HotS Highground Mechanic - Page 12

ThyLastPenguin

United Kingdom101 Posts

February 03 2013 18:33 GMT

#221

It'd be insanely easy to help new players understand this - the loading screen tips would be best.
If not, then just adjust the first campaign level to have a few marines run towards you while you have a highground advantage.

Raynor - "Hold position boys, we can use our high ground advantage to take less hits from these guys".
Or something similar, you get the idea.

aksfjh

United States4853 Posts

February 03 2013 19:33 GMT

#222

On February 04 2013 02:19 Falling wrote:
What if it were among the tips and hints Blizzard gives? Add it in their tutorials? Integrate it into one of their missions, etc? Would you still have an issue with it if the implicit was made explicit? Put it into the patch notes. Newbs can read/watch can't they?

In reality, I don't think it's even necessary to know that shots are being missed. You attack into units on the high ground a couple times and get mauled and you think 'crap, I won't attack into entrenched positions without a bigger army.' Or "I need to go around the army on the high ground' which is precisely the sort of thinking high ground advantage is supposed to promote. Alternate routes, diversionary tactics. To add variety to the frontal assault. And it only makes sense that attacking uphill will be harder.

Except it's not initially intuitive. You could lose your army and think, "damn, marines are OP! Wtf?!" Again, I'm not against a bigger high ground advantage, but it should be done well. Basically, in a way that is both intuitive and as little as luck based as possible. The armor idea is good, but it fails the intuitive test.

monitor

United States2404 Posts

February 03 2013 19:45 GMT

#223

On February 04 2013 04:33 aksfjh wrote:

Show nested quote +

For lower level players... it honestly doesn't really matter that much. Most of the low level BW players had no idea that there was a 47% miss chance (I think its 47?) but it didn't really affect that much considering they weren't playing anywhere near the skill cap. SC2 has many more resources to make the miss chance or damage reduction known. Just a tooltip, a notice when you login, etc. would do it.

coolcor

520 Posts

February 03 2013 20:00 GMT

#224

On February 04 2013 04:33 aksfjh wrote:

Show nested quote +

A player might not read the tool tips about units doing bonus damage to certain unit types. Why is that system intuitive when a new player can run a bunch of units they do not know are armoured type into a bunch of marauders they do not know do bonus damage and be confused "damn, marauders are OP! WTF?!" If you say they should read the tooltips and memorize the damage and armour types of all units in the game before playing then there are plenty of places to put high-ground information they should find out. Including the campaign and that new hots training mode that they should be playing first.

Also if you go back to the GDC Dustin Browder video I linked earlier he showed a screen of when highground gave plus 2 armour and that information was shown right on the units on the field when it happened so the same can be done with any buff highground can give. Put in an option to turn that off for pros who get it and there is no problem with intuitiveness or screen clutter. He said the problem with it was that it prevented player skill and did not say that they thought highground advantage could not be made intuitive for new users.

Gfire

United States1699 Posts

February 03 2013 20:11 GMT

#225

I think difficulty to understand is a valid argument. Game design (like map design,) is a game of compromises, not doing whatever you're doing and ignorantly believing it's %100 the best in every way and has no downsides.

But I think it can be dealt with pretty easily in the interface. Even having a graphical representation for misses or whatever it is... And a lot of other things people have mentioned. I think it's doable.

ZeaL.

United States5955 Posts

February 03 2013 21:03 GMT

#226

How high ground miss chance can lead to more dynamic games:

1) Any base surrounded by high ground is vulnerable. Map makers can use this to make expansions and even the main susceptible to very cost effective sieges. Ex: If the third is on low ground surrounded by high ground, it may be difficult to take or hold. This incentivizes putting pressure as it can be done with relatively few units.

2) If bases are on the high ground, they can be easier to defend against aggression. This cuts both ways, players can choose to be very greedy and spend less on defense as their units are worth more on high ground, alternatively, if you drop a base you can keep the player from responding by positioning yourself at the ramp. See doom drops, recalls from BW.

3) Contains become stronger. If you take the initiative to move out and set up a contain on the high ground, it makes it so the opponent must break the contain or go around.

Anyways, the general idea is that high ground advantage goes to whoever has the high ground. The defender doesn't always hold it, the aggressor can often be the one who has it.

Defender's advantage can lead to dynamic play as well but that's a different topic.

Falling

Canada11349 Posts

February 03 2013 21:04 GMT

#227

@aksfjh
Who are these mythical newb players that know nothing about RTS's, yet must know absolutely everything about it or they will not enjoy it/quit and yet will do absolutely nothing to figure it out on their own?

I don't even know what a intuition test is, but your example sounds like a hasty generalization. I run into 10 marines on level ground and destroy them. I run into 10 marines that are up on a cliff and they destroy me. Hm, maybe high ground has some sort of advantage. Maybe I will adjust my plan with that in mind. Or maybe I will bother to look up exactly why that it is. Both are reasonable responses. Simple observation and adjustment will do the trick even if they don't research to discover the why. A whole bunch of the new RTS's have cover systems for goodness sake. How is this any different, or are those unintuitive as well?

I'm not exactly sure when I learned about miss-chance, but I do know I had already adjusted how I attacked against cliffs and through chokes. The results naturally led to me change my plans well before I knew the why. Cause and effect and simple logic. I had naturally determined that attacking up cliffs= hard. Doesn't get more intuitive than that. I'm not sure why we are assuming other people, when they are still newbs, are incapable of this.

But where does the intuitive argument get us really? You say it is unintuitive because it fails the test and it is not initially obvious. I say it is intuitive because it makes sense that attacking up would be harder. Now what?

gedatsu

1286 Posts

February 03 2013 21:11 GMT

#228

+1 range to higher ground units is better than -1 to lower ground. Because -1 hurts too much for short range units such as roaches.

pzea469

United States1520 Posts

February 03 2013 21:30 GMT

#229

Plus range or minus range aren't good enough. It wont help when an enemy storms into your ramp. It would do nothing other than give your ranged units a few extra attacks. 1 extra armor probably isn't enough either. Damage reduction could work. Though in all honesty the hit/miss chance is probably the best. Idk why people think it's this random thing that will decide games left and right. It's not even random because a player makes the conscious choice of taking that chance. Starcraft has always been very related to poker. But yeah, if that scares too many people, then damage reduction is the way to go. 30% at least, if not 40.

Patate

Canada441 Posts

February 03 2013 21:34 GMT

#230

On February 02 2013 09:27 PandaTank wrote:
This is idiotic in my opinion. The defenders advantage is already far too great in StarCraft 2.

I'm not sure which other RTS games you've played, but apart from WC3 (which had sim city), I don't know any other games that have so few defender's advantage

KillingVector

United States96 Posts

February 03 2013 21:36 GMT

#231

On February 03 2013 22:47 Ragoo wrote:

Show nested quote +

+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.

To handle fractions, you can easily internally multiply all health and damage modifiers by N which will give you access to effects of size 1/N.

Now, for your example of armor effects. I don't really see how the % chance is any different in the long run. For something like marines vs roaches the flat damage reduction is 0.5(Damage - Armor). For % chance the expected damage is 0.5(Damage - Armor).

@aksfjh

I consider myself a very casual player. I'm only plat on NA, and I'm not very motivated to try to climb any harder. When I started the game I was bronze. I never played multiplayer BW since I didn't have good access to internet growing up. I dabbled a little bit in WC3 multiplayer, but not that much. I didn't really know much about either game.

When I started SC2, I had an expectation that there was an advantage to high ground. I thought it was in the form of extra range or something. I wasn't really sure, but didn't really care. All I acted on was my belief that high ground gave my some kind of advantage. I was shocked to learn that it didn't really do anything beyond sight blocking.

Also, I believe the people who say this can be easily explained in a tooltip or a tutorial are right. I didn't know about Shift+clicking until I read it in a tool tip. Control groups aren't even explained anywhere in the game except in a tool tip (or maybe a tutorial/challenge; I can't remember). Even then, the tool tip does a poor job.

Basic BO's aren't really taught, and how many people here would claim that they play with BO's they came up with themselves. They aren't found in the game at all for obvious reasons. That still doesn't stop people from going out and finding that information.

If anything I believe seeing pro's make exceptional use of high ground while playing high level games would inspire people to try out those strategies. Casual players may not be try-hards, but we still can be inspired by exceptional play.

da_head

Canada3350 Posts

February 03 2013 22:03 GMT

#232

On February 02 2013 10:31 Zenbrez wrote:
I wouldn't want more features that encourage turtling, it's already pretty bad.

maps encourage turtling. we need better maps and high ground advantage to have variety of builds.

GaNgStaRR.ElV

Canada535 Posts

February 03 2013 22:09 GMT

#233

On February 04 2013 06:36 KillingVector wrote:

Show nested quote +

I had a very familiar story to you. Coming from BW and WC3 I played as if I had highground in beta. After a couple instances of having tank clusters on the edge of cliffs eaten alive by marines I did my research and was shocked as it doesn't make sense. I would love for hit% to be brought back because I fully believe it will help to break up the death ball atleast in higher level play. Yes it may be confusing at first but the tooltip recommendation is spot-on; plus I can't stop envisioning a scenario where you have maps with hills/mountains to be used strategically. I also think it would sort a lot of the problems with balance in early rushes without being a straight up nerf; a good commander will be able to keep the oppon
ent on low ground while his skilled adversary will crush him if he can just get up the cliff. Sounds like an epic micro battle to me.

Blackhawk13

United States442 Posts

February 03 2013 22:18 GMT

#234

I think Blizzard has already considered this option but choose to give defenders advantages through race mechanics instead. In HOTS, Blizzard is adding more options to help the defender. These are the race advantages I can think of:

Terran:
-Planetary fortress
-Repair
-Close to production
-Cheap bunkers (salvage)
-Sensor towers
hots:
-Free siege mode: can stop any early game rush in its tracks
-Widow mines: very useful defending against harassing tactics; can instantly kill a whole group of mutalisks or dropships if attackers are not careful, can nearly 1 hit a banshee, and are quite useful in straight up defense as well. Oh, they're also very cheap, fast to build, and can provide vision of the map.

Zerg:
-Creep: speed, health regeneration, vision
-Queens: transfuse, long attack range
-Movable defensive structures
-Close to production
-Fungal growth
hots:
-Viper: pulling enemy units up to be killed instantly, cloud that prevents ranged attacks
-Swarm hosts: haven't seen much of these yet, but they may turn out to be an awesome defensive unit

Protoss:
-Forcefield
-Instant warp in to reinforce undefended positions
-Massive aoe damage in chokes/ramps
hots:
-Mothership core: nexus photon cannon thing, movement slow field, recall, damage of its own, scouting information

Coffeeling

Finland250 Posts

February 04 2013 00:33 GMT

#235

The thing is, though, that high ground is not equivalent to defender's advantage. High ground is simply advantageous terrain. Bases can be put on high or low ground, for example. A high ground mechanic also helps us get terrain other than the wall and the choke, and separates "terrain advantage" from them. Chokes play equally to both sides' advantage, and by necessity favour Sentries, for example. Wide, open ridges on the other hand help, for example, Marines and siege weapons while keeping the terrain open and hostile to the stupidity that is forcefield spam. As just one example.

How about lowground chokes, then? Or open bases on a hill? All things that give mapmakers and players alike a gradient of diverse things to consider and help maps actually feel different. Plus that small insignificant side effect of making it possible to defend against a deathball with something less than a deathball, at which point you kind of have to answer and suddenly wtf things are not turtly and...*

*the last bit might need an economy scaling model that is not capped at three bases, but together they should work wonders to promote interesting gameplay and allow a wide variety of map styles other than three close by bases easily defendable by a parked deathball.

Also, Ragoo and Barrin are goddamn heroes of visual, grokkable illustration of these points and deserve to have their posts spotlighted again:

On February 02 2013 19:49 Ragoo wrote:
Please keep in mind that the maps we use atm are not build with highground advantage in mind. And obviously if you just go ahead and give a turtle map like Metropolis a strong highground advantage it just becomes more ridiculous.

Instead you should see a highground advantage as a big potential to make better and more varied map designs in the future.

To illustrate my point some pictures:
+ Show Spoiler +

------------------------------------------------------------------

These two are basically the same in SC2 as the highground just gives vision advantages.

2)

-------------------------------------------------------------------

The only thing in these two pictures that gives the attacking army a disadvantage is that it will have to go through a choke (either a flat one or the ramp). There is no additional advantage for the army standing on the highground!!

3) Lastly as a good example for more varied map design lets take ridges which were commonly used in BW like Heartbreak Ridge or Gladiator. What's so great about them is that they give advantage without a choke, so choke abusing units like Sentries with forcefields or splash units don't get stronger, yet any army standing on top will have an advantage.

In SC2 the army standing on top of the ridge has no advantage at all.

On February 04 2013 00:45 Barrin wrote:
In mapmaking we distinguish between "High Ground Advantage" and "Defender's Advantage".

Defender's Advantage generally only refers to
(1) rally distances
(2) chokes@bases, particularly main/natural

And none of that really has anything to do with helping aggression. High Ground in front of your natural on the other hand can be very offensive...

Reverse Temple

or, you know, surrounding your main (click for TLPD info).

monitor

United States2404 Posts

February 04 2013 02:19 GMT

#236

On February 04 2013 07:03 da_head wrote:

Show nested quote +

maps encourage turtling. we need better maps and high ground advantage to have variety of builds.

Just going to add, the lack of highground advantage is the REASON maps are forced to encourage turlting. Once there is a highground mechanic, it is much easier to design expansions and the middle of the map to balance aggression and defense. Without a highground mechanic, we're forced to put massively long rush distances and tiny chokes into bases. And, there's nothing we, as mapmakers, can do about the middle of the map to allow zone control.

Randomaccount#77123

United States5003 Posts

February 04 2013 02:37 GMT

#237

--- Nuked ---

Falling

Canada11349 Posts

February 04 2013 02:46 GMT

#238

And those storms were a lot stronger. You can sit behind a cluster of cannons and with a couple storms or perhaps a couple reavers instead and you can watch the zerg waves crash against your defences.

YyapSsap

New Zealand1511 Posts

February 04 2013 02:53 GMT

#239

On February 04 2013 11:46 Falling wrote:
And those storms were a lot stronger. You can sit behind a cluster of cannons and with a couple storms or perhaps a couple reavers instead and you can watch the zerg waves crash against your defences.

I really miss those days..