On July 03 2012 18:05 hashaki wrote: To everyone who thinks deathballsyndrome has anything to do with stuff like unit clumping, unlimited unit selection etc.. Are you guys retarded? Deathballs exist because that type of play is rewarded. If sitting in your own base building up a massive force is rewarded, that's what's gonna happen.
This type of play is rewarded because AoEs were heavily nerfed to account for the fact that units auto-clump (making it too difficult to properly spread). If auto-clumping were removed, and clumping only happens manually, then AoEs could be buffed back to where they should be.
But you could just buff AoE and make the players spread manually.
You can't realistically spread manually in this game to prevent AoE spells, there isn't anywhere near enough time. And then when you go back to attack, everything bunches back together again. It'd get to a point where you'd start wishing the game had a 12 unit selection cap.
Emphasis added. I'd like to reiterate this point again for anyone who still doesn't get it:
Selection caps don't matter. You can assign 12 or fewer units per control group in SC2 and deathballs would still happen, and you could use unlimited selection hacks in BW and you still wouldn't get deathballs.
Deathballs are a consequence of unit pathing, not unit selection caps.
On July 03 2012 18:05 hashaki wrote: To everyone who thinks deathballsyndrome has anything to do with stuff like unit clumping, unlimited unit selection etc.. Are you guys retarded? Deathballs exist because that type of play is rewarded.
Not exactly, it IS relevant to unit clumping.
Take the classic Terran MMM composition. Medivacs fly above it so don't interfere with the ground units. Marines and Marauders form this very, very dense cluster of absurdly high DPS. The damage output of a Marine/Marauder ball is insane.
If they weren't clustered like that the DPS wouldn't be so high and it'd be easier to pick off units and engage. But it's not like that, so everyone else has to get units that do AoE damage to harm it. Hence it's generally better to just ball up the MMM until you HAVE to spread to avoid fungals or whatever, because it's more effective that way.
On July 03 2012 21:27 Adrenal6land wrote: Does anyone else think that Zerg will be raped by Tempest and widow mines because zerg is the only race that is not very usefull with a giant deathball? packs of lings/raoches/hydras/and mutas are very week and if you hit 1 widow mine or 1 splash of damage, it will completely kill the zerg force. Im also scared of an air unit with so much range..... That just means it can aid the death ball from a really really far range, and is Zerg getting an anti air unit that i havent heard about? zerg has very limited anti air in sc2. maybe the burrow charge Ultralist will take out those Tempest amiright guys? amiright???
...unless I missed something I was under the impression the Tempest had become single-target (like the Carrier).
Why not give all races some static or semistatic defense (with high cost or low DPS) and really huge AOE (like the 1/2 of the whole screen), which would be very cost effective if it was to hit a deathball and not cost-effective against small or medium groups of units?
It would discourage a deathball-based aggression and encourage harassment and multipronged attacks. What do you guys think? Should we push this idea?
Diamond Terran here, wouldnt increasing AOE damage make Terran even more difficult to play? AOE damage is a large part of why Terran takes so much control with constant splitting. I don't like the idea of stronger AOEs.
Has anyone considered that maybe the protoss deathball isn't so bad?
I mean think about it. The zerg get to be swarmy, the terran have multi pronged attacks, tank crawls, and diverse harassment methods (drops, reavers, bansees), and the protoss have their deathball. The deathball moves out with it's core units that need to be taken out (Colossi, immortals, or HTs), and it's supporting units (stalkers, zealots). With the ability to recall to the mothership core, it starts to become pretty cool. Just look at Kiwikaki vs Stephano Game 2 at IPL3, MVP vs Squirtle Game five at last GSL finals, or Hero vs Annyung from the IPLTAC3 Last week to see how once the protoss has the recall ability they start to really get a racial dynamic that is unique to them.
Yes, currently the deathball is boring until the mothership comes out because it results in the possibility of single-engagement games. In HoTS, the protoss at the very least will not have to wory about that. I can't WAIT to see what former WC3 players use the mothership core's recall for especially.
Dont you think that in BW there was no deathball but more raid because deathball would get annhilated by small groups like Reavers, templars, tanks or lurker and it dealt way more dmg???
On July 03 2012 22:41 Alex1Sun wrote: Why not give all races some static or semistatic defense (with high cost or low DPS) and really huge AOE (like the 1/2 of the whole screen), which would be very cost effective if it was to hit a deathball and not cost-effective against small or medium groups of units?
It would discourage a deathball-based aggression and encourage harassment and multipronged attacks. What do you guys think? Should we push this idea?
sry didnt read you post this was what im talking about. If they had something that could like 1 shot half of you marines there would be less balls like this
On July 03 2012 22:46 Acertos wrote: Dont you think that in BW there was no deathball but more raid because deathball would get annhilated by small groups like Reavers, templars, tanks or lurker and it dealt way more dmg???
That is exactly right. But due to the pathing engine in SCII Blizzard has nerfed AOE leading to deathballs. In BW power-units were able to control a large amount of space freeing up supply for attacks all around the map. In SCII it's all just a giant ball of shit.
On July 03 2012 22:41 Riverdragon0 wrote: Diamond Terran here, wouldnt increasing AOE damage make Terran even more difficult to play? AOE damage is a large part of why Terran takes so much control with constant splitting. I don't like the idea of stronger AOEs.
Actually no, as long as siege tank AOE damage got a big enough buff. Deathball play is a main reason terran is so bad in lategame. Being clumped up is not a naturally good formation for marines and marauders, but terran's do it anyway because that's the ONLY way to fight certain types of enemy deathballs. Fungal and storm are very effective at dealing with much larger numbers of marines and marauders, and this is how EVERY kind of splash damage (especially tanks) should work.
This would mean terran could stop their base from being overrun with 6-10 siege tanks while doing drops, banshee harass, hellion run-bys, and all the other mobile stuff terran players like to do but often can't because splitting up your army in WoL often means you just lose to the enemy deathball.
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
Well said. Those looking for "Tournament Mode" in my humble opinion would be best served by playing MavercK's incredible BW mod. It has options for enabling/disabling certain UI features such as unit selection limit.
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.
I'm sorry but this is simply a terrible idea. Why would you have two different games depending merely on whether you in tournament or ladder? How do you think players practise for tournament? Yes that's right on ladder.
And what is classified as tournament? Just big lans like MLG? Or online tournaments such as playhem? Not to mention its a huge barrier of entry for upcoming pros.
Sorry but for people to have efficient practise you need consistency. You can't just expect people to play two completely different games when they are laddering compared to when they are playing tournaments.
I guess you misunderstood what I was saying then since I meant that the tournament mode is supposed to have its own seperate ladder which all the pros and other players who wants to play with the different settings would use.
I dunno, I'm skeptical. It's good that Blizzard is listening to our complaints, but while these new units theoretically don't add anything to the deathball they certainly don't do anything to break them up either.
I may be thinking too simplistically, but couldn't Blizzard force the units to spread more by just making the collision boxes on ranged units larger? Or is that a sacred cow, too?
On July 03 2012 21:49 Lurk wrote: I think you guys are mistaking two different things for one. Deathball syndrome is not only that all units are physically clumped up into one big ball, it's also that all military units of one player are concentrated on one particular area of the map and not split into two smaller armies. While the first one is certainly connected to the new pathing and auto-clumping AI, the latter is definately not.
Strong and unforgiving AoE would prevent the deathball from being effective, so you could hold a strategic point with a few AoE units against a superior force (at least temporarily). Just think of bottlenecks like in '300', when quantity is just not the answer. Some of you people complain that manually spreading out the units to circumvent the AoE is impossible, but that is exactly the point. If preventing the deathball is the goal here, you are simply not supposed to attack with all your units at the same place. If you do nonetheless, you are supposed to take a severe punishment in the form of brutal AoE, whether you spread out your units somehow or not.
Instead, find other avenues of attack, do a simultaneous drop with some units, flank the enemy at another position or simply leave some units at home to thward off counter-drops. I agree though, that the current maps are often not open enough for such play but that's a problem easily fixed.
What I've been saying is that strong AOE is the answer to preventing the "giant balls of shit that run around the map in a clusterfuck."
But Blizzard will not implement strong AOE with the current pathing system. In fact, they've nerfed it! The two issues are connected.
Spreading out the units after EVERY click to circumvent AOE is not impossible, but it's pretty fucking difficult. If AOE damage sources were increased with the current system then it would make it impossible - limiting gameplay.
You WANT to see units spread out. But auto-clump is a fucking hassle, leading to deathballs. And deathballs = weak AOE to compensate.
I'm afraid the two are connected and you really can't have one without the other (I've been thinking about this a lot lol).
Blizzard nerfed AoE before players were really playing the game properly. Now we have people like MarineKing (and pretty much any code a or s player nowadays )to show us the way.
You wouldn't have to spread your units out after every click. You'd only have to do that if you had everything in one control group. Loads of people in this thread want 12 unit selection limit back (which lets be honest is never gonna happen) but there's nothing stopping you from selecting small chunks of your army at a time and moving it piece by piece. It might take a lot of mechanical skill to pull off, but isn't that what people want?
On July 03 2012 21:49 Lurk wrote: I think you guys are mistaking two different things for one. Deathball syndrome is not only that all units are physically clumped up into one big ball, it's also that all military units of one player are concentrated on one particular area of the map and not split into two smaller armies. While the first one is certainly connected to the new pathing and auto-clumping AI, the latter is definately not.
Strong and unforgiving AoE would prevent the deathball from being effective, so you could hold a strategic point with a few AoE units against a superior force (at least temporarily). Just think of bottlenecks like in '300', when quantity is just not the answer. Some of you people complain that manually spreading out the units to circumvent the AoE is impossible, but that is exactly the point. If preventing the deathball is the goal here, you are simply not supposed to attack with all your units at the same place. If you do nonetheless, you are supposed to take a severe punishment in the form of brutal AoE, whether you spread out your units somehow or not.
Instead, find other avenues of attack, do a simultaneous drop with some units, flank the enemy at another position or simply leave some units at home to thward off counter-drops. I agree though, that the current maps are often not open enough for such play but that's a problem easily fixed.
What I've been saying is that strong AOE is the answer to preventing the "giant balls of shit that run around the map in a clusterfuck."
But Blizzard will not implement strong AOE with the current pathing system. In fact, they've nerfed it! The two issues are connected.
Spreading out the units after EVERY click to circumvent AOE is not impossible, but it's pretty fucking difficult. If AOE damage sources were increased with the current system then it would make it impossible - limiting gameplay.
You WANT to see units spread out. But auto-clump is a fucking hassle, leading to deathballs. And deathballs = weak AOE to compensate.
I'm afraid the two are connected and you really can't have one without the other (I've been thinking about this a lot lol).
Blizzard nerfed AoE before players were really playing the game properly. Now we have people like MarineKing (and pretty much any code a or s player nowadays )to show us the way.
You wouldn't have to spread your units out after click. You'd only have to do that if you had everything in one control group. Loads of people in this thread want 12 unit selection limit back (which lets be honest is never gonna happen) but there's nothing stopping you from selecting small chunks of your army at a time and moving it piece by piece. It might take a lot of mechanical skill to pull off, but isn't that what people want?
I think its so true, because not a lot of pros have 2 or 3 control groups for their army aside from zerg who needs to flank (and aside from magic units). And having like 3 or 4 groups to avoid having all things killed or for multi pronged would be nice and rly micro intensive.
On July 03 2012 18:05 hashaki wrote: To everyone who thinks deathballsyndrome has anything to do with stuff like unit clumping, unlimited unit selection etc.. Are you guys retarded? Deathballs exist because that type of play is rewarded. If sitting in your own base building up a massive force is rewarded, that's what's gonna happen.
In order to break up the deathball the game has to reward small skrimishes, holding severral strategic positions on the map (a watchtower is not a strategic position, and if holding one position is enough, then a deathball can hold it), punish big clumps of units harder etc. Currently SC2 does very little of this, if anything at all.
You can keep talking about this and that to help deal with the issue, but it's not gonna change the fact that the way SC2 was designed, fighting one fight with one big ball of units is rewarded.
Don't like it? Go play Company of Heroes in wait for COH2 to be released
I dont think maps do much to help or reward the player who does small skirmishes either when you have easy accessible paths to expansions which are usually wide open btw and close to the enemy that it literally 20 seconds or so to check with a stalker. I believe expansions should be more tucked in away if that makes sense and have different chokes, walls and paths in the middle of the map for counter attacks to reward to skirmishing player. idk.
On July 04 2012 08:04 kineSiS- wrote: SC2 as spectator sport pales in comparison to SC1. There are many reasons for this, more than I care posting.
I think most of the people here realize this, which is why the modified movement thread is starting to take off.
It's also why the FRB thread took off awhile ago, but as far as I know that has more or less died off.
People do realize all the shortcomings of SCII to BW. The sad part is we have really limited influence. And this game is the future (in many ways it is a step back, while claiming to be more sophisticated).
At the end of the day, the current build isn't really fun for me to play anymore. BW just has so much more strategic weight to it.
On July 03 2012 18:05 hashaki wrote: To everyone who thinks deathballsyndrome has anything to do with stuff like unit clumping, unlimited unit selection etc.. Are you guys retarded? Deathballs exist because that type of play is rewarded. If sitting in your own base building up a massive force is rewarded, that's what's gonna happen.
In order to break up the deathball the game has to reward small skrimishes, holding severral strategic positions on the map (a watchtower is not a strategic position, and if holding one position is enough, then a deathball can hold it), punish big clumps of units harder etc. Currently SC2 does very little of this, if anything at all.
You can keep talking about this and that to help deal with the issue, but it's not gonna change the fact that the way SC2 was designed, fighting one fight with one big ball of units is rewarded.
Don't like it? Go play Company of Heroes in wait for COH2 to be released
I dont think maps do much to help or reward the player who does small skirmishes either when you have easy accessible paths to expansions which are usually wide open btw and close to the enemy that it literally 20 seconds or so to check with a stalker. I believe expansions should be more tucked in away if that makes sense and have different chokes, walls and paths in the middle of the map for counter attacks to reward to skirmishing player. idk.
Company of Heroes has a much better pathing algorithm than SC2 though. It doesn't have the strongest of positioning mechanics either, because often in the end you are moving around a "deathball" of tanks. If SC2 had Company of Heroes pathing, where the units didn't just ball up it would be a much better game though. I've been saying that a lot heh.
For some reason the designers think that SC2 pathing is the best thing ever made, and making it different would make it like "terrible like BW" which is absolute crap. Even Warcraft 3 pathing is better than SC2, but company of heroes style would be ideal.
I'd love to be able to rebalance company of heroes to put more emphasis on infantry and positional play. Although British comes pretty damn close, because of the massive supply cost of each defensive structure, eventually you get stuck and can't progressively move forward unlike Terran in BW.
IMO, the reason why deathballs are bad and happen in SC2 while they don't in SCBW is the ease in which you can cover and take ground in SC2.
In SCBW, if you won a major battle, you still couldn't just push through the map and win, because, and I don't know about actual in-game numbers, but the maps FELT bigger, and each race had better entrenchment options.
If you won a major battle you couldn't "Just walk into Mordor", because lurkers, tanks, stronger static defenses (maybe?), and the time it would take your army to arrive at their base, vs the time it would take them to reinforce and WORSE the time it would take YOU to reinforce across the map.
Further, due to poorer pathing, your reinforcements might get lost, stuck on terrain, strung out all over, etc. Reinforcing was dangerous and time-consuming to do on the move.
Also, a lot of time huge battles made less sense in SCBW because micro was more important. There were more units that could do more with more skill in SCBW. If you took all those units and just threw them in a big ball, that would basically just be you admitting: "I can't micro all this effectively, so I'm just going to group it together and throw it at you and hope you die."
When your small groups of units could wage huge upset battles against larger forces, and 'minor' micro wins or losses could affect big swings in battle results, smaller groups of units engaging smaller groups of units was 'safer' for the worse player and more cost efficient and 'better' for the better player.
Now, you have units that work better in balls, have no micro to speak of, or very easy micro, and many units that either have NO micro to speak of, or micro that can easily be handled as a group rather than as individuals...so controlling the deathball is simple, and there's no micro advantage to using smaller groups.
This is because of microless units like the colossus and the thor, smart-casting on units like templars, ghosts and infestors, and simple-to-use micro on many units like stim and burrow, as well as 'one-use' micro like blink, where you can use it 1 or two times at the start of the battle and then either not much, or not at all after that.
Additionally the addition of units that nearly REQUIRE a ball to use does nothing to help this. Like the colossus and many others, some units are just crap by themselves. 1 colossus by itself, or even in a small group is nearly worthless. It's a waste of resources. Put that same colossus + 2-3 more into a huge ball of death though, and it completely powers up your whole army. That's not to say that units shouldn't have synergy...but to have units that are ONLY about synergy and shine most only in deathball situations means that's all you will see.
And the sad part is that nothing about this is something you can 'easily' fix. Sure you can bandaid this with pathing changes, or revisions to control group limits and such...but it's design flaws inherent in the game and unit design and balancing. I have to say the 'deathball situation' in sc2 is BY DESIGN. At some point in development, SOMEONE saw the deathball and they thought it was awesome. And so now that's what you have. That's how the game works.
EPT
