EPT[HOTS] Breaking up the Death Ball - Page 21
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Rabiator
Germany3948 Posts
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dgwow
Canada1024 Posts
I dont like the pathing change much but I do think it is interesting that it forces you to be more aware of your unit control and therefore adds another skill element in the game. I think Blizzard should do some testing on max # of units per control group to find out what would be optimal for viewer enjoyment and general usability for the general player. | ||
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0neder
United States3733 Posts
On August 03 2012 12:13 dgwow wrote: I actually think that SC2 does have some qualities that are better than BW. BW has useless mechanics like sending workers to mine whereas SC2 has cool mechanics like chronoboost/inject larva/mules that are more interesting. How do you define interesting? Do you think more volatile gameplay is more interesting? Do you find games where comebacks are a rarity interesting? Do you find games where player A is twice as fast as his opponent but cannot translate that agility into anything meaningful because of a low skill cap interesting? Personally, I find volatile, comeback-hostile, discouraging scouting with wild swings of resources and huge vision very uninteresting. I find that macro mechanics that promote turtle-til-max very boring. But then again, I suspect that you aren't familiar enough with both games to make that assessment. I'm glad Blizzard scored casual you to replace hardcore (fan, not player) me, so at least they broke even between the both of us. I've almost given up on Sc2 improving. | ||
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mannerless
Brazil86 Posts
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 Great post, agreed 100%...but it just happens that Mr DBro is (for whatever reason) always showing his concern of making "tank lines" too powerful. First he killed positional play and now they are trying to "break the deathball" which they introduced (via terrible game design) in the first place. | ||
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Xiphos
Canada7507 Posts
On August 03 2012 12:13 dgwow wrote: I actually think that SC2 does have some qualities that are better than BW. BW has useless mechanics like sending workers to mine whereas SC2 has cool mechanics like chronoboost/inject larva/mules that are more interesting. These mechanics are the exact reason why scouting isn't as nearly important as it is in BW. Even though if you have scouted their entire base, you will be somewhat in the shadows about their intentions which makes timing attacks less utilized in the game and therefore less aggressive games and more games that require armies snowballing into 200/200 Texas standout style, followed by big battle into GG. In BW, you have literally actions all over the map. Watch ZerO vs JangBi game 5 for that. | ||
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Rabiator
Germany3948 Posts
On August 03 2012 12:13 dgwow wrote: I actually think that SC2 does have some qualities that are better than BW. BW has useless mechanics like sending workers to mine whereas SC2 has cool mechanics like chronoboost/inject larva/mules that are more interesting. I dont like the pathing change much but I do think it is interesting that it forces you to be more aware of your unit control and therefore adds another skill element in the game. I think Blizzard should do some testing on max # of units per control group to find out what would be optimal for viewer enjoyment and general usability for the general player. Chronoboost and larva inject and mules do only one thing: They boost the economy and production capability to speed up the game. That doesnt sound bad, but actually it is terrible, because it can make the game hard to handle and rather prone to critical mistakes. Imagine yourself at the wheel of a race car ... in a city ... with other regular cars on the street ... and you are racing against another guy in a similarly powerful car. If you are a professional race car driver you can handle it, but "normals" will either not use the full potential OR they will cause a crash due to their own inability. That is a bad concept and thus I am fully for getting rid of all those "turbo boosts" for economy and production: MULE, Warp Gate (changed in a way that warping in units can be done but at a cost of increased cooldown), larva inject, Reactor, Chronoboost. Having a (s)lower economy will make expensive units more important and will urge the players to "use them more carefully" and thus result in games with more strategy instead of the "just a-move them in, because I can reproduce stuff instantly anyways" style we have now. Throw-away-battles are kinda boring to watch, because there is no real strategy involved and the bigger economy/production speed makes too much of a difference (Zerg on 5+ bases vs. anyone else on just 3 = no chance the Zerg will lose). Skill in battle and the right decisions should play much more of a role and should ALWAYS leave room for a comeback. | ||
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ganman
Canada11 Posts
I eliminated the suggestions that make no sense for this. Terran Hunter Seeker Missile - Range increased to 8. Speed increased by 5%. 250mm strike cannons range increased to 8. Shaped charge upgrades to tanks reduce friendly fire by 75% Zerg Roach cost increased to 100 minerals 25 gas. Roach armor increased to 2. Infestors now spawn 2 infested terran upon death. Adrenal glands now increases zergling attack speed by 40%. (upgrade) revert queen buff. Protoss Warp gate tech removed from the game. All protoss gateway units receive a 15% increase in base damage. (upgrade) Stalker HP and shields increased to 100/100. Colossus removed from the game. Reaver added. Replaces Build time for all gateway units decreased by 15% . Khaydarin Amulet added. Increases High Templar starting energy by 25. Warp prism now has shield battery ability. Increases shield regen of all nearby units by 5 per second. Warp prism now has up to 200 energy. Shield regen costs 25 to activate and drains 5 energy per second. Ladder Best of 3/5/7 added to 1v1 search. Points won increases accordingly. Automated tournaments added. Big changes eh? I left the ladder changes cause there so good. Anywho to the explanation Terran itself is already the less DB ish. The HSM buff becomes a good encouragement for the enm to not group. I believe a better AOE buff so its more effective vs groups. The Thor fix is for a decent reaver counter. Tank fix to be more effective vs upgrade cracklings Zerg The roach buff and nerf is to remove there amount om the map but making individualy more effective. using them to poke and prod a effective tactic. As it stands you use roaches to either cheese or max. theres no happy medium. Infestors cause it be funny. Ling buff to make them a better raiding unit for mid game before or after mutas pop. Queen buff to force zerg back to building units at the start of the game. Overall my hope here is to encourage zerg into attacking and pressuring instead of turtling till max. pvz of 15 min no rush is pretty boring admitidly. Protoss The issue with toss is there forced to wait till t3 to have a effective army. PvP is entertaining till a colo pops and the overall skill limit is limited with the colo being so good as it is. WG removed to increase opurtonities to catch a toss off guard encouraging raiding drops and poking Build time fixed to compensate with wg removal The attk buff acros gateway units is to replace the wg reaserch and should cost and take bout the same amount of time. This is to give toss the ability to be aggresive early on to encourage poking. raids etc. However the upgrade requirements prevents early zealot 2 shotting lings and balances proxy gate builds. The secondary effect is making ff not required to survive early game. This encourages t&z to be aggresive knowing they cant just get ff forever. I would like ff to become obsolet and damage buff would help towards that goal. Colo changed to reaver. reaver keeps high bw damage. Similar to hsm damage. Reasoning is theres allot more micro potential in a reaver. makes fights as exciting as watching marine splits vs banes. Make ff placement way more skill based due to how the reaver does damage you cant mindlessly ff a army cause your big aoe becomes useless. I think will see some cool stuf like ff chokes and what not. Stalker buffed to give it more power vs the buffed roaches. I see map control batles going between the two for the 5 -10 min mark. Amulet returned. balanced around the lack of wg. WP is changed to help a toss be more aggresive. it be out of combat only but it be used like how the hots reapers can be used to poke aggresively. The easiest way to have no db is to have less units on the map. how you do that? have them kill each other before they form a db How i see these changes working out is each race gains effective methods to be aggresive from the start. Gimicky ff no longer so required. FFE no longer the must use BO. PvP way better with out collo and reintroducing the defenders advantage. Terran has lategame splash to effective counter large groups of unit. That is all Ganman | ||
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FragRaptor
United States184 Posts
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Dagan159
United States203 Posts
+ Show Spoiler + 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 quite an amazing post, because as well giving me somegood info on the rise and fall of competitive halo, It perfect illustrates what has happened between sc1 and sc2. What are the main differences between scbw and sc2? they have been brought up: unlimited unit selection, general nerf of AOE abilitys due to unit clumping. Why should a player split up their units? Ideally it should be because either their own units work better alone/ in smaller groups. Or their opponents units will be very cost effective, even in small numbers if you try to push into them. Units that represent this are HT's, infestors, tanks. In short, I believe these units are not doing their job. if you rush 3 tanks with 10 naked zealots, you might lose 1-2 zealots or similarly, 5 lings. Tanks are incredibly better in large groups, such that they are impossible to balance, you cant make 3 tanks good without making 20 tanks OP especially with the "smart tanks" in sc2. High Templars and Infestors do their job better, but at them moment the game is balanced such that since Terran can not effectively split up their army versus toss or zerg and is forced to attack as a deathball, high templars and infestors must be balanced to be good in these 200/200 battles, but not OP, making them much worse in smaller skirmishes. Thus both teams must deathball. | ||
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thezanursic
5479 Posts
I love the logic......... | ||
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thezanursic
5479 Posts
On August 03 2012 12:31 Xiphos wrote: These mechanics are the exact reason why scouting isn't as nearly important as it is in BW. Even though if you have scouted their entire base, you will be somewhat in the shadows about their intentions which makes timing attacks less utilized in the game and therefore less aggressive games and more games that require armies snowballing into 200/200 Texas standout style, followed by big battle into GG. In BW, you have literally actions all over the map. Watch ZerO vs JangBi game 5 for that. How exactly do chronoboosts, injects and mules contribute to less scouting and both games require just about the same amount of scouting. | ||
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thezanursic
5479 Posts
On August 03 2012 11:35 Kovaz wrote: 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 That doesn't make sense because if everybody has more powerful units everything equalizes. What Blizzard should do instead is to increase the size of units soo they can't all shoot at once and so that concaves are more important soo if you hold an important choke you can split of a part of your army and attack. | ||
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Ksyper
Bulgaria665 Posts
I know it's a huge change and people don't want that, but why not just experiment with it, make it into the ptr server and have a pro tournament with 12 unit control groups, just to see how the game would look. I mean I know it's gonna make it a little harder to play, but when you think about it it's not really making it harder because your opponent has to do the same. | ||
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Yoshi Kirishima
United States10343 Posts
On August 06 2012 06:15 Ksyper wrote: Why doesn't anyone talk about just making control groups max 12 units again? Or 24? I know it's a huge change and people don't want that, but why not just experiment with it, make it into the ptr server and have a pro tournament with 12 unit control groups, just to see how the game would look. I mean I know it's gonna make it a little harder to play, but when you think about it it's not really making it harder because your opponent has to do the same. Great point. Your opponent has to deal with it too! It will give more incentive to fight smaller but more numerous battles. Then, if someone decides to move their entire army, it will be that much more exciting/dramatic/climatic. | ||
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Xiphos
Canada7507 Posts
On August 06 2012 06:03 thezanursic wrote: How exactly do chronoboosts, injects and mules contribute to less scouting and both games require just about the same amount of scouting. Read the post. | ||
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thezanursic
5479 Posts
On August 03 2012 14:02 Rabiator wrote: Chronoboost and larva inject and mules do only one thing: They boost the economy and production capability to speed up the game. That doesnt sound bad, but actually it is terrible, because it can make the game hard to handle and rather prone to critical mistakes. Imagine yourself at the wheel of a race car ... in a city ... with other regular cars on the street ... and you are racing against another guy in a similarly powerful car. If you are a professional race car driver you can handle it, but "normals" will either not use the full potential OR they will cause a crash due to their own inability. That is a bad concept and thus I am fully for getting rid of all those "turbo boosts" for economy and production: MULE, Warp Gate (changed in a way that warping in units can be done but at a cost of increased cooldown), larva inject, Reactor, Chronoboost. Having a (s)lower economy will make expensive units more important and will urge the players to "use them more carefully" and thus result in games with more strategy instead of the "just a-move them in, because I can reproduce stuff instantly anyways" style we have now. Throw-away-battles are kinda boring to watch, because there is no real strategy involved and the bigger economy/production speed makes too much of a difference (Zerg on 5+ bases vs. anyone else on just 3 = no chance the Zerg will lose). Skill in battle and the right decisions should play much more of a role and should ALWAYS leave room for a comeback. The stupidity... Ohh well I'll dissect your post anyway. You are basically saying that Blizzard should remove Injects, chronos and mules because low level players don't use them often enough. WELL That's stupid because this is supposed to be a skillful game. I agree with the fact that slower economy would be good, but there are much better alternatives like decreasing the amount each worker brings or increasing the time that it takes a worker to mine a mineral or simply decreasing the amount of minerals in each mineral line. Now back to the part where you wanted to dumb down the game even more. Do you know that in Brood war (and yes like 99.99% of people Teamliquid already know this) you had to individually tell each worker to go mine after it spawned. Did that mean that the ''normals'' (whatever that means) were left behind in certain situations? YES and that is what it made it such a good game (and many other similar mechanics that operated in this way). | ||
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Shiori
3815 Posts
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thezanursic
5479 Posts
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Dagan159
United States203 Posts
On August 06 2012 06:12 thezanursic wrote: + Show Spoiler + On August 03 2012 11:35 Kovaz wrote: 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 That doesn't make sense because if everybody has more powerful units everything equalizes. What Blizzard should do instead is to increase the size of units soo they can't all shoot at once and so that concaves are more important soo if you hold an important choke you can split of a part of your army and attack. That isnt true. what he is proposing is when you leave 3 tanks back at home, instead of killing 3 zealots like they do now, they actually kill their cost or even, this might be crazy, alot more than their cost. the fact is we need, and specifically terran needs, units that are strong on the defensive, and above all, EFFECIENT defenders, even when they are small in numbers. If you simultaneously buff HT's tanks and infestors, it wouldnt equalize, the game would be completely different. | ||
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Meatloaf
Spain664 Posts
the additions proposed for HOTS look nice and im happy with them besides the warhound (that is a mech marauder...). I play protoss and god knows i hate the colossus the most , fckin boring unit as spectator and player. | ||
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