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On September 13 2013 02:48 Thieving Magpie wrote:Show nested quote +On September 13 2013 02:46 Woizit wrote:
I recall that there was a point on in WOL when Blizzard stated they were happy with the units and were only looking to balance specific strategies. It seems to me that this approach didn't work out at all, seeing how the meta went extremely stale at the end of WOL. It's quite possible that Blizzard has to rethink their balancing methodology for the game. The meta is stale because there is nothing to fight for on maps. Even MOBAs fight to defend and attack towers.
Well, one of the criticism of SC2 has always been on the deathballs, which ends up in there being not being enough battles across the map. I suppose if Blizzard doesn't look as heavily into balancing push timings and compositions, it might have been easier to buff the lesser used units and bring more creative use of them into the game.
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On September 13 2013 02:43 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On September 13 2013 02:39 Thieving Magpie wrote:On September 13 2013 02:19 Grumbels wrote:
you're being obtuse, they don't have to use the exact same algorithm, they just should have the same behavior, but without edge cases like with ramps and such. And I'm just talking about the part of pathfinding that creates the slightly clumsy spread out movement, not the engine as a whole. WC3 had units that took up space, that were blocky, that were in the way of each other, that didn't clump perfectly, just like brood war, but if you'd send an army somewhere at least it would always get there and not be held up on a ramp somewhere WC3 clumped just like in SC2, their clumps were square and rectangles, but they clumped. They even moved at the speed of the slowest unit of the selected group. WC3 actually forces clumping and you have to manually pull them apart in order for their clumps to work. The reason they don't have the same problems as SC2 is that the AOE hit less units and damage to health ratio was different.. The reason units spread out in BW was because the collisions would force units to reroute, if they forced to reroute too much the initial route they needed to take gets bumped off their memory and suddenly they're just standing in the middle of the map. Without blocky collisions that causes units to not be able to get up a ramp, we also would not have the self spreading movement of BW. This is what I'm talking about when I say that what you're asking for is not really "possible" to recreate because the "spreading out" nature in BW came about for the exact same reasons that all the bugs came about. You remove the bugs and you also remove the spreading out. The point that he is trying to make is that units clump in all games and the only reason they didn't do so in BW was because of the limits on the pathing. Any system to make them "not clump" would cause problems with control, since the player would have to fight against the units own tendency not to clump up when controlling the unit. So if you wanted the units to bunch up against a bunch of zerglings, they would fight against that due to the fact that they are programmed not to clump up. Right now, all of the units attempt to get as lost to the point you clicked on as possible, which is what you want when attempting to control units.
I think the whole situation of unit clumping is a mess. I don't think it is really directly "fixable" by just saying "okay we'll just bump up that collision monitoring or change pathing." I think the issues are that clumping is something that should happen but be really bad for you. So it is bad and should be discouraged, and to include with that is that it pretty much is. AoE will eat you in this game if you don't separate too quickly.
BUT! If you say split your army off to do some stuff or cover an angle and it goes wrong...you're screwed. So people keep their armies nice and tight together and then push or get pushed on and just attack.
So to break it down, you're in between a rock and a hard place. You run the risk of having parts of your army caught and pulled apart. Or you're stuck with this really lame looking and feeling A-move style that makes gameplay boring to do and see.
Also to compare all this to say WC3 is not very constructive. There is much less damage and units in an army in WC3, also these units were enormous in comparison and had lots of abilities in need of micro'ing.
Finally on the topic! I've said it a million times, Blizzard doesn't care. They need to learn to care. Valve didn't just jump into DOTA 2 with this attitude of just giving it all away and weak incentive to continue to log on and spend money and do stuff. In-game tournament system and client. Store. News. Blogging. Extensive community tab. Quarter of your screen for JUST SEEING STEAM FRIENDS AND CHATTING WITH THEM THAT IS ALWAYS THERE. The ability to pull all these things up at pretty much anytime. Knowing your player-base is far more productive than you so letting them do everything and you checking off the work. F2P elements. Better listening and actively engaging with your community. Let your fans and players pay into the success and growth of the game and tournaments. Honestly, if Blizzard can't find a way to monetize in a predominantly F2P model they aren't thinking about it. They're one of the largest and most resourceful developers in the industry. They should have a massive brain-trust behind solving these kinds of problems. I guess that's it.
Oh and serious managerial reworking. They are getting nothing done at too slow of a pace. If they want to monopolize the tournament scene and all game viewership for say a month or 2. They better have some serious shit planned for when their tournament (premier tournament of the game, which sucks actually) is over. Get radical, change things up a lot. Spend all your time for say a month on 1 or 2 units becoming useful via re-design and patching. There is nothing wrong with saying "okay lets branch from here, it didn't work" or whatever. Disregarding the pro-scene of DOTA2, I see all the heroes all the time and there is ~100 of them. Starcraft has what, 50 units total across all races? And I know the argument "well not all units should always be useful", there should ALWAYS be a time and place for each unit and an overarching strategy.
Lol /endRant
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Russian Federation40190 Posts
Get radical, change things up a lot.
Yeah, screw game, after all pro gamers can pick units they do not want to have... oh wait.
Disregarding the pro-scene of DOTA2, I see all the heroes all the time and there is ~100 of them.
With about of 30 of 'em actually used in TI3. ^_^_^_^_^_^
Starcraft has what, 50 units total across all races?
Good luck balancing this.
+ Show Spoiler +Quarter of your screen for JUST SEEING STEAM FRIENDS AND CHATTING WITH THEM THAT IS ALWAYS THERE.
A sole reason i uninstalled Dota 2.
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moba is a bad exemple of balance... moba nerfs/buffs are mostly minor changes... cauz we got that ban/pick order...
as for the UI... I would rather say that dota2 kept mostly the same UI as it was on war3... custom keys, allowed numeric pad on letters etc...
sc2 and sc1 UI...
sc2 and sc1 game speed...
then come sc2 and sc1 units...
then... we got 3 x SC2-s
sc1 esport started on BW
I think you can't compare moba balance and rts balance.. even ways of thinking
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On September 13 2013 02:48 Thieving Magpie wrote:Show nested quote +On September 13 2013 02:46 Woizit wrote:
I recall that there was a point on in WOL when Blizzard stated they were happy with the units and were only looking to balance specific strategies. It seems to me that this approach didn't work out at all, seeing how the meta went extremely stale at the end of WOL. It's quite possible that Blizzard has to rethink their balancing methodology for the game. The meta is stale because there is nothing to fight for on maps. Even MOBAs fight to defend and attack towers.
And so you have a very nice point.
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On September 13 2013 03:17 lolfail9001 wrote:Yeah, screw game, after all pro gamers can pick units they do not want to have... oh wait.
Fail at nit-picking. I made it abundantly clear what the circumstances would/could/should be for this.
Disregarding the pro-scene of DOTA2, I see all the heroes all the time and there is ~100 of them.
With about of 30 of 'em actually used in TI3. ^_^_^_^_^_^
You even included the context needed in my post to make yours sound even more baseless! DISREGARDING PRO SCENE (you know .0005% of the player-base) Who cares what the pros do? No one can do what the pros do, hence "pro." As far as the general populous of the game is concerned, everything should be seemingly viable.
Starcraft has what, 50 units total across all races?
Good luck balancing this.
What does balance have to do with any of it? DOTA 2 heroes aren't all perfectly balanced, but still find usefulness game after game? There's a problem when a race has 15 units and 5 of them aren't used. Scaling dude, scaling.
+ Show Spoiler +Quarter of your screen for JUST SEEING STEAM FRIENDS AND CHATTING WITH THEM THAT IS ALWAYS THERE.
A sole reason i uninstalled Dota 2.
Yeah because you and the super anti-social majority all hate playing games with their friends and having easy access to talking/interacting with them on some level. And that's how it is for absolutely everyone.
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It's been over 3 years and blizzard has learned next to nothing in relation to SC2. What makes you think they will have a conceptual design epiphany anytime soon?
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Blizzard can definately start doing some of these, but they have said that they wont rework any unit until LotV beta so they wont adopt any ideas. Overall i think one of the best things that blizzard could do is to buff underused units in sc2, this hurts the game way too much IMO, things like watching a terran everytime go bio sometimes kill me in the inside but blizzard has reasons to do so
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Well, LotV is not going to sell much as HOTS only sold 1/3 of WOL.
WOL = 3 million
HOTS = 1.1 million
LotV = 40k???
Going F2P may be an incentive for them now.
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On September 13 2013 02:39 Thieving Magpie wrote:Show nested quote +On September 13 2013 02:19 Grumbels wrote:
you're being obtuse, they don't have to use the exact same algorithm, they just should have the same behavior, but without edge cases like with ramps and such. And I'm just talking about the part of pathfinding that creates the slightly clumsy spread out movement, not the engine as a whole. WC3 had units that took up space, that were blocky, that were in the way of each other, that didn't clump perfectly, just like brood war, but if you'd send an army somewhere at least it would always get there and not be held up on a ramp somewhere WC3 clumped just like in SC2, their clumps were square and rectangles, but they clumped. They even moved at the speed of the slowest unit of the selected group. WC3 actually forces clumping and you have to manually pull them apart in order for their clumps to work. The reason they don't have the same problems as SC2 is that the AOE hit less units and damage to health ratio was different.. The reason units spread out in BW was because the collisions would force units to reroute, if they forced to reroute too much the initial route they needed to take gets bumped off their memory and suddenly they're just standing in the middle of the map. Without blocky collisions that causes units to not be able to get up a ramp, we also would not have the self spreading movement of BW. This is what I'm talking about when I say that what you're asking for is not really "possible" to recreate because the "spreading out" nature in BW came about for the exact same reasons that all the bugs came about. You remove the bugs and you also remove the spreading out.
WC3 also did NOT have "a crapton of units which could focus fire even high health enemy units to die in one volley" ... that game had a 12 unit selection which limited the dps concentration of an army. You also had an incentive to keep your army smaller than it could be ... which would not work in Starcraft IMO. So I think comparing the games directly is of limited use.
The "automatic fomation" would also be a bad thing for Starcraft because it removes micro potential and makes the play even more lazy than it is already.
The "bump into each other and reroute to spread out" is one of the necessary things for SC2, BUT the dev team said something like "we tested it and it didnt change much" for the Dynamic unit movement which people had come up with in 2011.
Dynamic Unit Movement
Even though it probably wasnt perfect the answer sounded as if Blizzard didnt understand the purpose of spreading units or such a change in behaviour OR they simply chose to ignore it.
No fix to clumpy unit movement
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On September 13 2013 14:34 larse wrote:
Well, LotV is not going to sell much as HOTS only sold 1/3 of WOL.
WOL = 3 million
HOTS = 1.1 million
LotV = 40k???
Going F2P may be an incentive for them now.
And how are you going to get the money to pay Dustins and Davids salaries? Selling skins doesnt make sense and what other option is there? Selling maps is a terrible idea for egoshooters already ...
You dont make a crappy game more popular in the long run by making it free to play, you only make the few idiots who dont want to pay the $60 play ... for a short time.
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On September 13 2013 14:52 Rabiator wrote:Show nested quote +On September 13 2013 14:34 larse wrote:
Well, LotV is not going to sell much as HOTS only sold 1/3 of WOL.
WOL = 3 million
HOTS = 1.1 million
LotV = 40k???
Going F2P may be an incentive for them now. And how are you going to get the money to pay Dustins and Davids salaries? Selling skins doesnt make sense and what other option is there? Selling maps is a terrible idea for egoshooters already ... You dont make a crappy game more popular in the long run by making it free to play, you only make the few idiots who dont want to pay the $60 play ... for a short time.
What they can do is make LotV arcade free (idk if map market is going to be a thing) in addition to the spawning they have right now. The expansion gets you ranked/unranked 1v1 and campaign(A large majority buy the game only for the campaign). That would be a start.
Along with some fresh ideas for starcraft 2, it could be enough. At the end of the day, hardcore fans can only prop up so much of the load. The casual market is really where you make money.
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Haven't read everything but blizzard has given a hint of what the community can do to help on testing things out, but no structured way of doing it ever came to be.
Personally i think they should abuse more the test map way, with trying out things that dont necessarily have to go live, where they can just see how it plays out. Since they can capture data from whoever plays these maps more easilly than us.
But what the community could do is something of those sorts, there's tons of threads and posts about balances, ideas, etc... It would be awesome it there was a structured group that made custom maps trying out several of these ideas, not only to flesh out more publicly what can or not work but also to give maybe extra data to blizzard of these huge amount of ideas that never have any backing or testing behind them.
A structured group for this would need exposure though, so it would need public personalities to it. Hopefully from several areas like casting, progaming or ex-progamers, mappers/custom game makers, high level players that been helping on strategy guides, etc... That would test these things more consistently and give ideas about it.
Dota even is an example of similar things, a custom game with different ideas. But while that one was completely different, something could be done to test more dramatic changes, especially since blizzard doesn't do it so publicly in test maps or they could even have 2 different types of test maps. One for ideas to go live, another to test big impact ideas.
Unfortunately i see a whole lot of talk and not as much action from our side.
All of this because, regarding to the thread itself, i agree that some changes should be tested regarding the underutilized units but it still needs to be very careful for the whole lot of reasons already mentioned throughout the thread. So an approach using custom maps but in a more structured way so we can actually learn and gather data from it, would in my opinion be the best way to go about it. Instead of doing it "half assed" in a very closed environment and then dumping to the public in a live setting, which blizzard so far only has been able to do these sort of things in a Beta environment... but again, why not have a test map(s) side of this as an ongoing beta and try to pick the solid ideas to be further tested for live and finally hitting live?
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The problem with BW is that it is a skill less game and they really shouldn't have made pathing that easy to use.
The Dune II way of army movement was much harder to use and the one unit selection really made micro "necessary," instead of just Dragoon a-move death balling. The need for building pavement underneath structures really allows for players macro to shine.
Nostalgic BW fanatics are really stupid to listen to sometimes and even though the clumping up of AI. is there it doesn't change the fact that most units in SC2 is better in a death ball formation and so if you changed the movement pathing it would just be, who's better at clumping up the units anyways and wouldn't change that much at all.
What they could do is nerf some of the ranged units, buff some melee, maybe add more melee units and add more splash damage. The day where people spread units like BW because they decided upon it is much greater than the day they did it, because that's how the pathing works.
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On September 13 2013 16:47 ejozl wrote:
The problem with BW is that it is a skill less game and they really shouldn't have made pathing that easy to use.
The Dune II way of army movement was much harder to use and the one unit selection really made micro "necessary," instead of just Dragoon a-move death balling. The need for building pavement underneath structures really allows for players macro to shine.
Nostalgic BW fanatics are really stupid to listen to sometimes and even though the clumping up of AI. is there it doesn't change the fact that most units in SC2 is better in a death ball formation and so if you changed the movement pathing it would just be, who's better at clumping up the units anyways and wouldn't change that much at all.
The funny thing is that it doesn't actually have anything to do with Brood War or Brood War "fanboyism".
In a real time game, if you do not have the physical (control) obstacle that will stand between what the player wants to do, and what the player actually can do within a specific time frame given his proficiency at the game and manual dexterity, you just don't have a game. You NEVER automate the tasks to the point where the player can control the game with ease.
You want to shoot a thing with your gun in an FPS game? You have to actually point the crosshair over his head within less than a second, and if he's faster at pointing the crosshair at you than you are at pointing the crosshair at him, you die. We could easily automate aiming, but we don't, because aiming is half the game, and we do not want to take half the game away from the player because that's dumb. If you did that, it would be all about who has the better gear loadout and smarter movement (ie who makes better decisions).
You want to build an unit in an RTS? You need to select ONE building and press a hotkey to build only ONE unit at a time, so that if someone is better at building units regularly than you are, he can get the advantage he deserves from being better at macro and multitasking (skills that are barely even relevant in SC2). In traditional RTS, control and multitasking were always half - or more than half - the game. If you take that away, it's all about who has the better build and unit composition at any point in time (ie who makes better decisions).
Physical control is what makes or breaks the game for mostly any real time games, especially competitive games. Bare strategy is boring, winning by having a better strategy and decision making alone is boring, and if you turn the game into that, it's no different than a fast paced card game.
If you want to fix BW pathing, fine, I get that. But you have to give some kind of mechanic IN RETURN - something that will make the game feel the same and be a proper spiritual successor and compensate for the layer of control you just eliminated by fixing pathing. You invent a new mechanic that will split the player's attention from where he would ideally want his attention to be, you invent a mechanic that will stress the player's mouse accuracy or keyboard APM in ways that Brood War didn't have.
But Starcraft 2 didn't do that. They "fixed" pathing and interface as if they were developing a business application and didn't bring anything to compensate for the loss in the depth of core gameplay. So they ended up with a game that looks like Starcraft, but feels more like SimStarcraft than a proper sequel.
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Russian Federation221 Posts
On September 13 2013 16:47 ejozl wrote:
The problem with BW is that it is a skill less game and they really shouldn't have made pathing that easy to use.
The Dune II way of army movement was much harder to use and the one unit selection really made micro "necessary," instead of just Dragoon a-move death balling. The need for building pavement underneath structures really allows for players macro to shine.
Nostalgic BW fanatics are really stupid to listen to sometimes and even though the clumping up of AI. is there it doesn't change the fact that most units in SC2 is better in a death ball formation and so if you changed the movement pathing it would just be, who's better at clumping up the units anyways and wouldn't change that much at all.
What they could do is nerf some of the ranged units, buff some melee, maybe add more melee units and add more splash damage. The day where people spread units like BW because they decided upon it is much greater than the day they did it, because that's how the pathing works.
OK let’s talk about pathfinding in LOL and DOTA2.
What algorithm is used there?
Do these games use dynamic movement?
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On September 13 2013 17:06 MikeMM wrote:Show nested quote +On September 13 2013 16:47 ejozl wrote:
The problem with BW is that it is a skill less game and they really shouldn't have made pathing that easy to use.
The Dune II way of army movement was much harder to use and the one unit selection really made micro "necessary," instead of just Dragoon a-move death balling. The need for building pavement underneath structures really allows for players macro to shine.
Nostalgic BW fanatics are really stupid to listen to sometimes and even though the clumping up of AI. is there it doesn't change the fact that most units in SC2 is better in a death ball formation and so if you changed the movement pathing it would just be, who's better at clumping up the units anyways and wouldn't change that much at all.
What they could do is nerf some of the ranged units, buff some melee, maybe add more melee units and add more splash damage. The day where people spread units like BW because they decided upon it is much greater than the day they did it, because that's how the pathing works. OK let’s talk about pathfinding in LOL and DOTA2. What algorithm is used there? Do these games use dynamic movement?
how is that at all relevant...
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On September 13 2013 14:52 Rabiator wrote:Show nested quote +On September 13 2013 14:34 larse wrote:
Well, LotV is not going to sell much as HOTS only sold 1/3 of WOL.
WOL = 3 million
HOTS = 1.1 million
LotV = 40k???
Going F2P may be an incentive for them now. And how are you going to get the money to pay Dustins and Davids salaries? Selling skins doesnt make sense and what other option is there? Selling maps is a terrible idea for egoshooters already ... You dont make a crappy game more popular in the long run by making it free to play, you only make the few idiots who dont want to pay the $60 play ... for a short time.
There are plenty of ways of monetize SC2. Not just skins. There are just so many ways. I can list a ton of. Use your imagination.
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Russian Federation221 Posts
On September 13 2013 17:14 Fishgle wrote:Show nested quote +On September 13 2013 17:06 MikeMM wrote:On September 13 2013 16:47 ejozl wrote:
The problem with BW is that it is a skill less game and they really shouldn't have made pathing that easy to use.
The Dune II way of army movement was much harder to use and the one unit selection really made micro "necessary," instead of just Dragoon a-move death balling. The need for building pavement underneath structures really allows for players macro to shine.
Nostalgic BW fanatics are really stupid to listen to sometimes and even though the clumping up of AI. is there it doesn't change the fact that most units in SC2 is better in a death ball formation and so if you changed the movement pathing it would just be, who's better at clumping up the units anyways and wouldn't change that much at all.
What they could do is nerf some of the ranged units, buff some melee, maybe add more melee units and add more splash damage. The day where people spread units like BW because they decided upon it is much greater than the day they did it, because that's how the pathing works. OK let’s talk about pathfinding in LOL and DOTA2. What algorithm is used there? Do these games use dynamic movement? how is that at all relevant...
I thought the thread was what Blizzard can learn from MOBA?
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On September 13 2013 17:16 MikeMM wrote:Show nested quote +On September 13 2013 17:14 Fishgle wrote:On September 13 2013 17:06 MikeMM wrote:On September 13 2013 16:47 ejozl wrote:
The problem with BW is that it is a skill less game and they really shouldn't have made pathing that easy to use.
The Dune II way of army movement was much harder to use and the one unit selection really made micro "necessary," instead of just Dragoon a-move death balling. The need for building pavement underneath structures really allows for players macro to shine.
Nostalgic BW fanatics are really stupid to listen to sometimes and even though the clumping up of AI. is there it doesn't change the fact that most units in SC2 is better in a death ball formation and so if you changed the movement pathing it would just be, who's better at clumping up the units anyways and wouldn't change that much at all.
What they could do is nerf some of the ranged units, buff some melee, maybe add more melee units and add more splash damage. The day where people spread units like BW because they decided upon it is much greater than the day they did it, because that's how the pathing works. OK let’s talk about pathfinding in LOL and DOTA2. What algorithm is used there? Do these games use dynamic movement? how is that at all relevant... I thought the thread was what Blizzard can learn from MOBA?
yea but... pathfinding algorithms don't really matter all that much in dotas. you're almost always controlling 1 unit. And dota just uses WC3 pathfinding anyway.
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EPT
