EPT
go ahead and try something, I'll keep ya safe 
" . It also helps fend off straight up all-ins which is probably a good thing.HotS Highground Mechanic - Page 10
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pzea469
United States1520 Posts
go ahead and try something, I'll keep ya safe " . It also helps fend off straight up all-ins which is probably a good thing. | ||
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Telcontar
United Kingdom16710 Posts
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Sent.
Poland9189 Posts
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Fiallach
France38 Posts
I kind of like a high ground advantage, obviously makes positioning more important, which is good. As other have said, i feel the idea that you can hold with smaller numbers against a large assault would promote aggressive play more than turtling. If you can defend your base with 30 supply of tanks, why bothering keeping them all at home? They could be usefull somewhere else. Therefore, it would reward people for being active with their units, and for knowing exactly what to keep at home. Another way to differentiate the scrubs from the top players, which is what we should be aiming for. I feel like randomness is bad, and should feel bad in a game like Starcraft. Randomness goes against skill, and mastery, since there is nothing you can do about it. I like the idea of a range reduction, which would force the army with a bad position to take some fire before being able to attack. It makes sense, and is elegant. It doesn't kill the very idea of attacking an entrenched position, just requires a decent numbers advantage. Of course i feel this shouldn't work for air to ground units, which would make them even more desirable when attacking an entrenched enemy, and would create cool synergies between ground based armies, and siege breakers airforces.( i'm thinking BL and tempest) Out of it: A point i would like to stress is how bad these kind of threads always become, and how sad this is. The stincky old SC2 Vs BW hate battles. First of all, SC2 has been out for 2 years now. It's obviously not going anywhere, and even if some people seem to really think otherwise,or can't see why, a lot of people love it, and will keep following it, no matter what, because they just like the game. Forget about esport and shiny lights, and giants bags of money. Some people are just here because they like the game. (yes i will say it as many time as needed). On the other hand, BW is a great game, and is not dead either, we can still enjoy it, plus if you like the old stars, and you're sad they went to play SC2, i'm pretty sure there's a ton of old games you haven't seen yet. Can we stop yelling now? There must be some ways to make this game better, and it should be possible to debate "yes this is a good idea", against " no it's not a good idea" without such empty arguments as "blizzard so dumb can't make a game anymore, sc2 sucks and always will" ,Vs, "stupid BW players, go play your old game". As a person who likes to read smart and well constructed arguments, and has loved TL for years ( yeah i didn't have the urge to have an account to rant, back in the days, i just enjoyed reading people debating, i'm pretty sure a lot of people are just like me), the first pages of this post make me sick. If i wanted to read such nonsense, ad hominem and empty posts i would read Bnet forum. Before posting, please ask yourself if you're going to add anything to the conversation, or just using the thread to vent for your feelings. Plus this time we even got the extra amount of obnoxious with the " you should require X skill to discuss here", which i can't even comprehend. You want to draw a line between pro players and non pros? That, i can understand, people at the top probably see what other don't. But otherwise, that's just nonsense. A bronzie ( to take an extreme), who watches every tournament out there, and knows every stat in the game but has slow hands and a slow mind, or a master player who just learns BO that other people made, and repeats them until he can execute them perfectly well? I'm not sure whose opinion i want to read more, and whose has more value. Probably both. Thank you for your patience if you've read until here, i just feel super frustrated, when i see an interesting topic going to waste because people need to share their hate for a game or the other using any pretext. | ||
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Magicferret
United States8 Posts
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Falling
Canada11349 Posts
I feel like randomness is bad, and should feel bad in a game like Starcraft. Randomness goes against skill, and mastery, since there is nothing you can do about it. What do we mean by this. I've argued this before, but people take a blanket statement "randomness is bad" and apply it to absolutely everythings. Spawn positions are random- is that bad? You say it's bad because there is nothing you can do about it. Similarily, this idea: I like the idea of a range reduction, which would force the army with a bad position to take some fire before being able to attack. It makes sense, and is elegant. It doesn't kill the very idea of attacking an entrenched position, just requires a decent numbers advantage. Is also something you can do nothing about. Unpredictable random new events are bad. Like if we are thinking (was it Day9's?) crazy map thing where he was spawning motherships on the map at random, etc. That demonstrably impedes player skill and it is completely unpredictable. You cannot plan around random motherships appearing at random and destroying stuff. You have no way of knowing. But something like miss chance maybe random when looking at each individual unit firing. But is very predictable in that we know exactly when and where miss chance will occur- low ground attacking high ground. Knowing that, the player can adjust their plan accordingly. You can plan offensively and defensively with that knowledge. It is not a new event that can throw a wrench in your plans. It is a passive terrain feature that does not change. As the attacker, you know that not every shot will hit, therefore your plans adjust and you bring more troops. The individual shot you cannot account for, but in the bigger picture you know very close to what the outcome will be and you can plan around that. And the big picture is it will cost more troops to attack then it will to defend so you must either get your troops over the cliff or else be prepared for heavier losses. So in that way the miss chance does exactly what it is supposed to do. There may be some variations, but over the period of the game miss chances should evenly distribute. The so-called negative impact on 'skill' or 'mastery' however you want to measure it would be minor I think. | ||
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Roe
Canada6002 Posts
On February 03 2013 10:09 Falling wrote: What do we mean by this. I've argued this before, but people take a blanket statement "randomness is bad" and apply it to absolutely everythings. Spawn positions are random- is that bad? You say it's bad because there is nothing you can do about it. Similarily, this idea: Is also something you can do nothing about. Random events are bad. Like if we are thinking (was it Day9's?) crazy map thing where he was spawning motherships on the map at random, etc. That demonstrably impedes player skill and it is completely unpredictable. You cannot plan around random motherships appearing at random and destroying stuff. You have no way of knowing. But something like miss chance maybe random when looking at each individual unit firing. But is very predictable in that we know exactly when and where miss chance will occur- low ground attacking high ground. Knowing that, the player can adjust their plan accordingly. You can plan offensively and defensively with that knowledge. It is not a new event that can throw a wrench in your plans. It is a passive terrain feature that does not change. As the attacker, you know that not every shot will hit, therefore your plans adjust and you bring more troops. The individual shot you cannot account for, but in the bigger picture you know very close to what the outcome will be and you can plan around that. And the big picture is it will cost more troops to attack then it will to defend so you must either get your troops over the cliff or else be prepared for heavier losses. So in that way the miss chance does exactly what it is supposed to do. There may be some variations, but over the period of the game miss chances should evenly distribute. The so-called negative impact on 'skill' or 'mastery' however you want to measure it would be minor I think. The difference with spawn positions is that the whole map is completely mirrored, which negates the randomness completely. Something random is not predictable, if something falls outside predictability then it doesn't take skill. You can argue that it takes more skill to weather a storm of huge RNG, but that says little if nothing about player skill with the game, and more about the person adjusting to a dice roll that's out of their control. If you want RNG you'll have to make it affect both players equally in order to save the game from dice rolls that push one player into critical victory territory. A very important assumption you make that turns out to be false is the player knowing that not every shot will hit. Due to probability you may well get every shot htiting, you may get no shots hitting. But consider a small window of a battle; that battle would be influenced highly by RNG, and as much as the whole game evens out if it lasts that long, the battle being critical to the overall result is still decided by RNG. Lastly, something being minor should not push it out of our view in perfecting a game. We should keep everything on the table for discussion. | ||
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pluvos
39 Posts
On February 03 2013 09:42 Magicferret wrote: I really don't like the way you are saying map makers can adapt. Its true that they can, but all the current maps will probably have to be changed to support this. I also agree with what others are saying if you increase the defenders advantage by having a stronger high ground mechanic it encourages staying on the high ground which encourages macro play. Also why would it matter if you had high ground in the middle of the map or strategic positions. If you have your army in the middle of the map your opponent is just going to drop you to death so you split up your army then you don't have enough units to defend the high ground advantage TvT is the only match up where I see armies in the middle of the map for long periods of time. It also encourages fast ranged units to be produced. If you scout when your opponent is moving out then you take your fast units and get an easy and unnecessary advantage by taking some middle high ground early. new maps get made all the time so i dont see how that is an issue, in fact less maps are made right now becuase mapmakers are quitting due to the LACK of a high ground advantage. high ground encourage macro and thats a bad thing? encouraging macro aswell as making it possible to defend a position against a larger army with a lesser one will make spreading out your army and taking additional bases a superior play rather than to have 1 big army and turtle on fewer bases. and when you have 2 players spreading their army out on more bases suddenly mapcontrol and tactical plays become very important which answers your question about why strategic positions are important. i dont understand the point you are trying to make about drops as it is totally irrelevant and your point is invalid anyways. is it a bad thing that you gain an advantage against an opponent that "moves out" with a single army by having mapcontrol? the whole effin point of high ground is that it gains an advantage to the player that is active on the map as it gives that player an opportunity to split his army to harass, defend additional bases, have more effective trades and deny his opponents additional bases. basically it encourages more active, intelligent play and makes dull, passive turtle play with a deathball moveout worse. | ||
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Falling
Canada11349 Posts
It creates terrain features. Something to fight over rather than just flat ground. The problem with -1 range is once you've closed the gap, then you are right back where you started with very little difference being high or low. Miss chance is a persistent advantage that can only be negated by getting on their level or coming in with more stuff. But what skill is actually being impacted? This is not a fps where we are individually aiming our troops weapons and the game has a random chance to miss. The part it is impacting is already automated. It doesn't impact our ability to split, to when and where to engage, to target fire, to use an ability such as blink, or to shoot and scoot. All the skills we actually use remain the same. It is simply harder to take the high ground units as it will take more shots or more troops than on the flat ground. The only 'skill' I can think it is impacting is that when we sent 12 roaches to attack 10 we should have won. But instead we now lose. But this isn't a new rule change mid-game. We know this from the outset and we would therefore attack with 15 instead. It makes the 'skill' of determining the exact right number of troops to win an engagement slightly less pre-determined, but because there are so many other things you can do (ablities, target fire, shoot and scoot) it would hardly matter anyways. A bean counting skill being slightly fuzzy is no big loss compared to the new tactical demonstrations of skill this would open up. | ||
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AnomalySC2
United States2073 Posts
On February 02 2013 09:15 Malpractice.248 wrote: I feel this would draw TvT out even further O.O Also, make defending so so much easier (given its nearly always up a ramp) This User was warned for this post | ||
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pluvos
39 Posts
or it would do the exact opposite which you would understand if you actually read the proposals and understood them instead of having a gut reaction t.t there is so much ignorance in this thread it hurts my brain | ||
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Goldfish
2230 Posts
On February 03 2013 08:24 Sent. wrote: I don't think it would work as good as it did in BW because of bigger control groups and shorter battles in SC2. It could be intresting in midgame but later it would just add more randomness and stupidity to the game. Yeah I agree. Even if BW didn't have high ground advantage, it would still be a game about positioning and stuff. Heck, there were plenty of competitive maps which didn't even have high ground in BW. I think the fewer minerals per bases is a much more effective (and simple) strategy to make SC2 less turtley and much more spread out. Though this has potential too (one of the reasons people turtle in the first place is because it's hard to defend against the opponent's deathball without having "all" your units there to defend). So, I definitely agree with it somewhat (I feel SC2 needs a bit of revamp in more areas, in general, though). I feel like randomness is bad, and should feel bad in a game like Starcraft. Randomness goes against skill, and mastery, since there is nothing you can do about it SC2 is a more random game than probably most competitive video games. Even Dota and Warcraft III (which have random damage values, you can deal 10 to 20 damage instead of a flat 15 damage every hit) is less random than SC2. I think people need to remember that due to the fog of war mechanic and random spawns, SC2 has elements of randomness. And SC2's element of randomness is much bigger than in Dota or WC3 or BW. The reason is that the random things (in SC2) affect the overall game outcome way more than those other games. And the potential for skill to overcome said randomness is much less than Dota, BW, or WC3. SC2's battles are all short. Being caught out of position once can potentially mean you lose the game right there. Build order disadvantages are much more damaging than in BW or WC3. There are few consistent champions in SC2 compared to Dota, BW, or WC3, and I say the main reason is that the game is a bit more luck based than those games. I guess the closest is probably Life (who has won everything he participated in since his first GSL victory, besides the last GSL) and MVP. It's definitely possible to be much better than your opponent, that you overcome the randomness in SC2 (so you can still win due to skill but the amount of skill required to "consistently" win against opponents, be a consistent champion, is much higher than other games). Dota, WC3, BW all had random mechanics (BW had the high ground advantage, and WC3 and Dota has random damage values for attacks, and for some skills too like Critical Strike), but those games have way more consistent top players than SC2. What you have to look at is how randomness affect the overall state of the game. In Dota and WC3, even though there are a ton of random things, they don't affect the game too much. However in SC2, with Fog of War, getting a BO disadvantage, being caught of position once, a clutch fungal, forcefield, marauders, EMP can lose you the entire game. | ||
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DeCoup
Australia1933 Posts
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ThyLastPenguin
United Kingdom101 Posts
I think this would be AMAZING...if the map pool is adjusted slightly. Let's look at Antiga Shipyard. The way I imagine a game would go would be players trying to grab the central highground for effective map dominance. If you have the highground then you can expand at will with a smaller army. Straight away, you can see how people will get the hell out of their base and say "I want more than 3 bases, so I need to contest this highground". How will people counter losing the highground? They will have to send a small army around the map in an attempt to distract the player so that they can get a good engagement. Now what if they lose? Well, there is a large chance that both attacks will fail due to the highground advantage. If you lose your army right now in SC2 then your opponent will just march to your base and slap you around the face with an enormous army. If you take highground advantage into effect then you still have a chance to scramble together some defense to push off this attack. In my opinion, on maps like Antiga highground advantage will promote lots of aggression around the map. Let's look at a different map: Entombed Valley. If the highground advantage was put into place here then we would see a ludicrous amount of 3 base all ins (There is a large amount already, but I'll explain below what'll change about that) because of the ease of taking greedy 3 bases and then greedily teching up to whatever all in you want. Also, due to the closeness of the ramps, deathball play would still be prominent and multi pronged aggression (not including drops) would be easily shut down - rewarding the deathball player for sitting inbetween ramps, punishing the opponent for trying multi pronged attacks. Lategame - in most maps - would be much more enjoyable to watch. Deathball won't be as prominent as people will willingly spend a small chunk of their army to watch over this far away expansion, making expanding more aggressively look much more delicious than just grabbing the near 4 bases and chilling until 200/200. Essentially, I feel this will (if the maps are adjusted) not only reward aggressively taking a position, but it will give players an important option: Do they want to go for a deathball style play - easier to control, VERY difficult to break, however taking further away expansions will be more easily punished by the opponent. Or do they want to go for smaller chunks of army - more easily breakable, however much more capable of aggressively expanding and punishing players for an immobile army whilst still not being insta-killed by someone who just gets a deathball and pushes. Well, like I said, I'm only plat. Maybe I'm talking out of my arse. | ||
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aksfjh
United States4853 Posts
On February 03 2013 08:17 Telcontar wrote: I think most pros would welcome such a change, but I get the feeling that a lot of casual, or even regular players would balk at the suggestion; Partly due to lack of understanding and comprehension of how it can enrich and up the complexity of the game, and partly due to the fact that they would rather the game remained deathball-friendly and pretty much how they've been playing it so far. And given how Blizzard is so accommodating to the casuals and the regular joes of SC2, I doubt they will ever test it, let alone introduce it. This post is so full of wrong. It's not that casuals enjoy the deathball, or frown on the complexity of the game. The problem arises when one has to start looking up the rules of the game or take a long-winded tutorial to play even at the most basic level. When you win or lose because there's some random rule about firing up a cliff that nobody can explain to you through the UI, then that's just bad design. | ||
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Ragoo
Germany2773 Posts
On February 03 2013 15:40 DeCoup wrote: I don't really like the idea of a % damage reduction. I think giving highground targets +1 armor in the calculation would be better as it would not change unit relationships as much and would be easier to work out the damage calculations. +1 armor is totally uneven as it majorly effects low damage units like marines but doesn't effect high damage units like tanks. Range reduction as Falling pointed out gives a rather small advantage as you are approaching the highground units but then it's basically nothing again. Also either you would make a flat range reduction and again that could turn out to work very unevenly for different units and change unit relationships. Or you make a % based range redution but then your all your different units in your army have to move closer by individual amounts which would make microing completely different. Also personally I think dynamic range changes are quite awkward. Lastly people are saying damage reduction but again if you do flat damage reduction that would effect low damage units much more than high damage. So you do a % based damage reduction right? Well first of all you end up with decimal values and I don't even know how SC2 would handle those. Secondly I think they would also change unit relationships and make armor scale weirdly: + Show Spoiler [% damage reduction] + Some examples for a 50% damage reduction (values aren't correct): 1) A marine has 6 damage and attacks a Roach with 2 armor. It will do 4 damage per shot. Now the roach is on the highground and with a 50% damage reduction the marine would only do 3 damage minus the 2 armor, so its 1 damage. So the damage reduction in this case is not 50% as an end result but 75%. 2) The marine has 6 damage and the roach 1 armor. Without highground advantage that's 6-1=5 damage. With highground advantage that's 3-1=2 damage. The real damage reduction here is 60%. 3) The marine has 6 damage and the roach 0 armor. Without highground advantage that's 6-0=6 damage. With highground advantage that's 3-0=3 damage. The real damage reduction here is 50%. 4) A tank has 50 damage and the roach 2 armor. Without highground advantage that's 50-2=48 damage. With highground advantage that's 25-2=23 damage. The real damage reduction here is 52%. 5) A tank has 50 damage and the roach 1 armor. Without highground advantage that's 50-1=49 damage. With highground advantage that's 25-1=24 damage. The real damage reduction here is 51%. 6) A tank has 50 damage and the roach 0 armor. Without highground advantage that's 50-0=50 damage. With highground advantage that's 25-0=25 damage. The real damage reduction here is 50%. I think the best highground advantage and (the only) proven concept is the miss chance. Something that worked very well in the game that's closest to SC2 (SC:BW) and another currently competitive title in Dota 2. I think Falling's argument about trading a bit of skill for really minimal amount of luck, but then getting a huge new potential for skill by smarter positiong and tactics with a highground advantage is hitting the nail on the head. I will quote myself again about luck in esport titles: I don't see how it -really- hurts competitive play. BW had miss chance (and other random things) and was arguably the biggest esport ever. WC3 had tons of item luck and luck with bashes,crits or other things and was a succesful esport, as is Dota which similar levels of luck elements + high impact of highground advantage. I'm sure LoL has some random stuff as well. How often in these games did players/teams just get lucky and won due to random elements of the game? Or to ask a bit differently, how often do fans regard a player/team as just lucky and undeserved winners cos of these things? Does it really effect the chance for the better player/team to win the game in a -significant- way? Furthermore, isn't the luck of bo wins, cheeses and some unlucky coincidences oftentimes much worse than a simple miss chance for highground? I think big parts of this community for some reason are obsessed with the idea of having nothing random in the game when in reality it is not that bad at all. | ||
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fabiano
Brazil4644 Posts
On February 03 2013 22:09 aksfjh wrote: This post is so full of wrong. It's not that casuals enjoy the deathball, or frown on the complexity of the game. The problem arises when one has to start looking up the rules of the game or take a long-winded tutorial to play even at the most basic level. When you win or lose because there's some random rule about firing up a cliff that nobody can explain to you through the UI, then that's just bad design. Oh really? You just called BW and Dota 2 (randomness, not cliff shooting in dota's case) games with bad design huh, how funny is that. No one will have trouble understanding the concept of misschance because you are firing up a cliff. Okay, maybe 6 years old kids, but you get my point. People should just stop coming up with lame excuses. | ||
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NukeD
Croatia1612 Posts
On February 03 2013 22:09 aksfjh wrote: This post is so full of wrong. It's not that casuals enjoy the deathball, or frown on the complexity of the game. The problem arises when one has to start looking up the rules of the game or take a long-winded tutorial to play even at the most basic level. When you win or lose because there's some random rule about firing up a cliff that nobody can explain to you through the UI, then that's just bad design. Your post is ridiculously wrong if you think people will think its weird and strange to have an high ground advantage. So you just assume most people are idiots who cant put two and two together. Any player who sees an army on highground will assume its a bad idea to engage that army there instead of on low ground, and he will assume that because its the way things work in real life. In real life the army that is on higher ground has a huge advantage over the on that is down, be it range, cover or whatever. If you think that this rule of nature and basic pysics is a random rule, then the theory of relativity will blow you away. | ||
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Ragoo
Germany2773 Posts
On February 03 2013 22:57 fabiano wrote: Oh really? You just called BW and Dota 2 (randomness, not cliff shooting in dota's case) games with bad design huh, how funny is that. No one will have trouble understanding the concept of misschance because you are firing up a cliff. Okay, maybe 6 years old kids, but you get my point. People should just stop coming up with lame excuses. Dota 2 - like WC3 - has an uphill miss of 25%. And unlike WC3 where most maps never used different height levels it's actually really important in Dota 2. Very important for the mid lane and also makes it very hard to push the bases cos they are on highground. Also plays an important role for taking fights. | ||
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fabiano
Brazil4644 Posts
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