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On July 03 2012 00:16 Archerofaiur wrote:As I see it their are many suggestions proposed in this thread and they fall into three categories Show nested quote +Things the community can change
Things Blizzard can and may be willing to change
Things that would require a rework of the engine
More Open Maps
Fewer Resources per BaseIncreased AOE
Defenders Advantage/Board ControlIncreased Unit Formation
Increased Unit Radius
Limited Unit Selection
How can you assert that unit radii and spacing is an engine change, when we already have evidence that it can be done in the editor just by tweaking variables? Unit variables are not part of the engine, the engine is just the mechanism for processing them.
Additionally, your assertion that better spacing will require some exponentially larger balance effort than Blizzard will already have to deal with has no basis in reality, it's just an excuse. The beta's going to last a while anyway, and Blizzard will have plenty of time to re-balance what little splash there is in the game.
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On July 03 2012 08:14 Darneck wrote:Show nested quote +On July 03 2012 07:58 dAPhREAk wrote:
i was watching proleague last night (sc:bw) and i was thinking that the reason sc2 is so deathballish is because of the maps. they encourage deathball type play because its so hard to effectively harass/attack multiple places at once. maybe we need larger maps. the trend seems to be smaller maps with few access points, which makes the games deathball battles. The maps are not the issue any longer, people thought so and maps got larger and it helped a bit but not enough, making them even larger is not the way to go. Also if I'm not wrong the sc2 maps already are as big or even bigger than the largest bw maps? It's just the engine, pathing, speed and everything else that makes them seem smaller.
Yes it did help, but the large maps had other flaws that led to their fading away. Larger maps are a big part of it.
And the fact that they still 'seem' smaller means that they still aren't the sweetspot size yet and need to grow more.
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On July 03 2012 04:39 tehemperorer wrote:Show nested quote +On July 03 2012 02:36 Darneck wrote:On July 03 2012 02:24 tehemperorer wrote:
The deathball "problem" is kind of overblown, and really is only one way to play the game that has its share of advantages and disadvantages. I think we should be thankful that we can play a blob style if we want; for some people it's easier and can be quite effective, while you can also play a more spread out harassing style and be an effective player as well. BW's pathing was a pain in the ass and made the game more mechanically difficult for a lot of players, and it became less about strategy and more about how fast you can move your hands which is kind of against the point of an RTS BW isn't less about strategy at all on the highest level. The mechanics just seperated the best players from the average/good players which is really good because that's what's needed. There needs to be something that allows you to keep a consistency by purely being better than your opponent. You can still get caught off guard by tactics by worse players but not amazingly worse which can still happen in sc2. The point is (to which you attest) that from an average/good level all the way to the top it is about mechanics more than strategy in BW. We're into opinions here, but an RTS should be about strategy more than a minimum skill threshold that must be passed before being able to play the game decently. This idea is excused for BW because BW was developed under a certain level of technological restrictions and was lucky enough to gain traction beyond it's normal lifecycle, but for newer RTS's, mechanics that are base and simple should be managed by the platform and not by the player. SC2 achieves this. My problem is most of the opinion in this thread seems to be based off of nostalgia and not what fundamentally makes an RTS. When SC1 came out I was excited for it but quickly found that it wasn't primarily about strategy when compared to the other games that were available at around the same time, like CnC and Dune. Again, you can argue this because it's a declaration of my opinion but I don't think you can argue that CnC and Total Annihilation were more mechanically challenging than SC:BW, and that's the point: don't add mechanical challenges to an RTS title that aren't necessary. If getting more spectators for the eSport is the goal, how are you going to explain arbitrary limitations on SC2 gameplay to someone if they had no idea what SC:BW was like? I thought selecting 12 units max in BW was extremely lame, since at the same time you could select however many you wanted in CnC. Try explaining that to a new spectator who is used to norms from today's gaming environment.
While I don't disagree that BW has some mechanics in there which probably won't be viable in this day and age. You have to realise that single building selection, 12 unit selection, manual mining were design decisions. There were RTS's around that period that had unlimited unit selection, MBS and automine. You even can make SCV's "automine" after building with shift-click. Even Red Alert had "automine". That said, most people are probably right in saying that these design decisions may not be viable in this day an age.
However just because BW has high mechanical difficulty does not take away from strategy, I'd say it increases it. Which is why the TBLS all play completely differently. Arguably SC2 actually has a higher apm requirement, the top SC2 players have higher avg apm than some of the best BW players. Savior and Stork both had very very low apm, in the low 200's, yet they were both part of the most consistent players in history. Even the term Bonjwa was initially inscribed onto Savior.
I have played both games at a reasonably high level, I feel that BW actually rewards strategy more than SC2. SC2 requires a much more all rounded skillset, good tactical decision making and reactionary play.
When I play BW I am thinking on a much more strategic level (my overall gameplan, positioning of buildings and units, areas to lock down, expansion timings, build branches). In SC2 I am thinking on a much more tactical level (my army composition, where and how to engage, drops, maximising opportunities, etc). Of course tactical and strategic elements are shared amongst both games, but I think the emphasis on strategy actually belongs to BW and not SC2.
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On July 03 2012 12:40 sluggaslamoo wrote:
That said, most people are probably right in saying that these design decisions may not be viable in this day an age.
Would you care to explain why it is better to have unlimited unit selection compared to limited unit selection?
There is this misconception nowadays that "more = better", but that isnt true. Having more units on the screen (and clumping them up with Blizzards movement AI) simply creates a fuzzy mass of units which are hard to distinguish sometimes. This is rather true for ZvZ battles where two Roach armies meet up. Sure you can see what is happening and the concaves will be forming, but it is boring to watch. You can have the same awesomeness in a battle with half the number of units and might even get some "hero units" (like the last Marine standing after an assault of Zerglings) which you could "care about" (well until he dies next battle).
On July 03 2012 12:40 sluggaslamoo wrote:
When I play BW I am thinking on a much more strategic level (my overall gameplan, positioning of buildings and units, areas to lock down, expansion timings, build branches). In SC2 I am thinking on a much more tactical level (my army composition, where and how to engage, drops, maximising opportunities, etc). Of course tactical and strategic elements are shared amongst both games, but I think the emphasis on strategy actually belongs to BW and not SC2.
It is really sad to say that SC2 has lost the "strategy" part from RTS. Positioning really is only a minor part for a game where masses of units clash and the right composition is more important. I wish Blizzard would notice this and started to care. The current design of HotS units seems very anti-Siege-Tankish and that is the last unit which was important for a strategic positioning.
The Deathball is bad, boring to watch, requires zero skill and should be removed from the game. Whatever means necessars should be taken and increasing AoE damage and radius would be a good start. Once this is done and 2-4 Siege Tanks are enough to defend a position against a swarm of Zerglings I would consider the Viper (and all the other HotS units) a fair and acceptable unit. As it is now it is redundant since the Zerg can easily swarm the Terran army anyways and then rebuild everything before they even have a chance to get back to a decent supply of Tanks.
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On July 03 2012 13:51 Rabiator wrote:Show nested quote +On July 03 2012 12:40 sluggaslamoo wrote:
That said, most people are probably right in saying that these design decisions may not be viable in this day an age. Would you care to explain why it is better to have unlimited unit selection compared to limited unit selection? There is this misconception nowadays that "more = better", but that isnt true. Having more units on the screen (and clumping them up with Blizzards movement AI) simply creates a fuzzy mass of units which are hard to distinguish sometimes. This is rather true for ZvZ battles where two Roach armies meet up. Sure you can see what is happening and the concaves will be forming, but it is boring to watch. You can have the same awesomeness in a battle with half the number of units and might even get some "hero units" (like the last Marine standing after an assault of Zerglings) which you could "care about" (well until he dies next battle).
The unlimited unit selection isn't the problem, though.
Anyone who's seen unlimited selection hacks from BW can tell you that they still don't bunch up like they do in SC2. The real reason why units bunch up so much is that Blizzard changed the movement AI so they naturally bunch up, and unlike other modern RTS games, we don't have formation buttons to automatically spread them back out.
On July 03 2012 13:51 Rabiator wrote:
The Deathball is bad, boring to watch, requires zero skill and should be removed from the game. Whatever means necessars should be taken and increasing AoE damage and radius would be a good start. Once this is done and 2-4 Siege Tanks are enough to defend a position against a swarm of Zerglings I would consider the Viper (and all the other HotS units) a fair and acceptable unit. As it is now it is redundant since the Zerg can easily swarm the Terran army anyways and then rebuild everything before they even have a chance to get back to a decent supply of Tanks.
All we need is to remove the auto-clumping unit variables and bring back wider AoEs (unnerfed storm, unnerfed siege tanks, lurkers instead of banes, etc). That way, units won't clump automatically and players won't have an incentive to clump manually either.
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Bosnia-Herzegovina261 Posts
Making small control groups would not matter at all, that's just dumb.
What makes deathball a deathball is this:
21:53 - 2 Deathballs meet, they carefully position before engaging
21:59 - 2 Deathballs start fighting
22:05 - The fight is over and one of the Deathballs won
(this is also in-game seconds, I just off-raced with Protoss and won against a Zerg by Archon toileting)
If you take a look at BW videos and gameplay, it feels like a war is going on, multiple fronts, attacks from every direction (most games I have seen is that players have around 100-150 supply at 20min mark, while in SC2, that would be considered as very horrible macro, simply because of Skirmishes). Currently, in SC2, it feels like 2 sides with access to Nukes meet (real world scenario), each of them launch 30 of them and the fight + the game is over.
I gladly invoke the idea of skrimishes in the early and mid game, without it being cheese or an allin, currently, neither side can do that aside from Terran drops (which can get shut down with a few Mutalisks/Feedback/Blink Stalkers). There is zero to nothing other races can do to attack the other race with their ground army without losing more. I am a Zerg player and I absolutely hate the fact that I have to get Brood Lords in order to win a game that has transitioned into late game (Ultralisks are just god horrible, we all know that), or that I have to rush to Brood Lords while spending as little resources on my Tier 1 army as I can, I hate the units, they feel like beefy bouncers who you do not want to mess with (day9 just did a daily where the Terran player avoided Brood Lords the ENTIRE game and won by slowly chopping down the Zerg bases, he only engaged the Brood Lords when the Zerg had 1 Extractor only and he had shitton of Vikings).
Like already said, the fights are too fast and units die too quickly. Have you ever encountered a Mech Terran who pushes out with 5-6 Thors, 10-12 Hellions and 15-17 Siege Tanks? Try attacking into that if you do not have Brood Lords (everything you have evaporates as if you sent 50 puppies instead of some beefy Roaches).
This is not a QQ post, I was just argumenting the fact that battles just end way too fast. Also, someone up there mentioned the option of retreat, I would really love if I could come in, do some damage and get the hell out of there (the only way you can do that now is Terran Drops and Mutalisks).
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Remember like, a year ago when somebody suggested that 'dynamic movement' be added in to make unit paths/movement more distinguishable, as well as to reduce the death ball scenarios? That would've been nice in HotS.
And to add to the deathball hatred, not only is it god-awfully boring to watch, it also means some units can't even get in range to do damage because they're all balled up. It's depressing to see any Protoss player, even super high level ones to have a big T1/1.5 ball with zealots in it, and they can't even do anything because they're control-grouped to the mass of stalkers and sentries and just end up malingering in the back lines doing absolutely nothing. Though I haven't followed the BW pro scene much at all, I remember vods that involved controlling every unit in a control group or a skirmish meticulously.. Bisu vs. Flash spider mines comes to mind. THAT is great to watch.
I think another good idea would be to make animation cancelling/"stutter-step" micro to be more difficult. There are very few units that have long attack animations in SC2. I don't even think there are any that are difficult to animation cancel. In DotA, tons of heroes had absolutely terrible animations and it took some skill to cancel them properly, be it for attacks or spells. The same rule applied for BW... for a LOT of units. I seriously think if Blizzard reworked some of the attack animations in SC2 it'd discourage the deathball a lot.
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On July 02 2012 00:57 enemy2010 wrote:
It think with units that "pull units out of a death ball to thin it out" won't prevent both parties to build up those.
My direct suggestion would be to allow less units to be grouped up in a control group. I don't think of a number as small as in BW (12 i guess, right?), but maybe something like 24, so one page of a control group?
First time reading this thread, but a 12 control group favors protoss so heavily:/. how is it fair that a zerg needs 1 control group for 6 food worth of zerglings? and a protoss can move 24 food worth of units off 1 control group. Lets not go back to the broodwar standard and make protoss the go to noob race.
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On July 02 2012 01:04 Shiori wrote:
It won't work. Why? Because the problem with the deathball isn't that it's too big; it's that it's a microless ball whose success or failure guarantees the success or failure of the game. These harassment units vary between being utterly useless and absurdly overpowered but none of them will win you the game themselves. They might, if poorly defended, give you a slight economic advantage, but if your deathball loses to the enemy's deathball, you still lose because he walks over your base.
Blizzard doesn't seem to understand that the deathball exists because of the insane cost-efficiency of a few key units. Terran is more capable of doing multi-pronged harassment because 1 Medivac with MM in it is worth its weight in gold as far as cost-efficiency goes. Same thing for Roaches/Lings against Protoss. The trouble is that Zerg and Protoss get their super cost-efficient units at tier 2 and 3, which means they're expensive and need to be surrounded with other units in order to survive. This leads to deathball syndrome. Colossi are bad if you just have 3 of them sitting by themselves, but if they're buffered by a bunch of Stalkers and Sentries, you have a game-ending force. Same with Immortals. Same with Brood Lords. Same with Templar. Same with Ghosts.
If Blizzard wants to get rid of the deathballs, they have basically two options: give everyone an early game unit that scales well and is cost-efficient, or nerf all units that are good against everythinkg. Prime targets for this nerf would be Marauders, Roaches, Colossi, Infestors, and so on. These are units that you can build in 1 or more matchups that are good against pretty much any strategy. I rarely make a decision when I decide to add a few more Colossi to the mix, because Colossi are basically always going to pay for themselves.
I also find it kinda ironic that the best units Blizzard is adding are the ones that can be readily added to deathballs, like the Viper, Widow Mine, and Oracle. Every Protoss player knows that the Tempest, at 300gas for no AoE, is going to be virtually worthless, especially since cleaning up an entire expansion over the course of 5 minutes wouldn't justify its obscene cost. I think attacking Nydus worms might be used, but that they're fundamentally unnecessary since Zerg harassment never gets shut down in the sense that DB thinks it does.
On July 02 2012 02:16 QuanticTheognis wrote:Show nested quote +On July 02 2012 02:12 []Phase[] wrote:On July 02 2012 01:52 Ballistixz wrote:
and brood lords(the fact that they spawn broodlings).
how do broodlings exactly make deathballs? If anything, they make it so that the opponents DB gets stucked. Obviously you are going to keep your 12 broodlords together, even if there wasent a death ball problem. (you kept your guardians together aswell. note : not stacked obviously). Most people here also blame pathing rather than the size of control group, however, they coincide. when you got your units in 1 group, the pathing indeed fucks everything up. However, if you split your DB into 3 groups, rather than 1 DB, you will get 3 smaller DB's, that each started moving at a different time. And when you've already made 3 groups, it won't be very hard to make your units flank, and also get good at this. So saying unlimited selection has NOTHING to do with it, is wrong, because indirectly it WILL affect the DB. This is not the only reason why DB exists, but the laziness unlimited control groups brings definatly has a big role to play in it. Again, limiting selection wont fix everything, but it'll def help, and I dont understand how others cannot see the link when in bw we were FORCED to control smaller groups and automatically tried to get advantages out of it such as flanking, because we had to split up a big group anyways. I am all for the several suggestions to 'fix' the DB, but one change wont do it all. We need the combination of many things to finally get rid of the deathball The synergy between the broodlord and the infestor/corruptor makes the deathball. It's not laziness of control groups lol. Even if you could only hotkey 4 units in a control group you would still want to have a flock of broodlords with infestor/corruptor support just because how powerful it was. Guardians weren't a deathball because there were very easy and viable solutions on dealing with them. It actually has nothing to do with how you have your hotkey setup.
Honestly I think these two posts sum it up pretty well. IMO limited unit selection/unit spacing and pathfinding is just side stepping around the issue, and I don't think unintuitive design and AI is the correct answer.
It's all about the design of the units themselves. The reason you DO see terran split up their army with multi pronged attacks (and zerg roach drops to a certain extent) is the due to the cost effectiveness of these units in low numbers. You can change the unit spacing and limit unit selection all you want, but zergs are NEVER going to want to split up their death ball because corrupters, broods and infestors synergise so well the more you have of them. They are next to useless in small groups. Same goes with protoss; don't see small squads of units because individually each unit is pretty cost inefficient.
Personally I think the design philosophy of terran is best; having cost effective tier 1-2 units as the backbone of your army and higher tier units to support, as opposed to protoss where your tier 1-2 units are only there to protect your colossi.
I guess for protoss it comes down to warpgate, since you simply can't have tier 1-2 units with the same cost effectiveness as their terran/zerg counterparts because they can be warped in anywhere on the map. IMO the best idea to both enable gateway units to be stronger and yet keep the warpgate concept (I think it is a pretty cool/unique concept) is to only allow units to be warped in from warp prism, or possibly only pylons that must be upgraded.
Just IMO of course
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It's all about the design of the units themselves. The reason you DO see terran split up their army with multi pronged attacks (and zerg roach drops to a certain extent) is the due to the cost effectiveness of these units in low numbers. You can change the unit spacing and limit unit selection all you want, but zergs are NEVER going to want to split up their death ball because corrupters, broods and infestors synergise so well the more you have of them. They are next to useless in small groups. Same goes with protoss; don't see small squads of units because individually each unit is pretty cost inefficient.
I guess for protoss it comes down to warpgate, since you simply can't have tier 1-2 units with the same cost effectiveness as their terran/zerg counterparts because they can be warped in anywhere on the map. IMO the best idea to both enable gateway units to be stronger and yet keep the warpgate concept (I think it is a pretty cool/unique concept) is to only allow units to be warped in from warp prism, or possibly only pylons that must be upgraded.
I'm currently constructing a blog post (it will be rather long, lol) detailing my thoughts about the current direction of HOTS and what I would personally change. All revolving around the issue of the deathball. I have a cool idea about the warpgate mechanic as well.
This issue really fucking interests me. And it is crucial to the game - which is why it makes me angry to see it sidestepped and treated trivially. I do hope that Blizzard actually reads the suggestions that we make.
Personally, I think that the problem here is primarily a unit issue, though pathing does play a role as well. The reason why I agree with you is the fact that though units clump up, the damage of high powered AOE units should be a natural deterrent to this, requiring players to spread their units apart in order to make them more effective. Left as it is, the current pathing engine would only require more skill from players in order to avoid having their armies destroyed by AOE (requires spreading of forces, damnit!).
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They should add in WC3 like pathing/unit ai.
The propbelm is not that you "want" a Deathball (you would want that in SC/BW too except when facing certain spells/abilitiys --> like in SC2  ).
The problem is that it's WAY to easy to get one because everything fits so nice together whiteout any problems...
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Canada11350 Posts
On July 03 2012 04:39 tehemperorer wrote:Show nested quote +On July 03 2012 02:36 Darneck wrote:On July 03 2012 02:24 tehemperorer wrote:
The deathball "problem" is kind of overblown, and really is only one way to play the game that has its share of advantages and disadvantages. I think we should be thankful that we can play a blob style if we want; for some people it's easier and can be quite effective, while you can also play a more spread out harassing style and be an effective player as well. BW's pathing was a pain in the ass and made the game more mechanically difficult for a lot of players, and it became less about strategy and more about how fast you can move your hands which is kind of against the point of an RTS BW isn't less about strategy at all on the highest level. The mechanics just seperated the best players from the average/good players which is really good because that's what's needed. There needs to be something that allows you to keep a consistency by purely being better than your opponent. You can still get caught off guard by tactics by worse players but not amazingly worse which can still happen in sc2. The point is (to which you attest) that from an average/good level all the way to the top it is about mechanics more than strategy in BW. We're into opinions here, but an RTS should be about strategy more than a minimum skill threshold that must be passed before being able to play the game decently. This idea is excused for BW because BW was developed under a certain level of technological restrictions and was lucky enough to gain traction beyond it's normal lifecycle, but for newer RTS's, mechanics that are base and simple should be managed by the platform and not by the player. SC2 achieves this. My problem is most of the opinion in this thread seems to be based off of nostalgia and not what fundamentally makes an RTS. When SC1 came out I was excited for it but quickly found that it wasn't primarily about strategy when compared to the other games that were available at around the same time, like CnC and Dune. Again, you can argue this because it's a declaration of my opinion but I don't think you can argue that CnC and Total Annihilation were more mechanically challenging than SC:BW, and that's the point: don't add mechanical challenges to an RTS title that aren't necessary. If getting more spectators for the eSport is the goal, how are you going to explain arbitrary limitations on SC2 gameplay to someone if they had no idea what SC:BW was like? I thought selecting 12 units max in BW was extremely lame, since at the same time you could select however many you wanted in CnC. Try explaining that to a new spectator who is used to norms from today's gaming environment.
I disagree that this has anything to do with nostalgia rather than what makes a good RTS. SC really is the only RTS game that I've come across that makes a difference not only what you make, but how you handle your units. Oh sure there's games with cover mechanics and formation buttons you can press. But none that allowed you the refined control that BW had where micro-ing a group of vultures could just murder zerglings. Or well placed shots from reaver-shuttle will pick apart a base (even the splash had a directional element to it.) SC has always been about sacrificing automation in order to place more powerful options in the hands of the skilled players. Why did they add Muling, Chrono, and Inject if it was just about strategy? What is stim doing in a game that should be all about strategy and not this mechanical skill of separating marines or kiting units? Why does Jaedong so sorely miss the possibility of microing mutalisks? Why are we forced to click a button for the battlecruiser to fire it's most powerful gun? What is manual blink doing on stalkers when they should be smart enough to attack on their own. Why are there even spells in an RTS that you have to manually control?
These all require a certain level of mechanical skill.
Most RTS games have moved away from being able to control how your units behave. Rather they take control from the players and automate everything. "It's all about strategy." A lot of suggestions are looking to give power back to the player so you don't just control where a unit goes (pre-battle positioning), but how it goes. (Things like moving shot.)
Some things are not just technical limitations, some are actually design choices. I would argue that smart casting/ not smart casting and overkill/ no overkill tanks are all design choices. Again, why even have spells in a strategy game if we don't like mechanics and just want strategy? Plus things like expanding the magic box isn't making things worse, but adding more options- you can clump units or spread them out. Your choice. Whoever said we need a formation button, please no. Player control, not preset automation please. Automation creates a pre-ordained way of doing things and it's hard to expand beyond the set way. Player control, while harder provides greater flexibility. (But I'm not sure 12-24 unit selection would be at the top of any of my lists of things to add to SC2.)
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the 12 limit unit selection could be made into some supply limit instead, for example 24 so that you could get either 12 zealots in a control group or 24 zerglings and it could possibly be modified so that you could still have a bit more of units with higher supply though you would generally still have less of those units.
And not in this thread but in many other threads I've seen people saying that removing MBS wouldn't work with warpgate but I think there's quite an easy fix for that too which would be that you have to go back to all of your gateways to "charge" them everytime you want to use them so you go back and charge all 10 of them and then you've got 10 warpins available still on the W button.
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limiting unit selections and removing MBS is just asking to frustrate new players, and that's the last thing u want is to drive away your playerbase.
red alert 1 did not have MBS or unlimited unit selection. red alert 2's intuitive UI, and engaging game play was what made red alert 2 stand out far more than red alert 1 or 3, or any other RTS in its time.
SC2 should not be going backward and completely alienate its playerbase. It needs to move forward in the stratgic department and gives new difficulties that pro players can invest in to better themselves.
Terran is a very well designed race (except for mech outside of tank, that needs to be overhauled and seriously changed). Protoss is worse offender in game that needs alot of changing, but it will be up to Blizzard to change that.
Zerg imo don't matter as much because they are the reactive race. By fixing protoss and terran, you fixes a huge portion of zerg problems in term of engagements and matchup. Though they could use more microable units
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On July 03 2012 17:27 iky43210 wrote:
limiting unit selections and removing MBS is just asking to frustrate new players, and that's the last thing u want is to drive away your playerbase.
SC2 should not be going backward and completely alienate its playerbase. It needs to move forward in the stratgic department and gives new difficulties that pro players can invest in to better themselves.
Not if you do it in the way that I've suggested earlier in the thread and simply add a tournament mode and ladder with the seperate changes to balance and mechanics while still keeping the current game that blizzard likes.
And just simply focusing on the strategic department is just bad, there needs to be something else too to seperate the best players from the other and the level of strategy is still just as high and higher even at the highest level no matter the more difficult mechanics.
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On July 03 2012 17:29 Darneck wrote:Show nested quote +On July 03 2012 17:27 iky43210 wrote:
limiting unit selections and removing MBS is just asking to frustrate new players, and that's the last thing u want is to drive away your playerbase.
Not if you do it in the way that I've suggested earlier in the thread and simply add a tournament mode and ladder with the seperate changes to balance and mechanics while still keeping the current game that blizzard likes.
Making it less limiting from 12 unit to 24 is not any better, it is still severely limiting. Seperating tournament and ladder is a decent idea but not a good one as you require two seperate balances and every units will have to change depending on which ladder. Not to say the "tournament mode" is still going to alienate any younger would be pros since they have been playing ladder all this time and have to forfeit everything they learned once they try the "competitive mode".
You might as well just make a new game
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[QUOTE]On July 03 2012 17:32 iky43210 wrote:
[QUOTE]On July 03 2012 17:29 Darneck wrote:
[QUOTE]On July 03 2012 17:27 iky43210 wrote:
limiting unit selections and removing MBS is just asking to frustrate new players, and that's the last thing u want is to drive away your playerbase.
[/QUOTE]
Making it less limiting from 12 unit to 24 is not any better, it is still severely limiting. Seperating tournament and ladder is a decent idea but not a good one as you require two seperate balances and every units will have to change depending on which ladder. Not to say the "tournament mode" is still going to alienate any younger would be pros since they have been playing ladder all this time and have to forfeit everything they learned because of a completely different mode.
You might as well just make a new game[/QUOTE]
How would it be like just making a new game? You'd already have half of it finished already and then you'd just need balance changes every month now and then for each.
And they would not have to forfeit everything, the core would still be there for them and they would just need to improve on the mechanics department mainly.
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On July 03 2012 17:35 Darneck wrote:Show nested quote +On July 03 2012 17:32 iky43210 wrote:On July 03 2012 17:29 Darneck wrote:On July 03 2012 17:27 iky43210 wrote:
limiting unit selections and removing MBS is just asking to frustrate new players, and that's the last thing u want is to drive away your playerbase.
Not if you do it in the way that I've suggested earlier in the thread and simply add a tournament mode and ladder with the seperate changes to balance and mechanics while still keeping the current game that blizzard likes. Making it less limiting from 12 unit to 24 is not any better, it is still severely limiting. Seperating tournament and ladder is a decent idea but not a good one as you require two seperate balances and every units will have to change depending on which ladder. You might as well just make a new game How would it be like just making a new game? You'd already have half of it finished already and then you'd just need balance changes every month now and then for each
If the game engine is done, Blizzard can implement any random units they wanted without much effort. Anybody could actually with map editor. Hardest part about RTS is balancing and game design, those two would be very different as depending on the mode. For instance, larva would be extremely overpowered in a non-MBS environment and zerglings would be extremely weak
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On July 03 2012 17:36 iky43210 wrote:Show nested quote +On July 03 2012 17:35 Darneck wrote:On July 03 2012 17:32 iky43210 wrote:On July 03 2012 17:29 Darneck wrote:On July 03 2012 17:27 iky43210 wrote:
limiting unit selections and removing MBS is just asking to frustrate new players, and that's the last thing u want is to drive away your playerbase.
Not if you do it in the way that I've suggested earlier in the thread and simply add a tournament mode and ladder with the seperate changes to balance and mechanics while still keeping the current game that blizzard likes. Making it less limiting from 12 unit to 24 is not any better, it is still severely limiting. Seperating tournament and ladder is a decent idea but not a good one as you require two seperate balances and every units will have to change depending on which ladder. You might as well just make a new game How would it be like just making a new game? You'd already have half of it finished already and then you'd just need balance changes every month now and then for each If the game engine is done, Blizzard can implement any random units they wanted without much effort. Hardest part about RTS is balancing. And game design between those two would have been different as well, cause for instance larva would be extremely overpowered in a non-MBS environment and zerglings would be extremely weak
It's not like any of these changes would require a change of the game engine, basically everything can be added already without any change to it which has already been shown in several different custom maps and modes.
Also suggested the unit limit selection being done somehow with supply instead of simply 12 units which could allow for 12 zealots or 24 zerglins etc
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On July 03 2012 17:39 Darneck wrote:Show nested quote +On July 03 2012 17:36 iky43210 wrote:On July 03 2012 17:35 Darneck wrote:On July 03 2012 17:32 iky43210 wrote:On July 03 2012 17:29 Darneck wrote:On July 03 2012 17:27 iky43210 wrote:
limiting unit selections and removing MBS is just asking to frustrate new players, and that's the last thing u want is to drive away your playerbase.
Not if you do it in the way that I've suggested earlier in the thread and simply add a tournament mode and ladder with the seperate changes to balance and mechanics while still keeping the current game that blizzard likes. Making it less limiting from 12 unit to 24 is not any better, it is still severely limiting. Seperating tournament and ladder is a decent idea but not a good one as you require two seperate balances and every units will have to change depending on which ladder. You might as well just make a new game How would it be like just making a new game? You'd already have half of it finished already and then you'd just need balance changes every month now and then for each If the game engine is done, Blizzard can implement any random units they wanted without much effort. Hardest part about RTS is balancing. And game design between those two would have been different as well, cause for instance larva would be extremely overpowered in a non-MBS environment and zerglings would be extremely weak It's not like any of these changes would require a change of the game engine, basically everything can be added already without any change to it which has already been shown in several different custom maps and modes. Also suggested the unit limit selection being done somehow with supply instead of simply 12 units which could allow for 12 zealots or 24 zerglins etc
It's not as easy as you make it out to be. sc2 was internally tested for many months, and beta was tested for 6 months, yet the game still came out extremely imbalance and took many patches of fine tuning to get to where we are today. RTS balancing truly takes alot of effort and time that I don't think its festible trying to maintain two mode
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EPT
