EPTOn July 04 2012 14:38 TyrantPotato wrote:
the point of a beta is to TEST NEW STUFF.
the point of a beta is to TEST NEW STUFF.
The point of a beta is to fix bugs. New features are added during alpha.
Modified Movement Test - Page 19
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There will obviously be balance shifts when gameplay values are changed. Nobody is claiming otherwise. This thread is about the effect these changes have on the clarity and spectator-friendliness of SC2. | ||
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Portlandian
Belgium153 Posts
The point of a beta is to fix bugs. New features are added during alpha. | ||
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Rkynick
85 Posts
The units still have the same efficient movement, just they are more spread out. The crux of BW design is inefficient movement. Inefficient movement means that units in crowded areas become less and less effective as the area becomes more crowded-- they're too stupid to move around eachother, which is less damage output for your army, as they cannot get in range. This means that there's more 'buffering time' before the engagement actually occurs-- units take longer to move into their positions, which increases the defender's advantage, particularly the power of splash damage and long ranged units, because these units have longer periods of time to attack without being attacked. With this, as in regular SC2, you just move forward casually and achieve 100% damage output. Presently, spreading out in SC2 provides a survivability bonus, but not a damage output bonus. Also, there is little time before the engagement reaches its climax and the engagement lasts very little time afterwards. Because units engage so efficiently, you need every unit to win a fight, and every extra unit you have is extra damage output. This is why deathballs form-- adding more units to them makes them more effective at a rate that doesn't tend to decrease. If you want to stop the deathballs, then adding more units to a group needs to become less and less effective as the group's size increases. This means a group of x size is just as effective as a group of x + 25 size at a certain point. This means the +25 player could take that 25 and use them elsewhere more effectively than keeping them with. If you want to do that: 1) powerful splash units & other area control units. Splash units can do more with less, and do much much more damage to over-saturated groups, and thus punish over-saturation. The issue is, as with the colossus, when these units become part of the deathball, rather than destroying it. Tanks are a good example of splash units done right. Psi Storms are also a pretty good example. Splash units are not the end-all-be-all answer to deathballs, however. 2) Inefficient movement mechanics. Units need to be god-awful at getting around eachother, and at moving in general. Things should break down more and more as more and more units are added. Good players can use their units more effectively, allowing them to use larger-sized groups to their full potential, so this both rewards good play and discourages deathballing after a certain 'breakdown' point. 3) essentially, units need to be able to stall. So, engagements should last longer. If a group of units can stall a larger group of units effectively, then a player can afford to break off units from the main group and form smaller groups for multipronged attacks and harassment. Stalling means you can have afford to have troops further and further away from your main forces or bases, as stalling gives you more time to gather your armies in one place, more time to react. Therefore, stalling is a major part of breaking up the deathball. 4) Counters. Counters are another situation where one can do more with less, as being prepared with the right kind of units to combat the enemy's army can give a player more breathing room because they will make more efficient trades. However, hard-counters should be avoided, and most units should be soft-counters. Gameplay which is reliant on counters encourages deathball behavior, as the vulnerable units will need to be protected (and thus surrounded). This is why, for example, we don't see colossus used for harassment. Too many hard counters. Counters, then, should be more along the lines of 'this is what counter unit is good at' rather than 'countered unit is too powerful, so let's give it a vulnerability.' If that makes any sense. Counters are tricky business, the other options are much surer bets. 5) More with less. I keep saying this, but this is the basis of my design hypothesis. If players can do the same with less, then they have excess units which would be put to better use elsewhere. Elsewhere = outside of the deathball. Right now SC2 does have an 'excess unit' point, but it's at around 300 army supply. We need to bring this point down. Way down. You can look at many parts of the SC2 game design and see features which contribute to these. However, they are simply not enough. When bigger is always better and you can't stall for time, the game is, most of the time, a race to simply be bigger. So that's all my cents. All of them. I hope you appreciate them. Don't spend them all in one place. I forgot one: - Control group limits will not solve anything. At all. They just artificially impose a weight on the power of large armies by making the player work harder to use them-- not to position them, or anything strategic and relevant like that, just simply to use them. The power of large armies should be limited by game mechanics, not terrible interface design. Look at Total Annihilation, for instance. It managed to limit the power of large armies (largely through the mechanics I've described above) and players could select an unlimited number of units at once. I believe BW did a lot of things right, but the control group limit really did not contribute to that at all, in my mind. | ||
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0neder
United States3733 Posts
On July 04 2012 14:36 LgNKami wrote: ever heard of forcefields (aka temporary industructible walls)? What of them? Which came first, the bad foundation or the band-aid ability? | ||
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Nazza
Australia1654 Posts
On July 04 2012 15:06 Rkynick wrote: This sort of change doesn't really fix the problem, as near as I can tell. The units still have the same efficient movement, just they are more spread out. The crux of BW design is inefficient movement. Inefficient movement means that units in crowded areas become less and less effective as the area becomes more crowded-- they're too stupid to move around eachother, which is less damage output for your army, as they cannot get in range. This means that there's more 'buffering time' before the engagement actually occurs-- units take longer to move into their positions, which increases the defender's advantage, particularly the power of splash damage and long ranged units, because these units have longer periods of time to attack without being attacked. With this, as in regular SC2, you just move forward casually and achieve 100% damage output. Presently, spreading out in SC2 provides a survivability bonus, but not a damage output bonus. Also, there is little time before the engagement reaches its climax and the engagement lasts very little time afterwards. Because units engage so efficiently, you need every unit to win a fight, and every extra unit you have is extra damage output. This is why deathballs form-- adding more units to them makes them more effective at a rate that doesn't tend to decrease. If you want to stop the deathballs, then adding more units to a group needs to become less and less effective as the group's size increases. This means a group of x size is just as effective as a group of x + 25 size at a certain point. This means the +25 player could take that 25 and use them elsewhere more effectively than keeping them with. If you want to do that: 1) powerful splash units & other area control units. Splash units can do more with less, and do much much more damage to over-saturated groups, and thus punish over-saturation. The issue is, as with the colossus, when these units become part of the deathball, rather than destroying it. Tanks are a good example of splash units done right. Psi Storms are also a pretty good example. Splash units are not the end-all-be-all answer to deathballs, however. 2) Inefficient movement mechanics. Units need to be god-awful at getting around eachother, and at moving in general. Things should break down more and more as more and more units are added. Good players can use their units more effectively, allowing them to use larger-sized groups to their full potential, so this both rewards good play and discourages deathballing after a certain 'breakdown' point. 3) essentially, units need to be able to stall. So, engagements should last longer. If a group of units can stall a larger group of units effectively, then a player can afford to break off units from the main group and form smaller groups for multipronged attacks and harassment. Stalling means you can have afford to have troops further and further away from your main forces or bases, as stalling gives you more time to gather your armies in one place, more time to react. Therefore, stalling is a major part of breaking up the deathball. 4) Counters. Counters are another situation where one can do more with less, as being prepared with the right kind of units to combat the enemy's army can give a player more breathing room because they will make more efficient trades. However, hard-counters should be avoided, and most units should be soft-counters. Gameplay which is reliant on counters encourages deathball behavior, as the vulnerable units will need to be protected (and thus surrounded). This is why, for example, we don't see colossus used for harassment. Too many hard counters. Counters, then, should be more along the lines of 'this is what counter unit is good at' rather than 'countered unit is too powerful, so let's give it a vulnerability.' If that makes any sense. Counters are tricky business, the other options are much surer bets. 5) More with less. I keep saying this, but this is the basis of my design hypothesis. If players can do the same with less, then they have excess units which would be put to better use elsewhere. Elsewhere = outside of the deathball. Right now SC2 does have an 'excess unit' point, but it's at around 300 army supply. We need to bring this point down. Way down. You can look at many parts of the SC2 game design and see features which contribute to these. However, they are simply not enough. When bigger is always better and you can't stall for time, the game is, most of the time, a race to simply be bigger. So that's all my cents. All of them. I hope you appreciate them. Don't spend them all in one place. I forgot one: - Control group limits will not solve anything. At all. They just artificially impose a weight on the power of large armies by making the player work harder to use them-- not to position them, or anything strategic and relevant like that, just simply to use them. The power of large armies should be limited by game mechanics, not terrible interface design. Look at Total Annihilation, for instance. It managed to limit the power of large armies (largely through the mechanics I've described above) and players could select an unlimited number of units at once. I believe BW did a lot of things right, but the control group limit really did not contribute to that at all, in my mind. Those are some pretty good points. I still think that this mod will contribute slightly to better gameplay though. It won't completely solve the problem, but I do think unit clumping is part of the problem. I think less clumping will result in less overall DPS in fights, which means that there's less han-bangs or "do or die" engagements. | ||
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TyrantPotato
Australia1541 Posts
On July 04 2012 14:54 Portlandian wrote: The point of a beta is to fix bugs. New features are added during alpha. your first post is to nitpick details? productive. | ||
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Qwyn
United States2779 Posts
On July 04 2012 15:06 Rkynick wrote: + Show Spoiler + This sort of change doesn't really fix the problem, as near as I can tell. The units still have the same efficient movement, just they are more spread out. The crux of BW design is inefficient movement. Inefficient movement means that units in crowded areas become less and less effective as the area becomes more crowded-- they're too stupid to move around eachother, which is less damage output for your army, as they cannot get in range. This means that there's more 'buffering time' before the engagement actually occurs-- units take longer to move into their positions, which increases the defender's advantage, particularly the power of splash damage and long ranged units, because these units have longer periods of time to attack without being attacked. With this, as in regular SC2, you just move forward casually and achieve 100% damage output. Presently, spreading out in SC2 provides a survivability bonus, but not a damage output bonus. Also, there is little time before the engagement reaches its climax and the engagement lasts very little time afterwards. Because units engage so efficiently, you need every unit to win a fight, and every extra unit you have is extra damage output. This is why deathballs form-- adding more units to them makes them more effective at a rate that doesn't tend to decrease. If you want to stop the deathballs, then adding more units to a group needs to become less and less effective as the group's size increases. This means a group of x size is just as effective as a group of x + 25 size at a certain point. This means the +25 player could take that 25 and use them elsewhere more effectively than keeping them with. If you want to do that: 1) powerful splash units & other area control units. Splash units can do more with less, and do much much more damage to over-saturated groups, and thus punish over-saturation. The issue is, as with the colossus, when these units become part of the deathball, rather than destroying it. Tanks are a good example of splash units done right. Psi Storms are also a pretty good example. Splash units are not the end-all-be-all answer to deathballs, however. 2) Inefficient movement mechanics. Units need to be god-awful at getting around eachother, and at moving in general. Things should break down more and more as more and more units are added. Good players can use their units more effectively, allowing them to use larger-sized groups to their full potential, so this both rewards good play and discourages deathballing after a certain 'breakdown' point. 3) essentially, units need to be able to stall. So, engagements should last longer. If a group of units can stall a larger group of units effectively, then a player can afford to break off units from the main group and form smaller groups for multipronged attacks and harassment. Stalling means you can have afford to have troops further and further away from your main forces or bases, as stalling gives you more time to gather your armies in one place, more time to react. Therefore, stalling is a major part of breaking up the deathball. 4) Counters. Counters are another situation where one can do more with less, as being prepared with the right kind of units to combat the enemy's army can give a player more breathing room because they will make more efficient trades. However, hard-counters should be avoided, and most units should be soft-counters. Gameplay which is reliant on counters encourages deathball behavior, as the vulnerable units will need to be protected (and thus surrounded). This is why, for example, we don't see colossus used for harassment. Too many hard counters. Counters, then, should be more along the lines of 'this is what counter unit is good at' rather than 'countered unit is too powerful, so let's give it a vulnerability.' If that makes any sense. Counters are tricky business, the other options are much surer bets. 5) More with less. I keep saying this, but this is the basis of my design hypothesis. If players can do the same with less, then they have excess units which would be put to better use elsewhere. Elsewhere = outside of the deathball. Right now SC2 does have an 'excess unit' point, but it's at around 300 army supply. We need to bring this point down. Way down. You can look at many parts of the SC2 game design and see features which contribute to these. However, they are simply not enough. When bigger is always better and you can't stall for time, the game is, most of the time, a race to simply be bigger. So that's all my cents. All of them. I hope you appreciate them. Don't spend them all in one place. I forgot one: - Control group limits will not solve anything. At all. They just artificially impose a weight on the power of large armies by making the player work harder to use them-- not to position them, or anything strategic and relevant like that, just simply to use them. The power of large armies should be limited by game mechanics, not terrible interface design. Look at Total Annihilation, for instance. It managed to limit the power of large armies (largely through the mechanics I've described above) and players could select an unlimited number of units at once. I believe BW did a lot of things right, but the control group limit really did not contribute to that at all, in my mind. So how do we set up a model of what we want to see in the game? We need to fix collision //wading through troops like butter, and we need to implement stronger AOE. Specifically, units with greater sustainability/control of space. We can only settle on so many limitations. Blizzard is not going to make their pathing system archaic, but perhaps they might be willing to adjust the clumping issue. Blizzard should implement a lurkeresque' unit instead of the SH, then. Siege tanks need a large buff. And collosi need to be replaced or revamped. AOE spells also need adjustments. This would provide all races with the core of units necessary for spatial control. Also, what form would this take, a custom map? I have plenty of ideas for HOTS that can be implemented in a custom map - for all races - that would take the game in a direction I think people would like to see. | ||
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larse
1611 Posts
Good Pathing without Deathball As I already said it many times, Dustin Browder's "deathball because of good pathing" is a pretext. You can have good pathing without deathball at the same time. And the easiest way to do this is to make the unit stay in their original formation while moving. And this guy in that post just shows how easy is to solve the deathball problem and how profound the result is. Just watch the videos in that post. Balance Issue: How Damage will be Done It is important to note that people's main concern that AOE damage will be much less effective in this mod is not the whole picture here. A more spread-out formation will affect how the damage is being done in three ways: 1, AOE damage will be less effective 2, DPS density of ranged unit will be lower, because there will be less units shooting within a certain area. Just think about it as a deathball of 40 marines in the current SC2, their DPS output forms a "DPS density" in the areas where all 40 marines can shoot at the same time. This will be a very high DPS outcome in that area. But if the 40 marines are spread-out, only a few of them can shoot in that area so the DPS outcome will be much less, or the DPS density will be much lower. 3, Melee damage will be more effective due to the more surface area for melee units to be able to attack. For example, if you a deathball of 40 marines in the current SC2, the enemy attacks you with 80 zerglings. The 80 zerglings can only attack the marines in the outer ring of the deathball, but can't attack the marines inside the outer ring until they kill the marines in the outer ring. However, with 40 spread-out marine, every single marine will have their surrounding area open to melee attackers, so the zerglings can close distance to every single marine and attack each of them from all angles. But that being said, you can still manually make a deathball by clicking anywhere inside the area of your selection in that modified movement mod. So, it is also important to note that a more spread-out formation will only affect those time when you intentionally not try to make a deathball in that mod. The False Promises of Spliting in the Current SC2 There is a popular argument that the current SC2 encourages more skill gap by forcing unit to clump up together so players have to split their army with really good micro. And this is a good test of the players skill. However, this argument is mostly invalid due to two reasons: First, you have to split your army in this modified movement mod. Your army will still clump up intentionally or unintentionally in this mod. So there are still tons of, if not less of, situations that players have to split their armies just like they do in the current SC2. It is important to note that because the units will stay in their original formation, players' skill to "make an original formation" is also a test of players' skill. "Making an original formation" is as hard as spliting your army in the current build because they involve exactly the same controls. You still have to select 2-3 units and move them away from other units and do it again to other 2-3 units and again and again. You have to do that and maybe in even more circumstances because now they can actually stay in that formation. Second, the result of splitting in the current SC2 has a bad mechanism. You can only ensure that your army keeps the formation that you made by standing still. If you move or a-move your splited army, they will immediately clump up again, even when they start shooting right away. In order to combat this bad mechanism, players especially Terran players start to use hold to make their marines and marauders not auto-engage the enemy because they will clump up even if they auto-engage the enemy. But because units can stay in their formation while moving, this in fact encourages players to do more micro because the result of your spliting actually stays after moving. Because the result of your micro will stay--your effort pays off--people will actuall do more micro rather than less micro in the new mod. What is your thought on this? Is it a better spectator experience? Is it a better gameplay mechanic? Will there be severe balance problem? | ||
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yeint
Estonia2329 Posts
On July 04 2012 07:44 0neder wrote: And let's be honest. If you're casual enough to not have any issues with SC2, this won't be an issue for you anyway. Oh, so now not agreeing with you means people are "casual"? | ||
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Nachtwind
Germany1130 Posts
tanks/colossi/archon/baneling/ultra useless this unit movement suggestion is for any new rts but not for sc2 | ||
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Steelo_Rivers
United States1968 Posts
On July 04 2012 15:09 0neder wrote: What of them? Which came first, the bad foundation or the band-aid ability? you're missing what came before both, the whining. | ||
LavaLava
United States235 Posts
From watching the TvP match, you can tell that it really doesn't break the game. Obviously, splash would have to be better, that's a given. I would say that i'd prefer if they weren't focused on DPS buffs, and instead were radius/duration/energy cost focused. There are two fundamental ways that the standard clumping movement behavior is worse in terms of game design: It ignores the distinction between two different types of player input., and it removes a valuable tactical choice. It forces clumping and makes the player correct for the broken behavior. There's one additional reason: The modified movement looks much, much better than the old style. I honestly think the odds are stacked against this change... but we need to figure out how to gain support for this, because it's that good. We NEED to add this to HotS. Somehow. Are there any professionals or other community people who could lend support for this? | ||
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GP
United States1056 Posts
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-Kyo-
Japan1926 Posts
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Bswhunter
Australia954 Posts
I think that being able to set up formations, even if it doesn't fix the deathball issue, is a cool feature that should be added anyway. | ||
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Steelo_Rivers
United States1968 Posts
On July 04 2012 15:58 LavaLava wrote: I really, really like this. From watching the TvP match, you can tell that it really doesn't break the game. Obviously, splash would have to be better, that's a given. I would say that i'd prefer if they weren't focused on DPS buffs, and instead were radius/duration/energy cost focused. There are two fundamental ways that the standard clumping movement behavior is worse in terms of game design: It ignores the distinction between two different types of player input., and it removes a valuable tactical choice. It forces clumping and makes the player correct for the broken behavior. There's one additional reason: The modified movement looks much, much better than the old style. I honestly think the odds are stacked against this change... but we need to figure out how to gain support for this, because it's that good. We NEED to add this to HotS. Somehow. Are there any professionals or other community people who could lend support for this? I agree with you. I have already input all my feelings on why this should be implemented but I completly overlooked the visuals of it. Im not gonna lie... I had only played about 10 games total of bw and I started playing that back in december (2011). The way the units move in that game (even though sometimes it made no sense. lol) not only looked better when directed correctly, but it also seems alot more realistic rather then having 75 marines and 20 marauders holding hands. I enjoyed watching the video almost as much as i enjoyed playing the map. ^^ | ||
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TechNoTrance
Canada1007 Posts
i also said it would only be easier for lower level players who kinda just know how to build and army and attack move. once you hit a certain level of play though, its a totally different story. So where is this magic level where suddenly this doesn't make the game easier? Do you realize how ridiculous that is? So it makes the game easier for bronze players, but doesn't make it easier for masters players. What kind of logic is that? you're probably one of the players who sits and lurks and waits until the person you're fighting isnt paying attention You can't be serious with this... Done arguing with you now, this is pointless. | ||
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Steelo_Rivers
United States1968 Posts
On July 04 2012 16:31 TechNoTrance wrote: So where is this magic level where suddenly this doesn't make the game easier? Do you realize how ridiculous that is? So it makes the game easier for bronze players, but doesn't make it easier for masters players. What kind of logic is that? You can't be serious with this... Done arguing with you now, this is pointless. There is not a magic level(rank), there is a level of understanding that is needed. If 2 bronze players were to 1v1 and one of them had a better understanding of the game than the other, who would win.. its the same across the board jack. so when you have 2 high level players who have the same level of understanding of the game, both players know how to push their advantages and disadvantages. adding this to the game doesnt change the amount of skill needed in higher level play(especially on daybreak). | ||
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Apolo
Portugal1259 Posts
1) the players aren't splitting their units at all. I see the terran engage with a clump of units most of the times aggainst the colossus. I mean whats the point of that game? They don't even use the thing they're testing. 2) doesn't seem that high level to me. Looks like platinum or lower | ||
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pzea469
United States1520 Posts
On July 04 2012 16:56 Apolo wrote: Not to be a bummer but the MMDayBreak Test Match is really bad... for two main reasons: 1) the players aren't splitting their units at all. I see the terran engage with a clump of units most of the times aggainst the colossus. I mean whats the point of that game? They don't even use the thing they're testing. 2) doesn't seem that high level to me. Looks like platinum or lower Yeah it's just low diamond play. I uploaded it because no one else was doing it. I just wanted to show the impact this would have on an average match I guess. Many thought it would just break the game somehow, that the movement would glitch out when played in real terrain with obstacles, but it shows that the game can still be played regularly. It's just 1 match and I'm not at all the best qualified to play it, as I've stated before, but it's better than nothing. The replay in the OP that someone posted is much better, though I'm hoping other people end up making vods. I'll try publishing more open maps as others have requested. | ||
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drivec
United States354 Posts
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