HotS Highground Mechanic - Page 3

On February 02 2013 12:04 KillingVector wrote:


Maybe I missed something, but I was under the impression that Blizzard has been ignoring these type of threads.

I'm going to play a little bit of devil's advocate, and argue a little against some of the suggestions. First, for a range reduction, my concern is that this affects high range units less than low range units in the sense that the % reduction of their range is less. I would prefer that a high ground advantage have a more flat % effect on ground range units. It keeps the purpose of the strategic terrain clear, instead of adding an element of "if I have the right composition to attack that hill, I can faceroll."

Second, the argument that random effects in Sc2 "average out" to something predictable gives me pause. The Law of Large Numbers does not apply here. A game of Sc is not a series of independent trials. Any kind of swing could potentially have great effect on the later stages of the game. This is especially true with my next concern with this argument, the baneling.

A couple banelings surviving can have a great effect on the outcome of the fight. A 5 health baneling does as much damage as a full health baneling. Of course, the 5 health baneling has less chance of survival to make its optimal detonation, but I feel like it needs testing to see how large the variance in gameplay could be.

I can't think of any argument against a flat damage reduction. Before people start arguing about decimals, remember that they could internally multiply all of the damage/health in the game by N allowing "fractional" values by 1/N. Of course, they would keep the health displays the same (just divide by N).

Edit: The other problem with % chance to miss ideas is Sc2's smart fire. I feel like their interaction would severely affect something like marines. They would intentionally spread their fire too thin against stuff on the high ground.

On February 02 2013 12:40 jinorazi wrote:
this seems to over complicate it...why not just do what bw did :/

On February 02 2013 12:50 Ooshmagoosh wrote:


The devs don't like the idea of random chance changing the outcome of a fight.

I really don't know why they didn't decide to change it to a % damage reduction, if RNG was that much of a problem. I really, REALLY don't know why they felt the need to mess with something that worked, and had been a significant part of player strategy and map design.

It's like they watched 5 games of TvP, then said "omg all they do is make tanks" then decided to gut or remove half the shit in the game.

On February 02 2013 12:23 sitromit wrote:
So more turtling? No thank you.

On February 02 2013 14:40 Emzeeshady wrote:

I disagree

On February 02 2013 12:38 coolcor wrote:


The miss chance can be programmed to be psudorandom like wc3 was to make sure it is much more unlikely to get a string of bad or good luck. They can even make each unit miss every other high ground shot predictably after randomly deciding if the first is hit or miss randomly if they wanted.

Smart fire does not work like that it happens because each marine or tank deals damage instantly as soon as it fires. The game does not fire two units at the same time so the target dies before any other marine or tank can do an overkill shot. Highground will not change this.

Dustin Browder mentioned high ground advantage in this video http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1014488/The-Game-Design-of-STARCRAFT during the skill part. He says they fought about stuff like that a lot, using the example of +2 amour on highground, but said "the problem with it is that it prevented a lot of player skill". He then went on to say they worked really hard to make terrain super meaningful without it using examples of melee against ranged units. Arguments about why high ground does not prevent player skill and that terrain is not very meaningful might have the best chance to convince him.

Finally, the map editor can add highground mechanics. If a tournament really wanted to they could use a map or two programmed to have highground advantage and balanced around that as a unique feature/gimmick of that map without blizzard doing anything right? BW had a few tournament maps with spells on them so just give high ground a very very subtle visual effect and say it has a spell like guardian shield on it except it gives whatever highground bonus the map maker wants. If it is successful maybe tournament maps can standardize on this feature and that would put a lot of community pressure on blizzard to eventually make ladder maps the same since they say they want to have tournament maps on it.