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On July 02 2012 01:58 rysecake wrote:Show nested quote +On July 02 2012 01:55 Ballistixz wrote:On July 02 2012 01:52 rysecake wrote:On July 02 2012 01:50 iky43210 wrote:On July 02 2012 01:43 a176 wrote:On July 02 2012 01:11 iky43210 wrote: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? no, purposely restricting UI to be unintuitive is a taboo in any designer or UI book. Not only are they frustrating, you are alienating a good portion of the playerbase when you do something like this that modern computer users/gamers aren't used to the deathball is a direct result of unlimited unit selection. it allows players to be lazy. it allows lazily designed units (read: colossus, tempest) to be overly effective. you dont see harassment groups in sc2 because static defense like a PF is so strong. you need a bigger and bigger ball to take it down; the unit ball is intrinsically more powerful the bigger it gets, so in the end there's no incentive for players to break up the deathball. deathball is a result of units interaction, not unlimited unit interaction. There just need to be greater reward for mult-tasking then pros will head toward that direction. TvZ and TvT are both good example, until recently. Having units moving so fast such as lings, units synergy like protoss death balls and no option for heavy AoE type dmg is why sc2 shifts toward deathballs. But even then, as player gets better those problem shifts away slightly i agree. i absolutely hate what tvz has become (ling infestor into broodlords). Watching marine tank vs ling bling muta back in the day was the best thing I have seen in this game to this date. The amount of micro and control required to fight that comp was incredible. the main problem with mutas bling is that it was a very fragile comp. terrans have learned to deal with it in a very simple way. get 3 atk and 3 armor on marines and split. im not gonna get into whether it was easier to execute for terran or zerg, don't like getting into that bullshit. but the fact that it required lots of micro from both ends was what made it interesting. ling infestor is such a boring comp to watch. press f and a.
in terms of micro ling infestor requires just as much as muta bling. you may think its easy to just press the F key, but if u fuck up and lose all of ur infestors to siege tanks ur fucked. doing that only works on terrans that like to clump up all there units anyway. splitting marines against fungals just like what you do against banes is still required.
late game it gets even more micro intensive for both sides. you seriously cant just 1 a brood lorde infestors into terran.
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personally i love the deathball, but i think the way the widow mines work out will be absolutly awesome.
but i think it will be broken in lower leagues. setting widow mines all over the map doesnt take much skill, but if you dont have the micro to spot the mine and destroy the affected unit befor ethe mine goes off, your army could be decimated
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On July 02 2012 01:58 Stratos_speAr wrote:Show nested quote +On July 02 2012 01:53 Zrana wrote:
Imo the best way of splitting up the deathball is increasing AoE damage.http:/www.teamliquid.net/forum/smilies.php
If you have a lot of single targeting units (e.g. marines) you want them clumped up so that more can fire at the same time.
However if powerful AoE is on the field the best players will split their army up and spread it out. This already happens quite a lot in SC2.
What i would like to see is yet more firepower given to aoe units so that moving around a big army becomes extremely dangerous due to the way units naturally clump up and so the metagame of strategies and tactics will change to reflect the danger of having a big ball of units.
This would be good for the game because spectators could watch either multiple small engagements around the map, or one big battle which would be lengthened by the fact that players couldnt keep their whole army together and it would become more of a running battle with constant reinforcing. This makes micro more apparent and more important (as there would simply be more of it to do).
There's been a huge amount of discussion over how sc:bw is better than sc2 or bw has a higher skill ceiling and similar topics. A large amount of that is down to how in BW you had to do a whole lot of babysitting of your units or they'd be unable to cross a bridge or something. In BW the units had a tendency to spread out, when a lot of the time you wanted them clumped up for the single-target dps to be higher. There's no reason why SC2 can't require the same sort of control but in the opposite direction; splitting up units and avoiding aoe.
This happens a lot already i know, but i reckon storm, fungal and siege tanks should all have an increased damage radius in HotS
This is incorrect. In BW, they didn't tend to spread apart; there was an AI "box" that was made whenever you moved your units. Your units would keep the same formation that they had when they were standing still and you selected them (as far as this was possible, considering obstacles/change of direction). This is exactly what SC2 needs. In SC2, if I manually spread units out, then select them in one group and right click to a location, they will immediately clump together to move there, which is terrible and incredibly annoying.
Yeah actually that would be totally awesome.
However i will say that while spreading out your units could seem incredibly annoying, a lot of people want 12 unit control groups back which would also be incredibly annoying (imo)(especially with zerglings, omg).
The spare apm you get for having a control group system that makes sense you could spend on keeping your army spread.
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Warpgate is tied into this problem as well. WG basically forces weaker gateway units to where if you don't have sentries/blink, going out into the middle of the map with anything less than a killing force is asking to lose your army and possibly the game.
The death ball can be dismantled with both Z/T lategame compositions. I think the main issue to address is WHY people wait 15-20min. to make the deathball in the first place.
Almost feel like it's the problem is too big for my scope of view, but I think its because protoss has no skirmish units aside from blink stalkers. Everything else is too cost inefficient for the damage that it does, unless it's in a game-ending army.
Sure oracle KIND of solves this problem, but the damage it does is nowhere near as severe as multipronged MMM drops, or banshees, or muta play. Not trying to spark balance talk, just saying that protoss/terran HAS to sit on it's ass (unless allin'ing), to get good map and positional control.
Either way, beyond my inexperienced theroycrafting, HotS protoss is really underwhelming me. Like, to the point where I'm not going to buy it unless something between now and then changes drastically.
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On July 02 2012 02:00 Ballistixz wrote:Show nested quote +On July 02 2012 01:58 rysecake wrote:On July 02 2012 01:55 Ballistixz wrote:On July 02 2012 01:52 rysecake wrote:On July 02 2012 01:50 iky43210 wrote:On July 02 2012 01:43 a176 wrote:On July 02 2012 01:11 iky43210 wrote: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? no, purposely restricting UI to be unintuitive is a taboo in any designer or UI book. Not only are they frustrating, you are alienating a good portion of the playerbase when you do something like this that modern computer users/gamers aren't used to the deathball is a direct result of unlimited unit selection. it allows players to be lazy. it allows lazily designed units (read: colossus, tempest) to be overly effective. you dont see harassment groups in sc2 because static defense like a PF is so strong. you need a bigger and bigger ball to take it down; the unit ball is intrinsically more powerful the bigger it gets, so in the end there's no incentive for players to break up the deathball. deathball is a result of units interaction, not unlimited unit interaction. There just need to be greater reward for mult-tasking then pros will head toward that direction. TvZ and TvT are both good example, until recently. Having units moving so fast such as lings, units synergy like protoss death balls and no option for heavy AoE type dmg is why sc2 shifts toward deathballs. But even then, as player gets better those problem shifts away slightly i agree. i absolutely hate what tvz has become (ling infestor into broodlords). Watching marine tank vs ling bling muta back in the day was the best thing I have seen in this game to this date. The amount of micro and control required to fight that comp was incredible. the main problem with mutas bling is that it was a very fragile comp. terrans have learned to deal with it in a very simple way. get 3 atk and 3 armor on marines and split. im not gonna get into whether it was easier to execute for terran or zerg, don't like getting into that bullshit. but the fact that it required lots of micro from both ends was what made it interesting. ling infestor is such a boring comp to watch. press f and a. in terms of micro ling infestor requires just as much as muta bling. you may think its easy to just press the F key, but if u fuck up and lose all of ur infestors to siege tanks ur fucked. doing that only works on terrans that like to clump up all there units anyway. splitting marines against fungals just like what you do against banes is required.
i can't tell if you're serious. flanking with lings, targetting marines with banelings and focus firing tanks with mutas all while terran is splitting everything is the same micro as a moving lings, running infestors in to fungal and then burrowing them?
you do not split marines against fungals in real time, it's near impossible because the animation of fungal is instant. most successful splits vs fungals are pre battle spreads.
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On July 02 2012 01:39 Chytilova wrote:Show nested quote +On July 02 2012 01:16 Snoodles wrote:On July 02 2012 01:07 xsnac wrote:
I dont understand why ppl dont like deathball ? a big battle with high tier units is the best thing you can ask for if you are a spectator . Are you serious? As a spectator when I'm watching a ZvP I tab out for a few minutes because everything in the first 10 minutes is just watching two guys macro. And how does that relate to deathballs? You can get high tier units in a game without pure macro for the first 10 minutes. That is just a function of how the match up has evolved up to this point.
Unless Blizzard spaces out units Deathballs will be a problem and always will be, I cant see HOTS improving this at all
The massive firepower packed into a small area encourages players to do it, looking for the perfect killing blow. Its poor to watch for the spectator as you cant see any micro and normally the game is decided in the first battle.
Protoss seems to suffer from it the most, as they cant expand easily due to Zealots being crap early game and Stalkers having garbage DPS\supply. The race is gimped by the Warpgate mechanic which nulifies defenders advantage therefore they cant be altered
Zerg are forced into Infestor to deal with upgraded marines
Terrans have the best micro units but seem to suffering against Zergs recently due to the large maps and Infestor fungal lockdowns. Fungal growth is killing the ZvT match up but how do Blizzard balence it out if it is nerfed and the lockdown is removed?
If the units were spaced out batles would last longer, the players would have more time to micro and show their skill and the spectators would get a better game to watch.
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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?
well that would kill zerg...
they would have to use like 5 hotkeys for just units (not including infestors, mutas, broodlors...) for army if you are maxed
that would make zerg easily the hardest race imo
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On July 02 2012 00:58 Torte de Lini wrote:
I think with Zerg, you would have a better argument talking about the vipers and its abilities.
I don't think they necessarily are intended to break up deathballs, the oracle and tempest as reasons to take up supply is a stretch at best.
You also have abilities that suggest more death balls, like hydra speed to keep up with units, swarm host to create a larger "swarm" attack, a giant engulfing attack and the mothership upgrade that can take large groups and port them back.
No way in hell is it going to create a swarm affect from what we've seen of it so far. You could make new zerglings faster than those things attack.
Hell on Shattered you could make new zerglings and (with creep spread) almost get them to your opponents natural between those things attacks.
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On July 02 2012 02:08 sVnteen wrote:Show nested quote +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? well that would kill zerg... they would have to use like 5 hotkeys for just units (not including infestors, mutas, broodlors...) for army if you are maxed that would make zerg easily the hardest race imo
While I think the suggestion is kind of silly. I don't agree that it would become the hardest race. It would be like BW where you'd only hotkey a portion of ur army while just boxing and a-clicking the rest real fast.
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On July 02 2012 02:08 Probe1 wrote:Show nested quote +On July 02 2012 00:58 Torte de Lini wrote:
I think with Zerg, you would have a better argument talking about the vipers and its abilities.
I don't think they necessarily are intended to break up deathballs, the oracle and tempest as reasons to take up supply is a stretch at best.
You also have abilities that suggest more death balls, like hydra speed to keep up with units, swarm host to create a larger "swarm" attack, a giant engulfing attack and the mothership upgrade that can take large groups and port them back. No way in hell is it going to create a swarm affect from what we've seen of it so far. You could make new zerglings faster than those things attack. Hell on Shattered you could make new zerglings and (with creep spread) almost get them to your opponents natural between those things attacks.
Yeah, the swarm host is the crappy stepbrother of the lurker. It doesn't seem to have much utility in its current form as of yet. It's a huge unit, clunky, slow ROF, and the dps is meh.
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I don't understand why people want to artificially make a game harder as opposed to rewarding plays that are more difficult to pull off.
Going back to a limited selection system would be a step backwards.
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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
EDIT: limiting unit selection seems a step backwards to many, but why? if you make a limitation of 1 page, you can still control maxed armies with relative ease, and it'll improve the spectator and player experience by a lot. It won't feel as 'clunky' as broodwar, but it'll still somewhat fight the deathball disease.
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Well one thing I don't think anyone has mentioned directly yet is that collossi can walk on top of their own units. This makes the protoss deathball a ton more efficient in terms of damage per area. If collossi had to deal with unit collision like every other unit in the game then I think this would limit the protoss deathball. In fact, making unit collision overall create more space between units would certainly help, as other people have said.
But I think the main problem is indeed that it is hard (especially as terran) to hold off a lot of aggression with relatively few units. You have to make your own deathball, but if you split up and attack, their deathball kills you. As has been said, siege tanks, fungal and storm need to be made a lot better to discourage deathballs.
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On July 02 2012 02:04 rysecake wrote:Show nested quote +On July 02 2012 02:00 Ballistixz wrote:On July 02 2012 01:58 rysecake wrote:On July 02 2012 01:55 Ballistixz wrote:On July 02 2012 01:52 rysecake wrote:On July 02 2012 01:50 iky43210 wrote:On July 02 2012 01:43 a176 wrote:On July 02 2012 01:11 iky43210 wrote: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? no, purposely restricting UI to be unintuitive is a taboo in any designer or UI book. Not only are they frustrating, you are alienating a good portion of the playerbase when you do something like this that modern computer users/gamers aren't used to the deathball is a direct result of unlimited unit selection. it allows players to be lazy. it allows lazily designed units (read: colossus, tempest) to be overly effective. you dont see harassment groups in sc2 because static defense like a PF is so strong. you need a bigger and bigger ball to take it down; the unit ball is intrinsically more powerful the bigger it gets, so in the end there's no incentive for players to break up the deathball. deathball is a result of units interaction, not unlimited unit interaction. There just need to be greater reward for mult-tasking then pros will head toward that direction. TvZ and TvT are both good example, until recently. Having units moving so fast such as lings, units synergy like protoss death balls and no option for heavy AoE type dmg is why sc2 shifts toward deathballs. But even then, as player gets better those problem shifts away slightly i agree. i absolutely hate what tvz has become (ling infestor into broodlords). Watching marine tank vs ling bling muta back in the day was the best thing I have seen in this game to this date. The amount of micro and control required to fight that comp was incredible. the main problem with mutas bling is that it was a very fragile comp. terrans have learned to deal with it in a very simple way. get 3 atk and 3 armor on marines and split. im not gonna get into whether it was easier to execute for terran or zerg, don't like getting into that bullshit. but the fact that it required lots of micro from both ends was what made it interesting. ling infestor is such a boring comp to watch. press f and a. in terms of micro ling infestor requires just as much as muta bling. you may think its easy to just press the F key, but if u fuck up and lose all of ur infestors to siege tanks ur fucked. doing that only works on terrans that like to clump up all there units anyway. splitting marines against fungals just like what you do against banes is required. i can't tell if you're serious. flanking with lings, targetting marines with banelings and focus firing tanks with mutas all while terran is splitting everything is the same micro as a moving lings, running infestors in to fungal and then burrowing them? you do not split marines against fungals in real time, it's near impossible because the animation of fungal is instant. most successful splits vs fungals are pre battle spreads.
your not suppose to split marines in real time..... if you know they are making infestors you split them AHEAD of time, especially while setting up siege tank positions.
also the micro techniques is different for a muta bling comp and a infestor ling comp. if a terran is set up and split his marines you cant just atk into that.
i dont know why you think that fungaling everything terran has while trying to not lose all of ur units in a bad engage in the process is easy.if terran starts to target fire infestors with his siege tanks then you are in a bad spot as zerg. if a ghosts gets a emp off on the infestors then you are in a bad spot as zerg.
you cant just run in and fungal everything and A move lings unless you are playing a very bad terran that engages on creep without clearing it every single game.
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On July 02 2012 02:12 []Phase[] wrote:Show nested quote +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.
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On July 02 2012 02:15 Ballistixz wrote:Show nested quote +On July 02 2012 02:04 rysecake wrote:On July 02 2012 02:00 Ballistixz wrote:On July 02 2012 01:58 rysecake wrote:On July 02 2012 01:55 Ballistixz wrote:On July 02 2012 01:52 rysecake wrote:On July 02 2012 01:50 iky43210 wrote:On July 02 2012 01:43 a176 wrote:On July 02 2012 01:11 iky43210 wrote: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? no, purposely restricting UI to be unintuitive is a taboo in any designer or UI book. Not only are they frustrating, you are alienating a good portion of the playerbase when you do something like this that modern computer users/gamers aren't used to the deathball is a direct result of unlimited unit selection. it allows players to be lazy. it allows lazily designed units (read: colossus, tempest) to be overly effective. you dont see harassment groups in sc2 because static defense like a PF is so strong. you need a bigger and bigger ball to take it down; the unit ball is intrinsically more powerful the bigger it gets, so in the end there's no incentive for players to break up the deathball. deathball is a result of units interaction, not unlimited unit interaction. There just need to be greater reward for mult-tasking then pros will head toward that direction. TvZ and TvT are both good example, until recently. Having units moving so fast such as lings, units synergy like protoss death balls and no option for heavy AoE type dmg is why sc2 shifts toward deathballs. But even then, as player gets better those problem shifts away slightly i agree. i absolutely hate what tvz has become (ling infestor into broodlords). Watching marine tank vs ling bling muta back in the day was the best thing I have seen in this game to this date. The amount of micro and control required to fight that comp was incredible. the main problem with mutas bling is that it was a very fragile comp. terrans have learned to deal with it in a very simple way. get 3 atk and 3 armor on marines and split. im not gonna get into whether it was easier to execute for terran or zerg, don't like getting into that bullshit. but the fact that it required lots of micro from both ends was what made it interesting. ling infestor is such a boring comp to watch. press f and a. in terms of micro ling infestor requires just as much as muta bling. you may think its easy to just press the F key, but if u fuck up and lose all of ur infestors to siege tanks ur fucked. doing that only works on terrans that like to clump up all there units anyway. splitting marines against fungals just like what you do against banes is required. i can't tell if you're serious. flanking with lings, targetting marines with banelings and focus firing tanks with mutas all while terran is splitting everything is the same micro as a moving lings, running infestors in to fungal and then burrowing them? you do not split marines against fungals in real time, it's near impossible because the animation of fungal is instant. most successful splits vs fungals are pre battle spreads. your not suppose to split marines in real time..... if you know they are making infestors you split them AHEAD of time, especially while setting up siege tank positions. also the micro techniques is different for a muta bling comp and a infestor ling comp. if a terran is set up and split his marines you cant just atk into that. i dont know why you think that fungaling everything terran has while trying to not lose all of ur units in a bad engage in the process is easy.if terran starts to target fire infestors with his siege tanks then you are in a bad spot as zerg. if a ghosts gets a emp off on the infestors then you are in a bad spot as zerg. you cant just run in and fungal everything and A move lings unless you are playing a very bad terran that engages on creep without clearing it every single game.
that's all i had to read. That's the problem right there. The exciting things about sc1 and sc2 is the micro DURING the battles, not before.
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On July 02 2012 02:12 []Phase[] wrote:Show nested quote +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 EDIT: limiting unit selection seems a step backwards to many, but why? if you make a limitation of 1 page, you can still control maxed armies with relative ease, and it'll improve the spectator and player experience by a lot. It won't feel as 'clunky' as broodwar, but it'll still somewhat fight the deathball disease.
idk if you have ever played a game where a zerg has made 20+ broodlords and some infestors, but that is called the zerg deathball. toss cant engage that many broods and infestors unless u can get vortex off and archon toilet the broods. if broodlords had the same attack as guardians from BW they wouldnt be nearly as effective.
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On July 02 2012 02:04 rysecake wrote:Show nested quote +On July 02 2012 02:00 Ballistixz wrote:On July 02 2012 01:58 rysecake wrote:On July 02 2012 01:55 Ballistixz wrote:On July 02 2012 01:52 rysecake wrote:On July 02 2012 01:50 iky43210 wrote:On July 02 2012 01:43 a176 wrote:On July 02 2012 01:11 iky43210 wrote: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? no, purposely restricting UI to be unintuitive is a taboo in any designer or UI book. Not only are they frustrating, you are alienating a good portion of the playerbase when you do something like this that modern computer users/gamers aren't used to the deathball is a direct result of unlimited unit selection. it allows players to be lazy. it allows lazily designed units (read: colossus, tempest) to be overly effective. you dont see harassment groups in sc2 because static defense like a PF is so strong. you need a bigger and bigger ball to take it down; the unit ball is intrinsically more powerful the bigger it gets, so in the end there's no incentive for players to break up the deathball. deathball is a result of units interaction, not unlimited unit interaction. There just need to be greater reward for mult-tasking then pros will head toward that direction. TvZ and TvT are both good example, until recently. Having units moving so fast such as lings, units synergy like protoss death balls and no option for heavy AoE type dmg is why sc2 shifts toward deathballs. But even then, as player gets better those problem shifts away slightly i agree. i absolutely hate what tvz has become (ling infestor into broodlords). Watching marine tank vs ling bling muta back in the day was the best thing I have seen in this game to this date. The amount of micro and control required to fight that comp was incredible. the main problem with mutas bling is that it was a very fragile comp. terrans have learned to deal with it in a very simple way. get 3 atk and 3 armor on marines and split. im not gonna get into whether it was easier to execute for terran or zerg, don't like getting into that bullshit. but the fact that it required lots of micro from both ends was what made it interesting. ling infestor is such a boring comp to watch. press f and a. in terms of micro ling infestor requires just as much as muta bling. you may think its easy to just press the F key, but if u fuck up and lose all of ur infestors to siege tanks ur fucked. doing that only works on terrans that like to clump up all there units anyway. splitting marines against fungals just like what you do against banes is required. i can't tell if you're serious. flanking with lings, targetting marines with banelings and focus firing tanks with mutas all while terran is splitting everything is the same micro as a moving lings, running infestors in to fungal and then burrowing them? you do not split marines against fungals in real time, it's near impossible because the animation of fungal is instant. most successful splits vs fungals are pre battle spreads.
true, but like people keep saying, if you fuck up just once and lose 6 infestors, that can lose you the game, especially ibn the mid game.
regardless, TvZ in general is a volatile match up for both sides. the grass is always greener 
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OP, you forgot that Swarm Host and Viper are also designed to break the deathball.
Swarm Host is a siege unit that may be used to do some area controls.
Viper's abduct spell is to pull something out of the deathball.
Viper's blinding cloud spell forces you opponents to split their ranged units otherwise they can't fire if they clump up as a deathball.
However, battlehellion and warhound are introduced to be a "A-Move Friendly" units (according to David Kim). So these two units will increase the deathball phenomenon in Terran.
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Whether these units will work as designers intended is another question entirely.
I think there are some inherent problems to the unit design, and they can do a better job than what we have seen from Blizzard. The following is just my thought:
1. Even if battlehellion is a deathball unit, it's a necessary addition to Terran mech so I would say it's a good addition.
2. Warhound is too similar to the role of Thor as a ground mech unit. It should be changed into some other roles that can be used outside the deathball.
3. Viper's abduct spell is not a good one since it reduces your opponent's incentive to position his army strategically. Knowing that the key units will be pull to death anyway, your opponent will simply don't position his army at all but go deathball.
4. Viper's blinding cloud spell is too similar to fungal growth. One is to make enemy can't move in AOE; the other is to make enemy can't shoot in AOE. The combination of fungal growth and blinding cloud is almost a death penalty to Terran bio. Anticipating Terran will never go bio against Zerg in HOTS.
5. Viper's spells should be changed into something that oriented toward area control. Blizzard should utilize the nature of creep. For example, Viper is now a "creep manipulation unit". It has two spells. One is to change the creep inside a radius of 7 into "slowing creep". Enemy ground units' movement speed inside the slowing creep reduced 50%. The other spell is to change the creep inside a radius of 5 into "fire creep". Enemy ground units inside the fire creep will take 1 damage (ignore armor) per second.
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On July 02 2012 02:17 rysecake wrote:Show nested quote +On July 02 2012 02:15 Ballistixz wrote:On July 02 2012 02:04 rysecake wrote:On July 02 2012 02:00 Ballistixz wrote:On July 02 2012 01:58 rysecake wrote:On July 02 2012 01:55 Ballistixz wrote:On July 02 2012 01:52 rysecake wrote:On July 02 2012 01:50 iky43210 wrote:On July 02 2012 01:43 a176 wrote:On July 02 2012 01:11 iky43210 wrote:
[quote]
no, purposely restricting UI to be unintuitive is a taboo in any designer or UI book. Not only are they frustrating, you are alienating a good portion of the playerbase when you do something like this that modern computer users/gamers aren't used to the deathball is a direct result of unlimited unit selection. it allows players to be lazy. it allows lazily designed units (read: colossus, tempest) to be overly effective. you dont see harassment groups in sc2 because static defense like a PF is so strong. you need a bigger and bigger ball to take it down; the unit ball is intrinsically more powerful the bigger it gets, so in the end there's no incentive for players to break up the deathball. deathball is a result of units interaction, not unlimited unit interaction. There just need to be greater reward for mult-tasking then pros will head toward that direction. TvZ and TvT are both good example, until recently. Having units moving so fast such as lings, units synergy like protoss death balls and no option for heavy AoE type dmg is why sc2 shifts toward deathballs. But even then, as player gets better those problem shifts away slightly i agree. i absolutely hate what tvz has become (ling infestor into broodlords). Watching marine tank vs ling bling muta back in the day was the best thing I have seen in this game to this date. The amount of micro and control required to fight that comp was incredible. the main problem with mutas bling is that it was a very fragile comp. terrans have learned to deal with it in a very simple way. get 3 atk and 3 armor on marines and split. im not gonna get into whether it was easier to execute for terran or zerg, don't like getting into that bullshit. but the fact that it required lots of micro from both ends was what made it interesting. ling infestor is such a boring comp to watch. press f and a. in terms of micro ling infestor requires just as much as muta bling. you may think its easy to just press the F key, but if u fuck up and lose all of ur infestors to siege tanks ur fucked. doing that only works on terrans that like to clump up all there units anyway. splitting marines against fungals just like what you do against banes is required. i can't tell if you're serious. flanking with lings, targetting marines with banelings and focus firing tanks with mutas all while terran is splitting everything is the same micro as a moving lings, running infestors in to fungal and then burrowing them? you do not split marines against fungals in real time, it's near impossible because the animation of fungal is instant. most successful splits vs fungals are pre battle spreads. your not suppose to split marines in real time..... if you know they are making infestors you split them AHEAD of time, especially while setting up siege tank positions. also the micro techniques is different for a muta bling comp and a infestor ling comp. if a terran is set up and split his marines you cant just atk into that. i dont know why you think that fungaling everything terran has while trying to not lose all of ur units in a bad engage in the process is easy.if terran starts to target fire infestors with his siege tanks then you are in a bad spot as zerg. if a ghosts gets a emp off on the infestors then you are in a bad spot as zerg. you cant just run in and fungal everything and A move lings unless you are playing a very bad terran that engages on creep without clearing it every single game. that's all i had to read. That's the problem right there. The exciting things about sc1 and sc2 is the micro DURING the battles, not before.
it being exciting to watch or not is purely opinion and debateable. some people LOVE to watch huge clump of army vs huge clump of army battle in a huge all out war and others like the more strategic side of things.
it doesnt matter if you hate it or love it, its apart of the game and does require micro to pull off vs equally skilled opponents.
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EPT
