EPTThe Philosophy of Design: Part 2 - Unit Design - Page 26
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Foxx1
United States57 Posts
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lbmaian
United States689 Posts
These are articles are to discuss what we can learn from the past to improve SC2. But another method would be focus on what SC2 did well. Since this thread focuses a lot on what was better in in other RTS games (namely BW) than in SC2, we can turn that around and ask what SC2 did better than other RTS games. | ||
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sluggaslamoo
Australia4494 Posts
On January 16 2012 10:23 Foxx1 wrote: I agree with all of this so much. Especially when bringing more spellcasters into the game will not help. A good comparison is company of heroes. Every unit in that game required some sort of micro to be successful. The more you can micro the more you can get out of it. Not all unit sin sc2 is like this The infantry also had good pathing while not running in a ball. Could you imagine how bad CoH would be if everything moved in one clumped ball? Blizzard are in denial about their pathing, it really really sucks, it is so badly designed, yet they defend it as if its the best thing since sliced bread. There are much better pathing algorithms out there. On January 16 2012 10:36 lbmaian wrote: I would like to see an article on what SC2 did right. These are articles are to discuss what we can learn from the past to improve SC2. But another method would be focus on what SC2 did well. Since this thread focuses a lot on what was better in in other RTS games (namely BW) than in SC2, we can turn that around and ask what SC2 did better than other RTS games. There was actually an article which did just that, but I disagree with a lot of the points. One of the main focuses was mobility, medivacs and nydus mainly. Medics provide so much more skill depth than medivacs, dropship play was actually cool because it required more than half a brain to do a drop. There is a VOD of Nada with a tiny group of M&M&F killing tonnes of lurkers and lings and buildings, I calculated it to the equivalent of something like 50 banelings, 30 lings, a hatchery, and evo chamber. Nyduses are used more in BW, simply because to allow them to build off creep meant getting hit with the biggest nerf bat of all time. Nyduses were actually really really useful in BW, and allowed Zerg to build expos at any corner of the map and actually defend them. I think Creep Spread was the only good advancement in SC2, everything else is just a meer shadow of the BW version. | ||
Falling
Canada11584 Posts
I don't particularly like Phoenixes compared to Corsairs, but that lift ability is pretty cool. The problem with thinking about a lot of these units is there are some fundamental issues I have which effects them all. Pathing and grouping for one, and the slight latency or lack of responsiveness for another. Linking nydus worms is a vast improvement from their BW counterpart although they seem to get used about as much these days. I like having ghosts as a more useable tech although nuclear bombs are not nearly as impressive- what does it take 3-4 to take out a command centre? There's more or at least in comparison to any modern RTS I can think of. SupCom2 is the game I love to hate as it got almost everything wrong. And in comparison to that, SC2 is genius. | ||
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sluggaslamoo
Australia4494 Posts
On January 16 2012 11:11 Falling wrote: Oh there's more than that. The interaction between banelings and marines is pretty cool. Both players are microing against each other rather than one side suddenly preventing movement. And banelings as an entire concept is pretty cool as well. I don't agree that banelings make lurkers redundant, but I like them as units. I don't particularly like Phoenixes compared to Corsairs, but that lift ability is pretty cool. The problem with thinking about a lot of these units is there are some fundamental issues I have which effects them all. Pathing and grouping for one, and the slight latency or lack of responsiveness for another. Linking nydus worms is a vast improvement from their BW counterpart although they seem to get used about as much these days. I like having ghosts as a more useable tech although nuclear bombs are not nearly as impressive- what does it take 3-4 to take out a command centre? There's more. I edited my post above to talk about Nydus Worms. ^^ They are in-fact much more useful in BW, they are a core building with late game Z, you see them 100% of the time as long as it gets to late game. Nuke is an improvement somewhat I must admit, but they need to increase the damage by at least 3 times and probably the cost as well to compensate. The reason nuke was not used in BW was the odd tech requirement, against P you never made barracks units, Z had overlords with detection, T you needed battlecruisers (competing addon). Marines vs Banelings is just a mere shadow of BWs version of Marines vs Lurkers. BW also had the same sorts interactions but with almost every unit. Scourge vs Muta-Wraith-Corsair / Swarm vs Bio. Except picking of scourge at your six, requires a lot of skill compared to splitting. The other thing about splitting is some marines will almost always die, just less of them or more banelings are lost, scourge encounters can leave either side completely destroy or completely unphased, so the dynamic is much greater. | ||
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Falling
Canada11584 Posts
And yeah if you compare Marines vs Lurkers and Marines vs Banelings there's not much of a comparison. But it is one of the better highlights from SC2. BW also had the same sorts interactions but with almost every unit. Scourge vs Muta-Wraith-Corsair / Swarm vs Bio. This is very true and one of the more disappointing things about SC2. Only a handful of units do what almost every unit could in BW. And even if the unit isn't used very much (wraiths), when you pulled it out, you could suddenly demonstrate some awe inspiring micro control like that Baby vs Effort game I posted earlier. | ||
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lbmaian
United States689 Posts
As for nydus worm, it has less to do with the building itself and more with the rest of the game. The SC2 nydus IS improved (I think - I don't remember the rate at which units can exit the nydus in BW). It's just that the rest of SC2 conspires against distant bases for zerg. Basically, you have to put everything in the context of SC2 mechanics. Assuming that they won't change, what unit substitutions/additions from BW would help SC2. | ||
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EternaLLegacy
United States410 Posts
On January 16 2012 11:55 lbmaian wrote: sluggaslamoo, I think lots of what you're talking about depends on the BW mechanics. Put those BW units in SC2 with SC2 mechanics and pathing, and it would probably be a wash. You already see a similar type of micro against lurkers in SC2, except it's marines vs. tanks, and I find both anti-baneling and anti-tank splitting to be equally interesting. The only advantage the lurker has at that point is surprise (stop lurkers?). As a spectator, I feel that banelings are superior to lurkers - it just fits the swarm feel of the zerg so well. Of course, banelings pale in comparison to lurkers when it comes to zone control. As for nydus worm, it has less to do with the building itself and more with the rest of the game. The SC2 nydus IS improved (I think - I don't remember the rate at which units can exit the nydus in BW). It's just that the rest of SC2 conspires against distant bases for zerg. Basically, you have to put everything in the context of SC2 mechanics. Assuming that they won't change, what unit substitutions/additions from BW would help SC2. No. SC2BW has proven you're just wrong. | ||
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sluggaslamoo
Australia4494 Posts
On January 16 2012 11:55 lbmaian wrote: sluggaslamoo, I think lots of what you're talking about depends on the BW mechanics. Put those BW units in SC2 with SC2 mechanics and pathing, and it would probably be a wash. You already see a similar type of micro against lurkers in SC2, except it's marines vs. tanks, and I find both anti-baneling and anti-tank splitting to be equally interesting. The only advantage the lurker has at that point is surprise (stop lurkers?). As a spectator, I feel that banelings are superior to lurkers - it just fits the swarm feel of the zerg so well. Of course, banelings pale in comparison to lurkers when it comes to zone control. As for nydus worm, it has less to do with the building itself and more with the rest of the game. The SC2 nydus IS improved (I think - I don't remember the rate at which units can exit the nydus in BW). It's just that the rest of SC2 conspires against distant bases for zerg. Basically, you have to put everything in the context of SC2 mechanics. Assuming that they won't change, what unit substitutions/additions from BW would help SC2. Nydus Worm is much cheaper and much faster in BW. As for banelings vs lurkers, I'm not gonna argue anymore. You simply have to see to believe. | ||
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Roe
Canada6002 Posts
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lbmaian
United States689 Posts
On January 16 2012 12:53 sluggaslamoo wrote: Nydus Worm is much cheaper and much faster in BW. As for banelings vs lurkers, I'm not gonna argue anymore. You simply have to see to believe. Agreed, it's just a opinion. And yes I do watch BW. There's enough of these "you just can't understand" shotgun posts - let's avoid them, m'kay? | ||
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sluggaslamoo
Australia4494 Posts
On January 16 2012 13:00 Roe wrote: I disagree with you on the no zone control. Forcefield fits that role exactly. PDD gives you zone control as well. And in the expansion we will see any lacking in this field be helped out by shredder, viper, etc. Maybe PDD needs to be stronger somehow, because it's sort of linear right now. You put it down, it absorbs a certain amount of hits, then needs to recharge slowly. Its not really zone control if its only available for a very short time. I can literally fortify a position forever with enough tanks/mines/turrets/depots. It does require a big investment though and a lot of precious time and effort, its like building a castle. PDD/Forcefield is a relatively small investment but the scale at which you can control a zone is also much less. | ||
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Fallians
Canada242 Posts
 Maybe they aren't as beefy as in BW but almost all the SC2 maps feature a large amount of ramps and ledges where you can place some tanks on the high ground and some on the low ground to make it near impossible to deal with it at some stages in the game, then again this isn't directly related to the unit itself but to the positioning of the unit. | ||
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EternaLLegacy
United States410 Posts
On January 16 2012 13:22 Fallians wrote: I think the only thing that I disagree with in this post is that siege tanks are a ''glass cannon'' of sorts. Coming from a zerg perspective I really don't think tanks are that fragile Maybe they aren't as beefy as in BW but almost all the SC2 maps feature a large amount of ramps and ledges where you can place some tanks on the high ground and some on the low ground to make it near impossible to deal with it at some stages in the game, then again this isn't directly related to the unit itself but to the positioning of the unit.That's just a problem with map design. BW maps are very cautious to avoid abusable ledges these days because of how game-breaking it can be. I'll get to this in detail in part 4, whenever I get around to writing that. | ||
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CeriseCherries
6170 Posts
 )... The thing i would like most is zone control tbh | ||
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Big J
Austria16289 Posts
On January 16 2012 10:36 lbmaian wrote: I would like to see an article on what SC2 did right. These are articles are to discuss what we can learn from the past to improve SC2. But another method would be focus on what SC2 did well. Since this thread focuses a lot on what was better in in other RTS games (namely BW) than in SC2, we can turn that around and ask what SC2 did better than other RTS games. I'm currently working on such a thing, but I'm not sure if I'm gonna publish it. After all I'm not a native english speaker and know that I don't express myself very well sometimes But I just want to say, that in this article I'm focusing a lot on a concept I'm calling "Vanillia SC2", which is just broodwar in an SC2 enviroment (pathing, AI...). Because I think articles like this one, which compare broodwar abilities with SC2 abilities just don't make any sense to begin with, as in broodwar things like clumping didn't exist on such a level as in SC2. This very article for example just takes too many steps at once. Like in Broodwar, noone would have given a damn about a low damage, low radius ability like fungal growth and forcefields without smartcast might have just been a niche ability to hold a ramp, but probably not seen any combat use. Or if it had, map layouts might have been completly different. Also it's not really fruitful, to say how much micro has been done with a dragoon in BW, when it would have been a pure 1a unit within the SC2 enviroment. | ||
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bgx
Poland6595 Posts
On January 16 2012 13:15 sluggaslamoo wrote: Its not really zone control if its only available for a very short time. I can literally fortify a position forever with enough tanks/mines/turrets/depots. It does require a big investment though and a lot of precious time and effort, its like building a castle. PDD/Forcefield is a relatively small investment but the scale at which you can control a zone is also much less. thats why Flash has his scary winrate, because he has awesome castles, i remember how Calm was trying to break it but couldnt  Also Nyduses in BW are not equal to nyduses in SC2, 1 is meant to be defensive (on creep only and instant deployment) second mostly aggresive (it has alarm and troop deployment delay, and quite significant). Also Nydus in sc2 is always a big investment its 150/300 for only 1 exit(building + exit). And frankly zerg units in sc2 dont need instant transport for defence if you have proper spotting, spending 100 gas to deflect 1 or 2 drops when you can send zerglings/mutas ? I cant see nydus in sc2 pulling out the same or even comparable defense as in sc1, many times ive seen player saving his hatch in last ditch effort because he was able to get 20 zerglings 2 defilers and 5 lurkers in 2 sec. Lack of swarm and lurkers and high ground also cheapens defenders advantage. defilers and lurkers are slow and precious(so their numbers are lower than say zerglings) so nydus is very very usefull to transport those units, you can have for example 3 lurkers and you can move them accross your 3 bases because you have 2 nydus networks. Thats just example, but infestor wouldnt work like that(maybe if u got lucky fungal), none zerg unit in sc2 would work like that. | ||
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Myrddraal
Australia937 Posts
On January 15 2012 11:16 Myrddraal wrote: This is just plain wrong, not to say that every situation can be micro'd against, but there are certainly some in which the micro of the other player changes the outcome completely. I will give you a situation in each match up where forcefields are micro'd against. PvT: Protoss throws down forcefields cutting the army in half, Terran proceeds to stim and kite anyway (not backwards obviously) in order to do maximum damage. If there was any gap in the forcefield wall, Terran will likely escape the majority of their units and sustain little damage. Zealots are now in a bad position if there are any left and Terran comes out on top due to good micro. Alternatively, if Terran has Medivacs in the above situation, he lifts up his trapped units and drops them back on the other side of the forcefields, now the forcefields are acting against the Protoss as his Zealots will be unable to attack. PvZ: Protoss forcefields off a bunch of Roaches, they burrow move under them and kill off the Protoss units/ burrow move to escape the trapped Roaches. Can go further where the Protoss tries to throw down more forcefields so the Roaches can't unburrow and have to keep moving. PvP: Not quite as common but using Archons/Colossi to bust down a Forcefield and attack up a ramp, or down a ramp depending on the situation. Only really counting this as Micro because of how much effort it takes to get Archons to do what you want. Also, there is quite often a dance between two players when forcefields are a threat, and in my opinion this can often be a tense and complex micro situation that not only increases the micro required, but adds a great deal of depth to what would otherwise be a clear cut engagement. It is you that needs to start looking at the big picture here, rather than letting your narrow mindedness and Brood War bias dictate everything that you say. Your entire analysis is full of it actually in that you should change your title to "Comparing Brood War to Starcraft 2" so people get a better idea of what they are actually reading. On January 15 2012 13:09 EternaLLegacy wrote: So your counterexamples are: Firstly I would like to say that my examples were simply situations (by no means an exaustive list) in which your statement fails to hold up, and it does, so my original argument is correct on this merit alone and you have failed to justify your statement in any way shape or form. A case where Protoss screws up, Here your narrow mindedness shows in that you assume that a gap in the Forcefields or Forcefields that leave room for kiting must mean that Protoss has screwed up. It actually doesn't, the amount of Forcefields available are dependent the number of sentries and the amount of energy they have. It seems reasonable to me that the more Sentries there are the better/easier the forcefields will be, considering Sentries are such a large gas investment. The number of forcefields required are dependant on the engagement position (the map) and the size of the armies involved (assuming a wide area). It is these factors, along with player execution that determine how effective a set of forcefields will be. a case where one unit using an expensive (250/250) ability can somewhat negate the FFs, What is your point here, are you trying to say that it is an unreasonable cost to be able to circumvent forcefields? I would argue that the fact that top players will rush to get Tunneling Claws in order to do this pretty much proves otherwise. To put it into perspective 6 sentries (which is a common amount to get vs Zerg but it is often more) costs 600 gas, this slows down Protoss tech significantly, for this amount of gas you could get Burrow + Movement for 250 and you still have 350 for Roaches, which is a total of 14 Roaches. It's just my opinion but I think this is quite reasonable. Also, if this was your argument it is just bad, the question is whether you can micro against Forcefields with respect to the design of the game, unless it is totally unreasonable, the cost does not diminish the capacity to do so. and a case where only 2 units (and you concede, really 1) can even do anything about a FF. Actually I still said both are capable, simply one is more difficult, try reading next time before you reply to a post. And then you talk about a dance between players before engagement, as if that's something that happens only because of FF, No, I said that players dance when Forcefields are a threat not because they are a threat. and doesn't happen in BW as well. I think you need to start thinking big picture here. I never mentioned Brood War, thats just your inherent bias coming up again, I simply said it adds more depth, and that is exactly what it does. On January 15 2012 14:36 DoubleReed wrote: You were the one saying there's no dancing with FF, when there blatantly is. It's not just because of FF and he never said that. When you say something that's just wrong then it's just wrong. Thank you to DoubleReed for understanding exactly the point I was trying to make. On January 15 2012 16:16 EternaLLegacy wrote: I'm against it cause it's a 1 sided ability. It's up to the protoss to land good ones, but once they're down that's it. Players are better with dealing with it because people adapt and players get better. So what you are trying to say here is that its not a fundamental design flaw and that players can deal with Forcefields as they get better?? Wow that sounds completely different to your whole "You can do nothing against forcefields!" argument. Maybe your reading comprehension is lacking, but FF clearly REDUCES micro available to the opposing player. That's literally the point of the spell. The fact that you question his reading comprehension is a joke when you can't seem to understand a very basic point I was making and you once again say that FF reduces micro available, which he did not dispute in his post. | ||
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Myrddraal
Australia937 Posts
On January 16 2012 13:15 sluggaslamoo wrote: Its not really zone control if its only available for a very short time. I can literally fortify a position forever with enough tanks/mines/turrets/depots. It does require a big investment though and a lot of precious time and effort, its like building a castle. PDD/Forcefield is a relatively small investment but the scale at which you can control a zone is also much less. You can do essentially the exact same thing in SC2, have you not watched MVP play split map against Zerg? | ||
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writer22816
United States5775 Posts
On January 16 2012 01:12 DoubleReed wrote: What? FF reduces micro the same way that Dark Swarm does. If you get caught badly with Dark Swarm, you die. You can try to run away, of course, and you better run away unless you just want to lose your whole army. With FF, you engage properly you can mitigate the FF and come out on top. You only fail that hard against FF if you engage stupidly. I fail to see how FF is more 1-sided than any other ability. I mean when Day9 is talking about Frisbees and Baseballs, Forcefield is obviously a frisbee. And wow, immediately just saying "Yup FF in BW would obviously be OP and ZvP would just be impossible" makes me think no arguing or sense will even shift your mind away from this closed thinking. Cut the feedback loop, please, and actually consider what forcefield would do in BW. Don't immediately look for bad things it would do, think of how it would interact with the other units. Clearly you don't watch BW. Just how the hell are FF and dark swarm the same? FF prevents your army from moving. It reduces micro for the opposing player. Dark swarm forces your army to move. It ADDS micro. On January 15 2012 22:39 Big J wrote: Of course BW was really lucky. It has absolutly huge design flaws: bio vs Protoss or bio vs Terran anyone? Just because not every unit is viable in a matchup doesn't mean the game has huge design flaws. Just how is SC2 different in this regard? Well done OP. You really hit the nail on the head with this thread. | ||
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