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.
I'm fine with other mods such as "stronger team colour" and "custom decals", as they are purely for aesthetic purposes.. (at least, from my point of view). As for this mod, I discourage the implementation, simply because it changes gameplay for the opponent in an unfair way. It gives a disadvantage to those who have to manually struggle to split their forces in dire situations, where the perfect split to save your life won't always be the result. Human error is part of the game; we practice for efficiency.. this mod is an excuse.
I don't think you understand - this is not something that only one player would be able to use. Like 6m1hyg and other concepts on how to change the game balance, this is something that people are trying to propose to Blizzard.
I'm fine with other mods such as "stronger team colour" and "custom decals", as they are purely for aesthetic purposes.. (at least, from my point of view). As for this mod, I discourage the implementation, simply because it changes gameplay for the opponent in an unfair way. It gives a disadvantage to those who have to manually struggle to split their forces in dire situations, where the perfect split to save your life won't always be the result. Human error is part of the game; we practice for efficiency.. this mod is an excuse.
Read the OP next time, please.
It's a custom map, a test map... no one can use it to gain an unfair advantage. It's just for the sake of testing what would SC2 look like if it was implemented.
Does any one else think daybreak isn't a good map to test this? It is mostly turns and if there is open area is isn't extremely huge(which is what this mod needs). The units clump up when they go into the turns even with modified movement. Could someone make an MMTal'darim altar or something like that? (also take the rocks off of the third )
On July 05 2012 00:10 FragRaptor wrote: Does any one else think daybreak isn't a good map to test this? It is mostly turns and if there is open area is isn't extremely huge(which is what this mod needs). The units clump up when they go into the turns even with modified movement. Could someone make an MMTal'darim altar or something like that? (also take the rocks off of the third )
There is an MMTaldarim, check the OP for the exact name.
The test seemed interesting and I do like how it is small. Personally, I don't like how units naturally clump just by moving is SC2. Not because I don't like splitting them, because I don't mind that. But I like the focus of micro to be using units, rather then fighting against their AI. The change did not seem to prevent clumping if terrain was involved or a there was a lot of back and fourth, but did allow the players to move their army across the field without have to slip every half a screen.
I don't know if it can be added in, but HotS is a good place to do so subtle things to the pathing and make the game a bit better. I don't think Blizzard will neglect this, since the people there most likely want to make the best game they can. Hopefully they look at this and put it into the bag of ideas they have.
i think the main reason this appeals to me as a player is that it would give mapmakers more incentive to design maps different; particularly, more openly. maps are so narrow near the mains and focused around one giant hole of space in the middle. that design philosophy is so uninspiring to me and i'd assume to most people who enjoy this game.
On July 04 2012 23:50 StackerTwo wrote: I firmly believe that mm, will not change the deathball; nor would limited selection in control groups.
MM would make the death ball easier to presplit, and collapse. but it does not change the NEED to match deathball with deathball;
limited control groups, makes it more difficult to control, but again it does not change the need for deathballs. 12 marines vs 12 stalkers? 12 lings vs 12 hellions? how many hotkeys do you need to control 100lings, and 50 banes? would this limitation be imposed on buildings? zerg has what 5-8 base+upgrade buildings, while t&p has 12+ rax/fac/star, gate/robo/star
what could possibly change the death ball would be some way to make any excess unit give reduced return. example: why do players not make 60 workers on 1 base? because pass the point of full saturation there is no return on investment.
have you ever seen a 20 thor composition? why? because the way thor collision works only a certain number can "fit" in a concave(i assume the warhound will have the same issue), the rest will be walking around until a "parking spot" opens up.
but then again... changing collision would really throw off any balance that we still have. how many of each unit should/could fit in a reduced engagement?
I definitely wouldn't mind a larger collision box for units either and I would even want to get rid of MBS and unlimited unit selection and replace it with a certain amount of max supply per unit group so that you could have more zerglings than 12 but still just 12 zealots for example.
Anyway, this would discourage deathballs if it came coupled with an AOE buff which it would have to. If there's a risk of your whole deathball being utterly destroyed by AOE, a lot more than it already is, you wouldn't want to risk clumping it up as much
On July 04 2012 07:26 dNa wrote: sorry, i don't like it at all... i want my units to clump up and have to spread them manually in the battle... that's what makes marine micro so awesome... this is just "hey look, i can have all my marines split 2minutes before the actual fight happens" ... great, who cares... please don't take micro out of the game. thank you.
Please read the comments in the thread before you just make assumptions out of thin air.
It wouldn't remove the micro because AOE radius/damage would most likely be buffed along with it which would make it so that you still have to split the same amount when you are already spread and even more if you choose to stay clumped all the time still.
the way the movement is presented on the video makes it so that the units stay spread out the way you did no matter how far you do it...
spreading out clumped stuff is about the only thing that requires skill at this point, if you take this out, this game will be too easy for my taste.
sorry, if anything i'd be fine, if the units have a bigger "individual space" per unit, which means the units are farer spread but still tend to clump.. but the way this is, the units don't run to the center point, but instead run the same distance as the unit in the middle towards the point. That means there will be a point where you have spread out wide enough, no matter how much you buff all the AOE damage/range.
And please keep in mind that in NO point of a battle a "ball" formation is good for your army. you want in arcs. So all you actually do with this idea is making the "moving arround" of the armies slightly more appealing to the watcher, while at the same time taking out all the micro skill that is involved, lowering the skill ceiling by alot. and - if i remember correctly - people think sc2 is easy enough, right?
anyway, that's just my opinion, as long as fans of this stay on their own maps and it doesn't get picked up by blizzard (which it won't) i will be totally fine with it.
The thing is that if you have your units presplit like the marines in the vid, then yeah, you're safe from AoE, but your army also can't attack in that position or you'd be extremely inefficient. Moving your army around presplit is one thing, but attacking with it is different. Even though they try to keep their formation, when you attack an enemy, the army is going to gather together since all the units will put themselves in range to attack. They just won't clump up into perfect ball shapes with MM. When this happens, AoE works perfectly fine. You can't have both though. You can't be presplit and engage while staying presplit. It just wouldn't work. This is assuming the map even has that much space to maneuver.
Testing in MMTaldarim is required to truly settle this though, since MMDaybreak didn't provide enough space to really see the full effect of this change.
depends on what composition your opponent has. if it involves banelings: yes you can stay in a presplit formation because as long as banelings don't kill at least 3 marines per baneling they won't be costefficient.
this is how micro is supposed to look. imagine the same fight with your mod... it would just be 40 marines 1 by 1, 2 banelings would die to kill 1 marine, siegetanks would kill 4 zerglings and 1 marine with 1 blow because the zerglings wrap themselves arround individual marines. There would be no micro whatsoever as soon as the fight begins, for terran at least, and i hardly think that zerg would be able to do anything good.
can these people please read the thread? AOE's power will have to be increased. The mod gives you more options, if you don't understand that, pitty.
On July 04 2012 23:50 StackerTwo wrote: I firmly believe that mm, will not change the deathball; nor would limited selection in control groups.
MM would make the death ball easier to presplit, and collapse. but it does not change the NEED to match deathball with deathball;
limited control groups, makes it more difficult to control, but again it does not change the need for deathballs. 12 marines vs 12 stalkers? 12 lings vs 12 hellions? how many hotkeys do you need to control 100lings, and 50 banes? would this limitation be imposed on buildings? zerg has what 5-8 base+upgrade buildings, while t&p has 12+ rax/fac/star, gate/robo/star
what could possibly change the death ball would be some way to make any excess unit give reduced return. example: why do players not make 60 workers on 1 base? because pass the point of full saturation there is no return on investment.
have you ever seen a 20 thor composition? why? because the way thor collision works only a certain number can "fit" in a concave(i assume the warhound will have the same issue), the rest will be walking around until a "parking spot" opens up.
but then again... changing collision would really throw off any balance that we still have. how many of each unit should/could fit in a reduced engagement?
I definitely wouldn't mind a larger collision box for units either and I would even want to get rid of MBS and unlimited unit selection and replace it with a certain amount of max supply per unit group so that you could have more zerglings than 12 but still just 12 zealots for example.
Anyway, this would discourage deathballs if it came coupled with an AOE buff which it would have to. If there's a risk of your whole deathball being utterly destroyed by AOE, a lot more than it already is, you wouldn't want to risk clumping it up as much
There's this game called Brood War - You might like it.
I wish people would stop trying to ruin SC2 by changing it into BW. If you like BW, play BW, it already bloody exists. Or play one of the many BW custom maps that exist in SC2 already.
Here we go with the, there's already brood war, play it argument.
I already like sc2 the way it is but I want it to be better obviously, especially as a spectator sport and these are things that personally I think would make it better so why the hell would I not want it?
What would playing the bw custom map get me as a spectator if it was never used in tournaments by pro players? Nothing.
On July 04 2012 23:50 StackerTwo wrote: I firmly believe that mm, will not change the deathball; nor would limited selection in control groups.
MM would make the death ball easier to presplit, and collapse. but it does not change the NEED to match deathball with deathball;
limited control groups, makes it more difficult to control, but again it does not change the need for deathballs. 12 marines vs 12 stalkers? 12 lings vs 12 hellions? how many hotkeys do you need to control 100lings, and 50 banes? would this limitation be imposed on buildings? zerg has what 5-8 base+upgrade buildings, while t&p has 12+ rax/fac/star, gate/robo/star
what could possibly change the death ball would be some way to make any excess unit give reduced return. example: why do players not make 60 workers on 1 base? because pass the point of full saturation there is no return on investment.
have you ever seen a 20 thor composition? why? because the way thor collision works only a certain number can "fit" in a concave(i assume the warhound will have the same issue), the rest will be walking around until a "parking spot" opens up.
but then again... changing collision would really throw off any balance that we still have. how many of each unit should/could fit in a reduced engagement?
I definitely wouldn't mind a larger collision box for units either and I would even want to get rid of MBS and unlimited unit selection and replace it with a certain amount of max supply per unit group so that you could have more zerglings than 12 but still just 12 zealots for example.
Anyway, this would discourage deathballs if it came coupled with an AOE buff which it would have to. If there's a risk of your whole deathball being utterly destroyed by AOE, a lot more than it already is, you wouldn't want to risk clumping it up as much
There's this game called Brood War - You might like it.
I wish people would stop trying to ruin SC2 by changing it into BW. If you like BW, play BW, it already bloody exists. Or play one of the many BW custom maps that exist in SC2 already.
On July 04 2012 23:50 StackerTwo wrote: I firmly believe that mm, will not change the deathball; nor would limited selection in control groups.
MM would make the death ball easier to presplit, and collapse. but it does not change the NEED to match deathball with deathball;
limited control groups, makes it more difficult to control, but again it does not change the need for deathballs. 12 marines vs 12 stalkers? 12 lings vs 12 hellions? how many hotkeys do you need to control 100lings, and 50 banes? would this limitation be imposed on buildings? zerg has what 5-8 base+upgrade buildings, while t&p has 12+ rax/fac/star, gate/robo/star
what could possibly change the death ball would be some way to make any excess unit give reduced return. example: why do players not make 60 workers on 1 base? because pass the point of full saturation there is no return on investment.
have you ever seen a 20 thor composition? why? because the way thor collision works only a certain number can "fit" in a concave(i assume the warhound will have the same issue), the rest will be walking around until a "parking spot" opens up.
but then again... changing collision would really throw off any balance that we still have. how many of each unit should/could fit in a reduced engagement?
I definitely wouldn't mind a larger collision box for units either and I would even want to get rid of MBS and unlimited unit selection and replace it with a certain amount of max supply per unit group so that you could have more zerglings than 12 but still just 12 zealots for example.
Anyway, this would discourage deathballs if it came coupled with an AOE buff which it would have to. If there's a risk of your whole deathball being utterly destroyed by AOE, a lot more than it already is, you wouldn't want to risk clumping it up as much
There's this game called Brood War - You might like it.
I wish people would stop trying to ruin SC2 by changing it into BW. If you like BW, play BW, it already bloody exists. Or play one of the many BW custom maps that exist in SC2 already.
if it were to people like this, we'd be eating shit off the ground just like in the stone ages. Thank you I'll enjoy my molecular cooking because people actually give criticism, try to improve what we currently have and try out new things. Noone here wants bw carbon copy. We want sc2 to be better than it is. If you think sc2 is at it's full potential, you must have one narrow mind.
Most people that are aggainst this seem to always say the same thing:
"It takes out the skill of splitting units in the middle of a battle"
Which to me is exactly the same as people were saying about automining, rally points, and so on. Watching a player fight aggainst the computer's mechanics is nothing to be amazed at. The units clump automatically independent of the player's skill. It's as cool to watch MKP split marines as it's cool to watch Bisu click on 10 gateways in 1s. Cool trick, but nothing more than just overcoming a handicap of the game.
Nevertheless, with this mod you can still watch splitting. It just is calculated and premeditated. A player can always clump his marines so the zerg makes banelings. But then he splits them in the last minute, to make the banes cost inefective. On the other hand, we can see much more tactical positions with the army. Players would know that they're not wasting actions by spreading units in a specific way like it happens now because they wouldn't disappear by a move command.
Also, this would be good for those that complain the defenders advantage is too small and should be bigger: we see many players making a beautiful concave when they're expecting an attack. Then the attacker baits, the defender clicks in and his units move. Boom. All his work wasted. The units got clumped again and he has to redo it all over if he wants to defend with a concave. At that time the attacker can now go knowing the defender is clumped and his advantage minimized.
For those that complain about balance as well. It's true. It would most likely unbalance the game in unexpected ways. But you can't theorize about it without even seeing it in action. Months ago Idra said Stephano's style would be figured out and he would go back to his place. If even him can be so wrong about a complete style of the race he plays, who are you to come here say this will break the game? And even if it indeed breaks the game, i believe it's in the best interest of Blizzard to see the long term future, and HoTS is a great opportunity to test it, at least in beta. As many people have said it looks and feels more natural and epic with the units spread out. Imagine the amount of tactis pre splitting could bring to pro play. As a spectator that would make me want to watch this game more.
And just as a final request: Mentioning the word BW in any context, question or statement, will only have Blizzard guys' brains flip up and say "Broodwar is a great game, and you can go play it if you want." There's no use to use that word, because apparently they don't want to have anything to do with it, it only seems to put out those premade replies and completely ignore the question.
I thought the OP was going to be a Luddite whinger begging for a return to the shonky pathing of Starcraft 1, where units used to endlessly bump into each and get stuck, so I was pleased to see that his proposition was to make units move in formation. I've been playing RTS (quite mediocrely) since the original Dune 2 and I've always thought that moving units in formation is a fantastic idea. You can actually take it even further and lock the speed of all units to the speed of the slowest in the group, but that is an issue for the individual need of each game.
What I don't understand is people wishing for a return to a maximum selection group size of 12. In the older games that was obviously down to some technical limitation, and resulted in many a hilarious session of marshalling large groups of fifty or more zerglings across the map by grabbing 12 at a time. In Dune 2, which I pointedly mentioned just before, the restriction was even greater - there were no control groups at all. So that's the bad old days. Going back to these limited control schemes is not the answer to creating better gameplay, it is wishing for a return to eating shit off the ground.
So I now see how the clumping in SC2 is not the same as formation movement, and as I say I have an existing favourable disposition towards stuff moving in formation. Formation creates strategical and tactical opportunities to those able to exploit it, which is exactly what this genre of games should be about. It's not just about APM to outproduce and outmaneouvre the opponent, though that is certainly (the R in RTS) part of the genre - control improvements expand what it is possible for a highly competent player to achieve, so there is no question that unlimited unit selection removes any skill from the game. Arguing for this to be added into the game as an artificial restriction is the hidebound view here, and against moving forward into the incredible potential of what control and pathing improvements can bring to RTS.
On July 05 2012 01:04 Apolo wrote: Most people that are aggainst this seem to always say the same thing:
"It takes out the skill of splitting units in the middle of a battle"
Which to me is exactly the same as people were saying about automining, rally points, and so on. Watching a player fight aggainst the computer's mechanics is nothing to be amazed at. The units clump automatically independent of the player's skill. It's as cool to watch MKP split marines as it's cool to watch Bisu click on 10 gateways in 1s. Cool trick, but nothing more than just overcoming a handicap of the game.
Nevertheless, with this mod you can still watch splitting. It just is calculated and premeditated. A player can always clump his marines so the zerg makes banelings. But then he splits them in the last minute, to make the banes cost inefective. On the other hand, we can see much more tactical positions with the army. Players would know that they're not wasting actions by spreading units in a specific way like it happens now because they wouldn't disappear by a move command.
Well, not only that... but it would probably open the way for more awesome micro than marine splitting, since the battles will actually last longer than 5 sec and will give time to good players to micro units individually or little group by little group.
Seriously... right now, it's pretty much always : "A ball of units vs a ball of units, the fight last 3 sec"... It would be totally different and I don't think that it would be for the worst.
And a guy like MKP that can split is marine will be able to actually do even better shits... like, clumping or splitting little group of marines on the spot if needed. Splitting against infestor or banelings, grouping against mutas and lings... backing up is injured marines behind a row of full health marauders or marines, for them to tank new lings waves... Focus-firing efficiently with three different group of blue-fames hellion, kiting ultras around like a boss by just stimming the marauders or the marines that are in range with the ultras... etc, etc. All that become actually viable and possible, because the fights last more than a few seconds and because your units are not all in a big single ball or two big balls. And, that's just in ZvT, for the Terran side. There's a tons of posibilities.
Rebalancing is a issue, yes... but I feel that it would totally be for the greater good.
I don't think this mod has so much to do with bw but it has much more in common with the movement in wc3 where the units stayed in formation. In fact it was optional in wc3 to select one or the other army movement setting either formation or clump/ball.
On July 04 2012 23:58 Deimos0 wrote: I don't get it - first there were complaints about how units clump in SC2 and now suddenly clumping is considered good for the game. Since you still have to manually move your units to desired formation I don't see a problem with OP's modification.
Lol, I agree completely. Soon after SC2 came out EVERYONE bitched and whined about how much the game revolves around deathballs. Now we get some video showing a mod that helps keep things from auto-clumping into that Deathball and half the community suddenly loves their deathballs.
The problem is that it is Human nature to be a little afraid of change, and way too many people are going to see the non-clumping units and think "Holy #&^% thats a huge change!" then make a snap judgment about it. The handful of people who actually test the mod and see that it actually does not impact the game overly much then get drowned out by the whine of the masses.
If more people would post AFTER they tried a game or two of the mod, and actually spent some time thinking about the implications and ramifications we might see a lot less bitching. Sadly, this is not how the internet works and spot judgments will continue to be made.
On July 04 2012 23:50 StackerTwo wrote: I firmly believe that mm, will not change the deathball; nor would limited selection in control groups.
MM would make the death ball easier to presplit, and collapse. but it does not change the NEED to match deathball with deathball;
limited control groups, makes it more difficult to control, but again it does not change the need for deathballs. 12 marines vs 12 stalkers? 12 lings vs 12 hellions? how many hotkeys do you need to control 100lings, and 50 banes? would this limitation be imposed on buildings? zerg has what 5-8 base+upgrade buildings, while t&p has 12+ rax/fac/star, gate/robo/star
what could possibly change the death ball would be some way to make any excess unit give reduced return. example: why do players not make 60 workers on 1 base? because pass the point of full saturation there is no return on investment.
have you ever seen a 20 thor composition? why? because the way thor collision works only a certain number can "fit" in a concave(i assume the warhound will have the same issue), the rest will be walking around until a "parking spot" opens up.
but then again... changing collision would really throw off any balance that we still have. how many of each unit should/could fit in a reduced engagement?
I definitely wouldn't mind a larger collision box for units either and I would even want to get rid of MBS and unlimited unit selection and replace it with a certain amount of max supply per unit group so that you could have more zerglings than 12 but still just 12 zealots for example.
Anyway, this would discourage deathballs if it came coupled with an AOE buff which it would have to. If there's a risk of your whole deathball being utterly destroyed by AOE, a lot more than it already is, you wouldn't want to risk clumping it up as much
There's this game called Brood War - You might like it.
I wish people would stop trying to ruin SC2 by changing it into BW. If you like BW, play BW, it already bloody exists. Or play one of the many BW custom maps that exist in SC2 already.
if it were to people like this, we'd be eating shit off the ground just like in the stone ages. Thank you I'll enjoy my molecular cooking because people actually give criticism, try to improve what we currently have and try out new things. Noone here wants bw carbon copy. We want sc2 to be better than it is. If you think sc2 is at it's full potential, you must have one narrow mind.
Yeah, you want a game to be better... by being worse? Because removing stuff like MBS, unlimited unitselection is ultimately making the game stupider than what it is supposed to be. And it won't make the actual game better, the same flaws that are in the game now that encourages deathballplay will still be there, but pulling off the deathball mechanicswise will only be harder.
I will keep repeating the same thing in these threads, SC2 the way it's been designed is encouraging deathball-play to a certain degree, and that won't change by making the game stupider so a deathball is harder to pull off.
What you want is something that encourages fighting on multiple fronts (which will also raise the need for multitasking), encourages faster expansions and in general, punishes big balls of units a-moving their way to victory. How could this be achieved?
For one thing, less resources (patches) pr. base is one way to go (imo), which will force players to expand faster and more often. Maybe maps should be tweaked a bit too so a player can't camp one spot with almost all their units and still have a perfectly acceptable response-time to harassment at any of their bases.
Also, AOE should be scary as hell in the game. Currently it really isn't as scary as it should be, but you can't just buff AOE in the current state of SC2.
There's multiple ways to go about the game to "fix" a deathballproblem instead of going back too stupid shit like BW. Lack of MBS and unlimited unitselection was NOT what made the game what it was/is.
On July 04 2012 23:50 StackerTwo wrote: I firmly believe that mm, will not change the deathball; nor would limited selection in control groups.
MM would make the death ball easier to presplit, and collapse. but it does not change the NEED to match deathball with deathball;
limited control groups, makes it more difficult to control, but again it does not change the need for deathballs. 12 marines vs 12 stalkers? 12 lings vs 12 hellions? how many hotkeys do you need to control 100lings, and 50 banes? would this limitation be imposed on buildings? zerg has what 5-8 base+upgrade buildings, while t&p has 12+ rax/fac/star, gate/robo/star
what could possibly change the death ball would be some way to make any excess unit give reduced return. example: why do players not make 60 workers on 1 base? because pass the point of full saturation there is no return on investment.
have you ever seen a 20 thor composition? why? because the way thor collision works only a certain number can "fit" in a concave(i assume the warhound will have the same issue), the rest will be walking around until a "parking spot" opens up.
but then again... changing collision would really throw off any balance that we still have. how many of each unit should/could fit in a reduced engagement?
I definitely wouldn't mind a larger collision box for units either and I would even want to get rid of MBS and unlimited unit selection and replace it with a certain amount of max supply per unit group so that you could have more zerglings than 12 but still just 12 zealots for example.
Anyway, this would discourage deathballs if it came coupled with an AOE buff which it would have to. If there's a risk of your whole deathball being utterly destroyed by AOE, a lot more than it already is, you wouldn't want to risk clumping it up as much
There's this game called Brood War - You might like it.
I wish people would stop trying to ruin SC2 by changing it into BW. If you like BW, play BW, it already bloody exists. Or play one of the many BW custom maps that exist in SC2 already.
if it were to people like this, we'd be eating shit off the ground just like in the stone ages. Thank you I'll enjoy my molecular cooking because people actually give criticism, try to improve what we currently have and try out new things. Noone here wants bw carbon copy. We want sc2 to be better than it is. If you think sc2 is at it's full potential, you must have one narrow mind.
Yeah, you want a game to be better... by being worse? Because removing stuff like MBS, unlimited unitselection is ultimately making the game stupider than what it is supposed to be. And it won't make the actual game better, the same flaws that are in the game now that encourages deathballplay will still be there, but pulling off the deathball mechanicswise will only be harder.
I will keep repeating the same thing in these threads, SC2 the way it's been designed is encouraging deathball-play to a certain degree, and that won't change by making the game stupider so a deathball is harder to pull off.
What you want is something that encourages fighting on multiple fronts (which will also raise the need for multitasking), encourages faster expansions and in general, punishes big balls of units a-moving their way to victory. How could this be achieved?
For one thing, less resources (patches) pr. base is one way to go (imo), which will force players to expand faster and more often. Maybe maps should be tweaked a bit too so a player can't camp one spot with almost all their units and still have a perfectly acceptable response-time to harassment at any of their bases.
Also, AOE should be scary as hell in the game. Currently it really isn't as scary as it should be, but you can't just buff AOE in the current state of SC2.
There's multiple ways to go about the game to "fix" a deathballproblem instead of going back too stupid shit like BW. Lack of MBS and unlimited unitselection was NOT what made the game what it was/is.
You're making the assumption that clumping = objectively smarter AI. It doesn't. The effect of clumping was caused by a subjective number value that Blizzard put in the game. It is in no way "smarter" to have the AI auto-clump units.
MBS and unlimited selection are dead topics. Stop bringing them up. This is about unit boxes and clumping.
I wonder if people even realize that even though this pathing helps against banelings, it really SUCKS against bigger ling based armies since there is more surface area to attack the split marines. There's a reason why you split marines against banes but not against mass lings. This was true in BW as well. You wanted marines compact together against ling armies, but when lurker burrowed, you started splitting them. It's not like if this change went through, the marines would pre-split marines and their job is done, there's a lot more to it depending on your opponent's army composition.
EPT
)
