly but some people are suggesting that blizzard basically worsen the pathing and AI of units.
To fix deathball syndrome you have to make toss units stronger by themselves. Because in cost-for-cost even matches with their counterparts almost all toss units lose.
The problem with that is if you make individual toss units stronger, you also inadvertently make the deathball stronger.
Remove the Colossus, there, deathball solved.
You can't make toss units stronger because of warpgate.
Lol... a terran bio ball which coast less than half the of what a protoss deathball is (even without colo) will get decimated in 5 seconds. Stim + medi + kiting vs gateway units only? Ya right lol. Throw in a ghost then a mediocre terran just rolls over a good protoss.
Protoss has the worst t1 units. The also have very limited synergy with other units. There are only 2 late game composition a good protoss will have, gateway archon, and gateway colo/archon. Without colo then ghost will laugh at any 3/3 protoss army.
On December 29 2011 23:39 gn0m wrote: I dont think that the unit clumping in SC2 increases nor decreases the skill level particularly much, it’s just the way the game works. That being said, I think that it’s a big flaw since it creates dull blob vs. blob battles. In BW, battles can stretch over several screens which create a much more epic feeling compared to two blobs trying to deal as much DPS as possible. The clumping also makes it harder to see whats going on, which is a big no-no for a game that aspires to be an eSport.
Also, the comments about how unit clumping creates so much micro are just ridiculous. There is less micro in SC2 period, and it has nothing to do with clumping, but with auto surround, smart target, smart cast, unlimited unit selection etc. SC2 is an excellent game but anyone saying that is has more micro than broodwar needs a reality check.
As micro in bw and sc2 is limited by apm and not by possibilities it is simply impossible for one of those 2 games to have "more micro". the difference is how the micro looks like.
On December 29 2011 23:13 Nymbul wrote: Maybe it needs to be tweaked slightly but some people are suggesting that blizzard basically worsen the pathing and AI of units.
To fix deathball syndrome you have to make toss units stronger by themselves. Because in cost-for-cost even matches with their counterparts almost all toss units lose.
The problem with that is if you make individual toss units stronger, you also inadvertently make the deathball stronger.
Remove the Colossus, there, deathball solved.
You can't make toss units stronger because of warpgate.
Lol... a terran bio ball which coast less than half the of what a protoss deathball is (even without colo) will get decimated in 5 seconds. Stim + medi + kiting vs gateway units only? Ya right lol. Throw in a ghost then a mediocre terran just rolls over a good protoss.
Protoss has the worst t1 units. The also have very limited synergy with other units. There are only 2 late game composition a good protoss will have, gateway archon, and gateway colo/archon. Without colo then ghost will laugh at any 3/3 protoss army.
If colo gets removed then bring back reaver.
Reaver would be definietly overpowered for the same cost ( 200 / 200 ) if this "ball" syndrome keeps exisisting
On December 29 2011 12:07 Leviance wrote: The first true SC2 bonjwa will actually train and be able to de-clump his units, everyone is gonna be shocked how one-sided battles will go in his favour. I don't get how even now, a year after release, the majority of the pros (Koreans included) only use 1-2 hotkeys for their armies. The best Zergs in the world still run all their lings clumped into a siege line instead of separating a few at the start to completely negate splash, Collossi attacks are still devastating because everyone is too lazy to split intelligently so that most of the splash is avoided, far too often a group of 4-6 templars get hit by ONE emp because lazy players (pros!!!) keep them so vulnerably together. The new UI allows for being more lazy, and the pros atm are showing just that: being lazy (on their level) I know it'd be fucking hard to constantly de-clump and so on, but that's exactly the work a wannabe-bonjwa has to do, if it wasn't hard as shit, everyone could do it. But right now everyone (GSL winners included) just keeps suffering from the 1-2 control group syndrome and the many disadvantages that come with it. frustrating to watch, but leaves hope for Jaedong, Flash etc. switching and showing the rest how it's done.
Ive had similar thoughts often myself.
Imagine for example what you could accomplish as a zerg against a siege line for example. Pre-splitting all banes before running in to avoid any more than one being killed at the time. Having a few lone lings (or roaches for their superior tanking purpose) lead the charge to avoid halv the army dieing to the first siege tank fires. Having 3-5 or so independant control groups of lings targetting different siege tanks. While at the same time controlling your banes/infestors/mutas/whatever properly. Obviously theres a limit to human APM, but one can dream at least since theres just an almost indefinite amount of small things even the best could improve on today.
many things have been changed in response to the death ball being a viable possibility i.e. storm in BW was much stronger than it is now; if part of your army got caught in it then almost always the first priority was getting out of it. in SC2 things like that have to be tweaked for the sakes of 'imbalance'.
Still the biggest point, as someone pointed out above, is that the game is still in its infancy. army splitting and micro in the way that puma used against Hero in DHW grand finals to win on metalopolis completely demolished hero's straight up push; things are developing. Blizzard is well in touch with what the game needs for maximum success and by the time sc2 reaches same age of brood war these issues will be resolved
Lots of people seem to think that clumping units is a "micro opportunity" because de-clumping them manually will give you an advantage. I don't think this is correct at all. De-clumping only gives you an advantage against AoE, otherwise you WANT your units to be clumped because it gives your army concentrated DPS. And against AoE, the answer in large battles is usually not to de-clump units anyway. Instead players focus down or disable the source of AoE (e.g. EMP for HT, Vikings/corruptors for collosus, feedback for infestors, etc.).
No it is not bad, it allows for something that SC2 which is an almost limitless skillceiling in something. Something that SC2 badly lacks micro wise.
Besides, SC2 units need to be made to take critical advantage of stupidity ( i.e. clumping up ) but right now the punishing units don't do that as much. It's a different game, and I like that.
Sc2 has 99 problems, but unit clumping won't be one once players get good enough and once more punishing units get added.
On December 29 2011 23:39 gn0m wrote: I dont think that the unit clumping in SC2 increases nor decreases the skill level particularly much, it’s just the way the game works. That being said, I think that it’s a big flaw since it creates dull blob vs. blob battles. In BW, battles can stretch over several screens which create a much more epic feeling compared to two blobs trying to deal as much DPS as possible. The clumping also makes it harder to see whats going on, which is a big no-no for a game that aspires to be an eSport.
Also, the comments about how unit clumping creates so much micro are just ridiculous. There is less micro in SC2 period, and it has nothing to do with clumping, but with auto surround, smart target, smart cast, unlimited unit selection etc. SC2 is an excellent game but anyone saying that is has more micro than broodwar needs a reality check.
As micro in bw and sc2 is limited by apm and not by possibilities it is simply impossible for one of those 2 games to have "more micro". the difference is how the micro looks like.
I disagree, its not only that some micro stuff is easier to execute due to the streamlined design, but some possibilities have also been removed. Day9 talked about it and described it beautifully so I encourage you to have a look:
On December 29 2011 23:39 gn0m wrote: I dont think that the unit clumping in SC2 increases nor decreases the skill level particularly much, it’s just the way the game works. That being said, I think that it’s a big flaw since it creates dull blob vs. blob battles. In BW, battles can stretch over several screens which create a much more epic feeling compared to two blobs trying to deal as much DPS as possible. The clumping also makes it harder to see whats going on, which is a big no-no for a game that aspires to be an eSport.
Also, the comments about how unit clumping creates so much micro are just ridiculous. There is less micro in SC2 period, and it has nothing to do with clumping, but with auto surround, smart target, smart cast, unlimited unit selection etc. SC2 is an excellent game but anyone saying that is has more micro than broodwar needs a reality check.
As micro in bw and sc2 is limited by apm and not by possibilities it is simply impossible for one of those 2 games to have "more micro". the difference is how the micro looks like.
BW has more micro: Patrol Micro.
Did you even read what he wrote?
Yes I did, and my point is: BW has all the SC2 micro aspects, and even some more, like patrol micro.
It's pretty much a bad thing. To all the people saying it increases micro, you need to consider that the clumping is ingrained into strategy now. Things like Forcefields and Guardian shield REQUIRE clumping to work. As a Protoss player, I definitely have the APM to spread my army apart, but I choose not to because it makes me susceptible to surrounds and bad concaves. For Protoss, this is essentially the worst possible thing that can happen.
The unit clumping is one of the biggest reasons why I lost interest in playing SC2. I'm back to playing other RTS games (not BW, never played that) because I find them more entertaining and fun to play. Way too many of my SC2 games ended up as army blob v. army blob with it all being vaporized in five seconds.
I think I prefer the term "blobbing" over "clumping"
The smaller unit collision radius + 3d graphics means units are constantly overlapping each other visually, and their form just kind of disappears into a big army blob. This is most pronounced with mass roaches I think.
Just speaking of the visual effect of increasing the collision radius (about 1.5 sounds about right): the game would look much better, battles would be much more clearly and cleanly communicated to the spectator, armies would take up more of the screen and battles would feel more epic
As it is right now, a capped army can take up like 1/8th of the screen because everything blobs together... in BW, capped armies took up 2 screens, and it was because there was very little unit overlap.
And people thinking this would hurt micro, it just wouldn't. The difference competitively would be very small, it'd be more of a visual change. Unit scattering would still be just as relevant, and any weakening of AOE can be solved with minor balance tweaks.
On December 29 2011 12:07 Leviance wrote: The first true SC2 bonjwa will actually train and be able to de-clump his units, everyone is gonna be shocked how one-sided battles will go in his favour. I don't get how even now, a year after release, the majority of the pros (Koreans included) only use 1-2 hotkeys for their armies. The best Zergs in the world still run all their lings clumped into a siege line instead of separating a few at the start to completely negate splash, Collossi attacks are still devastating because everyone is too lazy to split intelligently so that most of the splash is avoided, far too often a group of 4-6 templars get hit by ONE emp because lazy players (pros!!!) keep them so vulnerably together. The new UI allows for being more lazy, and the pros atm are showing just that: being lazy (on their level) I know it'd be fucking hard to constantly de-clump and so on, but that's exactly the work a wannabe-bonjwa has to do, if it wasn't hard as shit, everyone could do it. But right now everyone (GSL winners included) just keeps suffering from the 1-2 control group syndrome and the many disadvantages that come with it. frustrating to watch, but leaves hope for Jaedong, Flash etc. switching and showing the rest how it's done.
do you really think with so much at stake and practicing 10+ hours a day that the only reason pros don't spread their armies is because they're lazy?
its not that pros are lazy. not at all. Its that the unit composition of T and P heavily favor "balling" or "clumping". And there isn't enough AOE to deal with that issue. In brood war you had ensnare at T2 for zerg and plague at T3, and ensnare hits about the same size as current fungal, but plague was about 1.5x bigger AoE, and it takes all units down to 1 health. I really hate how people bitch about fungal for this reason alone, but the point is, AoE for T and P and little for zerg, T and P have high range, zerg has low, this essentially maens you WANT to clump because you have the advantage.
The other issue is that, barring things like warping in a row of zealots in front of your protoss ball for ezpz style arrangement, and then moving the zealots ahead while managing your faster deathball units so they stay directly behind in their "clump, which is good for protoss to do all the frickin time, Im going to guess that the pros have discovered, as I have, that Declumpuing takes a backseat to Macro like inject and unit spamming from structures. If you declump, you win maybe 10% better, but focused that much more micro into your playstyle, thus your macro falters and you die in the Remax Wars.
SC2 is about the deathball, or who remaxes faster. There's little else.
On December 29 2011 12:54 Mossen wrote: I don't like the clumping. Mainly because it makes it almost impossible to come back from behind to have a chance of winning the game. In BW, there was more of a chance that, even if behind, you could win a skirmish due to the fact that the whole army was not engaging at once and the player had to use a little more strategy, unit position, etc. This meant that you could possibly change the tide of the game. Now, it is just ball vs. ball and the fact that you can put infinity units on 1 hot key exasperates the situation.
I know this is besides the point, but it also makes it much more unrealistic. Imagine a group of 20 real marines tightly clumped in a ball stutter stepping and hitting the target with every shot fired. Ridiculous, IMHO. Anyone who has fired a gun knows its more likely they would be dying of friendly fire at every shot.
this, completely. If you lose vs a deathball, you've lost. If you lose vs a brood waer deathball, its not by as much because units couldnt clump, like the most retarded king of units colossus. The design of the colossus wasn't even intended to create a deathball by their thinking, it was intended so coloss could run up into enemy bases and kill workers like a raider. dustin browder actaully said this latter part in the beta or release interview or whatever. Basically, the colossus being a perfect deathball supplement was an oversight. But hey, oversights abound in SC2. which is why we have a useless reaper and corruptors and imba marines.
On December 29 2011 23:39 gn0m wrote: I dont think that the unit clumping in SC2 increases nor decreases the skill level particularly much, it’s just the way the game works. That being said, I think that it’s a big flaw since it creates dull blob vs. blob battles. In BW, battles can stretch over several screens which create a much more epic feeling compared to two blobs trying to deal as much DPS as possible. The clumping also makes it harder to see whats going on, which is a big no-no for a game that aspires to be an eSport.
Also, the comments about how unit clumping creates so much micro are just ridiculous. There is less micro in SC2 period, and it has nothing to do with clumping, but with auto surround, smart target, smart cast, unlimited unit selection etc. SC2 is an excellent game but anyone saying that is has more micro than broodwar needs a reality check.
As micro in bw and sc2 is limited by apm and not by possibilities it is simply impossible for one of those 2 games to have "more micro". the difference is how the micro looks like.
BW has more micro: Patrol Micro.
Did you even read what he wrote?
Yes I did, and my point is: BW has all the SC2 micro aspects, and even some more, like patrol micro.
So you read it but didn't understand. BW has more micro possibilities but APM severely limits what a person can do. No one is close to the limit of what you can do with micro in either game, that was what he was saying.
SC2 gameplay rewards AoE SO much it's retarded. I think control groups should be capped or clumping should be lessened to make it more BW-like.
Think of everything each race usually bitch about... splash damage on their mutas, banelings on their marines, colossi tearing through their units, etc.
I don't think it's visually unappealing nor is it any more "unrealistic" than a million and a half other things in the game. I think people are waaaaaaaaaaay too hyperbolic about the "ball v ball" aspect of the game. They make it sound like the entire game comes down to a one second engagement, when 90% of the time it's all based on positioning, timing, unit composition, upgrades, etc.
I love this fucking game exactly how it is and will be pissed as fuck if they start making it work like an old game just so people can play it and feel like they're playing an old game. PLAY THE OLD GAME IF YOU LIKE IT MORE!
On December 29 2011 23:39 gn0m wrote: I dont think that the unit clumping in SC2 increases nor decreases the skill level particularly much, it’s just the way the game works. That being said, I think that it’s a big flaw since it creates dull blob vs. blob battles. In BW, battles can stretch over several screens which create a much more epic feeling compared to two blobs trying to deal as much DPS as possible. The clumping also makes it harder to see whats going on, which is a big no-no for a game that aspires to be an eSport.
Also, the comments about how unit clumping creates so much micro are just ridiculous. There is less micro in SC2 period, and it has nothing to do with clumping, but with auto surround, smart target, smart cast, unlimited unit selection etc. SC2 is an excellent game but anyone saying that is has more micro than broodwar needs a reality check.
As micro in bw and sc2 is limited by apm and not by possibilities it is simply impossible for one of those 2 games to have "more micro". the difference is how the micro looks like.
I disagree, its not only that some micro stuff is easier to execute due to the streamlined design, but some possibilities have also been removed. Day9 talked about it and described it beautifully so I encourage you to have a look:
Yes and no... Day9 is right and everything but (as far as i remember the episode) he talks exclusively about what is now not possible anymore and not what is possible now. F.e.: infinite unit selection allows gives me more spare apm to do something else as well. i dont use x apm to command 50units from a to b. Im only using x/5 now or even less for the same thing which means i have still a lot of ressources to do stuff like macroing or small assaults/defenses while I do this. Especially if you watch supercreative players like TLO you will find out just how true this can be and how many times x you still can squeeze out of your units if you just outmicro your opponent on multiple fronts at the same time.
Especially judging from multidrops and marine vs baneling battles I just think day9 purposly talks sc2 control possibilities a little bit down to avoid debates like (isnt 3x better than 9x because it means that you simply cant win just by being good with mutalisks) a lot of it will/might just come down to development in gameplay. right now we hardly ever see people really use their armies all the time, but what if the game starts to get figuered out. what if people really develope those playstyles in which a protoss exclusivly builds units at proxy pylons and zerg cant afford to build a unit "just in case". Honestly, sc2 develops a lot but in my eyes it still feels like people just pee their pants all day instead of using their possibilities they are still philosophing over ways in which they could lose. (ever seen that game: min0-6 using everx unit they have to harass buildings and control the map. min6-10 setting up a first army from 2bases. min10-15 sending just as few units out so it doesnt matter in terms of defence. then one big fight and over is the game) realisticly one person should always try to be aggressive necause only one player can win a battle. even more so if the game is a little more statistical, as then it is easier to judge wether it is you or your opponent that has the opportunity armywise to do so... but i think we still are not there. jjakji vs leenock was a good start and players like HerO or TLO already generate most of their strength from being in their opponents face. Its still T-5+ years before we should start to talk about bw and sc2 in one sentence -if we ever should!)
I can just about guarantee that if they tried to reduce unit clumping that the community reaction would be overwhelmingly negative. You might think BW was the better game and attribute that to thinks like unit clumping, but in reality SC2 is doing fine the way it is.
The worst part about this debate is that it's really just blind conjecture. You can't predict exactly how a change this big would play out in the long run, and people here seem to be so confident in these idealized, hypothetical notions about how it would benefit the game. It's a very different game than BW and fights are going to be quicker if for no other reason than the unit pathing being way better.
On December 30 2011 03:24 Beakyboo wrote: I can just about guarantee that if they tried to reduce unit clumping that the community reaction would be overwhelmingly negative. You might think BW was the better game and attribute that to thinks like unit clumping, but in reality SC2 is doing fine the way it is.
The worst part about this debate is that it's really just blind conjecture. You can't predict exactly how a change this big would play out in the long run, and people here seem to be so confident in these idealized, hypothetical notions about how it would benefit the game. It's a very different game than BW and fights are going to be quicker if for no other reason than the unit pathing being way better.
it doesnt have to be. Map editor. I've been saying for ages that if people truly think something is OP or UP, or something mechanical about the game needs changing, map edit it and release it as a "TheoryCraft game X" where some idea is put into practice for people to play on their own. This would not only increase everyone's personal understanding of the game, an d make them more informed when blizz tries to "patch/fix" issues, it would also give them some idea of what could really work as far as changing the game.
firstly that clumping is visually unappealing besides the strategic concerns.
Secondly, having played a lot of Warcraft 2, Warcraft 3 frozen throne,and now this game I will say that as much as I enjoy this game (and I do) I miss the ability for superior micro to dramatically effect the outcome of battles like they did in the previous games. I know a lot of people are shouting "THEN GO PLAY THE OLD GAME" but that's not the point. No one is attempting to revert sc2 to an older style of game for nostalgia's sake, the fact is that sc2 is missing a lot by not emulating these exciting, interesting qualities of its classic RTS predecessors.
In this game, so many battles are over in the blink of an eye. Yes positioning, micro is important to some extent but not nearly to the degree it was in games like frozen throne. In frozen throne you would often have armies that were identical in food to each other and it was chiefly your mastery in focusing units, doing clever micro plays etc. that determined the outcome in battle. It coudl lead to some really beautiful and exciting moments. Unfortunately that is missing from this game. Most of the time you can figure out before hand who is going to win the battle entirely from food count and composition. Controlling your units plays some role but not nearly enough imo.
So yeah, basically I'm hoping that in the coming expansions, minute control of your army in sc2 will pay bigger dividends, and that less of the battles will be over in the blink of an eye.
i think its a good thing for the game however it can be extremely unforgiving. it increases the skill cap for those that spread and prepare for their opponents army and is unforgiving for the unprepared baller.
take fungal for instance - i agree that the patch was necessary because it was too easy-mode. now, it requires more precision to chain fungal to kill units which was absolutely necessary. however there are still complaints (significantly less, anyway) that fungal is too strong.
well, thats not exactly true. you clumping your units is too weak. if you use micro and splitting, you will notice that fungal becomes exponentially less effective and it becomes difficult for zerg to decide what to fungal. often times, this engagement requires a retreat and loss of units for nothing (due to siege tank fire, forcefields, colossus, storm, etc).
i can't tell you how many zvz's i've won by pre-spreading my units and having a better unit concave where fungals were hitting a single row of roaches instead of my opponent's 2 rows. or how much more DPS i get because my hydras aren't clusterfucking and taking their sweet-ass time to get in range. same with roaches. i'm sure this is especially true for the balling-terrans vs the spreading-terrans. even for colossus! imagine the sheer dps if you had your colossus lined parallel to the MM of your opponent and zealots providing even surface area (no 2 zealots having to run around each other) to slam against the terran ball? its tremendous and partially why i feel like i see protoss losing big engagements. conversely its why i see them winning engagements as well. take it from a zerg - surface area totally matters.
conversely, balling does make attacking with small numbers of marines really good. like REALLY good. i've seen players micro around an extractor and kill an obscene amount of zerglings because of stutter-stepping withe a ball. but its only as good as the other player allows it to be. but it also makes forcefields and baneling splash really good. it requires little micro on the terran's end but it can be punished pretty hard too. suddenly one baneling is hitting all of those marines instead of a few.
i guess my final comment would be the mid-game ball. its pretty potent and can punish pretty hard (especially groups of banelings). but i think, from a zerg perspective, it can be dealt with by preparing properly via creep spread, premaking banelings and creating more zerglings as the push is coming (instead of waiting for your new lings to pop and making banelings with THEM). with protoss, im not sure what to tell ya. you really do need aoe and rushing to aoe can be punished a mid-game tank pressure. i guess scouting and reading your opponent is really whats important.
TL;DR: with proper preparation, balling punishes the baller. not the person who is properly prepared.
I think that the game is fine, most of what people are saying about micro in broodwar was to make up for design flaws (muta micro ) with ou it Terran would be having a large advantage in the match up . Peopl complain about sc2 but why do we all just try to make up for the perceived flaws? I'm sure the reason broodwar did so well was that blizzard wasn't gearing for a highly. Competitive gAme. While in sc2 they were gearing for exactly that! They made it easier for units to move around , made spell casting more effective (fungals and storm vs clumps emps to a lesser extent) So with competitive gaming in mind but still wanting People of all levels to enjoy try make it so units can ball up and fight eachother but really reward people who position and micro . There is nothing wrong with the game it's what you make of it and how you look at it from multiple views
The clumping of units in SC2 DOES NOT increase the necessity to spread your units to avoid AOE compared to BW. Why? Because AOE was much more powerful in BW than in SC2. AOE has actually been massively nerfed in SC2 compared to BW, BECAUSE of the constant clumping of units.
How does Blizzard solve this problem? Easy! Increase the collision size of units, re-buff the potency of AOE, and re-balance the game around this simple design change.
What is the positive of such a change? AOE remains relatively as powerful as it is now, so no real change there. However, manual positioning of parts of your army in fights will matter more (it will take longer for a more spread-out army to automatically form a concave, for instance, and will encourage and REWARD the better player more for preemptively setting up an arc).
Really the only negative that I see is that it makes splash damage too viable. You can't win a long macro game without splash; At least, it will be a lot harder to.
On December 30 2011 10:07 LilClinkin wrote: The clumping of units in SC2 DOES NOT increase the necessity to spread your units to avoid AOE compared to BW. Why? Because AOE was much more powerful in BW than in SC2. AOE has actually been massively nerfed in SC2 compared to BW, BECAUSE of the constant clumping of units.
How does Blizzard solve this problem? Easy! Increase the collision size of units, re-buff the potency of AOE, and re-balance the game around this simple design change.
What is the positive of such a change? AOE remains relatively as powerful as it is now, so no real change there. However, manual positioning of parts of your army in fights will matter more (it will take longer for a more spread-out army to automatically form a concave, for instance, and will encourage and REWARD the better player more for preemptively setting up an arc).
I 100% agree. The fix (especially if combined with no smart casting) would make AoE much more powerful. This however is such a powerful argument:
Doesn't that little switch make everything more epic and understandable. I can identify units individually and pick out which ones the pro is micro'ing, individually. Rather than vaguely seeing a blob with a variety of units.
And no matter how good the pro's get, it will never look like this when the armies are in transit. There's no reason or cause to split units when you're sending units from one side of the map to the other. However, aesthetically, it makes all the difference in the world.
In addition, stalker with collosi on top in a giant ball not only naturally occurs due to mechanics, but it is desirable due to concentrated dps in the smallest amount of area will murder spread out units. It's why focus fire works. The more volleys there are, the better off, focus fire is because there's less stuff firing back at you each time.
But forget about mechanics, just from an observer point of few. Which looks better? Clumped or unclumped? Which is more understandable at a glance? Which one can you identify the armies by their parts rather than a vague blob?
as long as there are enough aoe units then it shouldnt be an issue as engagin gin the death ball style is discrouged as it then allows ur opponent to maximise their aoe units dps. thus it would be a skill to control, ur uinits so that uy have the most efficent formation i.e. largest number of units engaged whilst minimal number of units of ur opponenet engaged while at the same time being spread enough so that u would be vunerable to aoe attacks
On December 29 2011 23:39 gn0m wrote: I dont think that the unit clumping in SC2 increases nor decreases the skill level particularly much, it’s just the way the game works. That being said, I think that it’s a big flaw since it creates dull blob vs. blob battles. In BW, battles can stretch over several screens which create a much more epic feeling compared to two blobs trying to deal as much DPS as possible. The clumping also makes it harder to see whats going on, which is a big no-no for a game that aspires to be an eSport.
Also, the comments about how unit clumping creates so much micro are just ridiculous. There is less micro in SC2 period, and it has nothing to do with clumping, but with auto surround, smart target, smart cast, unlimited unit selection etc. SC2 is an excellent game but anyone saying that is has more micro than broodwar needs a reality check.
As micro in bw and sc2 is limited by apm and not by possibilities it is simply impossible for one of those 2 games to have "more micro". the difference is how the micro looks like.
I disagree, its not only that some micro stuff is easier to execute due to the streamlined design, but some possibilities have also been removed. Day9 talked about it and described it beautifully so I encourage you to have a look:
Yes and no... Day9 is right and everything but (as far as i remember the episode) he talks exclusively about what is now not possible anymore and not what is possible now. F.e.: infinite unit selection allows gives me more spare apm to do something else as well. i dont use x apm to command 50units from a to b. Im only using x/5 now or even less for the same thing which means i have still a lot of ressources to do stuff like macroing or small assaults/defenses while I do this. Especially if you watch supercreative players like TLO you will find out just how true this can be and how many times x you still can squeeze out of your units if you just outmicro your opponent on multiple fronts at the same time.
As I see it, there are two essential changes in SC2 micro compared to BW micro. One is that a lot of things have been simplified, such as smart cast and all the other stuff I mentioned in my previous post. Although I think that Blizzard went a bit overboard with the idea of making SC2 accessible to all kind of players, I still can appreciate how, for example, unlimited unit selection is a necessary feature in a modern RTS game. Players should be able to move their entire army without extensive APM usage – I totally get how that appeals to the broad mass of gamers.
The other change however is a different story, and that is the limited possibilities in SC2 for an extremely talented player to beat a very good player in a micro battle. In SC2, it is not only easier to execute simple commands but it is also harder for a better player to radically affect the outcome of a battle due to superior micro. This is a big problem. In the currant state of SC2, there isn’t sufficient ways to maximize the usage of units. As Day9 puts it, proper muta micro increases the utility of mutas by 9 times whereas good SC2 micro increases the utility by 1,5 times. In BW, I love how amazing micro can change the outcome of a game. SC2 units on the other hand are easy to handle, and to what you want them to do, but in the meantime they are not the dangerous tool they were in BW, in the hands of a progamer.
Moreover, many SC2 players, in my opinion, have a flawed view on this matter. As you put it, “more spare APM gives players the opportunity to do other stuff, like macroing and whatnot”. SC2 macro is already much easier so I’m not going to get into that. But my point is that there isn’t that much to do with the spare APM – the possibilities to spend spare APM on game changing micro is already caped. Please note that I’m not saying that there isn’t stuff you can do with spare APM. Neither BW nor SC2 can ever be played at the maximum level; it isn’t humanly possible to have perfect micro in either game. The thing is that the spare APM cannot be utilized to increase the efficiency in a way that is possible in BW.
Especially judging from multidrops and marine vs baneling battles I just think day9 purposly talks sc2 control possibilities a little bit down to avoid debates like (isnt 3x better than 9x because it means that you simply cant win just by being good with mutalisks)
I’m not going to pretend that I speak for Day9 in any way, but I think it’s far more likely that he is very cautious about criticizing SC2 than that he is purposely talks down the possibilities of SC2. Baneling vs. Marine micro is a great example of a skill rewarding, dynamic micro situation, but unfortunately there are few situation like this in SC2 (and multidrops are in no way more present in SC2 than BW). Either way, I strongly believe that a game that rewards a really talented player is a more interesting game, even if that means that someone can win a game with excellent muta micro alone.
a lot of it will/might just come down to development in gameplay. right now we hardly ever see people really use their armies all the time, but what if the game starts to get figuered out. what if people really develope those playstyles in which a protoss exclusivly builds units at proxy pylons and zerg cant afford to build a unit "just in case". Honestly, sc2 develops a lot but in my eyes it still feels like people just pee their pants all day instead of using their possibilities they are still philosophing over ways in which they could lose. (ever seen that game: min0-6 using everx unit they have to harass buildings and control the map. min6-10 setting up a first army from 2bases. min10-15 sending just as few units out so it doesnt matter in terms of defence. then one big fight and over is the game) realisticly one person should always try to be aggressive necause only one player can win a battle. even more so if the game is a little more statistical, as then it is easier to judge wether it is you or your opponent that has the opportunity armywise to do so... but i think we still are not there. jjakji vs leenock was a good start and players like HerO or TLO already generate most of their strength from being in their opponents face. Its still T-5+ years before we should start to talk about bw and sc2 in one sentence -if we ever should!)
I’m not quite sure what your point is here. I agree that SC2 micro will probably be better in the future but at this moment I feel that the limit is set by game design, not the lack of skilled players. Better players will emerge into the scene but there is only so much they can do with what is given to them.
One problem with the Day9 video is that people are throwing the 9x for BW vs the 1.5x for SC2 that he stated like it was a fact, or that it he had done any demonstrable research to come to those numbers. They were almost completely random. While saying that the cap for unit efficiency due to micro is higher in BW than in SC2 is an arguable point, I don't think throwing out numbers like that are at all accurate, and people keep saying it like it's a given truth.
I think is worse, from the spectator view and for the gamer point, for a ton of reasons. Clumping makes micro easier (no ofense but those that say that it makes it harder have no idea what are they talking about), is uglier to watch and the "auto arc" favors fast movement 1a units (stimmed marauders, roaches)
On December 30 2011 11:09 MCDayC wrote: One problem with the Day9 video is that people are throwing the 9x for BW vs the 1.5x for SC2 that he stated like it was a fact, or that it he had done any demonstrable research to come to those numbers. They were almost completely random. While saying that the cap for unit efficiency due to micro is higher in BW than in SC2 is an arguable point, I don't think throwing out numbers like that are at all accurate, and people keep saying it like it's a given truth.
Agreed, the numbers are totally arbitrary but the point remains valid. There is just more potential micro power in BW units but perhaps not x9 compared to x1,5. I don’t think that Day9 intended to put numbers on micro ability, he just used them to prove his point.
On August 15 2007 15:09 Zanno wrote: Here's a comparison of SC pathing vs war3 pathing. From watching gameplay vids, it SEEMS to me, that units are using war3 style pathing, except clumping together more heavily. Someone who went to Blizzcon can confirm this.
Edit: Seems like some people can't read, so I'm going to emphasize this very important point with some bold italic underlining: THE FORMATION BUTTON IN WARCRAFT 3 CHANGES THE PATHFINDING SO THAT YOUR SELECTION MOVES AT THE SPEED OF THE SLOWEST UNIT. THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH UNITS GETTING CLUMPED UP INTO A NICE LOOK GRID, AND THERE IS NO WAY TO DISABLE THIS ASPECT OF THE WAR3 PATHING!!!
SC pathing: units move parallel to each other, unless they're going down a ramp or something else is obstructing their path, or the formation is outside of the "magical boxes".
It's a little inaccurate at times, but it generally gets the right idea.
(edit) If the units are outside of the magic boxes, they all converge on a single point, regardless of whether or not the point is inside or outside of the unit formation.
War pathing: units fall into a nice looking box
Oh no! All that time I spent setting up a nice little formation to protect my archmage was completely wasted.
It doesn't matter if they are tightly packed or spread out, they still fall into the same spread box formation. You might also want to take note that the position of the box is dependent on the direction you clicked the command in.
This box may look nice, but it has huge implications on unit formations, in other words, you can't set one up! Toggling the formation button does nothing - that sets it so that a group of units moves at the same speed as the slowest unit.
Someone from Blizzcon can probably answer this. I've noticed big units like siege tanks tripping up as they try to rotate around each other, instead of moving parallel to one another so they wouldn't have to get around each other. It also seems like no matter what the player does, marines travel in huge boxy clusters.
That box may LOOK nice, but it plays horrible, and out of all of the features that you can argue newbie up war3, this is by far the biggest one. The most optimal pathing formation is one where all your units move parallel to each other - refer to 1,000 vods of players setting up zergling surrounds, moving perfectly set up zealot walls to charge tank lines and block zerglings from hitting your templar, and deliberately calculated tank formations. With war3 style pathing, these formations would immediately be broken up in a single move command.
I don't understand why anyone else hasn't brought this up but me, and whenever I posted about it during war3 beta, I got ignored. This is a HUGE FUCKING DEAL and we need to make a lot of noise about it to get this fixed as soon as possible.
Unlike a lot of other comments about war3 in this forum, this is not a blind "war3=noob" flame, it's a serious issue that's gone without discussion.
What we know now, is that the pathing works similar to warcraft 3 except it arranges units in a circle instead of a square.
In starcraft you are often quite deliberate with your unit formations, and as a medicore BW PvT player I can tell you that very subtle differences in unit formation I can't even put into words make the difference between you crushing a tank line with minimal losses or losing your whole army killing like 3 tanks and a bunch of vultures. But in starcraft 2, every time you go to attack, your army formation is completely reset.
If they really want to fix this in the most baller passive way possible, that noobs will never notice, would be to implement BW style pathfinding for control groups with 12 units or less where your units stay in the formation you put them unless they can't.
It has nothing to do with being "bad", all it needs to do is move units in parallel. Buggy dragoon AI can fuck off, I don't miss it, I just want my units to do what I tell them.
What honestly surprises me, isn't so much that I called this right away, but rather the issue is exactly as severe I thought it would be. Maybe if we are lucky, we can get it fixed in HOTS, but I think one of the problem we're having Blizzard is that I haven't seen a single pro player articulate why BW pathing was better
On December 30 2011 11:14 Belha wrote: Please add a pool
I think is worse, from the spectator view and for the gamer point, for a ton of reasons. Clumping makes micro easier (no ofense but those that say that it makes it harder have no idea what are they talking about), is uglier to watch and the "auto arc" favors fast movement 1a units (stimmed marauders, roaches)
Poll: Unit organisation
Units always stay spread out (31)
69%
Keep it as it is - clumped up (7)
16%
Allow unit battle formations (7)
16%
45 total votes
Your vote: Unit organisation
(Vote): Units always stay spread out (Vote): Keep it as it is - clumped up (Vote): Allow unit battle formations
i'm not sure i can comment on this, but i always subconsciously think in terms of zerglings, marines, and zealots & compare the different feelings between both games when it comes to engagements.
simply put, i just think it is mostly terran bio being made stronger for starcraft 2. the units stay together very naturally, and yet you can avoid AOE with them extremely quickly. medics are no longer part of the ground army, but are further along the tech tree and are much more expensive. it is the image of bio being easy to control and easy to make efficient that it makes it hard for me to wrap my head around everything else that matters.
zealot & dragoon were the bread and butter. it was how you controlled them, and the ratio between how many of each were made that made every bit of difference to me. the units would stray and target fast moving, high-damage-dealing units even if they were no match for them (zealot vs vulture). it is now like moving against a wall of units and is very hard to separate an army that remains together. maybe it's for the best, i don't know.
all i know is that my images of zealots, marines, and zerglings are forever shattered ):
if units didnt clump protoss would be extremely underpowered. All our army compositions depend on splash damage. Also it's not that hard to spread out your unites a little to do less damage. And when you look at it from a point of realisticly speaking its a game not real life it doesnt have to be realistic. The game like mechanics and tricks that you can take advantage of give players and spectators even more to be entertained by. In brood war it was harder to macro thus a moving alot of your armies then macroing up took a lot more effort so alot less control could be given to the units while in starcraft 2 macro is a piece of cake )compared to broodwar). It takes like 50 apm to macro @ a masters league level and this allows you to have more time to control your army so I would argue that It is a positive asset to the game rather than a flaw
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...
And unclumping them seems more useful than having them clumped so you can avoid AOE... just because bad mechanics forced you to click each dragoon 30 times so it didnt wander off on its own doesn't make it a better thing. Microing small groups of units to unclump them can be every bit as hard.
But it obviously isn't because everyone is in consensus that SC: BW is a much harder game to master.
False Statement. Disproven by logic statements and parameterizing.
The only true statement lies in that they are both different games, and you can apply various different functions to come out with either SC2 being harder or SC:BW being harder.
One could easily say SC2 is so much harder because units die so easy that the amount of micro you could do in SC may be higher, but skillwise, it might be "harder" to micro in SC2 because events happen so fast. See this problem with human beings?
I think if specific units had micro "tricks" (i.e mutas/wraiths/vultures/carriers ect. in Brood War) this would be a lot less of a problem...but the only micro tricks SC2 has is splitting marines (if that even is considered a trick -.-) and I'm struggling to think of any others. We are stuck with the 1a syndrome because that's simply more efficient because the units are designed to work optimally like that as opposed to require something done to them to work at their max.
On December 30 2011 12:09 FatkiddsLag wrote: those of you who want unclumped i just assume you want terran bio ball to be unstoppable
im sorry but this has to be said.
if blizzard is going to be changing the pathing dont you think things will be balanced accordingly????!!!////???
honestly throughout this thread there are heaps of people saying "oh no but then this unit will be OP nono no this will be op no no no then this unit will be shit"
omfg stop for a moment.
if blizzard were to change Ai clumping to what the images on page 12 show they would only do so at the release of either HOTS or LOV. (LOV more likely).
once doing so everything would be reshuffled and re balanced to account for the new AI changes.
there wont be any OMFG storm is UP it shit. because it will be changed!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1111111121111 elerven one one !!!!
blizzard however has said they dont want to dumb down ai but i dont think they understand that its not dumbing down the ai but rather "changing" the ai pathing.
ARGHGHGHGHGHGHGHHGHHGGH
think for a moment what is better to watch. two tightly packed balls of units firing lasers and whoosh sparks at each other.
or a spread out easy to see units that now have to be moved around more in order for each side to maximise efficiency?
YES IT IS easier for players to 1a a ball of units across a map and in most cases. YES IT WOULD be harder to control army's if the pathing were changed.
but if people can play BW (not a bw vs sc2 comment calm down) at the level they do with the restrictions in place people WILL adapt to sc2 changes.
and ultimately sc2's success as an esport (gosh i said it) will be determined by is watchabilty.
people need to get off the whole "omfg balance balance balance shit shit shit op up op up dont change it will break the game "bandwagon and just think.
/rant over.
Edited: not as much caps not as much shouting ha ha cheers.
@poster above , I suggest editing the caps because excessive use of it will make you sound like you are shouting the whole way and mod's do not like that ... good luck.
Clumping is not the issue. Its having unlimited units in a control group. Directly leads to deathball/1a syndrome.
12 unit selection in BW is often called archaic, but it forces you to spread your units out due to only selecting some of your army at a time. Although, 24 might be a better limit for SC2.
Bad obviously. It results in ball vs ball which sucks as a spectator, and less ability to control space because of how powerful dense clumps of units are.
How do you "fix" unit clumping ? Air unit clumping ? well that was there in bw and it will cause a ton of problems with muta micro ( phoenix also but those are still quite rare to see in number over 5 ) Ground unit clumping ? How do you make them no clump ? They are not ( as far as i am concerned ) clumping to unrealistically except for the colossus which is kind of an air-ground unit so we just ignore him here for a second.Hell they are so "unclumpable" that ultralisks can't walk over lings.
What you are asking for is a "bad" engine which forces you to not be able to control your army at once/unit don't clump due to bad pathing, just like bw ( in which the engine was good for the time..but that was a while ago ), and honestly if you really want that there is a whole bunch of ppl playing bw , hell even ppl playing sc vanila, that you can play with/watch a competitive scene with. Blizzard unit pathing/interaction is the most well done and realistic ,while not damaging the actual control you have over the unit (see Total war series/LOTR where the units interact more realistically but once they engage... you ain't gonna micro them to much since they won't do what you tell them to do due to the "realists" combat ), in any RTS up to date. Ground units don't clump unrealistically except for the colossus ( which is an air-ish unit ) and air units ( which do so for the sake of being able to micro them properly ) Why have worse pathing and units not interacting as realistically as they do now ? Not to have "big battles" ? The game is designed so that big battles will happen, if you don't want that then you should design the game another way where there would be more mobile units and all the "strong" units would be siege tank like ( quite frankly that will never be sc2 nor i want it to be ) by introducing shitty pathing like in bw ( again, im not insulting bw, by the time they made the engine i know there pathing was the greatest )/ limited control group you fix the problem by increasing the mechanical requirement to do so, which is pretty much saying " you have to be god like with unit control to play properly"... i do not believe anyone would agree with this. Bw was so static with small engagements everywhere due to siege units being overpowered so making the game engine worse so that units don't interact well one near another might not even fix it.
It is just pointless to discuss this until someone puts the effort to give us a custom map with a "proper" unit pathing so thus ppl can decide if it would idd help sc2. I doubt blizzard will change the god-like pathing/unit control with no match in the RTS world that the game has now.
Edit: Its way bigger of a rant than i had expected now that i read it, so let me tl;dr it for you TL;DR + Show Spoiler +
If you want to play bw go play bw, people still play bw and there is a reason why bw is not played so much in USA/EU, making sc2 like bw will make sc2 not be played so much in USA/EU it won't magically make everyone play a bw-esc game because it called sc2
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...
harder to micro because the units were retarded (dragoon)
I read this a lot and I dont know where this came from. Every person with IQ over 60 after 20-30 games could understand the specifics of the dragoon`s movement.
You can't explain that! But in all seriousness, if you don't think Goliaths and Dragoons were autistic there is something wrong with you, I'm sure even A+ players (like Day[9], Idra, Testie, etc. and such) would tell you that their pathing was awful and they were terrible to control at times.
On August 15 2007 15:09 Zanno wrote: Here's a comparison of SC pathing vs war3 pathing. From watching gameplay vids, it SEEMS to me, that units are using war3 style pathing, except clumping together more heavily. Someone who went to Blizzcon can confirm this.
Edit: Seems like some people can't read, so I'm going to emphasize this very important point with some bold italic underlining: THE FORMATION BUTTON IN WARCRAFT 3 CHANGES THE PATHFINDING SO THAT YOUR SELECTION MOVES AT THE SPEED OF THE SLOWEST UNIT. THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH UNITS GETTING CLUMPED UP INTO A NICE LOOK GRID, AND THERE IS NO WAY TO DISABLE THIS ASPECT OF THE WAR3 PATHING!!!
SC pathing: units move parallel to each other, unless they're going down a ramp or something else is obstructing their path, or the formation is outside of the "magical boxes".
It's a little inaccurate at times, but it generally gets the right idea.
(edit) If the units are outside of the magic boxes, they all converge on a single point, regardless of whether or not the point is inside or outside of the unit formation.
War pathing: units fall into a nice looking box
Oh no! All that time I spent setting up a nice little formation to protect my archmage was completely wasted.
It doesn't matter if they are tightly packed or spread out, they still fall into the same spread box formation. You might also want to take note that the position of the box is dependent on the direction you clicked the command in.
This box may look nice, but it has huge implications on unit formations, in other words, you can't set one up! Toggling the formation button does nothing - that sets it so that a group of units moves at the same speed as the slowest unit.
Someone from Blizzcon can probably answer this. I've noticed big units like siege tanks tripping up as they try to rotate around each other, instead of moving parallel to one another so they wouldn't have to get around each other. It also seems like no matter what the player does, marines travel in huge boxy clusters.
That box may LOOK nice, but it plays horrible, and out of all of the features that you can argue newbie up war3, this is by far the biggest one. The most optimal pathing formation is one where all your units move parallel to each other - refer to 1,000 vods of players setting up zergling surrounds, moving perfectly set up zealot walls to charge tank lines and block zerglings from hitting your templar, and deliberately calculated tank formations. With war3 style pathing, these formations would immediately be broken up in a single move command.
I don't understand why anyone else hasn't brought this up but me, and whenever I posted about it during war3 beta, I got ignored. This is a HUGE FUCKING DEAL and we need to make a lot of noise about it to get this fixed as soon as possible.
Unlike a lot of other comments about war3 in this forum, this is not a blind "war3=noob" flame, it's a serious issue that's gone without discussion.
What we know now, is that the pathing works similar to warcraft 3 except it arranges units in a circle instead of a square.
In starcraft you are often quite deliberate with your unit formations, and as a medicore BW PvT player I can tell you that very subtle differences in unit formation I can't even put into words make the difference between you crushing a tank line with minimal losses or losing your whole army killing like 3 tanks and a bunch of vultures. But in starcraft 2, every time you go to attack, your army formation is completely reset.
If they really want to fix this in the most baller passive way possible, that noobs will never notice, would be to implement BW style pathfinding for control groups with 12 units or less where your units stay in the formation you put them unless they can't.
It has nothing to do with being "bad", all it needs to do is move units in parallel. Buggy dragoon AI can fuck off, I don't miss it, I just want my units to do what I tell them.
What honestly surprises me, isn't so much that I called this right away, but rather the issue is exactly as severe I thought it would be. Maybe if we are lucky, we can get it fixed in HOTS, but I think one of the problem we're having Blizzard is that I haven't seen a single pro player articulate why BW pathing was better
Huh. You know what? I think you're right. Unit clumping is part of the problem due to aesthetics. But the resetting formations is actually anti-micro and far more problematic. There was one question, I've had in the back of my mind for awhile and that is- is there magic box for the ground? Because the units pushing each other around seems the opposite of how magic box ground troops worked.
That was part of how dragoon micro or even zealot lines attacking tank lines worked. But yeah, somehow the issue of units moving in the formation you set up (NOT a formation button), running parallel needs to be talked about. Because Blizzard seems to think the argument is we want dragoon glitches back in the game and that is simply not true.
No matter how good pro's will get, they will still have to fight this formation reset problem and the ui itself will counteract them every step of the way.
On December 30 2011 15:12 Aterons_toss wrote: How do you "fix" unit clumping ? Air unit clumping ? well that was there in bw and it will cause a ton of problems with muta micro ( phoenix also but those are still quite rare to see in number over 5 ) Ground unit clumping ? How do you make them no clump ? They are not ( as far as i am concerned ) clumping to unrealistically except for the colossus which is kind of an air-ground unit so we just ignore him here for a second.Hell they are so "unclumpable" that ultralisks can't walk over lings.
What you are asking for is a "bad" engine which forces you to not be able to control your army at once/unit don't clump due to bad pathing, just like bw ( in which the engine was good for the time..but that was a while ago ), and honestly if you really want that there is a whole bunch of ppl playing bw , hell even ppl playing sc vanila, that you can play with/watch a competitive scene with. Blizzard unit pathing/interaction is the most well done and realistic ,while not damaging the actual control you have over the unit (see Total war series/LOTR where the units interact more realistically but once they engage... you ain't gonna micro them to much since they won't do what you tell them to do due to the "realists" combat ), in any RTS up to date. Ground units don't clump unrealistically except for the colossus ( which is an air-ish unit ) and air units ( which do so for the sake of being able to micro them properly ) Why have worse pathing and units not interacting as realistically as they do now ? Not to have "big battles" ? The game is designed so that big battles will happen, if you don't want that then you should design the game another way where there would be more mobile units and all the "strong" units would be siege tank like ( quite frankly that will never be sc2 nor i want it to be ) by introducing shitty pathing like in bw ( again, im not insulting bw, by the time they made the engine i know there pathing was the greatest )/ limited control group you fix the problem by increasing the mechanical requirement to do so, which is pretty much saying " you have to be god like with unit control to play properly"... i do not believe anyone would agree with this. Bw was so static with small engagements everywhere due to siege units being overpowered so making the game engine worse so that units don't interact well one near another might not even fix it.
It is just pointless to discuss this until someone puts the effort to give us a custom map with a "proper" unit pathing so thus ppl can decide if it would idd help sc2. I doubt blizzard will change the god-like pathing/unit control with no match in the RTS world that the game has now.
Edit: Its way bigger of a rant than i had expected now that i read it, so let me tl;dr it for you TL;DR + Show Spoiler +
If you want to play bw go play bw, people still play bw and there is a reason why bw is not played so much in USA/EU, making sc2 like bw will make sc2 not be played so much in USA/EU it won't magically make everyone play a bw-esc game because it called sc2
Seem pretty ill informed about broodwar , engagement was static because of mech immobility , it can't move as fast like MnM to get map control that's why it has to rely on dropships and map control to gain an advantage or slow push towards the enemy as seen in TvP , TvT . How does one unit interact well with each other ? Vultures are good companion with tanks , so are goliaths and even turrets .
On the other hand bw doesn't have "SHITTY" pathing at all , I enjoy microing my siege tank , spreading them in front of my enemy's natural , putting up advertisement saying " COME AT ME BRO " and they do , damn blue goo's so wonderful to see . Muta micro , vulture micro, zergling micro, dragoon micro, Tank micro ,carrier micro , they are so wonderful and even the goliath lousy pathing is really tolerable . A simple move command or stop to de freeze the frozen dragoons are quite easy in my opinion .
Sc2 elitism sentiments is oozing through out your whole statement .
On December 30 2011 12:09 FatkiddsLag wrote: those of you who want unclumped i just assume you want terran bio ball to be unstoppable
im sorry but this has to be said.
if blizzard is going to be changing the pathing dont you think things will be balanced accordingly????!!!////???
honestly throughout this thread there are heaps of people saying "oh no but then this unit will be OP nono no this will be op no no no then this unit will be shit"
omfg stop for a moment.
if blizzard were to change Ai clumping to what the images on page 12 show they would only do so at the release of either HOTS or LOV. (LOV more likely).
once doing so everything would be reshuffled and re balanced to account for the new AI changes.
there wont be any OMFG storm is UP it shit. because it will be changed!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1111111121111 elerven one one !!!!
blizzard however has said they dont want to dumb down ai but i dont think they understand that its not dumbing down the ai but rather "changing" the ai pathing.
ARGHGHGHGHGHGHGHHGHHGGH
think for a moment what is better to watch. two tightly packed balls of units firing lasers and whoosh sparks at each other.
or a spread out easy to see units that now have to be moved around more in order for each side to maximise efficiency?
YES IT IS easier for players to 1a a ball of units across a map and in most cases. YES IT WOULD be harder to control army's if the pathing were changed.
but if people can play BW (not a bw vs sc2 comment calm down) at the level they do with the restrictions in place people WILL adapt to sc2 changes.
and ultimately sc2's success as an esport (gosh i said it) will be determined by is watchabilty.
people need to get off the whole "omfg balance balance balance shit shit shit op up op up dont change it will break the game "bandwagon and just think.
/rant over.
Edited: not as much caps not as much shouting ha ha cheers.
exactly. the whole game, each and every unit would have to be rebalanced. You could as well just ask blizzard to drop sc2 and start developing sc3, as it is more likely to play sc3 in 2013 than unclumped sc2 ever. Also this collision size stuff people arguement with wont change a lot in terma of "stuff you have to do". broodwar was so.hard to to micro because units did not do what u wanted them to do, but they still could be packed very tightly artificially. changing the colission circles takes away the possibility to micro units close together as well. units still get stuck in "balls" but now they dont look like balls anymore and everytime you try to micro a unit from the middle it still wont move through the invisibly blocked spaces around it. You will have to dumb down ai, to achieve what you are looking for.
And what is bettercto watch? i guess thazs a simple question of what you want to see... do you prefer tennis or soccer, skiing or basketball, dancing or "the biggest explosions". I prefer watching sc2 over bw,for whatever reasons.
I would like units to clump together more tightly.
Especially air units. They de-clump so quickly... and you can't do the same muta micro as brood war.
It's an easy change. Just slow the de-clumping of air units. Broodwar air units de-clump, but really really slowly. Actually, maybe I'm just imaging overlords. So do units de-clump at the same speed as their unit speed? I blanking now.
As far as ground units... I would disagree that making units more retarded would be the best choice for sc2. Sure, it'll make things more difficult to move around. But there isn't a reason to... What kind of skills do you need to move BW units? If you can move single units as smooth as sc2 movement, then there isn't a reason to change movement. The problem shouldn't be movement, but how fast units kill other units with deathballs. as everyone says, there's a lot of splash damage in starcraft 2. It makes the game faster since movement is smarter. It's just zerg doesn't have a good answer to protoss deathballs..
The koreans making the fuss should be rectified with some new ideas. I don't see how making units more retarded will make the game more entertaining. And don't tell me the reason people don't like deathballs because it 'looks stupid.' Well, i've been watching a few games, and these deathballs are looking a lot more like squads and untis are spread around the maps like squads...
On December 30 2011 12:09 FatkiddsLag wrote: those of you who want unclumped i just assume you want terran bio ball to be unstoppable
im sorry but this has to be said.
if blizzard is going to be changing the pathing dont you think things will be balanced accordingly????!!!////???
honestly throughout this thread there are heaps of people saying "oh no but then this unit will be OP nono no this will be op no no no then this unit will be shit"
omfg stop for a moment.
if blizzard were to change Ai clumping to what the images on page 12 show they would only do so at the release of either HOTS or LOV. (LOV more likely).
once doing so everything would be reshuffled and re balanced to account for the new AI changes.
there wont be any OMFG storm is UP it shit. because it will be changed!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1111111121111 elerven one one !!!!
blizzard however has said they dont want to dumb down ai but i dont think they understand that its not dumbing down the ai but rather "changing" the ai pathing.
ARGHGHGHGHGHGHGHHGHHGGH
think for a moment what is better to watch. two tightly packed balls of units firing lasers and whoosh sparks at each other.
or a spread out easy to see units that now have to be moved around more in order for each side to maximise efficiency?
YES IT IS easier for players to 1a a ball of units across a map and in most cases. YES IT WOULD be harder to control army's if the pathing were changed.
but if people can play BW (not a bw vs sc2 comment calm down) at the level they do with the restrictions in place people WILL adapt to sc2 changes.
and ultimately sc2's success as an esport (gosh i said it) will be determined by is watchabilty.
people need to get off the whole "omfg balance balance balance shit shit shit op up op up dont change it will break the game "bandwagon and just think.
/rant over.
Edited: not as much caps not as much shouting ha ha cheers.
exactly. the whole game, each and every unit would have to be rebalanced. You could as well just ask blizzard to drop sc2 and start developing sc3, as it is more likely to play sc3 in 2013 than unclumped sc2 ever. Also this collision size stuff people arguement with wont change a lot in terma of "stuff you have to do". broodwar was so.hard to to micro because units did not do what u wanted them to do, but they still could be packed very tightly artificially. changing the colission circles takes away the possibility to micro units close together as well. units still get stuck in "balls" but now they dont look like balls anymore and everytime you try to micro a unit from the middle it still wont move through the invisibly blocked spaces around it. You will have to dumb down ai, to achieve what you are looking for.
And what is bettercto watch? i guess thazs a simple question of what you want to see... do you prefer tennis or soccer, skiing or basketball, dancing or "the biggest explosions". I prefer watching sc2 over bw,for whatever reasons.
What's so hard to micro ? my siege tank's were chilling in their fortified position waiting for Dragoons to storm me .
In Russia tanks stomp you .....
January , oops I mean blue goo you are so beautiful.....
Well, it's easier with clumped up engine when playing ranged (non-aoe) vs melee (non-aoe). In all other situations you want to split (vs aoe) or get a better arc (ranged vs ranged or melee vs melee). Isn't it obvious? :o
On December 29 2011 11:56 Mohdoo wrote: All units need a collision size about 1.5x what it is right now.
This. The pathing is fine, they just need not to be so close to each other like they were in a sold out concert and people have no space to move. Compared to an image of sc2 units i saw some time ago with units more spread between each other, the real one looked really bad.
It seems to me that SC2 units are even closer to each other than soldiers moving in formation, which not only looks bad, but gives a sense of "something is not right here".
"Unclumping" units like in BW would severly reduce the usefullness of AoE/splash and psi storm and fungals in particular which would give us yet another delicate balance problem, IMO.
Quick thought and I don't know if it's been mentioned. I personally would love if sc2 had some type of army formation commands with a few customizable ones kind of like AoE. I'd be sick in terms of all the unique ways people approach different micro situations with different units.
On December 30 2011 12:09 FatkiddsLag wrote: those of you who want unclumped i just assume you want terran bio ball to be unstoppable
im sorry but this has to be said.
if blizzard is going to be changing the pathing dont you think things will be balanced accordingly????!!!////???
honestly throughout this thread there are heaps of people saying "oh no but then this unit will be OP nono no this will be op no no no then this unit will be shit"
omfg stop for a moment.
if blizzard were to change Ai clumping to what the images on page 12 show they would only do so at the release of either HOTS or LOV. (LOV more likely).
once doing so everything would be reshuffled and re balanced to account for the new AI changes.
there wont be any OMFG storm is UP it shit. because it will be changed!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1111111121111 elerven one one !!!!
blizzard however has said they dont want to dumb down ai but i dont think they understand that its not dumbing down the ai but rather "changing" the ai pathing.
ARGHGHGHGHGHGHGHHGHHGGH
think for a moment what is better to watch. two tightly packed balls of units firing lasers and whoosh sparks at each other.
or a spread out easy to see units that now have to be moved around more in order for each side to maximise efficiency?
YES IT IS easier for players to 1a a ball of units across a map and in most cases. YES IT WOULD be harder to control army's if the pathing were changed.
but if people can play BW (not a bw vs sc2 comment calm down) at the level they do with the restrictions in place people WILL adapt to sc2 changes.
and ultimately sc2's success as an esport (gosh i said it) will be determined by is watchabilty.
people need to get off the whole "omfg balance balance balance shit shit shit op up op up dont change it will break the game "bandwagon and just think.
/rant over.
Edited: not as much caps not as much shouting ha ha cheers.
And the idea of this is just stupid (not you). Its like you don;t get a fully functional and complete game anymore without paying 60+40+40$, and thats assuming when they said "priced as an expansion", they mean 40$. They specifically did NOT give a price tag, and only gave a tag line.
On December 30 2011 22:27 sekritzzz wrote: Quick thought and I don't know if it's been mentioned. I personally would love if sc2 had some type of army formation commands with a few customizable ones kind of like AoE. I'd be sick in terms of all the unique ways people approach different micro situations with different units.
I remember seeing a video of SC2 before it released, and that video showed units in a loose and open formation. From Zerg to protoss, they moved like WC3 units.
They specifically took this out and made armies clump.
I hate that we still have this "well right now in the 10+ years developed broodwar were everything is figured out xy is way better", well of course it fucking is, even people who are considered the best at sc2 right now (mvp, nestea etc.) have no fucking idea how to really micro efficiently. Balls are already getting less and less present, and about (latest) 3 years from now we will laugh at someone 1/2aing his ball across the map. People (especially koreans) need to give the game more time to developed, we are only one year in and the game has already developed sooo much in all the matchups, just stop expecting sc2 to immediatly be on bws level of depth when most people don't even really understand what they are doing atm.
On December 31 2011 00:31 Lorch wrote: I hate that we still have this "well right now in the 10+ years developed broodwar were everything is figured out xy is way better", well of course it fucking is, even people who are considered the best at sc2 right now (mvp, nestea etc.) have no fucking idea how to really micro efficiently. Balls are already getting less and less present, and about (latest) 3 years from now we will laugh at someone 1/2aing his ball across the map. People (especially koreans) need to give the game more time to developed, we are only one year in and the game has already developed sooo much in all the matchups, just stop expecting sc2 to immediatly be on bws level of depth when most people don't even really understand what they are doing atm.
this is really wishful thinking or nostalgia transference from brood war, to me. Protoss and terran thrive on keeping thier stuff balled up, mostly because the pathing works very efficienctly. There's no way for a Z to punish a balling protoss other than fungal or retreat. The game is in fact designed around this concept, see colossus standing over zealots and stalkers.
On December 31 2011 09:59 curtdisis wrote: its a good thing because it just takes more micro to spread units which makes the game harder
The problem is, it doesn't. the Ball in PvZ is so immensely strong and functions BEST when balled, a spread out ball would be way less dangerouas and more flankable, needing more Forcefields, etc
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
It was inherent with the high numbers of units you are able to hotkey to one group and NOT intended, but a side effect of how they created the hotkey system in SC2, that is why units are not clumped in BW, because of the low number of units able to be on one hotkey.
There are some key features in SC2 that rely on units being close together. One of them is Stim for marines, you want that blob to be as close together as possible. Its fast, and deals huge ammounts of damage. However this is countered by AOE damage. So maybe this is a general trend? Maybe more AOE for all the races is the good quick fix to make Starcraft 2 play out in more "grandscale" tactics.
I dont know, its certainly very complex. And I think there are a few important things to remember:
1) Broodwar took a long time to get that good. Not just because of balance changes, or the Broodwar expansion, but also the level of skill from the players. These things took many years to develop.
2) If it gives you an edge, the pros will do it. Like spreading units. Proper unit spreading will evolve im sure, even with zero balance changes.
EPT
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