On October 29 2013 02:45 The_Red_Viper wrote: Well yeah i kinda agree that deathball play is less common. But deathballs arent gone and they are as boring as ever, thats my point.
They are never going to leave as long as all of our units can fit on one screen. There are no hitters in baseball and those are dull, but it's the way the game works.
bad analogy. no hitters are mega intense. stick to starcraft sir.
In your opinion, sir. I know plenty of baseball fans how loath them.
looks like everyone is having a good time.
the Larson perfect game is one of the most celebrated games in the history of the World Series.
the Dave Stieb no-hitter got a standing ovation even though it was in the opposition ball park. and his "near misses" of no-hitters were equally intense. it was in old cleveland municipal stadium.. and again.. everyone had a great time even though the "Blue Jays" are the worst road draw in Major League Baseball.. by a huge margin.
this is way off topic though.
Opinions and personal taste are things that cannot be disproven. Your argument is both fruitless and proves very little.
I have to say, reading that, followed by reading your quote, quite funny.
Still not sure why we are talking about this though.
On October 29 2013 02:18 RampancyTW wrote: Oh look, more gems![quote]... The pros have stopped using deathballs because they're too BAD to use.
They didnt use to stop deathballs, gosh why are you insisting on that point if its just not true.
On October 29 2013 02:17 RampancyTW wrote: Plansix, as much as these threads are obnoxious, all of the little gems that they squeeze out of the woodwork ALMOST make it all worth it.
[quote]
Where else can you find such a high concentration of people that clearly neither play nor watch the game?
If you think that this post was bad and it has no truth in it, then i think you dont watch the game^^ sc2 is an extremely timing heavy game, yeah he exaggerated a bit, but there is some truth in it..
The ones that are good enough to stop using them have stopped using them, because they're suboptimal.
"Deathball" is a general term used to describe an unstoppable game-ending army (which usually does form to close out games), but that's completely different from "deathball play," which is what threads like these and posters like the one I responded to are referring to. Deathball play is dying as players get better.
And SC2 is no more timing-dependent than BW was, but I don't hear anybody complaining about the timing-dependency of BW. Probably because it's not actually an issue, and lends a natural ebb and flow to games.
Well yeah i kinda agree that deathball play is less common. But deathballs arent gone and they are as boring as ever, thats my point.
That's 100% a player skill thing, though. The better a player gets, the less likely he is to fall back to deathball play.
Well no and thats exactly my point. It isnt even that there are deathballs, but how they play out is the stupid thing in sc2. Dear vs soulkey game two. Dear lost his 3rd several times but got his deathball rolling. He then won the game with one fight and that fight was just stupid and anticlimatic, thats the "problem". (btw i dont say he didnt deserve that win, he harrassed well etc!!).
Well, that's the thing. The deathball push as the end is just ceremony. It's an engagement that says "After all of this action throughout the game, I have amassed a sizeable enough of an advantage that I can end it right here." Or it's a response to a player spreading themselves out too thin/getting out of position in their attempts to abuse a less-mobile player.
Without the possibility for a deathball roll-over, the more mobile player would always win, because there would be no way to truly punish a similarly-skilled opponent with more mobility. If the engagements were super long and exciting with the far superior force being unable to beat the far inferior force with similar levels of play, then there would be a completely separate issue of glaring imbalance and/or unusable units.
i dont know man. I think its just anticlimatic and not exciting at all. I get what you are saying but if we pretend that they have 2 blobs that are actually quite equal in strenght, nothing changes, cause the fight is just so fast over and there is very little micro you CAN SEE (some would argue you can DO) during them. I really enjoy sc2 and i agree that the games got better over time, but this issue is pretty much the same as ever, except that the game that leads to it has changed in a good way
I actually posted about this right above. The actual army engagements are more than just the fully-committed fighting that occurs. There's a lot of dancing and sparring that leads to that end few seconds of fighting, and even those few seconds of fighting can last a longgg time if both players are on top of their micro and positioning and reinforcing.
Well i dont think i can add much more to my thoughts. I think it could still be better and more appealing to watch. I think a big reason why mobas are so successfull is that the teamfights are pretty cool to watch most of the time (and i am not even a big moba fan per se). I think sc2 lacks in these aspects in a lot of matchups. Its not "bad enough" for me to not watch it (i like sc2, i started with it and just now got into BW too), but i can acknowledge that it could be better i guess.
On October 29 2013 02:18 RampancyTW wrote: Oh look, more gems![quote]... The pros have stopped using deathballs because they're too BAD to use.
They didnt use to stop deathballs, gosh why are you insisting on that point if its just not true.
On October 29 2013 02:17 RampancyTW wrote: Plansix, as much as these threads are obnoxious, all of the little gems that they squeeze out of the woodwork ALMOST make it all worth it.
[quote]
Where else can you find such a high concentration of people that clearly neither play nor watch the game?
If you think that this post was bad and it has no truth in it, then i think you dont watch the game^^ sc2 is an extremely timing heavy game, yeah he exaggerated a bit, but there is some truth in it..
The ones that are good enough to stop using them have stopped using them, because they're suboptimal.
"Deathball" is a general term used to describe an unstoppable game-ending army (which usually does form to close out games), but that's completely different from "deathball play," which is what threads like these and posters like the one I responded to are referring to. Deathball play is dying as players get better.
And SC2 is no more timing-dependent than BW was, but I don't hear anybody complaining about the timing-dependency of BW. Probably because it's not actually an issue, and lends a natural ebb and flow to games.
Well yeah i kinda agree that deathball play is less common. But deathballs arent gone and they are as boring as ever, thats my point.
That's 100% a player skill thing, though. The better a player gets, the less likely he is to fall back to deathball play.
Well no and thats exactly my point. It isnt even that there are deathballs, but how they play out is the stupid thing in sc2. Dear vs soulkey game two. Dear lost his 3rd several times but got his deathball rolling. He then won the game with one fight and that fight was just stupid and anticlimatic, thats the "problem". (btw i dont say he didnt deserve that win, he harrassed well etc!!).
Well, that's the thing. The deathball push as the end is just ceremony. It's an engagement that says "After all of this action throughout the game, I have amassed a sizeable enough of an advantage that I can end it right here." Or it's a response to a player spreading themselves out too thin/getting out of position in their attempts to abuse a less-mobile player.
Without the possibility for a deathball roll-over, the more mobile player would always win, because there would be no way to truly punish a similarly-skilled opponent with more mobility. If the engagements were super long and exciting with the far superior force being unable to beat the far inferior force with similar levels of play, then there would be a completely separate issue of glaring imbalance and/or unusable units.
i dont know man. I think its just anticlimatic and not exciting at all. I get what you are saying but if we pretend that they have 2 blobs that are actually quite equal in strenght, nothing changes, cause the fight is just so fast over and there is very little micro you CAN SEE (some would argue you can DO) during them. I really enjoy sc2 and i agree that the games got better over time, but this issue is pretty much the same as ever, except that the game that leads to it has changed in a good way
I'm a big fan of SC's, Bomber's, and Maru's terran deathballs in both TvZ and TvP
Sure it looks like a train of terran infantry streaming the length of 4-8 screens as they stutter step, split, do drops, and land emps/burrow micro mines/target fire tanks, but its the same thing as a deathball.
Mechanically speaking that is. Visually it looks very different and in the end I think most people's actual complaints about the deathball is not *how* it works but is instead *what* it looks like.
yeah kinda, but thats not the whole truth. tvz engagements are way way cooler, cause terran has to split vs banelings, drop, spread the mines out. Zerg has to split vs the mines, split the banelings too, if possible surround the terran, micro your mutas to pick up the mines etcpp. You could argue that it only looks better, but thats the whole point, it looks better cause the interaction is way better designed.
I'm mostly just trying to point out that even the Protoss deathball has a LOT going on to it, mechanically speaking. It has lots of pre-splitting, storm flanks, Colossus kiting, proper blink play, target firing, observer placement, etc...
It also "technically" takes up a large area of the map. But observers don't look cool as "map control" elements the way a pack of marines or lings take up space. 1-2 templars engaging a flanking storm doesn't look as badass as a contingent of bio/roaches doing a surround. And stalker target firing doesn't excite like marine splits excite.
There is a lot of VERY impressive things happening with a protoss deathball. But I agree with you that it sucks how much of it is so transparent (in a bad way). We just can't see it very well like we can when watching zerg surrounds (looking like ants swarming a spider) or watching bio engagements (splits, stutters, etc...).
On October 29 2013 02:51 Plansix wrote: There are no hitters in baseball and those are dull, but it's the way the game works.
that is not a statement of "personal taste" that is an incorrect over generalization. i,and millions of baseball fans love no hitters. and as u've already stated.. personal tastes can'tt be disproven. stick to starcraft, this is off topic.
Sorry, I should have said I found them boring an dull and a lot of my friends do too. I didn't think my statement would be mistaken to include every baseball fan in creation. I sincerely apologize for its inaccuracy and to those who were offended or hurt by it.
"Deathball" in the traditional sense is pretty much gone from the pro scene. If you watched any of the Season 3 finals you'd know this.
This thread is about 1 page of insightful commentary and 9 pages of Terrans complaining that they can't beat Protoss "because deathball" despite the fact that bunching all your units (especially HT) is one of the worst things you can do against Terran.
On October 29 2013 02:51 Plansix wrote: There are no hitters in baseball and those are dull, but it's the way the game works.
that is not a statement of "personal taste" that is an incorrect over generalization. i,and millions of baseball fans love no hitters. and as u've already stated.. personal tastes can'tt be disproven. stick to starcraft, this is off topic.
Sorry, I should have said I found them boring an dull and a lot of my friends do too. I didn't think my statement would be mistaken to include every baseball fan in creation. I sincerely apologize for its inaccuracy and to those who were offended or hurt by it.
In fairness to Planxis, I still don't understand why in the hell you'd be entertained by a no hitter. Unless it was the giants of course, that goes without saying
But really, other than the fact that you enjoy watching your team winning, a no hitter is literally baseball minus the baseball team. Turns the game into a bunch of guys standing around grass watching their friends play catch.
All my objectivity disappears when I see the giants do it, but really though. Fanboyism is just that, fanboyism.
I don't think that death balls (defined as large groups of units with exceptional power) are bad per se. I also don't think that death ball play is necessarily bad, but I suppose that every play style has the potential to degenerate. In Starcraft II's case it can be that economy, map control, production and so on all don't matter because you simply can't kill or even dent the death ball once it exists.
I was watching Planetary Annihilation videos after reading about it in the first post and I would say that the game seems to have severe problems. It is played on a sphere, but there is no meaningful terrain, so you have to defend sections of your base with turrets and that sort of thing and I would say that the entire game can be reduced to attacking at many different fronts and constantly multitasking. Much like one of those games of risk that you can play on the arcade actually. I would say that the inability to create cost effective armies once you're down on economy and an inability to defend your territory without investing too much into static defense probably makes the game more one dimensional. (this is my analysis based off of 1h of PA footage though )
On October 29 2013 04:11 Grumbels wrote: I don't think that death balls (defined as large groups of units with exceptional power) are bad per se. I also don't think that death ball play is necessarily bad, but I suppose that every play style has the potential to degenerate. In Starcraft II's case it can be that economy, map control, production and so on all don't matter because you simply can't kill or even dent the death ball once it exists.
I was watching Planetary Annihilation videos after reading about it in the first post and I would say that the game seems to have severe problems. It is played on a sphere, but there is no meaningful terrain, so you have to defend sections of your base with turrets and that sort of thing and I would say that the entire game can be reduced to attacking at many different fronts and constantly multitasking. Much like one of those games of risk that you can play on the arcade actually. I would say that the inability to create cost effective armies once you're down on economy and an inability to defend your territory without investing too much into static defense probably makes the game more one dimensional. (this is my analysis based off of 1h of PA footage though )
I'm hoping someone can make a custom map to truly modify the pathfinding， etc.
On October 29 2013 04:04 DinoMight wrote: "Deathball" in the traditional sense is pretty much gone from the pro scene. If you watched any of the Season 3 finals you'd know this.
This thread is about 1 page of insightful commentary and 9 pages of Terrans complaining that they can't beat Protoss "because deathball" despite the fact that bunching all your units (especially HT) is one of the worst things you can do against Terran.
Bunching all your stuff is bad in general in SC2. The only time you actually want to bunch up stuff is when you are against melee only stuff that lacks huge amounts of splash like banes and even then some prefer to keep stuff bunched up and just focus it down before it hurts (see: Innovation).
On October 29 2013 22:12 NeThZOR wrote: Map design is the way forward. It is not up to Blizzard, but up to the mapmaking community and pros to change the way maps are made.
It is now up to Blizzard to make those maps used though due to WCS'n'stuff.
On October 29 2013 22:12 NeThZOR wrote: Map design is the way forward. It is not up to Blizzard, but up to the mapmaking community and pros to change the way maps are made.
It is now up to Blizzard to make those maps used though due to WCS'n'stuff.
Lots of non-WCS tournaments that could do it; but won't since players won't test new maps at the cost losing practice time on WCS maps.
On October 29 2013 22:12 NeThZOR wrote: Map design is the way forward. It is not up to Blizzard, but up to the mapmaking community and pros to change the way maps are made.
It is now up to Blizzard to make those maps used though due to WCS'n'stuff.
Lots of non-WCS tournaments that could do it; but won't since players won't test new maps at the cost losing practice time on WCS maps.
On October 29 2013 04:11 Grumbels wrote: I don't think that death balls (defined as large groups of units with exceptional power) are bad per se. I also don't think that death ball play is necessarily bad, but I suppose that every play style has the potential to degenerate. In Starcraft II's case it can be that economy, map control, production and so on all don't matter because you simply can't kill or even dent the death ball once it exists.
I was watching Planetary Annihilation videos after reading about it in the first post and I would say that the game seems to have severe problems. It is played on a sphere, but there is no meaningful terrain, so you have to defend sections of your base with turrets and that sort of thing and I would say that the entire game can be reduced to attacking at many different fronts and constantly multitasking. Much like one of those games of risk that you can play on the arcade actually. I would say that the inability to create cost effective armies once you're down on economy and an inability to defend your territory without investing too much into static defense probably makes the game more one dimensional. (this is my analysis based off of 1h of PA footage though )
I'm hoping someone can make a custom map to truly modify the pathfinding， etc.
There are already a few of those maps in sc2. SC2:BW and maybe Starbow use custom scripts to simulate BW-like pathing. There was a big thread last year about a map that modified one value in the editor to greatly increase the size of magic boxes so that units can move in a spread formation but can still clump up manually if needed.
not a new issue...and certainly one that the devs at blizzard are aware of. i imagine they think about every detail of their games to a greater depth than we forum warriors do, to be honest.
the deathball is good...it't a valid formation of units on the battlefield. i don't know if it should be the default though...i think i should have to choose it.
i don't like the look of it...can't see the ground between your units so your army doesn't feel impressive, and you miss all of those beautiful animations blizz worked hard to create.
as a concept, i think a strategy game should allow for options, innovations and creativity in solving any one particular problem, and movement on the field, maneuvers in battle could benefit with more diversity in SC2. i think.
On October 29 2013 04:11 Grumbels wrote: I don't think that death balls (defined as large groups of units with exceptional power) are bad per se. I also don't think that death ball play is necessarily bad, but I suppose that every play style has the potential to degenerate. In Starcraft II's case it can be that economy, map control, production and so on all don't matter because you simply can't kill or even dent the death ball once it exists.
I was watching Planetary Annihilation videos after reading about it in the first post and I would say that the game seems to have severe problems. It is played on a sphere, but there is no meaningful terrain, so you have to defend sections of your base with turrets and that sort of thing and I would say that the entire game can be reduced to attacking at many different fronts and constantly multitasking. Much like one of those games of risk that you can play on the arcade actually. I would say that the inability to create cost effective armies once you're down on economy and an inability to defend your territory without investing too much into static defense probably makes the game more one dimensional. (this is my analysis based off of 1h of PA footage though )
I'm hoping someone can make a custom map to truly modify the pathfinding， etc.
There are already a few of those maps in sc2. SC2:BW and maybe Starbow use custom scripts to simulate BW-like pathing. There was a big thread last year about a map that modified one value in the editor to greatly increase the size of magic boxes so that units can move in a spread formation but can still clump up manually if needed.
Barrin's maps with less mineral patches also simulated the 4-6 base map spread that naturally broke up the deathball just because the bases were too spread out to protect otherwise.
On October 29 2013 04:11 Grumbels wrote: I don't think that death balls (defined as large groups of units with exceptional power) are bad per se. I also don't think that death ball play is necessarily bad, but I suppose that every play style has the potential to degenerate. In Starcraft II's case it can be that economy, map control, production and so on all don't matter because you simply can't kill or even dent the death ball once it exists.
I was watching Planetary Annihilation videos after reading about it in the first post and I would say that the game seems to have severe problems. It is played on a sphere, but there is no meaningful terrain, so you have to defend sections of your base with turrets and that sort of thing and I would say that the entire game can be reduced to attacking at many different fronts and constantly multitasking. Much like one of those games of risk that you can play on the arcade actually. I would say that the inability to create cost effective armies once you're down on economy and an inability to defend your territory without investing too much into static defense probably makes the game more one dimensional. (this is my analysis based off of 1h of PA footage though )
I'm hoping someone can make a custom map to truly modify the pathfinding， etc.
There are already a few of those maps in sc2. SC2:BW and maybe Starbow use custom scripts to simulate BW-like pathing. There was a big thread last year about a map that modified one value in the editor to greatly increase the size of magic boxes so that units can move in a spread formation but can still clump up manually if needed.
Barrin's maps with less mineral patches also simulated the 4-6 base map spread that naturally broke up the deathball just because the bases were too spread out to protect otherwise.
I also recall playing another map that increased unit radii as a dps nerf to clumping, though with pathing unchanged. It honestly felt awkward to play, but it's always interesting to try out these ideas in various custom maps.
On October 29 2013 23:27 Azelja wrote: If Blizzard would just "fix" the 3-base max income thing...
Honestly, this isn't even something that looks like it needs "fixing" at this point. I wouldn't be opposed to some tweaking IF it could be shown that it improved the game, but things look pretttty damn good at the top level right now.
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