In Brood War, High-Ground had a big impact in gameplay. There were smarter plays, and more comebacks. This is true for Starcraft 2 as well; however, the problem is that the high-ground only affects the early to mid game in SC2.
Due to the fact that Zerg (Overlord, Overseer, Mutalisk), Terran (Medivacs, Scan, Vikings), Protoss (Collosus, Observer), all have easy access to high-ground vision after the mid game, the high ground does not play a big role in the game.
The result is that battles take less advantages of terrain, and battles become one sided and a math game.
This is the beta, and beta should be where we try new things, right?
Here are some suggestions to increase the highground advantage so that even in the late game, the highground matters: (Please note that I don't mean implement all of them, I mean choose one or two and test them out)
-1 Range when attacking Highground This would have a big impact on gameplay, such as in TvT, the defender would have the advantage in Tank Wars, making it less stalemate. In Other match-ups, it would always give the first shot to the defender, which gives defender the advantage. The attacker would now have the burden of micro, as he/she would have to play cleverly to overcome the advantage.
Damage Reduction This is the simpler solution, which would play out similarly as BW. The defender would always have an advantage, and smaller armies would be able to use terrain and control to overcome the army deficits, leading to more comebacks and amazing plays.
Attack Speed Reduction This would have similar impacts as Damage Reduction.
All in All, A Better Highground advantage would provide: - More comebacks - Smarter Players to prevail, Leads to Smarter Plays in general - Less Stalemate in defender's position in Tank Wars - Map features become very important, and fun - Macro builds, if the defender has enough control, would be viable.
Thank you. This is the Beta. Please Consider.
I think a highground mechanic would encourage positional play and micro. It'd also add diversity and fun to the maps.
Blizzard would be silly not to implement one of these ideas, or at least try. My personal favorite is a 40% damage reduction from lowground range units shooting up to highground (same damage reduction for 1 level or 2). SC2 is lacking map control features, and the best way to add in that dynamic is with a highground. As Semmo stated, it would encourage comebacks and positional play, reward smart engagements, and ultimately increase the skill ceiling. And, last but not least, maps could be made with many different features and concepts than the current SC2 design allows.
The map pool would have to change a bit; the only current ladder maps that would work really well with a highground mechanic (in my opinion) are Daybreak and Cloud Kingdom. But losing the other maps wouldn't be a tragedy by any means to SC2. I'm sure Blizzard could pick up some GSL, Proleague, or community maps to fill the gap in time for HotS' release.
I'd like to add to the discussion of "defenders advantage". Many people seem to think that highground advantage would make encourage turlting in SC2. But infact, it is quite the opposite.
A lack of a highground advantage is actually the reason maps have to promote turtling. Current maps need massive rush distances. They also need tiny chokes into expansions. The middle of the map cannot be designed to utilize map control or to be used aggressively. Highground advantage means mapmakers can toy with highground and lowground for aggressive and defensive uses.
For example, a map like Match Point from BW allows a player to advance aggressively into the opponents third expo (the mineral-only). Or, a player can control the corner highground and defend two+ expansions.
Maps in SC2 would definitely change. The change would be for the better. Naturals would no longer have to be highground. Strategically designed highground could be used to the attackers advantage. Valuable expansions could be placed on lowground. Maps could encourage harassment in new ways using cliffs. So no, adding a highground mechanic would not encourage turtling in SC2 once the maps adapt.
Personally i feel its way too easy to defend in sc2 and these mechanics would just make that worse.
Part of the reason it has been so deathbally is there is less incentive to attack. So while I personally feel its a good idea, its a good idea for a different game.
I am glad Blizzard is thinking about trying new things. When I first got WoL beta and even before that when we played at Blizzcon, the lack of high ground advantage really irked me. Like many things I moved on and I honestly never really thought about revisiting this mechanic... so props to Blizzard in that regard.
I wouldn't be worried about "Saving" Sc2 lol. It will pretty much dominate the RTS market for a while. There will always be a desire for competitive rts and as long as it has no competition it doesn't need saving. Now trying to compete with Mobas or another genre... well that is another story.
Let's all just focus on helping Blizzard making SC2 the best it can be!
I don't understand the suggestion that -1 when attacking high ground make it less of a stale mate? the stale mate is caused when the defender can defend against any attack and the attack refuses to attack because of it.....
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 don't believe there's much defenders advantage at all in SC2. There are only maps like Metropolis with 5 bases behind two tiny chokes, gigantic rush distances that don't get shorter, and no harass potential. The only defenders advantage is the time it takes to walk across the map...
You aren't taking into account map design. Yes, some maps would make defending the natural a little easier (but that isn't much of an issue). Highground advantage would make some aggression easier by controlling portions of the map and forcing your way into a players base. Also, some expansions are on lowground. Mapmakers are quite smart when it comes to map design; I'm sure increasing the defenders advantage with a highground mechanic will not be an issue.
damage reduction is idiotic and it changes the unit relationships
miss chance is better, and the randomness averages out over many attacks, the only time it will actually be a coinflip is when you are trying to allin up a ramp and then you deserve to have that be a coinflip anyways
it's stupid, most of the time when you attack up a ramp you will risk it because you will attack into a concave and you will have a ball on the ramp, that's already enough for a defensive advantage, do you want to remove all ins from the game? lol
On February 02 2013 09:48 Extenz wrote: it's stupid, most of the time when you attack up a ramp you will risk it because you will attack into a concave and you will have a ball on the ramp, that's already enough for a defensive advantage, do you want to remove all ins from the game? lol
if you can actually defend with fewer units then that means you are free to take more expansions and are encouraged to split up your army and make it less deathbally, and fight for map control instead of sitting in your natural until you max out
On February 02 2013 09:26 Archybaldie wrote: Personally i feel its way too easy to defend in sc2 and these mechanics would just make that worse.
Part of the reason it has been so deathbally is there is less incentive to attack. So while I personally feel its a good idea, its a good idea for a different game.
I completely disagree with this statement. There is not much defender's advantage in Starcraft 2. Going through small chokes into large armies is basically suicide, but with high ground vision that is prevalent in the late game, above-ramp armies can be engaged by below-ramp ranged units without necessitating travel through the narrow choke point, resulting in an essentially even engagement. Engagements before 200 supply necessarily give some sort of advantage to the defender because aggressive reinforcements to a push take longer to arrive than defensive reinforcements, with the exception of warpgate units. Static defense does give the defender an advantage. In the late game, however, reinforcements aren't as important, and static defense plays less of a role. A notable exception to this is tvt, because taking time to siege up tanks within the range of enemy tanks puts the attacker at an enormous advantage.
If defending was easier, players would no longer be forced to keep the majority of their army in one place and could harass and expand more aggressively because they would be able to defend larger armies with strategically placed smaller armies. I do not get the "Starcraft 2 has too many deathballs, defender's advantage would make this worse" argument. The reason deathballs are prevalent is that there is little incentive to split up one's army, because larger armies almost always defeat smaller armies if both are well-positioned.
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 would say the complete opposite tbh. Most of the times there is no defenders adventage at all except faster reinforcements and ofc you get mechanics like warpgates and creep that negate that.
I have always felt it to be weird that say if you are on the edge of a cliff with roaches and have an ovy there that you can shoot UP the cliff to kill an enemy. I think that anything that cannot shoot up should not be able to shoot up. Simply put roaches, marauders, Hellions, collusi etc should not be aloud to aim up if they cant aim up.
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 would say the complete opposite tbh. Most of the times there is no defenders adventage at all except faster reinforcements and ofc you get mechanics like warpgates and creep that negate that.
In the early / mid game, stuff like roaches, mothership core, forcefields, range 5 queens, creep, salvageable bunkers w/ easier-to-use SCVs for repair, free siege mode tech, widow mines, easy ling-tight walloffs with all buildings, 6 second spores, jetpack overlords, overlord nests everywhere on every map, stargate detection through oracles, it's kind of difficult to be successful with non-allin aggression.
But yeah, in the lategame, you win a fight and baaaaaaaaaaaaawwwwwwrrrrrgh all over the base.
I think TL should institute a policy where in threads regarding game design or game balance, posters should have to include their battlenet ranking before they can comment. This is not elitism, its just that if you're silver league and you say things like "sc2 defenders already have too much advantage because its hard to attack up a ramp", you clearly have very little understanding of the game. This would not be a problem if Blizzard ignored low level people but they don't. I understand the argument that Blizzard have to appease the noobs because they are the largest in numbers. But imagine trying to design the game of tennis or any other competitive sport around what the noobs think instead of what is happening at the highest level. Serve and volley would be banned, 3 point lines would be only 3 meters away from the basket and goals would be 20 meters wide. Would people still play these games let alone watch?
I think I agree that this would only encourage turtling and death ball play more, which is not what's needed. If the defenders advantage is greater then people simply won't attack. If they won't attack, the game becomes boring (and results in long games with a single 200/200 battle that decides it when one player eventually gets impatient)
On February 02 2013 09:24 NukeD wrote: While this change is a step in the right direction, it will hardly do anything to save SC2.
Didn't know it needed to be saved.
Guess you have not played PvP in the past 2 years, or ZvZ at that.
Anyway, I always thought the terrain advantages in BW were so great due to how they could be strategically used - especially with map positioning and Tanks. (Ridges behind bases that have ramps on the other side) this encourages small skirmishes, but can also be used to great affect like in Flash vs Bisu on Neo ChainReaction SPL finals; seemingly one person is in an unbeatable position but the quick thinking and risk taking of another player triumphs in this example. Really, it just makes the game more interesting and intense overall.
I don't like the idea of damage reduction or anything else really suggested, but I do think high ground should be reverted to something similar to BW since there really is not a reason for it to remain the way it is now.
I could definitely get behind a cliff high ground advantage, but ramps strike me as a bit problematic. How could you ever hope to attack up the ramp at the natural on entombed for example? It could certainly work, but would require some rebalancing of certain maps.
On February 02 2013 10:55 Tachion wrote: I could definitely get behind a cliff high ground advantage, but ramps strike me as a bit problematic. How could you ever hope to attack up the ramp at the natural on entombed for example? It could certainly work, but would require some rebalancing of certain maps.
Yup a rebalance would be necessary of popular maps, but Imagine cloud kingdom, holding that mid section would be such a tactical boost it would be untrue.
Lower leagues will turtle a lot more, but the high league play opportunites would be amazing. All I would say is with this to work, they NEED to remove watch towers off high ground, otherwise Seige tanks will be disgusting.
It's a save for TvX and I can't understand why you are all so blind to see it o.o
The more you increase defender's advantage, especially in TvT, the harder it becomes to break turtlers. Everyone will just stay on tanks until they can go air. At least with the current situation, there is a constant flux on control, where one person has it, and the other person attempts to gain it, and then we attempt to go for Sky Terran once the other person tries to huddle themselves up (when they give up attempting to try to swing the game into their favor and try to take minimal losses). In TvP, this is a wasted mechanic (forcefields are your defender's advantage and you don't need one after the early game). TvZ, not so sure, because Zerg has no units that can seige while on ground, so the only thing it affects is marines, but we're transitioning into a game where mech is heavily preferred to bio (HoTS), so there's no need to worry about that.
It's a good thing that defender's advantage is only early game and mid game, because that's when you need it for the game to progress beyond the 8 min mark. But after that, it's just a "don't touch me, don't touch me!" mechanic, and that's not why anyone plays strategy games (at least, I've never heard of anyone that plays strategy games just to sit in their base all game).
On February 02 2013 10:47 MCXD wrote: I think I agree that this would only encourage turtling and death ball play more, which is not what's needed. If the defenders advantage is greater then people simply won't attack. If they won't attack, the game becomes boring (and results in long games with a single 200/200 battle that decides it when one player eventually gets impatient)
Well, one of the reasons that SC2 is deathball-y is because you can't really defend using a significant smaller force cost effectively. If you split you army is half, you just get run over. High ground advantage might help with that.
However, maps and maybe units themselves would all probably need to be rebalanced. Because comps are ling bane mutas aren't affected much while thinks like marine tank are nerfed significantly when on the low ground.
Some people are being a bit narrow minded on how this could potentially lead to better game and map design.
For example, everyone saying people would just turtle are assuming that your 2nd or 3rd base are always a high ground base. Well think of maps where essentially your main is high ground, natural is "even ground" and then ur 3rd is actually low ground. In those cases you could actually have a situation where trying to turtle on your 3rd would be easier to break since your defense could be below while the offensive units are actually on higher ground.
I'm not saying the idea is good or bad, but everyone saying it just leads to more and more turtling and defender advantage isn't thinking about the way maps could really be set up. So it is something to consider although I think anything more than -1 range or a slight damage reduction(15-20%) would be to extreme.
One thing I really miss from SC and BW was the use of the terrain. Putting tanks on ledges, dropping hydras on high ground, and cannoning ledges were all a fun part of BW although sometimes abusive. But it was something you had to prepare for and led to some cool play and strategy.
On February 02 2013 11:10 furerkip wrote: The more you increase defender's advantage, especially in TvT, the harder it becomes to break turtlers. Everyone will just stay on tanks until they can go air. At least with the current situation, there is a constant flux on control, where one person has it, and the other person attempts to gain it, and then we attempt to go for Sky Terran once the other person tries to huddle themselves up (when they give up attempting to try to swing the game into their favor and try to take minimal losses). In TvP, this is a wasted mechanic (forcefields are your defender's advantage and you don't need one after the early game). TvZ, not so sure, because Zerg has no units that can seige while on ground, so the only thing it affects is marines, but we're transitioning into a game where mech is heavily preferred to bio (HoTS), so there's no need to worry about that.
It's a good thing that defender's advantage is only early game and mid game, because that's when you need it for the game to progress beyond the 8 min mark. But after that, it's just a "don't touch me, don't touch me!" mechanic, and that's not why anyone plays strategy games (at least, I've never heard of anyone that plays strategy games just to sit in their base all game).
Your post, to me at least, seems to be under the impression that all maps are tight enough together that you CAN sit there and say "Don't touch me"
However, this is becoming less and less true with just one season of Kespa maps. Not perfect obviously, but a step in the right direction with everything being more spread out. If you can't abuse the fact someone is sitting in one spot on maps like that then you have no right to complain about people "camping", especially in an RTS. I think a better high ground mechanic would only supplement these new maps.
On February 02 2013 10:47 MCXD wrote: I think I agree that this would only encourage turtling and death ball play more, which is not what's needed. If the defenders advantage is greater then people simply won't attack. If they won't attack, the game becomes boring (and results in long games with a single 200/200 battle that decides it when one player eventually gets impatient)
Well, one of the reasons that SC2 is deathball-y is because you can't really defend using a significant smaller force cost effectively. If you split you army is half, you just get run over. High ground advantage might help with that.
However, maps and maybe units themselves would all probably need to be rebalanced. Because comps are ling bane mutas aren't affected much while thinks like marine tank are nerfed significantly when on the low ground.
Agreed - if the high ground advantage was increased, maps should be changed so the bases are more spread out, BW style. This would force more map awareness and control and encourage the use of small harassment squads to attack far expansions while still preventing the expansions from being steamrolled by the full army due to the increased ability to defend.
This is something I've been mulling over myself. The problem, as we see is, some people think the high ground (defenders, usually)advantage(in sc2) is fine, too great, or not enough. It is something that is still up for debate, and I'm not 100% sure if there is a right answer. Ramps also need to be taken into consideration, as this is really where the defenders advantage plays out in sc2(terrible terrible splash damage).
I'm currently thinking high-ground should be slightly better, by giving a flat damage reduction (somewhere in the 5-10% range), but I could be convinced otherwise.
As an aside, it is worth mentioning that in BW, being on high ground gave you a 30% chance to be missed by an attack from the low ground (random). I don't think that is the correct way to go about this (even though it averages out to about a 30% damage reduction in the long-term).
On February 02 2013 11:15 FLuE wrote: Some people are being a bit narrow minded on how this could potentially lead to better game and map design.
For example, everyone saying people would just turtle are assuming that your 2nd or 3rd base are always a high ground base. Well think of maps where essentially your main is high ground, natural is "even ground" and then ur 3rd is actually low ground. In those cases you could actually have a situation where trying to turtle on your 3rd would be easier to break since your defense could be below while the offensive units are actually on higher ground.
I'm not saying the idea is good or bad, but everyone saying it just leads to more and more turtling and defender advantage isn't thinking about the way maps could really be set up. So it is something to consider although I think anything more than -1 range or a slight damage reduction(15-20%) would be to extreme.
One thing I really miss from SC and BW was the use of the terrain. Putting tanks on ledges, dropping hydras on high ground, and cannoning ledges were all a fun part of BW although sometimes abusive. But it was something you had to prepare for and led to some cool play and strategy.
It's also worth noting that without actual terrain with actual effects means the only tool left is really the choke, which means traversibility is tied to terrain advantages always, and can be used by attacker and defender alike. With actual terrain that grants actual effects, you can have wide, uneven plains and small hills that are important for cover and so on. You could design terrain so that it was pretty unilaterally in either the defender's or attacker's favor. It'd free up mapmakers to experiement landforms in a much more nuanced way than is possible in current SC2.
The defenders advantage isn't "too good" in SC2 at present, it's more the properties of zerg that allows them to be insanely greedy. There are only a couple of builds that can punish the map control and economical advantage zerg gets by default now and they are extremely risky all-ins.
On February 02 2013 11:46 dirtydurb82 wrote: Great for every match except Mirrors. And may encourage a lot more bio in TvT now that I think about it... Huh.
I think this would help mirrors the most... at least it would help pvp for sure.
On February 02 2013 09:28 Pufftrees wrote: I am glad Blizzard is thinking about trying new things. When I first got WoL beta and even before that when we played at Blizzcon, the lack of high ground advantage really irked me. Like many things I moved on and I honestly never really thought about revisiting this mechanic... so props to Blizzard in that regard.
I wouldn't be worried about "Saving" Sc2 lol. It will pretty much dominate the RTS market for a while. There will always be a desire for competitive rts and as long as it has no competition it doesn't need saving. Now trying to compete with Mobas or another genre... well that is another story.
Let's all just focus on helping Blizzard making SC2 the best it can be!
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 09:24 NukeD wrote: While this change is a step in the right direction, it will hardly do anything to save SC2.
Didn't know it needed to be saved.
Guess you have not played PvP in the past 2 years, or ZvZ at that.
I've played both. The only thing that sucked about PvP was 4-gate and now that's null and void, and ZvZ only sucks now that people go BL/Festor every time. Ling/bane wars aren't that bad and PvP openings can be pretty diverse.
On February 02 2013 09:24 NukeD wrote: While this change is a step in the right direction, it will hardly do anything to save SC2.
not sure if its a "step in the right direction" or not but sc2 isnt the skill fest BW was i just wonder when we give up on blizzard games. its not just sc2 guys all blizzard games are horrible these days
To all of the opposer of this ideal. Think about it logically. If you are aiming at something from a lower platform, it is only obvious that the exact energy utilized to launch the shot as equal level will travel less. This, not only will improve SC2's gameplay but also enhance our suspension of disbelief.
why would this make any difference? It would make early games even more defensive, with almost no chance of doing early pressure. This would just compound the problems with units like colossus and broodlord turtling (that simply bypass any highground/terrain advantage).
If those type of units were adjusted something like this would be viable. Until then, its kind of pointless.
On February 02 2013 09:28 Pufftrees wrote: I am glad Blizzard is thinking about trying new things. When I first got WoL beta and even before that when we played at Blizzcon, the lack of high ground advantage really irked me. Like many things I moved on and I honestly never really thought about revisiting this mechanic... so props to Blizzard in that regard.
I wouldn't be worried about "Saving" Sc2 lol. It will pretty much dominate the RTS market for a while. There will always be a desire for competitive rts and as long as it has no competition it doesn't need saving. Now trying to compete with Mobas or another genre... well that is another story.
Let's all just focus on helping Blizzard making SC2 the best it can be!
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.
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.
On February 02 2013 12:40 jinorazi wrote: this seems to over complicate it...why not just do what bw did :/
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 12:40 jinorazi wrote: this seems to over complicate it...why not just do what bw did :/
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.
I just linked to a video where Dustin Browder tells you why they don't have any high ground advantage. They discussed it a lot and decided it prevented a lot of player skill. But they worked for weeks on the sizes of the units to make sure terrain is meaningful when zealots try to attack up a ramp instead.
I think the fact that there are even people arguing about it means it's worth trying out. I mean like the guy said, it is a beta and it's really hard to give a definite yes or no without physically seeing how it affects the game. With that said, I can see both sides of the argument and wouldn't mind seeing it tested.
Lack of defenders advantage = you have to have a strong force sitting at your base to defend Defenders advantage = you can defend even if some of your forces are out on the map
In which case it's the lack of defender's advantage that causes turtling. (and removes player skill)
On February 02 2013 12:23 sitromit wrote: So more turtling? No thank you.
this is the new generation response to improving the game. he doesnt mean high ground must work like this he means that positional advantage is a skill that is lacking in the game. sc2 is so bad skill wise compared to brood war. its very often that build orders crush and the current best race cleans house. its common that a far better player loses to a far worse simply because the race vs race dynamic in sc2 is so horribly imbalanced and since control is so easy, it magnifys the problems.
in broodwar protoss was an easier race to macro but just because he can make an army doesnt mean he can use it as well as say another much better zerg/terran could and he gets crushed. in sc2 its VERY easy to max and VERY easy to control said max army so there needs to be some way for the better play to trounce the lesser one
Saying high ground doesn't play a big role in the late game is something I just don't get. The player who wins the engagement is almost always the one who had their units positioned properly, using high ground/chokes to get shots off before the opponent can even attack, while keeping valuable units alive (given that both players were playing about roughly equal). The flip side of this is that while high ground is crucial for positioning, just because one occupies the high ground during an engagement doesn't mean they are in an optimal position. I feel too many people think they should win engagements because of this, not taking into consideration that the other player may have had better micro or unit comp for the situation
I dont think this will cause turtling. It would actually motivate players to leave their base as you don't need your entire force to stop massive runbys which SC2 falls victims too. Plus getting control of the high grounds out on the map would be quite beneficial instead of balling it up.
On February 02 2013 12:23 sitromit wrote: So more turtling? No thank you.
this is the new generation response to improving the game. he doesnt mean high ground must work like this he means that positional advantage is a skill that is lacking in the game. sc2 is so bad skill wise compared to brood war. its very often that build orders crush and the current best race cleans house. its common that a far better player loses to a far worse simply because the race vs race dynamic in sc2 is so horribly imbalanced and since control is so easy, it magnifys the problems.
in broodwar protoss was an easier race to macro but just because he can make an army doesnt mean he can use it as well as say another much better zerg/terran could and he gets crushed. in sc2 its VERY easy to max and VERY easy to control said max army so there needs to be some way for the better play to trounce the lesser one
I disagree
Re-read(or read in the first place in case you didnt) my post because I'm quite sure half of the pro players out there would be willing to tell you how horrible PvP and ZvZ are. Sure some players are able to optimize, and play the mirrors much better than others, but that definitely doesn't mean that they're good MUs. To make this less of a veiled complaint on balance and more towards the skill aspect we started with, simply compare the mirrors of PvP and ZvZ from BW to SC2. Which can you say honestly takes more skill?
From there, apply the ways the MUs can be played due to the maps and core game mechanics such as high ground and I just don't see much of a contrasting argument. Sure the game is made its own way and meant to be played in its own way. That doesn't refute that it shouldn't be improved however.
On February 02 2013 12:23 sitromit wrote: So more turtling? No thank you.
this is the new generation response to improving the game. he doesnt mean high ground must work like this he means that positional advantage is a skill that is lacking in the game. sc2 is so bad skill wise compared to brood war. its very often that build orders crush and the current best race cleans house. its common that a far better player loses to a far worse simply because the race vs race dynamic in sc2 is so horribly imbalanced and since control is so easy, it magnifys the problems.
in broodwar protoss was an easier race to macro but just because he can make an army doesnt mean he can use it as well as say another much better zerg/terran could and he gets crushed. in sc2 its VERY easy to max and VERY easy to control said max army so there needs to be some way for the better play to trounce the lesser one
I disagree
i think all the skills are there, but the game doesnt allow it to be displayed in a more brighter way, as in player consistency in short and long term.
On February 02 2013 09:28 Pufftrees wrote: I am glad Blizzard is thinking about trying new things. When I first got WoL beta and even before that when we played at Blizzcon, the lack of high ground advantage really irked me. Like many things I moved on and I honestly never really thought about revisiting this mechanic... so props to Blizzard in that regard.
I wouldn't be worried about "Saving" Sc2 lol. It will pretty much dominate the RTS market for a while. There will always be a desire for competitive rts and as long as it has no competition it doesn't need saving. Now trying to compete with Mobas or another genre... well that is another story.
Let's all just focus on helping Blizzard making SC2 the best it can be!
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.
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.
For some reason I assumed the game calculated which units the marines target and then assign damage, but what you said makes a lot more sense. Good to know that smart fire won't be an issue.
I wasn't aware the map editor can add high ground mechanics. I heard that someone made a mod to add it, but I wasn't aware of it actually being in the editor itself.
I don't understand how people are saying it causes turtling. I mean what we have now is turtling....and it's just as strong.
Highground advantage in maps in the current map pool would be huge.
Cloud Kingdom=Take the middle of the map with tanks, seige hosts Collosi and you have a good hold. That would then encourage people to run AROUND the middle instead of just pushing through the middle the WHOLE game.
Antiga= Holding the Mid ground again will mean you can control the map alot more. If we minus the watch tower out of the map, It would allow for GREAT run arounds/drops etc. Yes, the bases are up on the high ground too, but there are answers around it. Air units will be stonger on maps with high bases, as they will get up close and personal with the seige units, and then if your anti air units are in the base defending that, you run your bulk army straight at the mid to take it back. Every race has units that will be able to push that (Speed Zealots, Lings, Stim Marines). You just have to push up close to negate the high ground advantage.
Akilon= You have those sides that will Give high ground advantage, but also split the army in half if you want to control both. The map is big enough that you can run behind one seige position, and it's downhill, meaning breaking those seige lines that cover the middle of the map will give YOU the defenders advantage.
Daybreak and the others= Current forms would give STRONG defenders advantage to the base, and would cause turtling as their is no high grounds in the middle of the map. Giving maps more varied terrain, more up hills and down hills, would cause HUGE differences in the way games are played out.
I'm up for them testing these in Beta, and then if HOTS is released more testing on a PTR or a few of those call to action maps would be AWESOME!
Also, wasn't lack of Terrain advantage part of the reasons why SupeRouman quit mapmaking?
On February 02 2013 12:23 sitromit wrote: So more turtling? No thank you.
this is the new generation response to improving the game. he doesnt mean high ground must work like this he means that positional advantage is a skill that is lacking in the game. sc2 is so bad skill wise compared to brood war. its very often that build orders crush and the current best race cleans house. its common that a far better player loses to a far worse simply because the race vs race dynamic in sc2 is so horribly imbalanced and since control is so easy, it magnifys the problems.
in broodwar protoss was an easier race to macro but just because he can make an army doesnt mean he can use it as well as say another much better zerg/terran could and he gets crushed. in sc2 its VERY easy to max and VERY easy to control said max army so there needs to be some way for the better play to trounce the lesser one
I disagree
what do you disagree with lol. its literally impossible to disagree since i didnt post my pov, i posted a fact. sc2 is a 10x easier game as a whole and often times a lesser player wins when he may have deserved to lose or isnt capable of earning a win through mastery of the game as a whole
forums usually frustrate me i wish there was a top 8 masters finish requirement to post or something similar
sc2 lacks less in terrain mechanic defenders adv as it does in unit defenders advantage. the idea of defenders advantage isnt a stoppage of attack or favorable advantage towards an attack, its more or less a slowing down of an attack or risk of severe loss. defenders advantage doesnt mean 10 marines beat 20 or 15 or even 12, it means they have to wait for 15 or 20 which stalls and gives you more time or else he cant cost effectively continue the push. furthermore people keep talking about how we have turtle fests atm. we have turtle fests atm because armys are SO fast in sc2 that taking bases past 3 is often times impossible. ever been behind PvZ? good because u CANNOT recover from being behind in PvZ as the toss and often times zerg. in fact most matchups once you are behind after ONE fight, lead you to death. ZvZ is a bad matchup because of speedlings though people often dont understand that and PvP is bad because of warp ins. whats the common factor? high speed almost instantaneous attacks from speedlings and warping in across the map. RALLY times are defenders adv boys and girls and sc2 has fast units and easy macro mechanics that negate rally points and thus defenders advantage.
dustin browder has said he wont make the AI worse so that the game is like broodwar and so you then all go on to argue the following.....
dustin browder says we cant fix problem A and B
ok guys lets talk about problem C then this is the reason the game isnt good
no actually its because of problem A and B
well we cant fix problem A and B so if problem C isnt the solution what does that mean?
it means the game is beyond repair just like wow, diablo, wc3 and every other pvp game blizzard makes and will make
the game will have a semblance of balance at periods of time but the core issues will NEVER be fixed
I am thinking pure selfish here, but maps would be designed so much more amazing with one of these options. It would need some unit tweeking aswell, as zerg who has lings just won't give a poop about highground or not.
On February 02 2013 12:23 sitromit wrote: So more turtling? No thank you.
this is the new generation response to improving the game. he doesnt mean high ground must work like this he means that positional advantage is a skill that is lacking in the game. sc2 is so bad skill wise compared to brood war. its very often that build orders crush and the current best race cleans house. its common that a far better player loses to a far worse simply because the race vs race dynamic in sc2 is so horribly imbalanced and since control is so easy, it magnifys the problems.
in broodwar protoss was an easier race to macro but just because he can make an army doesnt mean he can use it as well as say another much better zerg/terran could and he gets crushed. in sc2 its VERY easy to max and VERY easy to control said max army so there needs to be some way for the better play to trounce the lesser one
I disagree
what do you disagree with lol. its literally impossible to disagree since i didnt post my pov, i posted a fact. sc2 is a 10x easier game as a whole and often times a lesser player wins when he may have deserved to lose or isnt capable of earning a win through mastery of the game as a whole
forums usually frustrate me i wish there was a top 8 masters finish requirement to post or something similar
And then you start pulling numbers out of your ass ... thumbs down you started reasonable.
the only reason turtle play is so powerful is how difficult it is to stop a max army from just rolling out and crashing into your front door. the high ground advantage isn't to help you defend your natural ramp, it is to make it possible for someone to realistically engage a deathball army before it's too late.
i support greater high ground advantage so that it's possible to play super greedily without being stuck up your natural ramp all game.
you cant fix problem C without fixing A and B nothing said here can ever change this. its a building and the foundation cannot be added upon untill its first made stable
I think people need to realize that if changes with this went through, maps would be very different. You probably wouldn't still have a main on upper levels w/ nat & third on medium level and the rest of the map on the lower level.
Instead, maybe your main is on middle ground, with higher ground areas and pods positioned around the map to help defend expansions or positional army movement.
Maps currently basically have to have all of the high ground at your main and natural because it's only effective early and mid game. With these suggested changes they would be easier to defend by default, allowing mapmakers more room to explore different main-nat-third set-ups that are more open and varied in height levels.
On February 02 2013 12:23 sitromit wrote: So more turtling? No thank you.
this is the new generation response to improving the game. he doesnt mean high ground must work like this he means that positional advantage is a skill that is lacking in the game. sc2 is so bad skill wise compared to brood war. its very often that build orders crush and the current best race cleans house. its common that a far better player loses to a far worse simply because the race vs race dynamic in sc2 is so horribly imbalanced and since control is so easy, it magnifys the problems.
in broodwar protoss was an easier race to macro but just because he can make an army doesnt mean he can use it as well as say another much better zerg/terran could and he gets crushed. in sc2 its VERY easy to max and VERY easy to control said max army so there needs to be some way for the better play to trounce the lesser one
I disagree
what do you disagree with lol. its literally impossible to disagree since i didnt post my pov, i posted a fact. sc2 is a 10x easier game as a whole and often times a lesser player wins when he may have deserved to lose or isnt capable of earning a win through mastery of the game as a whole
forums usually frustrate me i wish there was a top 8 masters finish requirement to post or something similar
And then you start pulling numbers out of your ass ... thumbs down you started reasonable.
10x ... really ?
Please don't brazenly assault someone's argument if you don't even understand it - you're shooting dawn DA STRAWMEN!!! Posting as much as you do one would assume you understand the simple use of a hyperbole, no?
The point he was trying to make was that the game is objectively easier because of X reasons which you have not, and he believes factually cannot be, refuted. So try again :D!
On February 02 2013 12:23 sitromit wrote: So more turtling? No thank you.
this is the new generation response to improving the game. he doesnt mean high ground must work like this he means that positional advantage is a skill that is lacking in the game. sc2 is so bad skill wise compared to brood war. its very often that build orders crush and the current best race cleans house. its common that a far better player loses to a far worse simply because the race vs race dynamic in sc2 is so horribly imbalanced and since control is so easy, it magnifys the problems.
in broodwar protoss was an easier race to macro but just because he can make an army doesnt mean he can use it as well as say another much better zerg/terran could and he gets crushed. in sc2 its VERY easy to max and VERY easy to control said max army so there needs to be some way for the better play to trounce the lesser one
I disagree
what do you disagree with lol. its literally impossible to disagree since i didnt post my pov, i posted a fact. sc2 is a 10x easier game as a whole and often times a lesser player wins when he may have deserved to lose or isnt capable of earning a win through mastery of the game as a whole
forums usually frustrate me i wish there was a top 8 masters finish requirement to post or something similar
And then you start pulling numbers out of your ass ... thumbs down you started reasonable.
10x ... really ?
Please don't brazenly assault someone's argument if you don't even understand it - you're shooting dawn DA STRAWMEN!!! Posting as much as you do one would assume you understand the simple use of a hyperbole, no?
The point he was trying to make was that the game is objectively easier because of X reasons which you have not, and he believes factually cannot be, refuted. So try again :D!
well well. its debates online that dont matter but i still pose this question.... am i wrong? is sc2 not easier? are making units and the speed of those units hurting the game? what was the problem with sc2 at launch. map size. map size is relative to unit speed right? its still a problem except now that maps are large 3rd bases are hard to take for slower armys and 4ths are sometimes out of the question
prove me wrong
does collosi and forcefield add defenders adv? yes only that VERY demanding tech path gives this but it can easily and swiftly attack as well. hardly a "defensive" unit with a "specific advantage"
does the new swarm host give good defense? no lol. in 75 percent of the games it will mean nothing. its lack of speed and stagnated attacks do not mesh with SC2 speed. swarm host has a speed of play of which would be suitable in BW not sc2
furthermore can you not see bliz secretly admits these are the core problems? why else would they add the "spider mine" the "lurker" "defiler" "firebat"
the "air reaver" even exists which tbh is like the reaver AND the corsair wrapped in one. bliz knows the problems even if they dont understand what to do
On February 02 2013 12:23 sitromit wrote: So more turtling? No thank you.
this is the new generation response to improving the game. he doesnt mean high ground must work like this he means that positional advantage is a skill that is lacking in the game. sc2 is so bad skill wise compared to brood war. its very often that build orders crush and the current best race cleans house. its common that a far better player loses to a far worse simply because the race vs race dynamic in sc2 is so horribly imbalanced and since control is so easy, it magnifys the problems.
in broodwar protoss was an easier race to macro but just because he can make an army doesnt mean he can use it as well as say another much better zerg/terran could and he gets crushed. in sc2 its VERY easy to max and VERY easy to control said max army so there needs to be some way for the better play to trounce the lesser one
I disagree
forums usually frustrate me i wish there was a top 8 masters finish requirement to post or something similar
If this is all you need to consider my post credible then consider it credible.
On February 02 2013 12:23 sitromit wrote: So more turtling? No thank you.
this is the new generation response to improving the game. he doesnt mean high ground must work like this he means that positional advantage is a skill that is lacking in the game. sc2 is so bad skill wise compared to brood war. its very often that build orders crush and the current best race cleans house. its common that a far better player loses to a far worse simply because the race vs race dynamic in sc2 is so horribly imbalanced and since control is so easy, it magnifys the problems.
in broodwar protoss was an easier race to macro but just because he can make an army doesnt mean he can use it as well as say another much better zerg/terran could and he gets crushed. in sc2 its VERY easy to max and VERY easy to control said max army so there needs to be some way for the better play to trounce the lesser one
I disagree
what do you disagree with lol. its literally impossible to disagree since i didnt post my pov, i posted a fact. sc2 is a 10x easier game as a whole and often times a lesser player wins when he may have deserved to lose or isnt capable of earning a win through mastery of the game as a whole
forums usually frustrate me i wish there was a top 8 masters finish requirement to post or something similar
And then you start pulling numbers out of your ass ... thumbs down you started reasonable.
10x ... really ?
Please don't brazenly assault someone's argument if you don't even understand it - you're shooting dawn DA STRAWMEN!!! Posting as much as you do one would assume you understand the simple use of a hyperbole, no?
The point he was trying to make was that the game is objectively easier because of X reasons which you have not, and he believes factually cannot be, refuted. So try again :D!
Hyperbole and facts simply don't work together.
And let me put you one X reason here then, what happens with all those Broodwar players that play an easy game now ? They would be eating there nose and play with a mouse only, how's that hyperbole for you.
I think this is one of those things that you can quite make accurate predictions on what effects it will have on the game. Best to make a custom map and get some high level players to test this thoroughly. So yeah, it wont hurt if blizzard tried this out in beta or made a custom map and call to action about this.
On February 02 2013 12:23 sitromit wrote: So more turtling? No thank you.
this is the new generation response to improving the game. he doesnt mean high ground must work like this he means that positional advantage is a skill that is lacking in the game. sc2 is so bad skill wise compared to brood war. its very often that build orders crush and the current best race cleans house. its common that a far better player loses to a far worse simply because the race vs race dynamic in sc2 is so horribly imbalanced and since control is so easy, it magnifys the problems.
in broodwar protoss was an easier race to macro but just because he can make an army doesnt mean he can use it as well as say another much better zerg/terran could and he gets crushed. in sc2 its VERY easy to max and VERY easy to control said max army so there needs to be some way for the better play to trounce the lesser one
I disagree
forums usually frustrate me i wish there was a top 8 masters finish requirement to post or something similar
If this is all you need to consider my post credible then consider it credible.
a player tag is required sir
You can look me up. I have been in masters for the last two seasons. You act like thats hard? Most of my knowledge of the game comes from watching anyway.
so then its as i thought. two fold
1- your masters but only past 2 seasons thus there is no way you were ever a TOP masters player (massive dif i assure you)
2- your knowledge comes from watching others do. when one does not or cannot do something, he misses crucial data from which to arrive at an educated opinion. you admitting this and your continual posts drown out good ideas tho most posts here will not be good ideas
then again i think most people are not qualified to vote/run for office (way off topic) i digress..
just toss me that player ID so i can see 10 diamond finishes and then u patch zerg 2 masters 2 seasons before the end. really not qualified to talk balance
the above poster is right. high grounds just the D list solution people keep throwing around since the primary problems of sc2 can never be fixed unless the game is changed
edit - lol yep i was right 2 seasons of patch zerg plat in the rest but by all means what does the patch zerg think is the problem?
On February 02 2013 12:23 sitromit wrote: So more turtling? No thank you.
this is the new generation response to improving the game. he doesnt mean high ground must work like this he means that positional advantage is a skill that is lacking in the game. sc2 is so bad skill wise compared to brood war. its very often that build orders crush and the current best race cleans house. its common that a far better player loses to a far worse simply because the race vs race dynamic in sc2 is so horribly imbalanced and since control is so easy, it magnifys the problems.
in broodwar protoss was an easier race to macro but just because he can make an army doesnt mean he can use it as well as say another much better zerg/terran could and he gets crushed. in sc2 its VERY easy to max and VERY easy to control said max army so there needs to be some way for the better play to trounce the lesser one
I disagree
forums usually frustrate me i wish there was a top 8 masters finish requirement to post or something similar
If this is all you need to consider my post credible then consider it credible.
a player tag is required sir
You can look me up. I have been in masters for the last two seasons. You act like thats hard? Most of my knowledge of the game comes from watching anyway.
so then its as i thought. two fold
1- your masters but only past 2 seasons thus there is no way you were ever a TOP masters player (massive dif i assure you)
2- your knowledge comes from watching others do. when one does not or cannot do something, he misses crucial data from which to arrive at an educated opinion. you admitting this and your continual posts drown out good ideas tho most posts here will not be good ideas
then again i think most people are not qualified to vote/run for office (way off topic) i digress..
just toss me that player ID so i can see 10 diamond finishes and then u patch zerg 2 masters 2 seasons before the end. really not qualified to talk balance
the above poster is right. high grounds just the D list solution people keep throwing around since the primary problems of sc2 can never be fixed unless the game is changed
stop trolling. to be "qualified to talk" is not something you can decide, even if you were top 8 grandmaster, having a discussion as a group between different level players does two things - enlightens the uninformed (if they choose to learn), and shows possible insight that an "expert" might not have because of their rigid thinking.
I have no doubt this entire thread is never going to influence blizzard balancing anyway, but its an interesting idea. What leads to more interesting plays are games where the defender does have a massive advantage, that already feels like the case with zerg and terran at least (creep for zerg, chokes/buildings/tanks/range etc. for terran). I don't really understand how protoss fits in with it tho, since the warp in mechanic can be done anywhere with well placed pylon/warp prisms, and force field is a mobile defender advantage.
I guess what I'm trying to say is, in the transition from WoL to HotS I would like it if protoss defender mechanic was improved, and hey look at that, they added the ability to make your nexus shoot. Seems okay to me, but not particularly interesting. Widow mines and swarm hosts also add to this defenders advantage theme.
Adding more high ground advantage to this would be in tune with what Blizzard is trying to do, but I don't think its necessary. I'd rather they fine tune the units they have decided to implement, and if they don't fit, replace them with ones that do.
On February 02 2013 09:24 NukeD wrote: While this change is a step in the right direction, it will hardly do anything to save SC2.
not sure if its a "step in the right direction" or not but sc2 isnt the skill fest BW was i just wonder when we give up on blizzard games. its not just sc2 guys all blizzard games are horrible these days
While I dont know when or if people will give up on every Blizzard game, Im pretty sure they will give up on SC2 in the near future. Even if HotS turns out better than WoL.
swarm hosts are REALLY bad. swarm hosts are good vs mech and require you to go roach hydra to defend them. if you fought marine tank with swarm host ling for example the terran will dart in, in between the locust spawns and your lings will lose the trade. now, the thing that swarm hosts DO have that are GREAT mechanic wise is the fact that they keep spawning locust no matter what. you may ask, why is that good? the reason is because now you cant mindlessly leave them burrowed. you may want to defend with them ABOVE ground first and burrow when you see attacks OR unburrow and relocate while charging up new locust.
great mechanic on a bad unit for the job.
i admit i got carried away with that kid but have you ever met someone who always "thinks he knows everything" but hes usually wrong or a complete idiot? when i see a guy whos plat and under for 7 seasons then randomly (um massive zerg buffs) gets low masters and starts posting his view it makes me cringe a bit.
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.
You're clearly not playing the same game as the rest of us.
Only at a GM level for the last ~2 years with thousands of games played. So clearly not at all. I bet your credentials are far more impressive for being such a smart-ass constructive contributor.
Damn, the way it was initially worded in the title I thought Blizzard were actually going to add a decent highground mechanic.
:/
the terran will dart in, in between the locust spawns
If you're letting people run in when there's no locusts spawning you're not burrowing properly. You can burrow in such a way that there's always locusts. Nobody does it because it's easier to select all and press the burrow key.
I never liked the high ground advantage in SC2. It's an all or nothing thing, you either don't have vision and there is nothing you can do, or you have vision and high ground doesn't matter at all. Any change would be great IMO.
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.
You're clearly not playing the same game as the rest of us.
Only at a GM level for the last ~2 years with thousands of games played. So clearly not at all. I bet your credentials are far more impressive for being such a smart-ass constructive contributor.
Can you give us comments on what exactly makes you think the defender has a considerable advantage? Your posts have no more constructiveness than those you accuse of being useless, but with said games/experience under your belt, you have the capacity to contribute to discussion.
From what I know, I think a high-ground advantage would be interesting at least to test. Would definitely be a big change of which the balancers would probably be leery, however.
if we want more active fights then we need more active maps, not high ground gimmicks.
See the latest whirlwind map or whatever with expansions at every edge of the map. Sure it may not be balance, but expect to see alot of actions across all races mid game on that map
On February 02 2013 17:32 Qikz wrote: Damn, the way it was initially worded in the title I thought Blizzard were actually going to add a decent highground mechanic.
the terran will dart in, in between the locust spawns
If you're letting people run in when there's no locusts spawning you're not burrowing properly. You can burrow in such a way that there's always locusts. Nobody does it because it's easier to select all and press the burrow key.
assuming we have enough swarm hosts to make a dent. too few locust spawns and it doesnt kill anything, to many and they dart in
Deserves to be tested imo. It'll give something extra to think about, which is a good thing. It could inspire map makers to make more interesting maps (not just for defence). The units giving the high ground vision should keep their default range of course.
On February 02 2013 18:06 iky43210 wrote: if we want more active fights then we need more active maps, not high ground gimmicks.
See the latest whirlwind map or whatever with expansions at every edge of the map. Sure it may not be balance, but expect to see alot of actions across all races mid game on that map
On February 02 2013 11:15 FLuE wrote: Some people are being a bit narrow minded on how this could potentially lead to better game and map design.
For example, everyone saying people would just turtle are assuming that your 2nd or 3rd base are always a high ground base. Well think of maps where essentially your main is high ground, natural is "even ground" and then ur 3rd is actually low ground. In those cases you could actually have a situation where trying to turtle on your 3rd would be easier to break since your defense could be below while the offensive units are actually on higher ground.
I'm not saying the idea is good or bad, but everyone saying it just leads to more and more turtling and defender advantage isn't thinking about the way maps could really be set up. So it is something to consider although I think anything more than -1 range or a slight damage reduction(15-20%) would be to extreme.
One thing I really miss from SC and BW was the use of the terrain. Putting tanks on ledges, dropping hydras on high ground, and cannoning ledges were all a fun part of BW although sometimes abusive. But it was something you had to prepare for and led to some cool play and strategy.
It's also worth noting that without actual terrain with actual effects means the only tool left is really the choke, which means traversibility is tied to terrain advantages always, and can be used by attacker and defender alike. With actual terrain that grants actual effects, you can have wide, uneven plains and small hills that are important for cover and so on. You could design terrain so that it was pretty unilaterally in either the defender's or attacker's favor. It'd free up mapmakers to experiement landforms in a much more nuanced way than is possible in current SC2.
I think the decoupling of chokes and advantage is precisely what is needed for your 'more active maps'
I dont want, sc2 is already super defense game, like all other like cnc, stronghold, aoe etc. it would make more boring to play, maybe not for the viewers. this is why i love wc3, you have to play pure offensiv and micro.
I believe what we need are later game static defenses that are much stronger but may need to cost supply. Maps also need less cliff areas, but instead areas of significance should have a combination of cliffs and impassable terrain that would have a choke or many funnels. There must also be an area that should allow for easier head on attacks that follow a much longer path. The same defensive area would also hinder the speed of conducting straight on counter attacks that were not premeditated in the case of someone pushing a max army around the longer path.
The -1 range seems like a really good idea on paper because it would at least promote people to harass. Would love to see it tested. Though as smart as Blizzards team of testers are, they would probably forget the huge positive impact of using different maps than the ones being used would have on this mechanic, and call this change bad.
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.
You're clearly not playing the same game as the rest of us.
Only at a GM level for the last ~2 years with thousands of games played. So clearly not at all. I bet your credentials are far more impressive for being such a smart-ass constructive contributor.
And still stating that SC2 has too much defender's advantage is dubious, especially when you play Protoss at GM level; or didn't you notice that Warpgate negates the elementary defender's advantage that is distance for the attacker's reinforcements? 90% of the time Protoss auto-wins Terran in lategame after winning a fight just because of the production asymmetry (notice how the reverse is not true). Didn't you notice how Forcefield allows you to negate the defender's positional advantage, resulting in ludicrous situations in which Protoss forces his way through 5 Bunkers like it's no problem (notice how the reverse doesn't exist)? Actually you're right, there may be too much defender's advantage in SC2, or rather too much asymmetry in the amount of defender's advantages races have in the different match-ups.
I don't get it. We have a suggestion that would allow for a deathball to be fended off by a smaller army that's utilizing the terrain advantages of his base, thus allowing for more multi tasking, and more entertaining plays in general. And people try to argue that this suggestion is somehow bad?!
Am I the only one tired of turtling 20 minutes and then have a huge deathball v deathball fight in like 50+% of games?
if would make the game a turtle camping boring shit ... sry i am 120% against anything of it !
On February 02 2013 19:44 MooseMasher wrote: I don't get it. We have a suggestion that would allow for a deathball to be fended off by a smaller army that's utilizing the terrain advantages of his base, thus allowing for more multi tasking, and more entertaining plays in general. And people try to argue that this suggestion is somehow bad?!
Am I the only one tired of turtling 20 minutes and then have a huge deathball v deathball fight in like 50+% of games?
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.
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 02 2013 09:27 PandaTank wrote: This is idiotic in my opinion. The defenders advantage is already far too great in StarCraft 2.
You're clearly not playing the same game as the rest of us.
Only at a GM level for the last ~2 years with thousands of games played. So clearly not at all. I bet your credentials are far more impressive for being such a smart-ass constructive contributor.
And still stating that SC2 has too much defender's advantage is dubious, especially when you play Protoss at GM level; or didn't you notice that Warpgate negates the elementary defender's advantage that is distance for the attacker's reinforcements? 90% of the time Protoss auto-wins Terran in lategame after winning a fight just because of the production asymmetry (notice how the reverse is not true). Didn't you notice how Forcefield allows you to negate the defender's positional advantage, resulting in ludicrous situations in which Protoss forces his way through 5 Bunkers like it's no problem (notice how the reverse doesn't exist)? Actually you're right, there may be too much defender's advantage in SC2, or rather too much asymmetry in the amount of defender's advantages races have in the different match-ups.
This is a difference in background IMO. People that played or at least watched and liked BW will want more defensive advantage simply because they are able to understand and then appreciate good defensive play. People coming from other games, games that were MUCH more limited in terms of strategy (like Counter Strike and DOTA as is that case with Panda) just want constant aggression.
I've noticed that people coming from similar backgrounds are also the ones that view mech as boring.
In war3 there was a small chance units would miss when the targets were on a highground, so might be worth a try, but it would not make sense for air units and colossi.
Well it might be a good idea but maps would have to be way different. Protoss/terran would have the sickest defender's advantage on current maps because of relatively small ramps. Thing is, those are needed because otherwise protoss just dies. So, we'd have to go back to giving protoss strong units and removing forcefield.
Test it please for god's sake test is. I'm so not gonna buy HotS or LotV if they aren't implementing the simplest mechanics which were fucking working well for 12+ years. I'm sick of their ignorance / dumbness.
Great post, I didnt't realize the extent to which this could change how maps are made. Mb we could finally get maps that actually feel and play really different from one another.
Also having the highground advantage with no choke would be so nice :D
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.
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 02 2013 20:15 PVJ wrote: Test it please for god's sake test is. I'm so not gonna buy HotS or LotV if they aren't implementing the simplest mechanics which were fucking working well for 12+ years. I'm sick of their ignorance / dumbness.
More or less this.
A proper defenders advantage would drastically increase the quality of all matchups in this game. Players accustomed to a-moving hyperproduced (because of SC2s easy macro and super production mechanics) deathballs will complain, but this change can only bring good (along with a lot more strategy) to this game.
According to me, the main problem is the warpgate which totally neglects the defender's advantage. Now, we don't know how the PvP metagame will develop but in WoL this would be a disaster since it was such a colossus feast. Don't know how you would end a pvp since no one would want to attack up the ramp? :p
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)
Then i guess the maps would be modified out of the standard single ramp for main and double ramp for natural
This is one of those things I hope goes through, along with supply/mining rate/base resource tweaks to make it so you can't just sit on 3 base and max out.
Edit:Whatever they do... I just hope they can make it a real tug of war like BW was /fanboy
What I don't understand is how the community constantly creates well-argued, considered arguments for significant changes to the game, and then argues about it for a bit and hopes that Blizzard puts it in the actual game just cos.
Not super familiar with the map maker or tools available like that, but I don't know why there hasn't been started a "StarCommunity 2" type initiative where things like Fewer Resources Per Base, Different Map Design, Removed/Limited Xel'Naga towers for vision, Increased High Ground Advantage, perhaps minor modifications to balance that generally people can agree on (e.g. queen range could probs be decreased again, colossus could be modified to have some kind of micro-able attack and not just 1a) are all implemented, and then a reasonable portion of the community plays at least some of the time on those maps and once/if it turns out to be majorly baller, then it can be shown to Blizzard as an example of what's possible. Seems a bit more proactive then all this well-argued but ultimately kinda pointless bitching (aka "suggestions").
On February 02 2013 21:15 NDDseer wrote: What I don't understand is how the community constantly creates well-argued, considered arguments for significant changes to the game, and then argues about it for a bit and hopes that Blizzard puts it in the actual game just cos.
Not super familiar with the map maker or tools available like that, but I don't know why there hasn't been started a "StarCommunity 2" type initiative where things like Fewer Resources Per Base, Different Map Design, Removed/Limited Xel'Naga towers for vision, Increased High Ground Advantage, perhaps minor modifications to balance that generally people can agree on (e.g. queen range could probs be decreased again, colossus could be modified to have some kind of micro-able attack and not just 1a) are all implemented, and then a reasonable portion of the community plays at least some of the time on those maps and once/if it turns out to be majorly baller, then it can be shown to Blizzard as an example of what's possible. Seems a bit more proactive then all this well-argued but ultimately kinda pointless bitching (aka "suggestions").
This doesn't mean "OMG MOAR TURTLING" if they'd make new maps with the high ground advantage in mind. They can make maps where if you turtle for too long and give your opponent too much map control, there would be key areas in the middle of the map where your enemy could just camp and wait for you to come out. + Show Spoiler +
In Jade, you're fucked if you let your opponent take control over your ledge, or even just let him have a concave in front of the middle highground ramp around your huge ramp
On February 02 2013 21:15 NDDseer wrote: What I don't understand is how the community constantly creates well-argued, considered arguments for significant changes to the game, and then argues about it for a bit and hopes that Blizzard puts it in the actual game just cos.
Not super familiar with the map maker or tools available like that, but I don't know why there hasn't been started a "StarCommunity 2" type initiative where things like Fewer Resources Per Base, Different Map Design, Removed/Limited Xel'Naga towers for vision, Increased High Ground Advantage, perhaps minor modifications to balance that generally people can agree on (e.g. queen range could probs be decreased again, colossus could be modified to have some kind of micro-able attack and not just 1a) are all implemented, and then a reasonable portion of the community plays at least some of the time on those maps and once/if it turns out to be majorly baller, then it can be shown to Blizzard as an example of what's possible. Seems a bit more proactive then all this well-argued but ultimately kinda pointless bitching (aka "suggestions").
Thank you. Which then raises the question, why do we still get people making a new thread every week with their suggested improvements, instead of pouring work into something like that?
I don't understand why people automatically think defender advantage -> turtling. If anything, wouldn't common sense suggest the exact opposite? The reason why so many SC2 games are build up for 15 minutes and one 30second engagement to end the game, is because players are so afraid of making a mistake of multi-pronged attacks or harass that leads to main army not big enough to handle the opponent's bigger army.
Defender's advantage allows for more army splitting, and results in opponents splitting their armies in response. Instead of competing deathballs, we'd have strategical attacks and strategical defenses at key areas. The game would have more skirmashes at different locations and more spread out engagements. Also, the map itself can punish turtling by allowing for more expansions. Want to turtle behind your seige line? I'll simply take the entire map and crush you with superior economy.
On February 02 2013 21:33 baubo wrote: I don't understand why people automatically think defender advantage -> turtling. If anything, wouldn't common sense suggest the exact opposite? The reason why so many SC2 games are build up for 15 minutes and one 30second engagement to end the game, is because players are so afraid of making a mistake of multi-pronged attacks or harass that leads to main army not big enough to handle the opponent's bigger army.
Defender's advantage allows for more army splitting, and results in opponents splitting their armies in response. Instead of competing deathballs, we'd have strategical attacks and strategical defenses at key areas. The game would have more skirmashes at different locations and more spread out engagements. Also, the map itself can punish turtling by allowing for more expansions. Want to turtle behind your seige line? I'll simply take the entire map and crush you with superior economy.
I agree with this. A good example would be a protoss opening with a warp prism in PvZ. There's always gonna be that fear of having too little of an army at home to defend a possible counterattack while being active on the map with part of your army. High ground advantage could change that and allow the defender more freedom. I do think it'd require a lot of redesigning and tweaking of existing units and maps though.
The defence of all three race in HotS are more powerful than in WoL. And if I play ladder or watch streams, Hots is too defensive for me (WoL is/was already too defensiv). In WoL were 90% of all games "build up 15mins and one 30sec fight", in HotS somewhere 99%.
On February 02 2013 22:25 Dingodile wrote: The defence of all three race in HotS are more powerful than in WoL. And if I play ladder or watch streams, Hots is too defensive for me (WoL is/was already too defensiv). In WoL were 90% of all games "build up 15mins and one 30sec fight", in HotS somewhere 99%.
Well HotS is just in beta, of course people are either gonna do crazy cheese or camp in their base because there's no clear definition of what you can or cannot do and when you can or can't be aggressive yet. Give the game some time
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.
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.
This post is really well done and explains the problem pretty much completely.
To be honest I never understood why they removed it. If they do it, we would have to rethink a lot of opening and remake many maps but it will allow so much for everyone ! New strats, maps that doesn't have small ramps needed for Protoss to survive, smarter plays overall... You would need to rethink some of the new units in HotS but I'm sure if the testing is done right it could improve the game.
The issue I'm finding here is that since SC2 favors 3 base play (that point is roughly equal to 4 bases or more) according to the SC2:BW thread. This means that if there was any more advantage to highground, people could turtle much easier on those 3 bases. The fact that someone can get steamrolled is a good thing IMO, because timing attacks and multi-pronged attacks are what kill deathballs, not the ability to defend very easily, which SC2 actually does have quite a bit. The thing about high ground mechanics (especially from those who played BW and generalize that incorrectly to SC2) is that in SC2, especially when attacking seems infeasible, people tend to turtle into deathball. Unlike in BW where attacking at multiple areas was a given, in SC2, it is more of a dance that requires that attacking with split up armies be something that doesn't get roflstomped by fewer units. There is a defenders advantage, long maps, choke points to bases, and the lack of (some of) this defenders advantage can make the game a lot more exciting to watch. Having a base be difficult to hold means that getting to 3 bases is hard enough to make the game exciting, and rewarding to know that you have kept one of the most important features in SC2 gameplay. If you increased that difficulty and assigned a random factor, you will frustrate a lot of people.
Also, to Barrin. I love Sun Tzu, but his words mean little in this discussion. Real war is nothing like SC2 and so his advice really doesn't mean much. Yes, he says some great things that can be generalized, but those are few and far between since SC2 does not play by the standards of war in his period.
I don't think the current way high ground work is the problem with SC2, the problem with SC2 is a lot bigger and more systematic and that is that it was created with absolute newbies in mind, so all of the units, mechanics, macro, micro, you name it is so absurd and bad.
Then on top of that you have the biggest noob Dustin Browder the Red Alert guy, the battle for middle earth guy coming and designing the most pro and balanced game ever, how did you expect to turn out? And on top of that you have sid sidekick Kim who has no clue about fun and balanced unit design.
So that is why the game is balanced around the colossus, brood lord/infestor right now. You have free units with the brood lord and infestor, you have mobile, powerful splash units like the colossus and you have absolute dreadful and not fun to use at all units like the roach, marauder, thor, infestor, corrupter, etc...
Unless they first of all either remove the "macro" which are actually EASY mechanics from the game or actually make them harder to use, then make the colossus weaker, remove free units from the game and remove spells that block movement you are never going to see a really fun and exciting match,. no matter how much casters yell and scream like if its supposedly fun.
On February 02 2013 23:31 renkin wrote: To be honest I never understood why they removed it. If they do it, we would have to rethink a lot of opening and remake many maps but it will allow so much for everyone ! New strats, maps that doesn't have small ramps needed for Protoss to survive, smarter plays overall... You would need to rethink some of the new units in HotS but I'm sure if the testing is done right it could improve the game.
I believe their justification for it was that introducing RNG elements to the gameplay would make wins slightly or greatly more decided by luck. Seems logical to me, and supported by the other extreme of RNG in WoW PvP.
I wish they would define what they mean by "skill". IMO they clearly only mean mechanics and the ability to click quickly and micro way too many units. However, this has nothing to do with strategy... while it may take more twitch "skill", it takes far less strategical thinking.
---
High ground can also be used offensively!!!
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)
It doesn't always have to be up a ramp.
Mapmakers can adapt.
On February 02 2013 09:26 Archybaldie wrote: Personally i feel its way too easy to defend in sc2 and these mechanics would just make that worse.
Part of the reason it has been so deathbally is there is less incentive to attack. So while I personally feel its a good idea, its a good idea for a different game.
High ground can also be used offensively.
Mapmakers can adapt.
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.
Mapmakers can adapt.
On February 02 2013 09:48 Extenz wrote: it's stupid, most of the time when you attack up a ramp you will risk it because you will attack into a concave and you will have a ball on the ramp, that's already enough for a defensive advantage, do you want to remove all ins from the game? lol
High ground can also be used offensively.
Mapmakers can adapt.
On February 02 2013 11:10 furerkip wrote: The more you increase defender's advantage, especially in TvT, the harder it becomes to break turtlers. Everyone will just stay on tanks until they can go air. At least with the current situation, there is a constant flux on control, where one person has it, and the other person attempts to gain it, and then we attempt to go for Sky Terran once the other person tries to huddle themselves up (when they give up attempting to try to swing the game into their favor and try to take minimal losses). In TvP, this is a wasted mechanic (forcefields are your defender's advantage and you don't need one after the early game). TvZ, not so sure, because Zerg has no units that can seige while on ground, so the only thing it affects is marines, but we're transitioning into a game where mech is heavily preferred to bio (HoTS), so there's no need to worry about that.
It's a good thing that defender's advantage is only early game and mid game, because that's when you need it for the game to progress beyond the 8 min mark. But after that, it's just a "don't touch me, don't touch me!" mechanic, and that's not why anyone plays strategy games (at least, I've never heard of anyone that plays strategy games just to sit in their base all game).
High ground can also be used offensively.
Mapmakers can adapt.
On February 02 2013 12:23 sitromit wrote: So more turtling? No thank you.
High ground can also be used offensively.
Mapmakers can adapt.
On February 02 2013 12:24 Masq wrote: why would this make any difference? It would make early games even more defensive, with almost no chance of doing early pressure. This would just compound the problems with units like colossus and broodlord turtling (that simply bypass any highground/terrain advantage).
If those type of units were adjusted something like this would be viable. Until then, its kind of pointless.
High ground can also be used offensively.
Mapmakers can adapt.
On February 02 2013 12:31 Emzeeshady wrote: This would be an awful change. People already say that we need more aggressiveness in SC2 and less turtling but this change would be the opposite. This game would be awful if people tried to make it like BW without the handicaps the game had.
High ground can also be used offensively.
Mapmakers can adapt.
On February 02 2013 12:32 grush57 wrote: Yea, this would make the game far more turtle like. Bad thing, imo.
High ground can also be used offensively.
Mapmakers can adapt.
On February 02 2013 19:02 Dingodile wrote: I dont want, sc2 is already super defense game, like all other like cnc, stronghold, aoe etc. it would make more boring to play, maybe not for the viewers. this is why i love wc3, you have to play pure offensiv and micro.
High ground can also be used offensively.
Mapmakers can adapt.
On February 02 2013 18:06 iky43210 wrote: if we want more active fights then we need more active maps, not high ground gimmicks.
See the latest whirlwind map or whatever with expansions at every edge of the map. Sure it may not be balance, but expect to see alot of actions across all races mid game on that map
So if the middle of the map is on higher ground and the bases tend to be on lower ground.. with a stronger high ground advantage, maps would be less active?
On February 02 2013 15:12 EnumaAvalon wrote: Better high ground mechanics can solidify the defender's advantage.
It can also help solidify map control.
On February 02 2013 15:46 sunglasseson wrote: you cant fix problem C without fixing A and B nothing said here can ever change this. its a building and the foundation cannot be added upon untill its first made stable
Welcome to Problem A.
On February 02 2013 21:15 NDDseer wrote: What I don't understand is how the community constantly creates well-argued, considered arguments for significant changes to the game, and then argues about it for a bit and hopes that Blizzard puts it in the actual game just cos.
Not super familiar with the map maker or tools available like that, but I don't know why there hasn't been started a "StarCommunity 2" type initiative where things like Fewer Resources Per Base ...
I really am sorry for not yet being able to support FRB the way it needs to be supported.. real life comes first.
And before FRB comes high ground mechanic, PLEASE.
On February 02 2013 21:33 baubo wrote: I don't understand why people automatically think defender advantage -> turtling. If anything, wouldn't common sense suggest the exact opposite? The reason why so many SC2 games are build up for 15 minutes and one 30second engagement to end the game, is because players are so afraid of making a mistake of multi-pronged attacks or harass that leads to main army not big enough to handle the opponent's bigger army.
Defender's advantage allows for more army splitting, and results in opponents splitting their armies in response. Instead of competing deathballs, we'd have strategical attacks and strategical defenses at key areas. The game would have more skirmashes at different locations and more spread out engagements. Also, the map itself can punish turtling by allowing for more expansions. Want to turtle behind your seige line? I'll simply take the entire map and crush you with superior economy.
Take a look at the target audience and you'll understand.
On February 02 2013 12:58 IndyO wrote: People need to realize that it would only encourage deathbally-turtle play on current maps, because the current maps have to be designed that way.
Thank you.
These people opposed to a high ground mechanic seem narrowly focused on the part where big armies collide and the physical micro part of it. Indeed, even some in favor. And who could blame you with it being what you're so used to?
The beauty if the dynamic "water dance" is flying way over your heads. Sun Tzu would be disappointed; + Show Spoiler +
... VI. Weak Points and Strong
1. Sun Tzu said: Whoever is first in the field and awaits the coming of the enemy, will be fresh for the fight; whoever is second in the field and has to hasten to battle will arrive exhausted.
2. Therefore the clever combatant imposes his will on the enemy, but does not allow the enemy's will to be imposed on him.
3. By holding out advantages to him, he can cause the enemy to approach of his own accord; or, by inflicting damage, he can make it impossible for the enemy to draw near.
4. If the enemy is taking his ease, he can harass him; if well supplied with food, he can starve him out; if quietly encamped, he can force him to move.
5. Appear at points which the enemy must hasten to defend; march swiftly to places where you are not expected.
6. An army may march great distances without distress, if it marches through country where the enemy is not.
7. You can be sure of succeeding in your attacks if you only attack places which are undefended.You can ensure the safety of your defense if you only hold positions that cannot be attacked.
8. Hence that general is skillful in attack whose opponent does not know what to defend; and he is skillful in defense whose opponent does not know what to attack.
9. O divine art of subtlety and secrecy! Through you we learn to be invisible, through you inaudible; and hence we can hold the enemy's fate in our hands.
10. You may advance and be absolutely irresistible, if you make for the enemy's weak points; you may retire and be safe from pursuit if your movements are more rapid than those of the enemy.
11. If we wish to fight, the enemy can be forced to an engagement even though he be sheltered behind a high rampart and a deep ditch. All we need do is attack some other place that he will be obliged to relieve.
12. If we do not wish to fight, we can prevent the enemy from engaging us even though the lines of our encampment be merely traced out on the ground. All we need do is to throw something odd and unaccountable in his way.
13. By discovering the enemy's dispositions and remaining invisible ourselves, we can keep our forces concentrated, while the enemy's must be divided.
14. We can form a single united body, while the enemy must split up into fractions. Hence there will be a whole pitted against separate parts of a whole, which means that we shall be many to the enemy's few.
15. And if we are able thus to attack an inferior force with a superior one, our opponents will be in dire straits.
16. The spot where we intend to fight must not be made known; for then the enemy will have to prepare against a possible attack at several different points; and his forces being thus distributed in many directions, the numbers we shall have to face at any given point will be proportionately few.
17. For should the enemy strengthen his van, he will weaken his rear; should he strengthen his rear, he will weaken his van; should he strengthen his left, he will weaken his right; should he strengthen his right, he will weaken his left. If he sends reinforcements everywhere, he will everywhere be weak.
18. Numerical weakness comes from having to prepare against possible attacks; numerical strength, from compelling our adversary to make these preparations against us.
19. Knowing the place and the time of the coming battle, we may concentrate from the greatest distances in order to fight.
20. But if neither time nor place be known, then the left wing will be impotent to succor the right, the right equally impotent to succor the left, the van unable to relieve the rear, or the rear to support the van. How much more so if the furthest portions of the army are anything under a hundred LI apart, and even the nearest are separated by several LI!
21. Though according to my estimate the soldiers of Yueh exceed our own in number, that shall advantage them nothing in the matter of victory. I say then that victory can be achieved.
22. Though the enemy be stronger in numbers, we may prevent him from fighting. Scheme so as to discover his plans and the likelihood of their success.
23. Rouse him, and learn the principle of his activity or inactivity. Force him to reveal himself, so as to find out his vulnerable spots.
24. Carefully compare the opposing army with your own, so that you may know where strength is superabundant and where it is deficient.
25. In making tactical dispositions, the highest pitch you can attain is to conceal them; conceal your dispositions, and you will be safe from the prying of the subtlest spies, from the machinations of the wisest brains.
26. How victory may be produced for them out of the enemy's own tactics--that is what the multitude cannot comprehend.
27. All men can see the tactics whereby I conquer, but what none can see is the strategy out of which victory is evolved.
28. Do not repeat the tactics which have gained you one victory, but let your methods be regulated by the infinite variety of circumstances.
29. Military tactics are like unto water; for water in its natural course runs away from high places and hastens downwards.
30. So in war, the way is to avoid what is strong and to strike at what is weak.
31. Water shapes its course according to the nature of the ground over which it flows; the soldier works out his victory in relation to the foe whom he is facing.
32. Therefore, just as water retains no constant shape, so in warfare there are no constant conditions.
33. He who can modify his tactics in relation to his opponent and thereby succeed in winning, may be called a heaven-born captain. ...
Great post !!!! I'm amazed by Sun Tzu's insight :O All of them apply directly to the game. Man, that man would have been a great starcraft player
Seriously, a lot of posters should refrain themself about talking "defender advatage", because the high ground mechanic is not about that. Map making is where it's gonna have an impact. New high ground mechanic will be a new tool for the map makers, and will probably show answers to your "defender advantage problem".
On February 02 2013 23:31 renkin wrote: To be honest I never understood why they removed it. If they do it, we would have to rethink a lot of opening and remake many maps but it will allow so much for everyone ! New strats, maps that doesn't have small ramps needed for Protoss to survive, smarter plays overall... You would need to rethink some of the new units in HotS but I'm sure if the testing is done right it could improve the game.
I believe their justification for it was that introducing RNG elements to the gameplay would make wins slightly or greatly more decided by luck. Seems logical to me, and supported by the other extreme of RNG in WoW PvP.
copypasting myself from reddit thread:
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.
HEY BRO sounds like an interesting mechanic however I don't think it would fix this:
So basically I did the standard medivac timing and lost a few units, killed 3 pylons and a few stalkers. I wasn't too stressed, he pushed back at me and I had to set up a defensive stance as he had 3 colossus and I had 4 vikings with 2 more on the way. To be frank I didn't stand a chance because he could move his colossus over his stalker army and deny any positioning for my vikings to take down his colossus. This is why sc2 will never change, because of specific units and their requirements for a "Hard counter". There was no defenders advantage for me here, rather he had the better advantage being on the offense.
This is me in a position ready to defend ~ I try to kill his colossus but he simple moves them to the right hand side of his army.
Now you can see that my viking have to reach over his army to attack the colossus, extremely vulnerable to the stalkers. Now you know why vikings have such big range people.
Now despite losing all my forces, I want to see if its even possible to engage with my vikings at all. They are too the right now.
On February 03 2013 01:34 FutureBreedMachine wrote: HEY BRO sounds like an interesting mechanic however I don't think it would fix this:
So basically I did the standard medivac timing and lost a few units, killed 3 pylons and a few stalkers. I wasn't too stressed, he pushed back at me and I had to set up a defensive stance as he had 3 colossus and I had 4 vikings with 2 more on the way. To be frank I didn't stand a chance because he could move his colossus over his stalker army and deny any positioning for my vikings to take down his colossus. This is why sc2 will never change, because of specific units and their requirements for a "Hard counter". There was no defenders advantage for me here, rather he had the better advantage being on the offense.
This is me in a position ready to defend ~ I try to kill his colossus but he simple moves them to the right hand side of his army.
Now you can see that my viking have to reach over his army to attack the colossus, extremely vulnerable to the stalkers. Now you know why vikings have such big range people.
Now despite losing all my forces, I want to see if its even possible to engage with my vikings at all. They are too the right now.
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 agree, they've already been balancing based on the fact that this advantage doesn't exist. So they've been compensating defenders in other ways. This would be overkill.
This is one of those things community should really make a fuss about so Blizzard takes notice.
Maybe not the same as described in the OP but a highground mechanic that gives SOME advantage to the defender should exist in SC2.
Some matchups might be more drawn-out but it also makes comebacks more likely to happen which is something you don't see all that often(compared to BW for example...).
One thing I wonder about is the speed of combat. Supposing we do have a high ground mechanic, less resources per base, or whatever else that encourages more spread out play, then what happens to units that are very micro dependent? Is the game too fast to allow players to properly micro them across different fronts?
On February 03 2013 01:34 FutureBreedMachine wrote: Well played David Kim, Well played.
Where's my defenders advantage?
Ironic that you post this whine in this thread, because if you would by any chance have fought by one of the two high grounds nearby your situation would have been totally different.
High ground disallows vision unless you have a flying unit, a colossus or a scan ready, or if you are 75% up the ramp. If you don't consider that a huge advantage, then I don't know what to tell you. forcing an army to walk up to a ramp, which will line them up in a much less optimal position, is huge. (Provided you managed to kill all the high ground vision units).
And even so, melee units will have to walk up the ramp since they can't jump on ledges, leaving them extremely ineffective.
And for the whiners, I'm masters on both EU as NA @ www.twitch.tv/kaluroo - profiles are on the description.
Introducing a high ground mechanic would be interesting as it'd give mapmakers one more thing to think about, maps changing game play significantly in different ways is always going to be good.
It is a advantage. But it is one that is easily negotiated with vision- obs, scan, overlords, units that bypass terrain, etc. Then the advantage is not very great. Something like miss chance or damage reduction continues to give the advantage to the person that won the highground. There is some advantage, but it is pretty insignificant compared to what it could and should be. It's one of those terrain features that actually creates points to fight over all over the map like Blizzard was hoping would happen with the watchtowers.
Whenever I see post trying to change SC2 based on BW I know it's gonna be bad. How long will it take for people to understand that BW is different from SC2. BW was a great game, still is, one can argue best RTS ever made which will become best RTS in the history, but that is not the point. SC2 is fundamentally different, it's similar to BW on some levels but most of BW is in lore and unit names, that is it. Mechanics are different, movement is different, macro is different, everything is different, hence SC2=/=BW. And if you don't believe me, believe Blizzard which is trying their hardest to differentiate game even more, not less.
I dont see how the game would become more turtle-y like some people claim. sure you COULD hang out in your main and be hard to kill, but the advantage isnt so strong that a 2 base economy wont be able to bust you. not to mention that a highground advantage is supposed to make you leave less units at a base to defend with so you can attack more often. (not having to pull your entire army to defend)
and every RTS game has a high ground advantage in some form, this isnt a 'make it bw' idea
The current high ground advantage was already stupidly lacking. There is no difference between high and low. Go for it!! Took them too long for them to realise.
Having a big penalty will encourage players to turtle, no one will want to attack and have a far bigger risk of losing everything. People would be even more directed to just defending until they get to their respective lategame deathball compositions.
On February 03 2013 03:48 Jochan wrote: Whenever I see post trying to change SC2 based on BW I know it's gonna be bad. How long will it take for people to understand that BW is different from SC2. BW was a great game, still is, one can argue best RTS ever made which will become best RTS in the history, but that is not the point. SC2 is fundamentally different, it's similar to BW on some levels but most of BW is in lore and unit names, that is it. Mechanics are different, movement is different, macro is different, everything is different, hence SC2=/=BW. And if you don't believe me, believe Blizzard which is trying their hardest to differentiate game even more, not less.
You say it is going to bad, but then you don't say why. Is BW having something an automatic dismissal for adopting it? What is wrong with the actual idea as being presented the thread beyond "SC2 is trying to be different."
On February 03 2013 03:57 Larkin wrote: Having a big penalty will encourage players to turtle, no one will want to attack and have a far bigger risk of losing everything. People would be even more directed to just defending until they get to their respective lategame deathball compositions.
I don't get it. How does being easier to defend with less units translate to a bigger risk of losing everything?
Remember a thread about this early in Wol beta, Can't find it atm because I don't remember what the title was :/ but I think one of the main points was : The defenders advantage was close to non existant in Sc2 and that would come back to hount them in the end ^^
What a terrible idea. As OP said it it works early to mid game, what more do you want? Oh and ''map makers can adapt''; whoever said that apparently has no idea how difficult it is to create a decent map for SC2. Being masters also means nothing, since you could be low masters for all I know and that means you are just as bad as everybody else.
On February 03 2013 03:57 Larkin wrote: Having a big penalty will encourage players to turtle, no one will want to attack and have a far bigger risk of losing everything. People would be even more directed to just defending until they get to their respective lategame deathball compositions.
I don't get it. How does being easier to defend with less units translate to a bigger risk of losing everything?
If it is easier to defend with less units, it is therefore more dangerous to attack.
The way SC2 works is that if you lose an engagement you are put behind and have to do something to get back.
So no one will attack because if their attack can be defended a lot easier, they will run an even greater risk of losing and being put behind. In addition, turtling players will obviously be defensive and so harassment in the form of things like drops will be less effective.
On February 03 2013 04:04 Inex wrote: What a terrible idea. As OP said it it works early to mid game, what more do you want? Oh and ''map makers can adapt''; whoever said that apparently has no idea how difficult it is to create a decent map for SC2. Being masters also means nothing, since you could be low masters for all I know and that means you are just as bad as everybody else.
What does the difficulty of making maps have anything to do with decisions that may be based upon them?
On February 03 2013 03:57 Larkin wrote: Having a big penalty will encourage players to turtle, no one will want to attack and have a far bigger risk of losing everything. People would be even more directed to just defending until they get to their respective lategame deathball compositions.
I don't get it. How does being easier to defend with less units translate to a bigger risk of losing everything?
If it is easier to defend with less units, it is therefore more dangerous to attack.
The way SC2 works is that if you lose an engagement you are put behind and have to do something to get back.
So no one will attack because if their attack can be defended a lot easier, they will run an even greater risk of losing and being put behind. In addition, turtling players will obviously be defensive and so harassment in the form of things like drops will be less effective.
How does this patch affect drops at all? Regardless of whether or not a player turtles they're all equally capable of holding drops with no damage, which this patch does not really affect.
On February 03 2013 03:57 Larkin wrote: Having a big penalty will encourage players to turtle, no one will want to attack and have a far bigger risk of losing everything. People would be even more directed to just defending until they get to their respective lategame deathball compositions.
I don't get it. How does being easier to defend with less units translate to a bigger risk of losing everything?
If it is easier to defend with less units, it is therefore more dangerous to attack.
The way SC2 works is that if you lose an engagement you are put behind and have to do something to get back.
So no one will attack because if their attack can be defended a lot easier, they will run an even greater risk of losing and being put behind. In addition, turtling players will obviously be defensive and so harassment in the form of things like drops will be less effective.
The high ground is part of what allows you to come back. It gives you survivability. Slow down the marauding army in time for you build up the next wave and attack. This allows you to push farther out into the field earlier because you can fall back in a harassing retreat, making stands on high ground areas which will allow you to cost-effectively trade. High ground advantage is more than just in your base. Maps can have high ground spread through the centre as well. If you have gained a high ground advantage that lies in between where a player wants to expand or that cuts through their reinforcing lines, you've been rewarded for pushing out offensively.
Not only that, but if you can cost-effectively trade your units for taking an expansion, then you can commit smaller bands of them to protect expansions while the main army marauds the map. But if the enemy finds a defensive position mid-map, they can hold off the larger army while committing a large enough strike force to knock out the smaller number of expansion defenders. This is all theoretical with no numbers behind them, but I contend that high ground better allows the armies to be split, but this in turn allows the enemy to split and gang up where they find a weak point. Rather than simply having two armies circling each other, looking for the flash engage.
More drops is exactly what more high ground advantage pushes towards. Drops become one of the ways to get over the defended positions.
I will grant you that the economic system would probably have to be tinkered with to give greater incentive to expand beyond 3 base max 200.
On February 03 2013 03:57 Larkin wrote: Having a big penalty will encourage players to turtle, no one will want to attack and have a far bigger risk of losing everything. People would be even more directed to just defending until they get to their respective lategame deathball compositions.
I don't get it. How does being easier to defend with less units translate to a bigger risk of losing everything?
If it is easier to defend with less units, it is therefore more dangerous to attack.
The way SC2 works is that if you lose an engagement you are put behind and have to do something to get back.
So no one will attack because if their attack can be defended a lot easier, they will run an even greater risk of losing and being put behind. In addition, turtling players will obviously be defensive and so harassment in the form of things like drops will be less effective.
The high ground is part of what allows you to come back. It gives you survivability. Slow down the marauding army in time for you build up the next wave and attack. This allows you to push farther out into the field earlier because you can fall back in a harassing retreat, making stands on high ground areas which will allow you to cost-effectively trade. High ground advantage is more than just in your base. Maps can have high ground spread through the centre as well. If you have gained a high ground advantage that lies in between where a player wants to expand or that cuts through their reinforcing lines, you've been rewarded for pushing out offensively.
My point being that no one will use a marauding army because of the fear of losing it to a defender with too powerful a high ground advantage. If it gets to the point where players can hold a ramp with half the forces of their opponent, it'll be too much.
However, you do raise a good point - players should be rewarded for taking the map, but I imagine if the defender's advantage is buffed lower league players especially will be even more afraid of pushing out on the map.
A step in the right direction, but kilometers away from "fixing" the game.
In quotes because for some people the game doesn't any fixing (due to lack of BW experience I'd dare to say), and as far as they care SC2 is perfect, and thinking that way is completely fine, they have fun and that's all that actually matters.
Anyway, high ground advantage adds positional play, but SC2 lacks good siege units to make use of positional play. FFS, the siege tank IS the perfect siege unit but it is rendered so weak in SC2... Often times when I tune-in some SC2 pro stream I just see one of the players waltzing around with his army as if the map was plain flat.
On February 03 2013 03:57 Larkin wrote: Having a big penalty will encourage players to turtle, no one will want to attack and have a far bigger risk of losing everything. People would be even more directed to just defending until they get to their respective lategame deathball compositions.
I don't get it. How does being easier to defend with less units translate to a bigger risk of losing everything?
If it is easier to defend with less units, it is therefore more dangerous to attack.
The way SC2 works is that if you lose an engagement you are put behind and have to do something to get back.
So no one will attack because if their attack can be defended a lot easier, they will run an even greater risk of losing and being put behind. In addition, turtling players will obviously be defensive and so harassment in the form of things like drops will be less effective.
The high ground is part of what allows you to come back. It gives you survivability. Slow down the marauding army in time for you build up the next wave and attack. This allows you to push farther out into the field earlier because you can fall back in a harassing retreat, making stands on high ground areas which will allow you to cost-effectively trade. High ground advantage is more than just in your base. Maps can have high ground spread through the centre as well. If you have gained a high ground advantage that lies in between where a player wants to expand or that cuts through their reinforcing lines, you've been rewarded for pushing out offensively.
My point being that no one will use a marauding army because of the fear of losing it to a defender with too powerful a high ground advantage. If it gets to the point where players can hold a ramp with half the forces of their opponent, it'll be too much.
However, you do raise a good point - players should be rewarded for taking the map, but I imagine if the defender's advantage is buffed lower league players especially will be even more afraid of pushing out on the map.
The fear of pushing out in the lower leagues is something that will always be with us and it is something they need to get over with- and a bigger carrot would probably work better. More economic advantage for expanding. But that goes for higher level players too. More incentive to expand, then they will be much more spread out. You can't defend all places equally, so then the players will be jockying to strike and exploit the weakest point (there's your Sun Tzu), but this in turn will force large army engagements as the defender races to protect their weak points. Players finding ways to pull their opponent out of position.
There is obviously a balancing act. You don't want to make the game so defensive in their base so that it is impossible to attack. But as we've already seen what the proposed high ground advantage does, I don't think this suggestion will lead to that. And if it does, then maybe it'll give Blizzard an idea of where and how to adust to their units to compensate for it.
edit I also think there is actually a greater incentive to go attack. There is less risk of a base race. This means you can commit your army to an attack and know that you can hold off a reasonable sized backstab. Thererfore, you can be more bold with your main army. Base races are fun and all, but the frequency with which they occur in SC2 is indicative of a persistant problem in defence.
On February 03 2013 03:57 Larkin wrote: Having a big penalty will encourage players to turtle, no one will want to attack and have a far bigger risk of losing everything. People would be even more directed to just defending until they get to their respective lategame deathball compositions.
I don't get it. How does being easier to defend with less units translate to a bigger risk of losing everything?
If it is easier to defend with less units, it is therefore more dangerous to attack.
The way SC2 works is that if you lose an engagement you are put behind and have to do something to get back.
So no one will attack because if their attack can be defended a lot easier, they will run an even greater risk of losing and being put behind. In addition, turtling players will obviously be defensive and so harassment in the form of things like drops will be less effective.
The high ground is part of what allows you to come back. It gives you survivability. Slow down the marauding army in time for you build up the next wave and attack. This allows you to push farther out into the field earlier because you can fall back in a harassing retreat, making stands on high ground areas which will allow you to cost-effectively trade. High ground advantage is more than just in your base. Maps can have high ground spread through the centre as well. If you have gained a high ground advantage that lies in between where a player wants to expand or that cuts through their reinforcing lines, you've been rewarded for pushing out offensively.
My point being that no one will use a marauding army because of the fear of losing it to a defender with too powerful a high ground advantage. If it gets to the point where players can hold a ramp with half the forces of their opponent, it'll be too much.
However, you do raise a good point - players should be rewarded for taking the map, but I imagine if the defender's advantage is buffed lower league players especially will be even more afraid of pushing out on the map.
The fear of pushing out in the lower leagues is something that will always be with us and it is something they need to get over with- and a bigger carrot would probably work better. More economic advantage for expanding. But that goes for higher level players too. More incentive to expand, then they will be much more spread out. You can't defend all places equally, so then the players will be jockying to strike and exploit the weakest point (there's your Sun Tzu), but this in turn will force large army engagements as the defender races to protect their weak points.
There is obviously a balancing act. You don't want to make the game so defensive in their base so that it is impossible to attack. But as we've already seen what the proposed high ground advantage does, I don't think this suggestion will lead to that. And if it does, then maybe it'll give Blizzard an idea of where and how to adust to their units to compensate for it.
This actually happens quite a lot in SC2. Lots of people choose to ignore this for some reason and only point to the games where there is turtling into death balls.
Regardless maybe I am wrong and this change will actually be beneficial. In that case there needs to be a shitload of testing done.
It may occur in SC2. But the question is to what degree. If it is a good thing, can we get more of it? Would better high ground advantage help encourage it? If yes, then why not try it? Yes it would require a lot of testing, but I think that's what many of us were hoping the expansion betas were for. Maybe it's a pipedream for SC3 two decades from now. Who knows.
I just want to jump in and say that the high ground mechanic was one of the worst things about BW. It was very random, and randomness does not belong in StarCraft.
That said, I do think it'd be interesting to try out modifying the high ground mechanic in SC2, but I don't think it's necessarily broken right now.
I think this is a good idea. For people saying defender's advantage is already too great, let's remember that all map trends right now have 3 easy to defend bases. In broodwar, 3rd bases were always mineral only if easy to defend, or much harder to defend.
-1 range sounds like an interesting approach. Just to run with that idea for a bit - how about -1 range per `standard unit' of height, where the standard unit is however high the typical main is from ground level. This gives yet another dimension (geddit?) to the dynamics and encourages clever use of terrain.
On February 03 2013 04:04 Inex wrote: What a terrible idea. As OP said it it works early to mid game, what more do you want? Oh and ''map makers can adapt''; whoever said that apparently has no idea how difficult it is to create a decent map for SC2. Being masters also means nothing, since you could be low masters for all I know and that means you are just as bad as everybody else.
I hope you know that I'm the author of Korhal Compound, my good friend superouman (Cloud Kingdom and others) retired partly because of no highground advantage, and all of the other mapmakers agree on adding a highground advantage (LS, ATTx, Jacky, TPW members, DF members, etc.). We are the mapmakers in SC2.
[edit] Didn't mean to sound like Korhal Comp is a good map lol... it sucked. But you get my point.
imo just make it like wc3 where you have a chance to miss uphill. it even makes sense from a standpoint of trying to hit something up a hill is harder.
On February 03 2013 04:04 Inex wrote: What a terrible idea. As OP said it it works early to mid game, what more do you want? Oh and ''map makers can adapt''; whoever said that apparently has no idea how difficult it is to create a decent map for SC2. Being masters also means nothing, since you could be low masters for all I know and that means you are just as bad as everybody else.
I hope you know that I'm the author of Korhal Compound, my good friend superouman (Cloud Kingdom and others) retired partly because of no highground advantage, and all of the other mapmakers agree on adding a highground advantage (LS, ATTx, Jacky, TPW members, DF members, etc.). We are the mapmakers in SC2.
[edit] Didn't mean to sound like Korhal Comp is a good map lol... it sucked. But you get my point.
Why don't you just add in high ground advantage with the editor and make all the highground maps you want?
On February 03 2013 04:04 Inex wrote: What a terrible idea. As OP said it it works early to mid game, what more do you want? Oh and ''map makers can adapt''; whoever said that apparently has no idea how difficult it is to create a decent map for SC2. Being masters also means nothing, since you could be low masters for all I know and that means you are just as bad as everybody else.
I hope you know that I'm the author of Korhal Compound, my good friend superouman (Cloud Kingdom and others) retired partly because of no highground advantage, and all of the other mapmakers agree on adding a highground advantage (LS, ATTx, Jacky, TPW members, DF members, etc.). We are the mapmakers in SC2.
[edit] Didn't mean to sound like Korhal Comp is a good map lol... it sucked. But you get my point.
Why don't you just add in high ground advantage with the editor and make all the highground maps you want?
Of course we can do whatever we want in the editor... but no one will play it, no tournaments will use it. Maybe some small scene will develop that plays it like Starbow or Onegoal, or maybe it can be used as a proof of concept, but that's it.
On February 03 2013 04:04 Inex wrote: What a terrible idea. As OP said it it works early to mid game, what more do you want? Oh and ''map makers can adapt''; whoever said that apparently has no idea how difficult it is to create a decent map for SC2. Being masters also means nothing, since you could be low masters for all I know and that means you are just as bad as everybody else.
I hope you know that I'm the author of Korhal Compound, my good friend superouman (Cloud Kingdom and others) retired partly because of no highground advantage, and all of the other mapmakers agree on adding a highground advantage (LS, ATTx, Jacky, TPW members, DF members, etc.). We are the mapmakers in SC2.
[edit] Didn't mean to sound like Korhal Comp is a good map lol... it sucked. But you get my point.
Hey, why aren't I on the list? I just posted a huge thread on this recently.
Anyway, I think I would have more fun as a map maker with some high ground advantage.. However I can't say for certain that just implementing it without other changes would work out completely. It might have some unwanted negative side effects.
Sadly, it could really look stupid for a while before players figured out how to use it, and everyone might think it doesn't work when it really just needs more time. Blizzard understands this well, though, when it comes to game design, but they mostly apply it to their own ideas that everyone is hating on. It's hard to convince them to try something, although it did work with the hellbat thing if I'm not mistaken, so maybe.
Edit: Not that I support biological hellions, lol.
I think at this point all races are really strong defensively and it's very hard to do any real early-mid game damage, this would only make it harder to attack which I feel is already extremely hard anyway. (think about bunkers, forcefields, fungal, spines, queens, etc..)
-1 Range when attacking Highground This would have a big impact on gameplay, such as in TvT, the defender would have the advantage in Tank Wars, making it less stalemate. In Other match-ups, it would always give the first shot to the defender, which gives defender the advantage. The attacker would now have the burden of micro, as he/she would have to play cleverly to overcome the advantage.
Have never read such a contradictory statement ever. It wouldnt make tank wars less stalemate, quite the opposite. It is already almost impossible to push against a tank line that is on top of a hill. With -1 range, it would simply be impossible to attack into another terran´s base, because his tanks would have a huge advantage. This results in an ever bigger stalemate because none of the two terrans can push into the other players tank line. All the other suggestions are terrible aswell.
The game does not need a highground advantage, if anything it needs a highground disadvantage. If it were harder to defend bases (and therefore highgrounds for the most part), then the player that has less bases (the one that wants to start a comeback) would have a much easier time to actually get a comeback going.
All these "we need more highground advantage" posts start off completely wrong by saying that they want to increase the comeback frequency by adding more highground advantage. A bigger highground advantage will always favor the one that has more bases and therefore the one that has the advantage in the game. An increase in highground advantage will just make the game even more boring because it will become impossible to start a comeback.
The only thing that would make the game more likely to have comebacks is to completely remove static defenses (including queen defense, all towers, mothership core, basically everything that can defend a base) and then also completely remove highground advantage. This way, whoever manages his units better will win the game. Sounds crazy, but thats how it is.
The only problem with this is that all-ins would become much more powerful, but that is also fixable. Buff scouting options across the board.
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.
What? Defender's advantage is terrible. There really isn't one at all, actually.
Have never read such a contradictory statement ever. It wouldnt make tank wars less stalemate, quite the opposite. It is already almost impossible to push against a tank line that is on top of a hill. With -1 range, it would simply be impossible to attack into another terran´s base, because his tanks would have a huge advantage. This results in an ever bigger stalemate because none of the two terrans can push into the other players tank line. All the other suggestions are terrible aswell.
The game does not need a highground advantage, if anything it needs a highground disadvantage. If it were harder to defend bases (and therefore highgrounds for the most part), then the player that has less bases (the one that wants to start a comeback) would have a much easier time to actually get a comeback going.
All these "we need more highground advantage" posts start off completely wrong by saying that they want to increase the comeback frequency by adding more highground advantage. A bigger highground advantage will always favor the one that has more bases and therefore the one that has the advantage in the game. An increase in highground advantage will just make the game even more boring because it will become impossible to start a comeback.
People making a comeback need a defender's advantage. Why? Because their opponent's army will destroy theirs anywhere else. That's why they are coming back. Reducing defender's advantage (even though there really isn't one right now) would make it even harder for comebacks to occur. When you are making a comeback, you don't randomly waltz out of your base to try to quickly destroy an opponent's base. Why? BECAUSE YOU CAN'T, THAT'S WHY YOU NEED TO COME BACK. Your army is weaker, and therefore the only thing that will let you come back is if you can hold your own bases/take one more base and hold them, which needs a better defender's advantage.
While I don't think that a HGM being in BW is a reason for/against it, it would be interesting to see how this effected the balance of the match ups and how/if they progressed differently. Also, not being a map maker, while I can't see why not being able to add a HGM would make it more difficult, I do know that I have absolutely no knowledge of how to make one, so I'm not going to give the general "Just add a high ground mechanic" response
Really wonder if they would even consider something like this... Im all for more positional play, but I dont see how 'tank stalemates' or any stalemates for that matter get solved by this : if anything, people will turtle even harder. Except this time at high ground locations. Maybe if expansions were more spread out, or you were forced to take more of them, yea I could see this working. Then you would have small defensive squads. That would seem pretty fun.
On February 03 2013 07:47 robih wrote: would ruin the game into an even worse campfest
lategame is already terrible enough
Which goes into another flaw with how you don't need to expand as quickly/often..... high ground advantages would be great if people actually had to be more aggressive to benefit economically.
I don't see how an actual defenders advantage would encourage turtling. Sure you can still turtle, like you can now, but it's less required imo. With a true significant defenders advantage, you can do risky things in your build without dying because your enemy only made army units. Lets say I try to be creative in my build and do something funky. If my opponent didn't do anything funky and just went straight army, then it doesn't matter if I snuck two early dts into his base because his army is better and will straight up kill me when it gets to my ramp. If I had a real defenders advantage, then even with a weaker army I have a chance to fend off the attack. It promotes creativity, because it's like a small blanket of safety softly telling you "hey 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.
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.
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.
On the topic: 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.
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.
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.
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. 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.
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.
What is a perfect game? Are there not always competing issues that are being balanced? It strikes me that it is a small sacrifice to add miss-chance that might make a minor difference in skill on an individual unit shot by shot. When in return we open up massive tactical options that demonstrates even more skill by players making use of the high ground advantage to take and hold terrain.
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.
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)
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
i don't want to be the guy that has to spout venom, but by looking at this thread, and then taking into consideration that TL has a lot of platinum+ players (there was a thread with league breakdown some time ago), honestly, if so many fairly skilled players don't understand what would change, how in the hell can you expect david kim, or even worse, justin browder to do so?
it's just another great idea that will be ignored because sc2 rules yo. swarm hosts with more free units and hellions that turn into roaches ftw.
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.
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.
Yes, they were/are bad design. That doesn't necessarily make them bad games, nor does it mean people won't still play it (and play it a ton). It does add yet another barrier of entry for a casual player though.
This reminds me of the whole debate in MMOs with PVP specific ability subtext, where abilities behave differently if casted against players compared to NPCs. It makes things incredibly confusing to somebody that just wants to get on 5 hours a week and just have fun with friends or strangers. By adding unnecessary or cumbersome complexity to the game, you shut those people out. IMO, that's what adding "hidden" high ground advantage does.
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.
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.
First of all, there's no other rule of miss chance or +armor (outside of very specific upgrades or abilities) in the game already. This isn't Warcraft, where unit stat modifiers are all over the place. Throwing something like +1 range or 33% chance to miss just muddies everything. Even if it's perfectly clear to somebody like you, brilliant in every way, not everybody will put "two and two together," especially at first glance.
Second, there is already a mechanic of high ground advantage, even if you don't like it. It's straight forward and intuitive. If you brush up against a cliff on the low ground, you can't see up it. You can't fire back at those units unless you gain vision. You see and understand that in the first 1-2s of an encounter with cliffs and high ground. Same with LOS blockers.
Yes, there probably could be some changes to high ground advantage we have now, but it's not necessary and it needs to be done in an intuitive way if done at all.
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.
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.
Yes, they were/are bad design. That doesn't necessarily make them bad games, nor does it mean people won't still play it (and play it a ton). It does add yet another barrier of entry for a casual player though.
This reminds me of the whole debate in MMOs with PVP specific ability subtext, where abilities behave differently if casted against players compared to NPCs. It makes things incredibly confusing to somebody that just wants to get on 5 hours a week and just have fun with friends or strangers. By adding unnecessary or cumbersome complexity to the game, you shut those people out. IMO, that's what adding "hidden" high ground advantage does.
People who play SC2 5 hours a week for a bit of fun and have no additional knowledge through spectating games or so wouldn't really realize if the game had a 30% miss chance or not, nor should the game be designed or balanced around these people. That's also the people who complain about completely ridiculous things as "imba" cos they don't understand high level gaming.
Similarly mapmakers would never focus on these casuals when making a map but only look to make the best maps for esports.
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.
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.
Yes, they were/are bad design. That doesn't necessarily make them bad games, nor does it mean people won't still play it (and play it a ton). It does add yet another barrier of entry for a casual player though.
This reminds me of the whole debate in MMOs with PVP specific ability subtext, where abilities behave differently if casted against players compared to NPCs. It makes things incredibly confusing to somebody that just wants to get on 5 hours a week and just have fun with friends or strangers. By adding unnecessary or cumbersome complexity to the game, you shut those people out. IMO, that's what adding "hidden" high ground advantage does.
People who play SC2 5 hours a week for a bit of fun and have no additional knowledge through spectating games or so wouldn't really realize if the game had a 30% miss chance or not, nor should the game be designed or balanced around these people. That's also the people who complain about completely ridiculous things as "imba" cos they don't understand high level gaming.
Similarly mapmakers would never focus on these casuals when making a map but only look to make the best maps for esports.
If such a miss chance was added to the game, blizzard could easily use it for a loading screen tooltip.
"Units shooting uphill have a 30% miss chance." or something along those lines.
On February 03 2013 10:43 Falling wrote: What is a perfect game? Are there not always competing issues that are being balanced? It strikes me that it is a small sacrifice to add miss-chance that might make a minor difference in skill on an individual unit shot by shot. When in return we open up massive tactical options that demonstrates even more skill by players making use of the high ground advantage to take and hold terrain.
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.
"You're goddamn right."
I'm not sure why people think this would lead to more turtling, if anything it would encourage people to stop turtling. What is the sense of building up a huge army that might then be dealt with by a smaller army (given you fight high ground vs low ground). It wouldn't even affect the mid and late game as much as it would affect the early game. Personally I think implementing a defender's advantage is definitely a move in the right direction. It would lead to more/earlier expanding and smaller groups of armies moving around trying to win smaller battles. This is a no brainer, I'm all for it.
On February 02 2013 09:48 Extenz wrote: it's stupid, most of the time when you attack up a ramp you will risk it because you will attack into a concave and you will have a ball on the ramp, that's already enough for a defensive advantage, do you want to remove all ins from the game? lol
if you can actually defend with fewer units then that means you are free to take more expansions and are encouraged to split up your army and make it less deathbally, and fight for map control instead of sitting in your natural until you max out
no. acutually it will encourage more passive play, encourage more deathball play, since one can play more greedy with the defender advantage. In other words, it will discourage aggression and everyone will sit in their base until they reach maxed army.
On February 02 2013 09:48 Extenz wrote: it's stupid, most of the time when you attack up a ramp you will risk it because you will attack into a concave and you will have a ball on the ramp, that's already enough for a defensive advantage, do you want to remove all ins from the game? lol
if you can actually defend with fewer units then that means you are free to take more expansions and are encouraged to split up your army and make it less deathbally, and fight for map control instead of sitting in your natural until you max out
no. acutually it will encourage more passive play, encourage more deathball play, since one can play more greedy with the defender advantage. In other words, it will discourage aggression and everyone will sit in their base until they reach maxed army.
If the evolution of BW is any indication - and considering many of the best SC2 pros used to play that game - there is evidence to say that defender's advantage encourages aggression. Someone who becomes more defensive will likely be able to expand faster, but then they are vulnerable on the map. Take for instance a TvP, if T turtles and cedes the map, Protoss will litter the map with pylons and be able to reinforce very easily. P will also be able to harass effectively until T has made a shit ton of turrets. By making lots of turrets, the economic advantage of faster expansion could well have been nullified. In addition, P has had pick of the litter for bases around the map.
Defender's advantage would also make the game much more interesting to watch, as the only positional aspect of the game has to do with arc/chokes at the moment. Defender's advantage could also encourage more creative attacks
On February 04 2013 00:24 Barrin wrote: I actually have a pretty strong conviction that the best maps for e-sports - at least the way SC2 is currently set up, which let me be clear I don't agree with to begin with - are just within the range of the average casual player.
I have strong suspicions that this was done on purpose. It only makes sense... follow the money.
Blizzard makes more money, many people get what they feel is a good game and have a lot of fun with it... and us "hardcore" [vocal minority???] are left rather unsatisfied with basically nowhere to turn in terms of RTS games.
But we're not gonna stop talking about it, right guys? xD
I don't know if we are a minority, less and less people are playing the ladder. Even on the forum, some people with no ladder experience sometimes argue about stuff they have never dealt with. See on reddit, those guys always creat threads about ladder anxiety and then argue about how blizzard should fix X detail
Personally i think this is a great idea, however it would require map makers to consider making maps differently to have a game changing effect!
Rather than having a descending map (high points at start/spawn location, rest of the map on the low ground), maps would require varied levels of terrain as features of the map. However the main base will have to be elevated by one level to help early game defense (with the ramp and such).
Would really love to see changes like this implemented! It would allow for much more game diversity and make positional play much more important than which death ball has the better arch! Could also allow for some sick micro of small sized forces vs medium sized forces in the middle of the map!
On February 03 2013 10:43 Falling wrote: What is a perfect game? Are there not always competing issues that are being balanced? It strikes me that it is a small sacrifice to add miss-chance that might make a minor difference in skill on an individual unit shot by shot. When in return we open up massive tactical options that demonstrates even more skill by players making use of the high ground advantage to take and hold terrain.
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.
"You're goddamn right."
I'm not sure why people think this would lead to more turtling, if anything it would encourage people to stop turtling. What is the sense of building up a huge army that might then be dealt with by a smaller army (given you fight high ground vs low ground). It wouldn't even affect the mid and late game as much as it would affect the early game. Personally I think implementing a defender's advantage is definitely a move in the right direction. It would lead to more/earlier expanding and smaller groups of armies moving around trying to win smaller battles. This is a no brainer, I'm all for it.
Decaf we already see some some pros go for thirds before the seven minute mark implementing this defenders advantage would make it more ridiculous and make most counters to early double expands negated and I personally thinks that is a terrible idea since it throws play into a specific route and makes the game less interesting through less non macro build choices. I really like to see players counter greediness and counter their opponents build through scouting this change would make it harder to do so. It should be rewarding to counter your opponents build and punish you if you dont prepare for a counter. This also really makes all-ins bad which they are already a risk they are perfectly strong if not scouted in ample time. This change really supports the people who don't scout for any dangers that would normally destroy them. There already is a defenders advantage aside from ramps and cliffs. Its the fact that if both your armies get wiped out you reinforce faster unless your opponent has a pylon in or near your base or other production facility proxied. Which goes back to solving your problems through scouting.
OP's post is nice and all, full of grand hopes for smarter plays, comebacks, etc. But most of the time when people want "more defender advantage", "more space controlling options", they will use that as a way to turtle even more in an already overly passive game.
SC2 is very passive until top level (Korean GM, GSL, Proleague) is reached. Even at EU foreigner level, people use "safe builds" (aka "not that safe but eh nobody is punishing it..."), macro up a bunch and it's not that rare to see 1 hour long games because nothing happens, people don't take risks, and are not mechanically skilled enough to make something happen anyway. Blizzard gave +2 range to queens, in an attempt (successful I would say :D) to increase Zerg defensive capabilities. How did that turn out? So much smart plays and comebacks, right? Instead of all the difficult thinking involved in the previous dichotomy "making drones vs making combat units", Zerg generally is able to reach at least 65 drones in their non-mirror matchups before anything decision-making related comes up. Nobody says "He droned up a bunch, that's really smart!".
So I'm completely against giving more defender advantage than there is right now. Queens, Mothership core and upgrade-less siege tanks are already good enough. Instead, provide players with fast and micro-intensive units to harass with and outplay their opponents in battle. For me one of the most interesting matchups in WoL to watch is TvT, and I feel like this is because tanks are not overly strong. Shit that moves can actually break siege lines if you have the right quantity and good micro, and that's great. I just hope TvT in HotS will not be full mandatory mech with tanks, turrets and mines everywhere
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.
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.
Yes, they were/are bad design. That doesn't necessarily make them bad games, nor does it mean people won't still play it (and play it a ton). It does add yet another barrier of entry for a casual player though.
This reminds me of the whole debate in MMOs with PVP specific ability subtext, where abilities behave differently if casted against players compared to NPCs. It makes things incredibly confusing to somebody that just wants to get on 5 hours a week and just have fun with friends or strangers. By adding unnecessary or cumbersome complexity to the game, you shut those people out. IMO, that's what adding "hidden" high ground advantage does.
People who play SC2 5 hours a week for a bit of fun and have no additional knowledge through spectating games or so wouldn't really realize if the game had a 30% miss chance or not, nor should the game be designed or balanced around these people. That's also the people who complain about completely ridiculous things as "imba" cos they don't understand high level gaming.
Similarly mapmakers would never focus on these casuals when making a map but only look to make the best maps for esports.
The notion of "imba" transcends player skill, unless you think Ryung specifically and nearly every other pro player is a casual player. Stop trying to pin all the things you don't like on people you don't understand. Casuals are just as much a part of SC2 as "hardcore" fans and players. The game should be the same level of accessible regardless if you want to spend 5 hours or 50 hours a week playing it. You can't ignore or shame the "casual" side of SC2 without also ruining the hardcore side.
Bottom line, this addition would be one of those things a very large number of people wouldn't understand or see unless they saw it explicitly explained somewhere, like Liquipedia or a reference on somebody's stream or cast.
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.
Saying there should be no highground advantage because some people won't understand it is akin to saying that it is not obvious how supply works and therefore that should be removed. Common sense dictates that units shooting up a cliff will not always hit their mark. There is no reason to keep dumbing down these games just because a few idiots won't get it right away.
Everyone who is saying this would lead to more turtling is forgetting that you would be making all the current maps that are used in this game obsolete balance-wise. With this chance, you could get rid of some of those tiny chokes and the ability to better zone off areas of the map would lead to more interesting positioning of expansions around the map. This is not as black and white as you are all making it out to be.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
@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?
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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...
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.
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.
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.
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.
In bw tvt armies were relocated with fleets of dropships rather than just walking into each others defensive positions. High ground advantage might return to that glorious state of affairs.
On February 04 2013 06:11 gedatsu wrote: +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.
And +1 will do nothing for melee units, such as the zergling or zealot. A Huge early game advantage for terran.
I can't believe what's so hard to understand about this. It's a great suggestion and will lead to less ball vs ball play. As sc2 is now you need a maxed army to defend against a maxed army. If it wasn't the case, you could defend against a maxed army and still have a portion av your army attack your opponent somewhere else, ergo you will need to cosider how much of an army you need to defend and how much you need to attack.
Wasn't it 30% miss chance in BW? That could be turned into 30% damage reduction. The calculation would have to be done after armor reduction. For instance 0/0 Stalker shooting up at 0/0 Roach would do (14-1)*70% = 9.1 damage instead of 13.
op do you really want games to become all about stale play, deathball massing with some awkward engagements because no one actually wants to attack high ground(minus drops-which are already prevalent in the metagame)? Not to mention the effects on balance & the effects on TvT. What about the effect it would have on maps with low ground mains? HotS is looking so well designed as it is, Its so depressing to see some people actually agree with the op... Well guess i gotta put my faith in blizzard not paying attention to terrible ideas like this...
sorry if that's a bit heavy of a response, but seriously... just no...
On February 02 2013 10:41 sths wrote: I think TL should institute a policy where in threads regarding game design or game balance, posters should have to include their battlenet ranking before they can comment. This is not elitism, its just that if you're silver league and you say things like "sc2 defenders already have too much advantage because its hard to attack up a ramp", you clearly have very little understanding of the game. This would not be a problem if Blizzard ignored low level people but they don't. I understand the argument that Blizzard have to appease the noobs because they are the largest in numbers. But imagine trying to design the game of tennis or any other competitive sport around what the noobs think instead of what is happening at the highest level. Serve and volley would be banned, 3 point lines would be only 3 meters away from the basket and goals would be 20 meters wide. Would people still play these games let alone watch?
Idk I play zerg and I guess in early early game I can attack up a ramp against terran and zerg but I can never attack up a ramp against protoss and in the midgame I can never attack up a ramp at all unless my opponent is out of position which makes the proposed changes irrelevent.
I agree with your statement but in this case his claims were fair and you can easily argue in their favor...so why not stay on topic.
On February 04 2013 21:27 Rorra wrote: hell no.. its fine as it is.
op do you really want games to become all about stale play, deathball massing with some awkward engagements because no one actually wants to attack high ground(minus drops-which are already prevalent in the metagame)? Not to mention the effects on balance & the effects on TvT. What about the effect it would have on maps with low ground mains? HotS is looking so well designed as it is, Its so depressing to see some people actually agree with the op... Well guess i gotta put my faith in blizzard not paying attention to terrible ideas like this...
sorry if that's a bit heavy of a response, but seriously... just no...
Why do you think deathball massing would become more prevalent if high ground advantage was implemented? Deathball massing didn't seem to be much of a problem in the original Starcraft, which had a high ground advantage. Why would things turn out so differently if high ground advantage was implemented in Starcraft 2?
On February 04 2013 20:35 gOst wrote: I can't believe what's so hard to understand about this. It's a great suggestion and will lead to less ball vs ball play. As sc2 is now you need a maxed army to defend against a maxed army. If it wasn't the case, you could defend against a maxed army and still have a portion av your army attack your opponent somewhere else, ergo you will need to cosider how much of an army you need to defend and how much you need to attack.
This, IMHO, is the simple and straightforward crux to the argument, and I think it (or something like it) should be quoted at the top of the OP so that everyone knows what's really being argued for.
The question in my mind is would balance really need to be changed that much? Right now the game is balanced for deathball vs deathball action - that is to say the balance is already poised so that a small advantage like high ground defence would free up only small amounts of forces for other types of attack/harrasment, thus not changing the game too much. I suppose that doesn't take into account the different levels of mobility of the different races though...
On February 04 2013 16:42 sharkeyanti wrote: For those who've asked, the BW miss chance is 50%.
The fact that most of people who are blindly agreeing with this suggestion don't know this is a pretty good indicator of how obfuscated this stuff can be, even among a community that SHOULD know something like this.
What happens if "deathball play" doesn't end when this silver bullet is implemented? What happens if a change like this doesn't do anything? At worst, what happens if this makes the game even worse strategically? All you've done is added a piss-poor mechanic that is difficult for most people to get at first glance.
On February 04 2013 16:42 sharkeyanti wrote: For those who've asked, the BW miss chance is 50%.
The fact that most of people who are blindly agreeing with this suggestion don't know this is a pretty good indicator of how obfuscated this stuff can be, even among a community that SHOULD know something like this.
What happens if "deathball play" doesn't end when this silver bullet is implemented? What happens if a change like this doesn't do anything? At worst, what happens if this makes the game even worse strategically? All you've done is added a piss-poor mechanic that is difficult for most people to get at first glance.
We're all gonna die.
It's to be tested.. In the beta..
Bad suggestion, because the defenders advantage is already way to big with the choke system :/
Read the thread. Several people pointed out that maps will have to be changed. Maybe this "choke system" doesn't need to exist with this implemented.
On February 04 2013 16:42 sharkeyanti wrote: For those who've asked, the BW miss chance is 50%.
The fact that most of people who are blindly agreeing with this suggestion don't know this is a pretty good indicator of how obfuscated this stuff can be, even among a community that SHOULD know something like this.
What happens if "deathball play" doesn't end when this silver bullet is implemented? What happens if a change like this doesn't do anything? At worst, what happens if this makes the game even worse strategically? All you've done is added a piss-poor mechanic that is difficult for most people to get at first glance.
On February 04 2013 16:42 sharkeyanti wrote: For those who've asked, the BW miss chance is 50%.
The fact that most of people who are blindly agreeing with this suggestion don't know this is a pretty good indicator of how obfuscated this stuff can be, even among a community that SHOULD know something like this.
What happens if "deathball play" doesn't end when this silver bullet is implemented? What happens if a change like this doesn't do anything? At worst, what happens if this makes the game even worse strategically? All you've done is added a piss-poor mechanic that is difficult for most people to get at first glance.
That's what betas are for.
So we're going to test this in a month? Maybe less? It's a huge change. If it were to be implemented, it would have to be done at the beginning of a beta.
At the highest levels of skill such a change could be great for spectators, it could make the game a lot more tense, but for everyone else, regardless of what people in this thread have said about changing the maps, it's going to really slow things down. Unless we're playing on completely flat maps with zero choke points it's going to not only require one of the suggested changes but a complete rebalancing of several units.
Won't happen. It's far too late in the HotS beta for such a change, and I can't imagine that being something that they test on a PTR or their testing maps. It's just too huge of a change.
Being completely honest, if the community got their way and a change like this was implemented, unit pathing was like it was in BW to avoid clumping, and some of the more convenient skill reducing features like MBS were removed ... SC2 would have died shortly after launch. The current belief in this community is that we've lost a lot of casual players because the casual aspects of SC2 are lacking, and if we make the base game closer to brood war, those casual aspects become even worse, and we're boned.
Want brood war? Play Brood War (I do), or play one of the dozen maps that aim to recreate Brood War's gameplay. Different game is different and will remain such.
Stop comparing to BW so much really. Map design and units are too different in sc2 for this to work well, for example the game is already a bit more stale in action and adding this highground mechanic would increase that. Frankly I think it's too late to implement this though it might be better in the end if the maps are made much more open in return..
The problem with this kind of thing in sc2 though is that massive drop play or air play is harder in sc2 I think because all AA units are basically airborne. In BW you have this interesting fight where one army controls ground and has good AA but the other has more mobility and air play. In sc2 you tend to defend drops and airplay with airplay yourself making this kind of play much less interesting.
If it were to be implemented the miss mechanic from BW is the most elegant probably. reduced damage sucks with the armor system of sc2, it means high damage units are hardly affected while low damage units are getting a MASSIVE damage nerf. Reduced attack rate makes absolutely no sense thematically. Reduced range imo influences the game in a poor way, sentries on the ramp or whatever get even stronger then. The possibilities to set up situations where A can hit B but not vice versa then probably get too much
On February 04 2013 16:42 sharkeyanti wrote: For those who've asked, the BW miss chance is 50%.
The fact that most of people who are blindly agreeing with this suggestion don't know this is a pretty good indicator of how obfuscated this stuff can be, even among a community that SHOULD know something like this.
What happens if "deathball play" doesn't end when this silver bullet is implemented? What happens if a change like this doesn't do anything? At worst, what happens if this makes the game even worse strategically? All you've done is added a piss-poor mechanic that is difficult for most people to get at first glance.
That's what betas are for.
So we're going to test this in a month? Maybe less? It's a huge change. If it were to be implemented, it would have to be done at the beginning of a beta.
Man don't be so shortminded, obviously there is not time for HotS beta to implement this, but LotV could be an option.
On February 04 2013 16:42 sharkeyanti wrote: For those who've asked, the BW miss chance is 50%.
The fact that most of people who are blindly agreeing with this suggestion don't know this is a pretty good indicator of how obfuscated this stuff can be, even among a community that SHOULD know something like this.
What happens if "deathball play" doesn't end when this silver bullet is implemented? What happens if a change like this doesn't do anything? At worst, what happens if this makes the game even worse strategically? All you've done is added a piss-poor mechanic that is difficult for most people to get at first glance.
That's what betas are for.
So we're going to test this in a month? Maybe less? It's a huge change. If it were to be implemented, it would have to be done at the beginning of a beta.
Man don't be so shortminded, obviously there is not time for HotS beta to implement this, but LotV could be an option.
On February 04 2013 16:42 sharkeyanti wrote: For those who've asked, the BW miss chance is 50%.
The fact that most of people who are blindly agreeing with this suggestion don't know this is a pretty good indicator of how obfuscated this stuff can be, even among a community that SHOULD know something like this.
What happens if "deathball play" doesn't end when this silver bullet is implemented? What happens if a change like this doesn't do anything? At worst, what happens if this makes the game even worse strategically? All you've done is added a piss-poor mechanic that is difficult for most people to get at first glance.
That's what betas are for.
So we're going to test this in a month? Maybe less? It's a huge change. If it were to be implemented, it would have to be done at the beginning of a beta.
Man don't be so shortminded, obviously there is not time for HotS beta to implement this, but LotV could be an option.
Topic title: HotS Highground Mechanic.
I know, but i think any rational person would know by now that implementing this is impossible withouth a delay on release, something that won't happen, so instead we should ignore that and just aim for more productive things
EPT![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/7K98af6.jpg)
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" . It also helps fend off straight up all-ins which is probably a good thing.
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