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On July 02 2012 05:00 0neder wrote:Show nested quote +On July 02 2012 04:02 Darneck 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 Blizzard should just implement a tournament mode and also have a ladder using that and one without where some balance changes/mechanics work differently. Restricting unit selection is not 'unintuitive, it's just a limit that effects army control for the better. I'm not necessarily advocating that, as I think the main issue is horrible closed map design and unit spacing, but I don't think it would hurt in some form. SC2 needs this kind of spacing (taken from this thread Dynamic Unit Spacing), Then deathballs will dissipate and splash can get way stronger and have more variance in the result. It's also more exciting because armies feel bigger and battles more epic.
Not sure if you meant to quote me or the guy I quoted but yea this kind of thing would help too. Especially mixed with limited unit selection or something else to make the game have harder mechanics
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On July 02 2012 04:58 0neder wrote:
If you think this stuff will prevent deathballs, think again.
Bigger more open maps, dynamic unit spacing (EG units get stuck on each other), stronger splash, and better game design will break up the deathball.
As long as current unit spacing paradigm, IE clipping units and hyper-dense grouping, continues, the deathball wars will continue and more people will get bored of SC2.
Bigger maps is the absolute last thing we need right now.
The problem with SC2 right now as an e-sport is that there's nothing goin on in the first 15 mins in the bigger maps.
For all the flaws SC2 had when it was released, I'm a strong believer that it was actually more entertaining, yes the balance was atrocious but there was more action going on, more stuff to watch. Now it's a borefest until the 15 min mark.
What SC2 needs is: much more action in the first minutes without ending the game, and put an end to the whole "flip coin" build order. Waiting 15 min for the game to pick up when it was already determined in the first 5 when a player went blindly with a better build order is just terrible.
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On July 02 2012 01:16 Snoodles wrote:Show nested quote +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.
That is because of the map pool. If there was a map that had a wide open natural that was difficult to Forge fast expand on, and yet had no easy to take third for Zerg (and didn't have an easy to take 3rd for Toss like Shattered Temple) we would actually see some action in the first few minutes.
Instead we get maps with easy to take bases and no action.
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On July 02 2012 05:00 0neder wrote:Show nested quote +On July 02 2012 04:02 Darneck 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 Blizzard should just implement a tournament mode and also have a ladder using that and one without where some balance changes/mechanics work differently. Restricting unit selection is not 'unintuitive, it's just a limit that effects army control for the better. I'm not necessarily advocating that, as I think the main issue is horrible closed map design and unit spacing, but I don't think it would hurt in some form. SC2 needs this kind of spacing (taken from this thread Dynamic Unit Spacing), Then deathballs will dissipate and splash can get way stronger and have more variance in the result. It's also more exciting because armies feel bigger and battles more epic. ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/IMGcj.jpg)
As already mentioned before, just change the "Formation Diameter" in the Gameplay Data into a larger value and your units will stay in the formation they are in when move commanded (can be changed for every map in the editor).
But I'm pretty sure Blizzard will never put this in, because of the same old reason, it makes the control of different units with different speeds much less intuitive. If you have a hellion and some marines in the same control group, the hellion will not move to the spot you command it to, it will move to some relative point between the one you commanded it to and the distance between the hellion and the marines added to that point (if the marines and hellions aren't clumped up in the first place).
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I like how Brood War was actually war-like, for example fighting on multiple fronts and how everything doesn't die within 5 secs also in Brood War comebacks were more easy
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+ Show Spoiler +On July 02 2012 05:00 0neder wrote:Show nested quote +On July 02 2012 04:02 Darneck 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 Blizzard should just implement a tournament mode and also have a ladder using that and one without where some balance changes/mechanics work differently. Restricting unit selection is not 'unintuitive, it's just a limit that effects army control for the better. I'm not necessarily advocating that, as I think the main issue is horrible closed map design and unit spacing, but I don't think it would hurt in some form. SC2 needs this kind of spacing (taken from this thread Dynamic Unit Spacing), Then deathballs will dissipate and splash can get way stronger and have more variance in the result. It's also more exciting because armies feel bigger and battles more epic. ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/x7RNX.jpg) ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/SuiCY.jpg) ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/345v3.jpg) ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/BEuVb.jpg) ![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/OPbLo.jpg)
By far a great example of why unit spacing is needed because its far more interesting to see armies spread out then clumped out in a ball style. They would also have to fix the maps too so that they don't have a ton of different choke points because if you see most of the maps that are being used on ICCUP and Fish server they have a lot of open space which gives units the ability to move around in a spread out way making them look far bigger and not like a tiny clumped up ball moving around the map.
This game is also far faster then Brood War and gives the player very little time to react which is really bad. I also find units do way to much damage too so retreating is never an option at some battles which retstricts the playstyles more. I find the economy spirals out of control very easily and its mostly the reason people in the lower leagues can't spend every mineral they get in the game and get called bad well its possibly because the game is moving to fast for them to keep up. The lack of defender's advantage also really hurts this game too and should be added. Limiting unit selection to something 24-30 units would be probably make people spread out there armies more and probably try little battles against different area's on the map.
I just want this game to be really good and last for years after the final game expansion comes out.
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There are a whole lot of core mechanics in the game that make deathballs preferable. Putting in a bunch of gimmicky units will not change anything, they'd need to redo a lot of very basic stuff (mostly for P and Z), which they're obviously not going to do.
And I doubt altering unit movement and formations would change all that much. To prevent deathballs, the game needs incentive to split one's army into smaller chunks, of which there's currently not much. Similarly, limited control groups wouldn't change a thing, you'd just have your deathball on three hotkeys instead of one.
On July 02 2012 05:11 BronzeKnee 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. That is because of the map pool. If there was a map that had a wide open natural that was difficult to Forge fast expand on, and yet had no easy to take third for Zerg (and didn't have an easy to take 3rd for Toss like Shattered Temple) we would actually see some action in the first few minutes. Instead we get maps with easy to take bases and no action.
You'd see a ton of all-ins. What you're describing is essentially Crossfire, a horrible PvZ map. There's a limit to what you can blame on maps, and this particular issue is all Browder and co.
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I don't see how these new unit break the deathball play. To me a non-deathball game is a game where you have to divide your army in 2-3-4-5 small army. Tempest , Oracle , widow mines don't divide your army , it's just harrass units to make your opponent weaker and kill him later with your BIG army that will crush him in 2 seconds !
Hots will be exactly the same as WoL : harass the opponent to make your late game deathball stronger. It just adds more useless units.
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On July 02 2012 05:10 Demorase wrote:Show nested quote +On July 02 2012 04:58 0neder wrote:
If you think this stuff will prevent deathballs, think again.
Bigger more open maps, dynamic unit spacing (EG units get stuck on each other), stronger splash, and better game design will break up the deathball.
As long as current unit spacing paradigm, IE clipping units and hyper-dense grouping, continues, the deathball wars will continue and more people will get bored of SC2. Bigger maps is the absolute last thing we need right now. + Show Spoiler +
The problem with SC2 right now as an e-sport is that there's nothing goin on in the first 15 mins in the bigger maps.
For all the flaws SC2 had when it was released, I'm a strong believer that it was actually more entertaining, yes the balance was atrocious but there was more action going on, more stuff to watch. Now it's a borefest until the 15 min mark.
What SC2 needs is: much more action in the first minutes without ending the game, and put an end to the whole "flip coin" build order. Waiting 15 min for the game to pick up when it was already determined in the first 5 when a player went blindly with a better build order is just terrible.
I think the term people are actually talking about is "more open" maps. They don't necessarily need to be bigger.
On July 02 2012 05:00 0neder wrote:Show nested quote +On July 02 2012 04:02 Darneck 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 Blizzard should just implement a tournament mode and also have a ladder using that and one without where some balance changes/mechanics work differently. Restricting unit selection is not 'unintuitive, it's just a limit that effects army control for the better. I'm not necessarily advocating that, as I think the main issue is horrible closed map design and unit spacing, but I don't think it would hurt in some form. SC2 needs this kind of spacing (taken from this thread Dynamic Unit Spacing), Then deathballs will dissipate and splash can get way stronger and have more variance in the result. It's also more exciting because armies feel bigger and battles more epic. + Show Spoiler +
Oneder that is a great thread and I think when SC2 was in its alpha stages things like that would have been the correct answer. However, currently SC2 needs a different solution. I see the present situation as very similar to the MBS and automining problem that we faced when SC2 was young. We solved that with macro mechanics. It seems to me that a similar innovative solution is required here.
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Deathball will still be there it will always be there as long as we can select as many units as possible, Every Race has their own deathball now as well. Plus The tempest is an awesome addition to the deathball it will be great paired up with colossus. and ffs
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On July 02 2012 05:38 SigmaoctanusIV wrote:
Deathball will still be there it will always be there as long as we can select as many units as possible, Every Race has their own deathball now as well. Plus The tempest is an awesome addition to the deathball it will be great paired up with colossus. and ffs
Not if the Tempest is given a minimum range.
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Pulling supply? If you make ten Oracles, Vipers or thirty Widow Mines maybe. Undeniable fact is that the Death Ball is still going to be prevalent in macro games, there are just going to be more options for players when not going for a straight up fight.
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On July 02 2012 05:38 SigmaoctanusIV wrote:
Deathball will still be there it will always be there as long as we can select as many units as possible, Every Race has their own deathball now as well. Plus The tempest is an awesome addition to the deathball it will be great paired up with colossus. and ffs
You think that if you added unlimited control groups to BW right now, players would put everything under one hotkey and a-move it around the map?
I think not much would change, because it is actually better to have small groups of units all around the map in BW. The same thing is not true in SC2 currently.
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On July 02 2012 05:22 Toadvine wrote:There are a whole lot of core mechanics in the game that make deathballs preferable. Putting in a bunch of gimmicky units will not change anything, they'd need to redo a lot of very basic stuff (mostly for P and Z), which they're obviously not going to do. And I doubt altering unit movement and formations would change all that much. To prevent deathballs, the game needs incentive to split one's army into smaller chunks, of which there's currently not much. Similarly, limited control groups wouldn't change a thing, you'd just have your deathball on three hotkeys instead of one. Show nested quote +On July 02 2012 05:11 BronzeKnee wrote: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. That is because of the map pool. If there was a map that had a wide open natural that was difficult to Forge fast expand on, and yet had no easy to take third for Zerg (and didn't have an easy to take 3rd for Toss like Shattered Temple) we would actually see some action in the first few minutes. Instead we get maps with easy to take bases and no action. You'd see a ton of all-ins. What you're describing is essentially Crossfire, a horrible PvZ map. There's a limit to what you can blame on maps, and this particular issue is all Browder and co.
Exactly. For some reason everyone needs to think new units will fix everything, when its not units that cause the issue.Its the new improvements in pathing that makes controlling a larger armier easier. Blizzard tried to innovate in War 3 with upkeep so that it encouraged players to keep armies small and not turtle into a big deathball push but it didn't turn out too good (maybe strong heroes also had an affect there). So for fear of alienating SC:BW fans they just gave up on this issue instead of doing something about it they took the lazy way out and added excellent pathing with a few new units. It is then no surprise how things turned out. Unless Blizzard actually find out a way to penalize controlling of large armies, we'll still see deathballs. Also as long as we see clumped up armies, AOE will dominate which means all AOE spells will be watered down which means lesser chance for a higher level unit to handle much larger armies without significant support.For example I'm betting that widow mines will be nerfed in the Beta to such an extent that they will be like ravens HSM... Same will happen with the new darkswarm since you probably can fit an entire 200food army in that space.
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Please dont shoot me. Just feel blizzard needs some credit.
So it has been said, by the developers, that the new expansion is hoping to get rid of the deathball problem. It has also been said, by roughly everybody on here, that the developers are going about this wrong. I see the arguments of the community, but I have to side with the developers thus far.
So far I have not seen people argue things from all points of view, just a few select ones that get repeated about 20 times in 6 page threads and are very narrow.
Maybe some other points of view:
Zerg changes
Viper- Yes it does goes great with the zerg deathball. But its abilities are made to break up opposing deathballs. Facing the viper, you get penalized the most for keeping your units together, making it a better idea to spread your army out to help negate the effects of blinding clouds and abducts.
Swarm Host- My biggest argument with this one I am not 100% sure about. What is the collision size of the locust? And do they block pathing like broodlings? Both of these would make them fairly horrible to put with your army, as having constant trash spawning on your side of the battle and pushing to get in range would just screw things up.
Ultralisks- Again the enemy has to keep their army spread apart, or else they will get burrow charged.
Protoss changes
Oracle- Once again designed to split up the enemy. If you dont properly defend your base, you cant use it. Better leave some units there or send a squad!
Tempest- This unit I can understand other peoples arguments. I think the idea might be more of area control. Anybody realize that their attack range is that of a watch tower? Although I think the idea of using it to attack from interesting angles will turn more into using it to force them to attack your death ball. So ya..... iffy about this.
Easier Recall- Only affects a small group of units. So the protoss can send out a hit force, target something, and bring them back. But considering the size of the army, if it finds any large armies it will probably die. So this forces you to spread out to cover all points of entry, instead of having them sneak around your ball.
Terran Changes
First I am guessing most of the terran changes are to promote factory play instead of bio or biomech.
BattleHellions- Completely a deathball supporter. Cant argue that. Just helps with mech focus. (Which will mean less bio, which will mean less of those storms that get complained about)
Warhound- Again a mech thingy. Essentially a mech marauder? I do hope they change the anti-mech missle on it. Possibly to the smoke screen?!
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=345093
Widow Mine- So if I clump my units into a death ball and get hit by these, I might lose a lot. Very anti deathball. Although I do think the ten seconds is pretty high. I do see the need of a timer. Instead of exploding on collision, like a spider mine, its meant to get farther into a ball and do more damage than the spider mine, so to balance this damage there needs to be a chance to negate it.
Other general arguments-
Collosus is not a hard to counter unit. You make anything that flys, which is all at the same tech level. Stop saying that its hard to counter. Low-micro, yes. Hard to counter, no.
This I have heard so many times. People feel that blizzard is at a low with creativity, but feel that they need to bring old units. How is this an answer to low creativity? Old units just so happen to not be new ideas. Lurkers are not new, they are old.
Ultimately I might agree that these change might not turn the game into a map wide struggle filled with micro battle, but I do think it will at least spread the battles apart, making them cover a larger area. Larger area means more stuff happening (rather than all on one screen. More stuff means more micro. Makes us happier, right?
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On July 02 2012 05:45 Toadvine wrote:Show nested quote +On July 02 2012 05:38 SigmaoctanusIV wrote:
Deathball will still be there it will always be there as long as we can select as many units as possible, Every Race has their own deathball now as well. Plus The tempest is an awesome addition to the deathball it will be great paired up with colossus. and ffs You think that if you added unlimited control groups to BW right now, players would put everything under one hotkey and a-move it around the map? I think not much would change, because it is actually better to have small groups of units all around the map in BW. The same thing is not true in SC2 currently.
It will probably be a mess due to the awful pathing in BW, but try to imagine BW with great pathing and unlimited unit selection....
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On July 02 2012 05:50 WickedBit wrote:Show nested quote +On July 02 2012 05:45 Toadvine wrote:On July 02 2012 05:38 SigmaoctanusIV wrote:
Deathball will still be there it will always be there as long as we can select as many units as possible, Every Race has their own deathball now as well. Plus The tempest is an awesome addition to the deathball it will be great paired up with colossus. and ffs You think that if you added unlimited control groups to BW right now, players would put everything under one hotkey and a-move it around the map? I think not much would change, because it is actually better to have small groups of units all around the map in BW. The same thing is not true in SC2 currently. It will probably be a mess due to the awful pathing in BW, but try to imagine BW with great pathing and unlimited unit selection....
Then you have deathballs. The issue is the spacing. There is none. You can fit 40 marines in a small tiny ass area where in broodwar you could only maybe fit 10. This leads to a giant increase in dps (for all races, just using marines as an example) and shit ends up dying way too fast. Space things out and now you have longer lasting fights, aoe that doesn't completely annihilate everything in 2 seconds. More micro. More multitasking (you'll end up using multiple smaller groups instead of trying to deathball because it's more effects, I.E. BW.). Just better all around.
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On July 02 2012 05:12 Bommes wrote:Show nested quote +On July 02 2012 05:00 0neder wrote:On July 02 2012 04:02 Darneck 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 Blizzard should just implement a tournament mode and also have a ladder using that and one without where some balance changes/mechanics work differently. Restricting unit selection is not 'unintuitive, it's just a limit that effects army control for the better. I'm not necessarily advocating that, as I think the main issue is horrible closed map design and unit spacing, but I don't think it would hurt in some form. SC2 needs this kind of spacing (taken from this thread Dynamic Unit Spacing), Then deathballs will dissipate and splash can get way stronger and have more variance in the result. It's also more exciting because armies feel bigger and battles more epic. As already mentioned before, just change the "Formation Diameter" in the Gameplay Data into a larger value and your units will stay in the formation they are in when move commanded (can be changed for every map in the editor). But I'm pretty sure Blizzard will never put this in, because of the same old reason, it makes the control of different units with different speeds much less intuitive. If you have a hellion and some marines in the same control group, the hellion will not move to the spot you command it to, it will move to some relative point between the one you commanded it to and the distance between the hellion and the marines added to that point (if the marines and hellions aren't clumped up in the first place).
Woah woah woah. There is a a "Formation Diameter" value in there? Is there any example of people tweaking it? I think it would be very interesting to see some maps with the tweaked value just for experimenting, kinda like how people played around with FRB.
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On July 02 2012 05:45 Toadvine wrote:Show nested quote +On July 02 2012 05:38 SigmaoctanusIV wrote:
Deathball will still be there it will always be there as long as we can select as many units as possible, Every Race has their own deathball now as well. Plus The tempest is an awesome addition to the deathball it will be great paired up with colossus. and ffs You think that if you added unlimited control groups to BW right now, players would put everything under one hotkey and a-move it around the map? I think not much would change, because it is actually better to have small groups of units all around the map in BW. The same thing is not true in SC2 currently.
I know for a fact almost 100% people would do that, You require far less apm to move around with a 1 control group and split and attack with mouse movements.
You think it's better because Pros that are really fast and make great decisions makes it look flawless. Though given that even Flash uses just 1 control group for his bio ball in sc2 shows it.
Tab selecting and smart spell casting has made it all pretty simple to use these giant clumps of units.
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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 .
Because watching 2 players taking 3~5 bases without any aggression is boring then all is decided in only 1 fight (boring too and no come back possible), if you are a spectator you want to shoot yourself...
Terrible terrible game design
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EPT
