EPT[HOTS] Breaking up the Death Ball - Page 11
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Signus
United States269 Posts
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Lurk
Germany359 Posts
On July 02 2012 17:15 ThePlayer33 wrote: i dont think spider mine stops deathball. small clumps are still extremely vulnerable to AOE (bw storm). its unit spacing. Not spider mines in particular, but stonger, unforgivable AoE will solve the problem. Sure, unit spacing is part of the problem, but strong AoE will eventually force players to split their units and eventually their army if bottlenecks don't allow for 200-200 battles with spaced out units. It's just that, unlike in bw, sc2 players whined and whined about AoE so it got nerfed, instead of learning how to split their units and armies. One positive example i can think of is thors vs. mutas - there, blizzards didn't back out for once and zerg players learned to magic box their mutas. However, just think of storm, emp, tanks - they all got nerfed big time so players didn't need to learn split their units. And also the issue of defenders advantage needs to be adressed as already pointed out multiple times. If i can't stop the deathball with a weaker force at least temporarily, i'm pretty much forced to deathball myself to stop it. Unfortunately, sc2 defensive mechanisms only work well against harass largely because siege units can be so readily brought with the deathball and don't have severe movement/vulnerability limitations. The collossus is IMO the prime example of what is wrong with sc2 unit design. It's a siege unit with brutal AoE that has none of the limitations that a siege unit should have - slow movement or even lack of mobility (tank), low vision to require a spotter, low hp, friendly fire, large radius to block own units. Instead, it's as fast as any normal unit, can walk up and see up cliffs, have high hp and can even stacked upon your own land units. And it doesn't have friendly fire, for some reason which i fail to understand - it's a straight up dumbed down 1a-unit. So naturally, it's not that surprising that most protoss deathballs center about collossi. BW siege units were a lot stronger (just think of what a scarab did to a bunch of marines), up to the point that it was practically impossible to break a bottleneck of 2-3 siege units with an unfinite amount of units. So players had to think innovative and explore other avenues of attack. At the same time, those siege units had severe limitations, especially considering their mobility (tanks had to siege, lurkers to burrow, reavers were just straight up sloooooow). On top of that, these units all had friendly fire - making you think twice to charge in with your main force while bombarding with your siege. | ||
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Lorch
Germany3685 Posts
Deathballs were a huge issues early last year when everyone was just 1aing around. Nowadays people are starting to understand the importance of concaves, using multiple control groups for your armies (I have seen some people going all the way up to 5 control groups just for their army) and most importantly attacking at multiple places at once while splitting up your army. In most pro level games, especially between koreans, you will mainly see a lot of smaller/bigger battles throughout the entire match and not that much of two people building shit, a moving and one guy coming out on top. I feel like both map design (e.g. allowing better concaves, making high/low ground more important, easy flanking spots etc.) and just the natural evolution of the game will take care of this. Though I have to say the hots units certainly don't promote deathball play and I'm sure some of them will help doing what they are supposed to do, which is tie supply up in units that are not key parts of your army. I really feel like people need to give sc2 so much more time, we are only 2 years in and 2/3 of the game aren't even out yet. And yet we still start to see people get actually good at this and we have already seen soooo many breath taking insanly awesome games, I can't wait to see where sc2 will be in 5-6 years from now on, when we have all expansions and people who have figured the game out to the mineral, I doubt deathball mechanics will be anyones concern by then. | ||
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Qwyn
United States2779 Posts
On July 02 2012 01:30 polyphonyEX wrote: Blizzard seems less creative than I would like. Just really poor game design in the first place. Yeah, pretty much this. All the new ideas that they are attempting to implement feel pretty damn weird. Why not put the lurker (ride that dead horse, rideeeee motherfucker) back in the godamned game? The reason why I want a power unit like that is that it is really fucking supply efficient. A unit like the lurker would allow more attacks to happen all around the map b/c it is really good at holding space for a low supply count. Also - why are the units in SCII so damn supply heavy? Seriously, with 88 drones I can only have 56 roaches, and that's without subtracting queen supply. That's rediculous. You need to allow more units to be produced if you want to see more attacks all around the map, IMO. Also, reduce the supply cost of the current units. A six supply ultra is fucking rediculous. Also, 3 supply siege tank, wtf? That's my current issue with this game, armies are too damn small. That's why as zerg I feel you have to build lings b/c all the other units are so fucking supply inefficient. There is a point where you can get enough power units and casters (dark swarm) that allow you to send side attacks all over the map and the like. A terran siege line for example. With the siege line set up the terran is free to drop b/c he has enough firepower not to lose all his marines immediately. Now the opposite side of the argument is that you should not have to build as many drones to get the same income rate, so that you can devote more population altogether to your army. | ||
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bhfberserk
Canada390 Posts
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Darneck
Sweden1394 Posts
Not sure how you can think that but it's already proven that it's not so it doesn't matter either way. If you actually haven't watched any BW games then you should do that first before coming to a conclusion whether it's boring or not. | ||
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Rabiator
Germany3948 Posts
On July 02 2012 00:52 Archerofaiur wrote: The Deathball. It is a phenomenon that has come to define almost every game of Starcraft 2. Huge armies grouped together that move together until one big battle that determines the game. The problem primarily arose out of changes to the UI, both improved pathing and unlimited unit selection. As we learn more about Heart of the Swarm it becomes clear that the developers are focused on breaking up the death ball. I fully agree with you on the problem which the Deathball causes, BUT your (and possibly Blizzards) conclusion is totally false. The real way to "nerf the Deathball" would be to nerf the mechanics which made it possible ... i.e. the unlimited unit selection, but much more the perfect movement AI. In addition to this the macroing capabilities need to be reduced. Taking a fast paced game in which people have problems to handle all the action and trying to make it even more fast paced in an attempt to fix it is plainly wrong. The game NEEDS TO BE SLOWED DOWN and made less convenient. In a less convenient game the mistakes you make arent game-ending, but in the current version of SC2 they often enough are. WAKE UP BLIZZARD! Not every movie sequel with "higher kill count" or "bigger explosions" is automatically better, but thats what I feel you are trying to do. Please stop before its too late and only kids trained from their infancy can handle it. | ||
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FragRaptor
United States184 Posts
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Insoleet
France1806 Posts
Technology has evolved, so units are not as retarded as in the past. Their pathing is good, the unlimited control group is good. The problem is not deathball. The problem is that deathball totally deny any micro (expect splittings bioball and kitting). If micro would make deathball less or more powerful, that would be a better game. And i think the choices blizzard made are the good ones. The deathball will still be there, but with micro, you'll be able to totally destroy it (or totally get destroyed). | ||
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Darneck
Sweden1394 Posts
On July 02 2012 21:58 Insoleet wrote: It seems like people would like to play Broodwar with higher graphisms. I dont agree. Technology has evolved, so units are not as retarded as in the past. Their pathing is good, the unlimited control group is good. The problem is not deathball. The problem is that deathball totally deny any micro (expect splittings bioball and kitting). If micro would make deathball less or more powerful, that would be a better game. And i think the choices blizzard made are the good ones. The deathball will still be there, but with micro, you'll be able to totally destroy it (or totally get destroyed). I hate this argument. People should stop thinking about it being technology having evolved and instead start thinking about it being rules for the game. Just because we have the technology to do something doesn't mean we should/have to do something. | ||
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Rabiator
Germany3948 Posts
On July 02 2012 21:58 Insoleet wrote: It seems like people would like to play Broodwar with higher graphisms. I dont agree. Technology has evolved, so units are not as retarded as in the past. Their pathing is good, the unlimited control group is good. The problem is not deathball. The problem is that deathball totally deny any micro (expect splittings bioball and kitting). If micro would make deathball less or more powerful, that would be a better game. And i think the choices blizzard made are the good ones. The deathball will still be there, but with micro, you'll be able to totally destroy it (or totally get destroyed). Deathball = maximized firepower = highest efficiency. You cant do anything against this EXCEPT through creating "OP units" (burrowed Banelings for example), but many of these have already been nerfed and thus the Deathball survived. That is BAD. The two "improvement" which you dont think as bad are the reasons for its existence. In BW it didnt matter that much if a unit was "OP" and killed other units rather efficiently simply because those other units didnt make up 90% of your opponents army. The Siege Tank is a prime example. For SC2 it had to be nerfed or else you could kill a majority of a Zerg army which is rushing you with just 2-3 of them. How does the reality look like today? The Zerg army approaches and simply overruns the Terrans anyways and the friendly fire from the Siege Tanks deals about half the damage. If Blizzard had "advanced technology" and added friendly fire to all area damage effects I wouldnt oppose you as much, but they didnt do that. Unlimited unit selection and perfect movement AI simply screw up the game too much ... in short: the Deathball is bad! Oh and a general hint: Not every new technology is good! When you get older you might notice those 10-year-old kids watching porn on their smartphones and that isnt a good thing at least in my book. Well technology certainly has advanced, but humanity hasnt. | ||
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FragRaptor
United States184 Posts
On July 02 2012 21:58 Insoleet wrote: It seems like people would like to play Broodwar with higher graphisms. I dont agree. Technology has evolved, so units are not as retarded as in the past. Their pathing is good, the unlimited control group is good. The problem is not deathball. The problem is that deathball totally deny any micro (expect splittings bioball and kitting). If micro would make deathball less or more powerful, that would be a better game. And i think the choices blizzard made are the good ones. The deathball will still be there, but with micro, you'll be able to totally destroy it (or totally get destroyed). Death balls have micro.... Blink... Fungals.... stutterstep... Everything you can think of. The BW guys aren't trying to make this their game but trying to analyze what made BW great and how that can positively apply to SC2. The problem right now is that unit pathing is designed for 1 unit. If you select 1 unit it will go to the area it was told to go. Likewise, in BW it would turn a couple times before it actually got to the positioning(depending on the order location). SC2 unit pathing is good and all for that one unit, but when it comes to controlling the entire army every unit trys to get to the exact same point like 200 people trying to cram through a doggy door. The units push together, clumping heavily, and sometimes take a little bit to actually settle down once every single unit makes it through to that 1 little point. However what these guys are saying is that BW tended to keep a positioning that allowed more micro to make more of a difference to the battle(not to mention making the armies look huge). SC2 while designed to have good unit pathing for a unit, has bad pathing when it comes to moving all units together. My thought is why not keep the exact same pathing SC2 has while moving 1 or so units, but do what the BW guys are saying while controlling an army. I'm not an expert or knowledgeable in anyway about BW, but I like to think I understand the gist of their argument. If I'm wrong about anything please tell me  I always enjoy learning. (Also I fully support bringing the lurker back because the swarm host is boring, retarded, and enables deathball based play...) | ||
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bgx
Poland6595 Posts
On July 02 2012 21:58 Insoleet wrote: It seems like people would like to play Broodwar with higher graphisms. I dont agree. Technology has evolved, so units are not as retarded as in the past. Their pathing is good, the unlimited control group is good. The problem is not deathball. The problem is that deathball totally deny any micro (expect splittings bioball and kitting). If micro would make deathball less or more powerful, that would be a better game. And i think the choices blizzard made are the good ones. The deathball will still be there, but with micro, you'll be able to totally destroy it (or totally get destroyed). It does not matter what technology was used to make the game. If the tool is insufficient comptetive wise it has to be changed. Whats worrying for me is that Blizzard chose the easier way to simply remove supply from deathball. Imho its "ethically" wrong. Its saying "look we have a new unit for you, but because our technology makes it hard for everyone, this unit will be only used as stand-alone not a part of our default deathball". It looks for me as they are giving us a fish not a fishing rod. Saying you can do only this and this with this unit, but you cant do this and this. Pigeon holing is a bad design. I would be happier with less units but more flexibility than more units and less flexibility. Why not fix the whole mechanism behind it? | ||
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sjperera
Canada349 Posts
The oracle was a great idea but now with the cloak field, don't you think Protoss players will take a few oracles along with their death ball to use cloak during major battles? I'm not sure how the widow mine works but that'll also be useful to take out unit clumps rather than single units or a group of 5 harrassing zealots going into your third. So once again, a Terran player would rather have 3 widow mines sticking to the Protoss death ball during a major battle than have them pick up and kill 3 of the 5 zealots running to your third. | ||
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Darneck
Sweden1394 Posts
On July 02 2012 22:30 sjperera wrote: I'm not sure if either of these concepts will break the death ball... The Tempest is almost a perfect addition to bring battles to bear... force engagements almost. The oracle was a great idea but now with the cloak field, don't you think Protoss players will take a few oracles along with their death ball to use cloak during major battles? I'm not sure how the widow mine works but that'll also be useful to take out unit clumps rather than single units or a group of 5 harrassing zealots going into your third. So once again, a Terran player would rather have 3 widow mines sticking to the Protoss death ball during a major battle than have them pick up and kill 3 of the 5 zealots running to your third. Indeed and the oracle cloak is made for the deathball. Clumping up units = more units in a smaller space = more cloaked units by a single oracle | ||
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iky43210
United States2099 Posts
On July 02 2012 22:11 Darneck wrote: I hate this argument. People should stop thinking about it being technology having evolved and instead start thinking about it being rules for the game. Just because we have the technology to do something doesn't mean we should/have to do something. its a game. you're not going to attract many next generation of progamers with an unintuitive/bad interface and UI. Imo one of the reason that flash, bisu, JD still dominates in broodwar scene for so long because lack of new talented players compare to the past, and the scene basically starts to stale and revolves around the same pros. I don't think the deathball problem is as severe as many of you try to make them out to be. Pros are starting to move away from the "deathball" for a while now. The only real offender still true in this game is protoss, but even then Hero shows that they don't have to play this way. It just so happens to be the most convient and safest way. With few changes to protoss, I believe all MU would be improved much better. I still think ling moves too fast, and that basically allows zerg to avoid punishment of misplacing lings and not spotting drops. Their t3 is also way too strong, while at the same time lacking a real t2 unit that is gas heavy and powerful. zerg's larva mechanics is also extremely forgiving and borderline broken with "larva saving" during late game, but that's another story. | ||
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iky43210
United States2099 Posts
On July 02 2012 22:30 sjperera wrote: I'm not sure if either of these concepts will break the death ball... The Tempest is almost a perfect addition to bring battles to bear... force engagements almost. The oracle was a great idea but now with the cloak field, don't you think Protoss players will take a few oracles along with their death ball to use cloak during major battles? I'm not sure how the widow mine works but that'll also be useful to take out unit clumps rather than single units or a group of 5 harrassing zealots going into your third. So once again, a Terran player would rather have 3 widow mines sticking to the Protoss death ball during a major battle than have them pick up and kill 3 of the 5 zealots running to your third. its not like you get to pick who you attach with widow mines. As a protoss you want to get those 3-5 zealots in as sacrifices rather than having your whole army blown up By adding more units that forces "zone controls", you inevitable want to break up your army into smaller values. The question now depends on how effective those zone controls are, and no way for us to tell until beta | ||
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Cruncher93
Germany28 Posts
On July 02 2012 22:44 Darneck wrote: Indeed and the oracle cloak is made for the deathball. Clumping up units = more units in a smaller space = more cloaked units by a single oracle But a 100HP Unit for 200 Gas? It will get sniped down immediately, since it is the only thing not cloaked. For example 4-5 Vikings (not sure if Oracle is armored) one-shot it, if there are Colossi you should have those Vikings, or if you have seen the Oracles harass before (they inflict permanent damage to an Oracle in only 2 seconds, keeping one Viking above your Base will be useful). Judging from the videos Blizzard showed, the cloak should be used to make drops and harass or rushes vs the Protoss harder. | ||
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Rabiator
Germany3948 Posts
On July 02 2012 22:56 iky43210 wrote: its a game. you're not going to attract many next generation of progamers with an unintuitive/bad interface and UI. Imo one of the reason that flash, bisu, JD still dominates in broodwar scene for so long because lack of new talented players compare to the past, and the scene basically starts to stale and revolves around the same pros. Oh come on ... just because someone says "Blizzard has gone too far with making UI movement perfect and the unlimited unit selection is bad" does NOT mean he wants to have Brood War settings. Its NOT one or the other, but there could be some shades of grey involved. Just look at THIS THREAD and combine it with "24 unit max per control group" and you have a shade of grey instead. I also suggested already that the player should be able to CHOOSE between open and close formation and thus decide himself if he wants to take the risk to die to area damage OR be on the safe side but with lower damage output from his own side. The SC2 version is simply bad, because it does NOT offer choice ... or rather "force the player to make a decision". The technology is there to do it ... all that is missing is the will to do it. EDIT: Here is a question for all those who think the Deathball isnt that bad: Why do you think there is no range upgrade for Marines anymore (which they had in BW)? Simple answer: It would be totally OP in a tight ball of death because Marines is a really small unit. | ||
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iky43210
United States2099 Posts
On July 02 2012 23:17 Rabiator wrote: Oh come on ... just because someone says "Blizzard has gone too far with making UI movement perfect and the unlimited unit selection is bad" does NOT mean he wants to have Brood War settings. Its NOT one or the other, but there could be some shades of grey involved. Just look at THIS THREAD and combine it with "24 unit max per control group" and you have a shade of grey instead. I also suggested already that the player should be able to CHOOSE between open and close formation and thus decide himself if he wants to take the risk to die to area damage OR be on the safe side but with lower damage output from his own side. The SC2 version is simply bad, because it does NOT offer choice ... or rather "force the player to make a decision". The technology is there to do it ... all that is missing is the will to do it. EDIT: Here is a question for all those who think the Deathball isnt that bad: Why do you think there is no range upgrade for Marines anymore (which they had in BW)? Simple answer: It would be totally OP in a tight ball of death because Marines is a really small unit. 24 units selections = ~5-6 controls just to select your max army (forget about controlling a few ghosts and ravens here and there). no it still wouldn't do anything, its a limit for the sake of there being a limit. The only reason why it was 12 unit in 1998 was due to engine limitation. and to your edit. Because marines already have the range upgrade | ||
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