On July 07 2012 07:59 StackerTwo wrote: a copy and paste of my post in the Modified Movement Thread.
I firmly believe that mm, will not change the deathball; nor would limited selection in control groups.
MM would make the death ball easier to presplit, and collapse. but it does not change the NEED to match deathball with deathball;
limited control groups, makes it more difficult to control, but again it does not change the need for deathballs. 12 marines vs 12 stalkers? 12 lings vs 12 hellions? how many hotkeys do you need to control 100lings, and 50 banes? would this limitation be imposed on buildings? zerg has what 5-8 base+upgrade buildings, while t&p has 12+ rax/fac/star, gate/robo/star
what could possibly change the death ball would be some way to make any excess unit give reduced return. example: why do players not make 60 workers on 1 base? because pass the point of full saturation there is no return on investment.
have you ever seen a 20 thor composition? why? because the way thor collision works only a certain number can "fit" in a concave(i assume the warhound will have the same issue), the rest will be walking around until a "parking spot" opens up.
but then again... changing collision would really throw off any balance that we still have. how many of each unit should/could fit in a reduced engagement?
Yes it appears MM doesnt automatically fix the Deathball. However MavercK is testing a movement modification for his SC2BW map
while it looks funky and cool the way units move, there is no way blizzard would let this pass. For aesthetic purpose
Blizzard's design team understands that more dynamic spacing is more interesting and real.
Do you have any statement by them to back this claim up?
No, but they'd have to be unbelievably myopic. Not even I can fathom otherwise. And I've made dozens of posts on specific shortcomings/weaknesses they have. I dunno, I guess it's possible....
Its not that clear cut. Even in this thread you have three or four competing arguements about why death balls occur.
And apparently the lead programmer of warcraft 1 thought they are caused by unlimited unit selection
How about less income? Making tech paths a risk (i.e cant just for example go from gassing up a bunch of sentries early game and switch to high templar right away)? How about bases being really hard to secure?
people who wish more micro intensive units and blame DB and Blizz for bad game design have no idea what they're talking about. Arguing about HOTS balances before the beta is out is a whole lot of speculative fancy from armchair game designers, anybody who wants to go back to the good ole glory days of BW are free to do so you know.. except SC2 is way better even with its 'deathball'. Admit it, if it sucked so bad the way so many people are posting on the forum, why play it. Go play D3, then you'll know that SC2 is the best game Blizz has on the table to date.
On August 02 2012 10:50 Rambolav wrote: How about less income? Making tech paths a risk (i.e cant just for example go from gassing up a bunch of sentries early game and switch to high templar right away)? How about bases being really hard to secure?
Uhm... no? That would push the game to be mostly about one base play and just massing up a quick army in the early game. Would be much like PvP a few months ago where the first player to try and expand typically lost.
Less income is a possibility, those 6m maps had some popularity (though I think the idea has died out a bit since it's pretty clear Blizz wont implement a change like that) and it's an interesting idea. But again it has to be done carefully so that one can still play for the late-game (which is what leads to the most dynamic play and strategies).
Unlimited unit selection, or at least up to 500 (was 255 really not enough?), along with the improved pathing and very close unit collision are the primary reasons that deathballs are prominent. Unit design like the Colossi also doesn't help.
I'm glad Blizz has some plans to try and split up the deathball, but I'm not convinced their plans will make the impact we all hope they will. Hopefully time will show otherwise.
On August 02 2012 11:42 ncsix wrote: people who wish more micro intensive units and blame DB and Blizz for bad game design have no idea what they're talking about. Arguing about HOTS balances before the beta is out is a whole lot of speculative fancy from armchair game designers, anybody who wants to go back to the good ole glory days of BW are free to do so you know.. except SC2 is way better even with its 'deathball'. Admit it, if it sucked so bad the way so many people are posting on the forum, why play it. Go play D3, then you'll know that SC2 is the best game Blizz has on the table to date.
Its one thing to argue over balence for a game that's beta hasn't even been released yet, but thats not the point of the thread is to discuss what direction the units are taking the game in and what mechanic's they encourage to do so. I think its worth discussing the possibilities of how the game may be played or what blizzard is trying to fix or focus on.
On August 02 2012 10:50 Rambolav wrote: How about less income? Making tech paths a risk (i.e cant just for example go from gassing up a bunch of sentries early game and switch to high templar right away)? How about bases being really hard to secure?
Uhm... no? That would push the game to be mostly about one base play and just massing up a quick army in the early game. Would be much like PvP a few months ago where the first player to try and expand typically lost.
Less income is a possibility, those 6m maps had some popularity (though I think the idea has died out a bit since it's pretty clear Blizz wont implement a change like that) and it's an interesting idea. But again it has to be done carefully so that one can still play for the late-game (which is what leads to the most dynamic play and strategies).
Unlimited unit selection, or at least up to 500 (was 255 really not enough?), along with the improved pathing and very close unit collision are the primary reasons that deathballs are prominent. Unit design like the Colossi also doesn't help.
I'm glad Blizz has some plans to try and split up the deathball, but I'm not convinced their plans will make the impact we all hope they will. Hopefully time will show otherwise.
How does that make any sense? Wouldn't the proposition of having less minerals provided by one base make it a more necessary risk to expand??? Plus your opponent would have less income to punish that expand. But before we get into that argument first you must discuss the many ways there would be to go about this. They could take away mineral patches, minerals returned, or just have less minerals at each patch. Personally I would say that taking 1 mineral patch away from every base in the game would be something to look into.
ZvT in heart of the swarm will have less death balls because of the swarm host and viper while terrans can use ghosts or ravens or mines etc to break up broodlord infestor. In terms of ZvP and TvP there needs to be experimenting with builds to actually prove how effective a death ball is. It'll take months to figure out, but eventually new tactics other than the death ball will arise at least that's my opinion.
On August 03 2012 00:23 Felvo wrote: ZvT in heart of the swarm will have less death balls because of the swarm host and viper while terrans can use ghosts or ravens or mines etc to break up broodlord infestor. In terms of ZvP and TvP there needs to be experimenting with builds to actually prove how effective a death ball is. It'll take months to figure out, but eventually new tactics other than the death ball will arise at least that's my opinion.
On August 02 2012 10:50 Rambolav wrote: How about less income? Making tech paths a risk (i.e cant just for example go from gassing up a bunch of sentries early game and switch to high templar right away)? How about bases being really hard to secure?
Uhm... no? That would push the game to be mostly about one base play and just massing up a quick army in the early game. Would be much like PvP a few months ago where the first player to try and expand typically lost.
Less income is a possibility, those 6m maps had some popularity (though I think the idea has died out a bit since it's pretty clear Blizz wont implement a change like that) and it's an interesting idea. But again it has to be done carefully so that one can still play for the late-game (which is what leads to the most dynamic play and strategies).
Unlimited unit selection, or at least up to 500 (was 255 really not enough?), along with the improved pathing and very close unit collision are the primary reasons that deathballs are prominent. Unit design like the Colossi also doesn't help.
I'm glad Blizz has some plans to try and split up the deathball, but I'm not convinced their plans will make the impact we all hope they will. Hopefully time will show otherwise.
How does that make any sense? Wouldn't the proposition of having less minerals provided by one base make it a more necessary risk to expand??? Plus your opponent would have less income to punish that expand. But before we get into that argument first you must discuss the many ways there would be to go about this. They could take away mineral patches, minerals returned, or just have less minerals at each patch. Personally I would say that taking 1 mineral patch away from every base in the game would be something to look into.
Was saying no to this question, "How about bases being really hard to secure?" Read my 2nd paragraph where I agree with you >.<
I think changing unit selection would be an awful idea. That would just annoy and make like 80% of sc2 players a lot worse at this game for no reason. It would actually make a lot of people harass a lot less because you always need your main army hotkeyed so that would leave no hotkeys left for their prism/drop/harss play.
The main thing would be to reduce the minerals/gas at every base. Give each race stronger harassing units. Give races units that work alone in a raiding type style.
In the end though I don't think deathballs are a big deal. It's a game where you build an army and fight the other person's army. Of fucking course people are going to mass an army and keep that army in a "ball". Strength in numbers .....
On August 02 2012 11:42 ncsix wrote: people who wish more micro intensive units and blame DB and Blizz for bad game design have no idea what they're talking about. Arguing about HOTS balances before the beta is out is a whole lot of speculative fancy from armchair game designers, anybody who wants to go back to the good ole glory days of BW are free to do so you know.. except SC2 is way better even with its 'deathball'. Admit it, if it sucked so bad the way so many people are posting on the forum, why play it. Go play D3, then you'll know that SC2 is the best game Blizz has on the table to date.
You are more of a Battlenet forums kind of guy. Your contribution will be appreciated there. Here people are just gonna troll you cos they dont understand!
Unlimited Unit Selection is likely the cause of the Deathball, but don't you think it's more because of the current skill level of SC2 players? Possibly in 2-3 years, the skill level will obviously be alot higher than today and probably by then, a giant Deathball will be considered low level play while the pros of tomorrow will be positioning all their units across the whole map like in BW.
On August 03 2012 04:51 NAPoleonSC wrote: Unlimited Unit Selection is likely the cause of the Deathball, but don't you think it's more because of the current skill level of SC2 players? Possibly in 2-3 years, the skill level will obviously be alot higher than today and probably by then, a giant Deathball will be considered low level play while the pros of tomorrow will be positioning all their units across the whole map like in BW.
I don't agree, spreading out and getting all your units to attack at once will definitely become the thing of the future but using an inefficient amount of units to deal damage only works on buildings or units that are being controlled poorly.
The fact of the matter is that a 200/200 ball is X as opposed to 12 units being X. If you are using less units in the former to try and do damage on the army then the 200/200 ball will just destroy them unless they are ranged. Range is really the only thing that lets you do damage on the ball with less units without losing everything(which might be the reason why the newer units are all extremely long ranged units).
It is possible to split units LIKE BW, sure, but it won't be as successful as in BW because BW was designed around that inefficiency. It was a limit that made armies look bigger, and made it so that a lot of units had to be controlled well to do damage together.
I'm not one to talk like I know anything about BW but thinking about game design it just makes sense if you don't want those deathballs happening. Just make it harder to have a deathball, they will still be there but only the better player can use them. Now you have made a game of skill.
Strangely makes sense when you think about it. The games industry has been going crazy lately with destroying all the limits of the older games. Take BF3 for example where unlimited sprint destroys the effect that limited sprint had in BF2/2142. Instead of having "Walking speed" And "Sprint", Now there is "Sprinting" and "walking speed" sprinting is the standard thing while walking speed is something you want to avoid. The effect of that shrunk all the maps and made everything feel smaller than it actually was(along with bad map design). Limits help games and make them what they are. Destroying limits, destroys games.
just make succesful harassment more rewarding in every stage of the game + more units that are good at harassing. Reward multitasking even more basically. I hope HOTS pulls that off
1.) Dramatically faster reinforcements and mechanics like inject larvae and chronoboost/warpgates.
2.) Insufficient splash damage mechanics to punish big clusters of units.
3.) Dramatically faster and easier economic build-up.
4.) Lack of micro-intensive units and a general abundance of 'dumb' auto-attack type units. This is sort of the 'colossus' problem where there's big catch-all units that counter everything and require no micro. BW was full of units like the reaver and lurker that could cause severe damage but required excellent micro and positioning to cause that damage.
I have a few ideas why deathballs are so prominent that don't seem to be getting as much attention:
1) There's not really any diminishing returns on making your army bigger. You just always want to cram more stuff into the deathball because it gets so much stronger when it gets bigger. 6 colossi is more than twice as good as 3 colossi. 20 Marines are more than twice as good as 10 Marines. There are a few units that don't work this way, for example High Templar start to have diminishing returns past about 4-5 of them, but for the most time units get exponentially better the more there are together. If there were diminishing returns to increasing your deathball's size, then eventually you reach a point where units start to become more effective on their own. Maybe you reach a point where adding a 4th colossus doesn't really do much, so maybe you should instead use it to harass or get a second group going.
I'm not entirely sure how to create diminishing returns, but I have a few ideas why things work the way they do:
A) The UI makes it far easier to have a big group work at peak efficiency. In my (albeit limited) experience with BW, it was hard to get a big army all attacking at once with a good concave and all reach the battle at the same time. You have 12 dragoons? Not too hard to use them all effectively. 24 is much harder, to the point where you don't get as much out of the second group. Compare to SC2, where you can easily get, say 200 zerglings all into the fray at once without much difficulty. So in BW you get diminishing returns on a bigger army just because it was harder to make a big army work.
B) Units are too easy to use and not potent enough. Look back at BW and look at how much damage some units did. Tanks did 70. Reavers did 100. Plague could do up to 300. Compare to SC2. Tanks do 35. Colossi do 15x2. Thors do 30x2. To illustrate why this causes deathballs, I'm going to explain how the exact same thing happened to Halo.
We'll start by comparing the starting weapons, since they are used more than any other weapon by far. In Halo:CE, players used the pistol, which could kill a player in 3 shots, with near-perfect accuracy from any distance. It took a little over half a second for a perfect kill. Halo 2 introduced the BR, which could kill in 4 bursts of 3 bullets. This increased the kill time dramatically to around 1.6 seconds (IIRC). However, Halo 2 had button glitches such as the double shot and BXR that allowed kills faster than that in certain circumstances, and the BR still had perfect accuracy, meaning perfect 4-shot kills could be achieved from anywhere.
Enter Halo 3. Halo 3 re-used the BR from Halo 2, but with a few changes. It had the same 4-shot kill with bursts of 3, but the bullets now spread out, meaning that even with perfect accuracy, 4-shot kills were still next to impossible apart from very close range. That, coupled with the complete lack of any button glitches, meant that Halo 3 had even slower kill-times than Halo 2.
So, we've established that as far as the potency of an individual player, Halo CE > Halo 2 > Halo 3. Now, let's examine the effect this has on the strategy.
In Halo:CE, players would spread out across the map, trying to control the power weapons, while also trying to lock down key areas of the map. Because of the power of the pistol, a single player could be left to hold an important position, because as long as his skills were up to par, he could hold off enemy attacks while his teammates sought out other important things.
In Halo 2, a phenomenon emerged called teamshooting. Essentially, teams would try to overwhelm enemy positions by attacking single players from multiple angles and essentially trying to outnumber them. Halo 3 took this to a whole new level. Towards the end of Halo 3's lifespan as an MLG title, the optimal strategy was to take all four of your team members, and just push towards the other team. Games were essentially won and lost based on who had more players shooting at a time. People didn't spread out and try to control the map or set up in optimal positions. As long as you had more guys than them in a particular area, you would win the battle and eventually the game.
This was termed 'linear-aggressive halo' by some of the more knowledgeable halo fans, and bemoaned as the worst thing to happen to halo. Fans likened back to the glory days of Halo:CE when teams had intricate strategies of how to control certain areas of maps, and games had a more dynamic, free-flowing feel as players moved around to try to control space and look for optimal angles. Halo had essentially devolved into two rams butting heads, and whoever was stronger would win.
Sound familiar? The deathball is to starcraft what teamshooting is to halo. It's an effect that occurs when individual player/units aren't potent enough to be useful on their own, so they have to group up and fight together. Starcraft needs stronger units that have more potential to do ridiculous amounts of damage. We need more units that decimate everything and we need to stop neutering anything that become even a little bit strong. When you can hold a base with two siege tanks and a few hellions, there's more incentive to spread out and hold a lot of bases. When you need 25 tanks to deal with some zealots and immortals, you just can't afford to split them up.
I think if you considerably lowered building health making em die allot faster would help fix the db. Would make you want to poke and prode on the chance to kill your enm production, also making expansions cheaper but way easier to kill would help make things allot more exciting
I think what needs to be done is add more units that are effective outstide of battle. I think that we have to realize that there could be nothing done to fix the deathball situation. I think that adding units like the oracle is a step in the right direction.
On August 03 2012 11:35 Kovaz wrote: I have a few ideas why deathballs are so prominent that don't seem to be getting as much attention:
1) There's not really any diminishing returns on making your army bigger. You just always want to cram more stuff into the deathball because it gets so much stronger when it gets bigger. 6 colossi is more than twice as good as 3 colossi. 20 Marines are more than twice as good as 10 Marines. There are a few units that don't work this way, for example High Templar start to have diminishing returns past about 4-5 of them, but for the most time units get exponentially better the more there are together. If there were diminishing returns to increasing your deathball's size, then eventually you reach a point where units start to become more effective on their own. Maybe you reach a point where adding a 4th colossus doesn't really do much, so maybe you should instead use it to harass or get a second group going.
I'm not entirely sure how to create diminishing returns, but I have a few ideas why things work the way they do:
A) The UI makes it far easier to have a big group work at peak efficiency. In my (albeit limited) experience with BW, it was hard to get a big army all attacking at once with a good concave and all reach the battle at the same time. You have 12 dragoons? Not too hard to use them all effectively. 24 is much harder, to the point where you don't get as much out of the second group. Compare to SC2, where you can easily get, say 200 zerglings all into the fray at once without much difficulty. So in BW you get diminishing returns on a bigger army just because it was harder to make a big army work.
B) Units are too easy to use and not potent enough. Look back at BW and look at how much damage some units did. Tanks did 70. Reavers did 100. Plague could do up to 300. Compare to SC2. Tanks do 35. Colossi do 15x2. Thors do 30x2. To illustrate why this causes deathballs, I'm going to explain how the exact same thing happened to Halo.
We'll start by comparing the starting weapons, since they are used more than any other weapon by far. In Halo:CE, players used the pistol, which could kill a player in 3 shots, with near-perfect accuracy from any distance. It took a little over half a second for a perfect kill. Halo 2 introduced the BR, which could kill in 4 bursts of 3 bullets. This increased the kill time dramatically to around 1.6 seconds (IIRC). However, Halo 2 had button glitches such as the double shot and BXR that allowed kills faster than that in certain circumstances, and the BR still had perfect accuracy, meaning perfect 4-shot kills could be achieved from anywhere.
Enter Halo 3. Halo 3 re-used the BR from Halo 2, but with a few changes. It had the same 4-shot kill with bursts of 3, but the bullets now spread out, meaning that even with perfect accuracy, 4-shot kills were still next to impossible apart from very close range. That, coupled with the complete lack of any button glitches, meant that Halo 3 had even slower kill-times than Halo 2.
So, we've established that as far as the potency of an individual player, Halo CE > Halo 2 > Halo 3. Now, let's examine the effect this has on the strategy.
In Halo:CE, players would spread out across the map, trying to control the power weapons, while also trying to lock down key areas of the map. Because of the power of the pistol, a single player could be left to hold an important position, because as long as his skills were up to par, he could hold off enemy attacks while his teammates sought out other important things.
In Halo 2, a phenomenon emerged called teamshooting. Essentially, teams would try to overwhelm enemy positions by attacking single players from multiple angles and essentially trying to outnumber them. Halo 3 took this to a whole new level. Towards the end of Halo 3's lifespan as an MLG title, the optimal strategy was to take all four of your team members, and just push towards the other team. Games were essentially won and lost based on who had more players shooting at a time. People didn't spread out and try to control the map or set up in optimal positions. As long as you had more guys than them in a particular area, you would win the battle and eventually the game.
This was termed 'linear-aggressive halo' by some of the more knowledgeable halo fans, and bemoaned as the worst thing to happen to halo. Fans likened back to the glory days of Halo:CE when teams had intricate strategies of how to control certain areas of maps, and games had a more dynamic, free-flowing feel as players moved around to try to control space and look for optimal angles. Halo had essentially devolved into two rams butting heads, and whoever was stronger would win.
Sound familiar? The deathball is to starcraft what teamshooting is to halo. It's an effect that occurs when individual player/units aren't potent enough to be useful on their own, so they have to group up and fight together. Starcraft needs stronger units that have more potential to do ridiculous amounts of damage. We need more units that decimate everything and we need to stop neutering anything that become even a little bit strong. When you can hold a base with two siege tanks and a few hellions, there's more incentive to spread out and hold a lot of bases. When you need 25 tanks to deal with some zealots and immortals, you just can't afford to split them up.
/rant
This is a really good post that makes a lot of sense. If tanks did more damage, it would incentivise Terran to do something with their MM bunches instead of just letting them ball up to a critical mass. Think of ZvZ. Because banelings are so efficient, you can be aggressive with lings while leaving a few banelings at home to play defense. There is always a reason to be poking at your enemy in ZvZ because defense is so efficient.
EPT
