There isn't anything wrong with the current dynamics, as pro games are now showing.
I disagree, I think the progames even from WCS aren't as good in this aspect as they could or should be.
...For arbitrary reasons that you have yet to specify beyond just saying it wasn't good enough for you.
Watch brood war and compare the games.
*Watches Flash turtle until 200-200 and roll random protoss* Whoa?
Mech in BW works nothing like an Sc2 deathball, it's extremely positional and clumping up and moving forwards is a death sentence. It's built around area control and multiple lines of defense, with constant vulture harassment to slow protoss down.
Protoss in SC2 works nothing like a BW Mech deathball, it's extremely reactive and spreading thin and turtling with multiple layers of defense is a death sentence. It's built around strategical dynamics with your opponent and multiple timing possibilities, with constant defensive posturing and offensive threatening to slow Terran down.
... you can make anything sound fancy if you just have enough in-depth knowledge about it. For the viewer what is left is a guy building tanks for 15+mins and then moving over to the opponent, or a guy building Colossi and Gateway units for 15+mins and then moving over to the opponent. How crucial that turret ring or that blink research for drop defense was is rather uninteresting if at the end of the day it simply prevented it.
On October 30 2013 03:56 AZN)Boy wrote: The problem with SC2 isn't so much about the dealthball and OP units. Blizz's approach toward the designed of micro and macro was flawed. Imagine if you’re only able to select 12 units at a time, hotkey 1 building at a time, and casters has to be control manually like in BW.
This would be more of a sensible approach rather than tweaking units and implementing small changes that ultimately effect the current meta game.
The good part of BW is neither unit selection nor limited building hotkey (I hate those wired features). As I said in the post, it is the pathfinding. I doubt you have read the post, especially the very comprehensive blog article regarding pathfinding mentioned in the post.
On October 30 2013 03:56 AZN)Boy wrote: The problem with SC2 isn't so much about the dealthball and OP units. Blizz's approach toward the designed of micro and macro was flawed. Imagine if you’re only able to select 12 units at a time, hotkey 1 building at a time, and casters has to be control manually like in BW.
This would be more of a sensible approach rather than tweaking units and implementing small changes that ultimately effect the current meta game.
The good part of BW is neither unit selection nor limited building hotkey (I hate those wired features). As I said in the post, it is the pathfinding. I doubt you have read the post, especially the very comprehensive blog article regarding pathfinding mentioned in the post.
Don't forget the mining. There is actually a benefit to spreading harvesters across more than 3 bases. And the micro of each and every unit is much more skillful- no much that an expert of a unit could do amazing things with it and people actually specialized in certain play styles.
On October 30 2013 00:11 SoFrOsTy wrote: BW had deathballs as well.
Only really for air units due to the movement mechanics and NEVER in a casual game ... unlike SC2, where you are basically forced to use the deathball because it is the "automatic" way.
Every race had countermeasures against air deathballs in BW, but there cant be the same anti-deathball mechanics in SC2 because they would become too efficient and have been nerfed to the ground already. They even gave Mutalisks super regeneration to lessen the risk of using them ...
On October 30 2013 00:11 SoFrOsTy wrote: BW had deathballs as well.
Only really for air units due to the movement mechanics and NEVER in a casual game ... unlike SC2, where you are basically forced to use the deathball because it is the "automatic" way.
Every race had countermeasures against air deathballs in BW, but there cant be the same anti-deathball mechanics in SC2 because they would become too efficient and have been nerfed to the ground already. They even gave Mutalisks super regeneration to lessen the risk of using them ...
Just stop. You make it too obvious that you don't play the game.
On October 28 2013 17:08 iMAniaC wrote: Very interesting reads! One point in particular that got me thinking was this:
So, what causes a deathball to be the best approach? Simply put, a deathball results when a force can stack DPS sufficient to prevent itself from sustaining casualties. Long range is the largest contributing factor to deathballs. Long range units in sufficient numbers can stack together and kill enemies forces of arbitrary size before they close to range to deal any damage. Splash damage also frequently leads to deathballs because increasing numbers of splash sources start to overlap in higher density, and allow increasingly tougher targets to be wiped out in large numbers.
However, looking at Brood War, many of the splash damage units were not actually splash damage units in a mobile deathball. The Siege Tank could not dish out splash damage while moving, so it was useless in a moving deathball. The Lurker could not attack at all unless buried, so it was useless in a moving deathball. The Reaver - well, you wouldn't want to have that unit in the middle of your deathball and you wouldn't want to have it too exposed either. So Brood War had several mechanics that (perhaps accidentally) made the splash damage units pretty worthless in deathballs. I find that interesting
I don't mean to make any implicit arguments about SC2 with this, though, I just wanted to point out something I found interesting after reading the blog and post.
I think its also interesting that siege tanks, lurkers and scarabs shots could be wasted by either shooting at the same target at the same time causing overkill aka wasted shots. they could also straight up miss. compare THAT to the splash in sc2
True overkill is another thing. SC2 has hardly any overkill because of units targeting AI right?
overkill happens a lot in sc2 in high damage low speed projectile attacks like vikings
On October 30 2013 00:15 lolfail9001 wrote: [quote] True, what about mining out part :3?
Then you take another base and simply abandon the base that's mined out. At no point in the game do you need more than 3 bases at once, and the benefits for taking more than 3 are subject to extreme diminishing returns.
If there was a way to make it imperative to continuously secure and hold bases past 3, that would mean players would have to defend multiple location at once, often too far away for the main army to arrive in time, which is a good thing.
Dunno, my favorite style of trading stuff all the time benefits from having lower amount of workers per base but keeping worker count in 70s. Just for the sake of A. not feeling too bad about losing whole mineral line tor random drop, since it is only 10 workers B. it's not like favorite compositions are slow (muta ling <3). Also, want it or not, but armies in BW sucked at defending multitude of bases. They had a benefit of ramps being overpowered against units. So forcing base spread has a single problem: drops become a SERIOUS problem, since stimmed bio can easily pick off bunch of warping zealots with micro and then you have a problem with base spread. And single benefit of having better economy than turtling player. But it's not like turtling player does not have a serious means to harass and can still gather deathball meanwhile with decent defense.
Of course it would be very hard, that's the whole point. The more difficult the basic metagame is to execute properly, and the more simultaneous activity there is, the more the truly great players can distinguish themselves from the merely good. Also, I liked how ramps would make aggression more difficult, it made massing units less effective, which is good.
If stimmed bio is dropping your base, and zealots are being warped in response, the toss has essentially already failed. That base was supposed to have HTs feedbacking the medivacs as they came in, and cannons with a small force of units to respond. Having to effectively and consistently defend multiple locations is one of the most difficult things in an RTS, and one of the best opportunities to shine.
There isn't anything wrong with the current dynamics, as pro games are now showing.
I disagree, I think the progames even from WCS aren't as good in this aspect as they could or should be.
Dear vs Maru and Dear vs Soulkey are what one sided matchups should look like.
Despite a 4-0 score, Dear vs Soulkey was a nailbiter EVERY SINGLE MATCH
And game 1 vs Maru was heavenly.
Sadly, we only have 1 Dear, we only have 1 Innovation. It'd be nice if we see more of these types of plays.
Absolutely, I think the fact that amazing players can make the game look good is awesome, my concern is these players are making the game look better than it actually is by sheer, very impressive, level of skill.
That should be the norm, not exceptions, that playstyle should be the style you HAVE to use every macro game at the professional level, outside of timings/all ins.
...And as players reach that level of skill, that WILL be the case.
They're not making the game look better than it is. That's impossible. They're showing a better idea of what the game actually is.
As more player elevate their play, these sorts of games will be FORCED to become the norm, because the ones that can't hack it will be left in the dust.
And I think we could expedite that process by making the game less forgiving of turtling and massing units in general. I think the game makes it too easy for lesser players to use easy strategies and achieve disproportionate results with them. All ins and timings especially, mainly because it's too easy to get a good army off too few bases.
As long these simple strategies exist and are as viable as they are, I think that is holding the game back.
there are so many more ways in which that could go wrong not sure it would actually be that much more entertaining for those lesser players to pretty much have to use these styles and then fuck them up by being, well, lesser players
The idea is that all players can work hard enough to be as good as Dear. But the current system allows them to be relaxed enough to simply play well instead of their best.
Good example of this is Demuslim. Same build all day err day. Doesn't scout, doesn't innovate. Why? Because he wins often enough with his style that he'd rather make less mistakes doing the easier play than push himself to be perfect.
The belief is that if we make the easy play no longer as effective as the difficult play, then people will start only practicing the difficult play. Because we believe that the current players are good enough to handle it.
For those of you who dont think there are deathballs in BW watch the following
Nada turtles to 200 after an early attack. He makes the deathball and wins in one punch right?
Absolutely not the deathball is just the preface, the battle then goes 30+ minutes after max out and shit just happens everywhere. Expos are taken everywhere, they are fighting tooth and nail for every expansion taking it away from there opponent
What I am trying to get at here is it may not be the deathball that is the problem its the fact that once SC2 games get to 200/200 the game is going to end very soon as recovery from a big battle is very hard. I think where we would like to be in SC2 is to have it that 200/200 is just merely the start of the game. IMO if there is to much harassment and to many small scale battles (8marines dropped in base) it kind of gets redundant. So I think large armies can be a good thing for the game, I think blizz needs to patch the after effect of Deathball vs Deathball. This is why a lot of people didnt get so crazed about Maru vs Dear, yes the action was really good but then before you knew it all his shit got vaproized and randomly it was over. The tables turned to quickly. Imagine if that game went on for another 20 minutes with huge 200/200 armies smashing each other? Would be very amazing to go from insane mid game into even crazier end game. Sign me up when we get to that point Il be back in a heartbeat. That is the intensity the spectators and the players deserve for the game. Not a 10 second clean up job.
Please no BW hate cuz I posted a video of it.
Also side note that video is amazing because of the positive mindset he has that can be applied to any game. I learned a lot about mindset right there.
On October 30 2013 00:34 Squat wrote: [quote] Then you take another base and simply abandon the base that's mined out. At no point in the game do you need more than 3 bases at once, and the benefits for taking more than 3 are subject to extreme diminishing returns.
If there was a way to make it imperative to continuously secure and hold bases past 3, that would mean players would have to defend multiple location at once, often too far away for the main army to arrive in time, which is a good thing.
Dunno, my favorite style of trading stuff all the time benefits from having lower amount of workers per base but keeping worker count in 70s. Just for the sake of A. not feeling too bad about losing whole mineral line tor random drop, since it is only 10 workers B. it's not like favorite compositions are slow (muta ling <3). Also, want it or not, but armies in BW sucked at defending multitude of bases. They had a benefit of ramps being overpowered against units. So forcing base spread has a single problem: drops become a SERIOUS problem, since stimmed bio can easily pick off bunch of warping zealots with micro and then you have a problem with base spread. And single benefit of having better economy than turtling player. But it's not like turtling player does not have a serious means to harass and can still gather deathball meanwhile with decent defense.
Of course it would be very hard, that's the whole point. The more difficult the basic metagame is to execute properly, and the more simultaneous activity there is, the more the truly great players can distinguish themselves from the merely good. Also, I liked how ramps would make aggression more difficult, it made massing units less effective, which is good.
If stimmed bio is dropping your base, and zealots are being warped in response, the toss has essentially already failed. That base was supposed to have HTs feedbacking the medivacs as they came in, and cannons with a small force of units to respond. Having to effectively and consistently defend multiple locations is one of the most difficult things in an RTS, and one of the best opportunities to shine.
There isn't anything wrong with the current dynamics, as pro games are now showing.
I disagree, I think the progames even from WCS aren't as good in this aspect as they could or should be.
Dear vs Maru and Dear vs Soulkey are what one sided matchups should look like.
Despite a 4-0 score, Dear vs Soulkey was a nailbiter EVERY SINGLE MATCH
And game 1 vs Maru was heavenly.
Sadly, we only have 1 Dear, we only have 1 Innovation. It'd be nice if we see more of these types of plays.
Absolutely, I think the fact that amazing players can make the game look good is awesome, my concern is these players are making the game look better than it actually is by sheer, very impressive, level of skill.
That should be the norm, not exceptions, that playstyle should be the style you HAVE to use every macro game at the professional level, outside of timings/all ins.
...And as players reach that level of skill, that WILL be the case.
They're not making the game look better than it is. That's impossible. They're showing a better idea of what the game actually is.
As more player elevate their play, these sorts of games will be FORCED to become the norm, because the ones that can't hack it will be left in the dust.
And I think we could expedite that process by making the game less forgiving of turtling and massing units in general. I think the game makes it too easy for lesser players to use easy strategies and achieve disproportionate results with them. All ins and timings especially, mainly because it's too easy to get a good army off too few bases.
As long these simple strategies exist and are as viable as they are, I think that is holding the game back.
there are so many more ways in which that could go wrong not sure it would actually be that much more entertaining for those lesser players to pretty much have to use these styles and then fuck them up by being, well, lesser players
The idea is that all players can work hard enough to be as good as Dear. But the current system allows them to be relaxed enough to simply play well instead of their best.
Good example of this is Demuslim. Same build all day err day. Doesn't scout, doesn't innovate. Why? Because he wins often enough with his style that he'd rather make less mistakes doing the easier play than push himself to be perfect.
The belief is that if we make the easy play no longer as effective as the difficult play, then people will start only practicing the difficult play. Because we believe that the current players are good enough to handle it.
And a majority of the people want region lock....
Well, in fairness, I only want region lock because I'm a scarlett fanboy who wants to see her win all the NA money. She can share it with polt even. So I'm very much a biased twat when it comes to region locks.
More effective change would be to provide better low tier compensation to allow for money to be earned through grinding games and less by making top 8 which gives incentives to teamless players to keep going to the qualifiers and getting their face smashed by Koreans because they at least get $50-$100 for their efforts. An increase in low level player entry will naturally increase competition and lead to a more robust economic system.
But maybe I'm just not a fan of a trickle down style compensation system and am instead a believer in higher minimum wage to provide incentive for amateurs to improve themselves.
There was an RTS called Rise of Nations that had very tactical gameplay because the game punished deathballs and overkill. For every unit that was attacking a single target they would inflict less damage. So you had an incentive to keep the army spread out and attacking multiple targets. This is the only way to cure the deathball imo. The crappiest thing about SC2 is Bioballs bulldozing everything and concencrated fire sniping important units.
Ok, now I think that we have a huge mess with all threads about Sc2 problems. Every few pages I read totally oposite ideas/solutions a few examples:
- AOE units should be more powerfull <---> AOE are too powerfull because all units move together. - Mules, warp and larvas make achieve 200/200 army too easy <---> if you lose you army, maxing again 200/200 its too hard. - More advantages for defenders!!! <----> dont let people turtle!!, they will be making deathballs and its boring.
On October 31 2013 01:57 drkcid wrote: Ok, now I think that we have a huge mess with all threads about Sc2 problems. Every few pages I read totally oposite ideas/solutions a few examples:
- AOE units should be more powerfull <---> AOE are too powerfull because all units move together. - Mules, warp and larvas make achieve 200/200 army too easy <---> if you lose you army, maxing again 200/200 its too hard. - More advantages for defenders!!! <----> dont let people turtle!!, they will be making deathballs and its boring.
So can we just make a summary of all SC2 problems: Game has bad music and bad story. Bang, that's all.
On October 31 2013 01:57 drkcid wrote: Ok, now I think that we have a huge mess with all threads about Sc2 problems. Every few pages I read totally oposite ideas/solutions a few examples:
- AOE units should be more powerfull <---> AOE are too powerfull because all units move together. - Mules, warp and larvas make achieve 200/200 army too easy <---> if you lose you army, maxing again 200/200 its too hard. - More advantages for defenders!!! <----> dont let people turtle!!, they will be making deathballs and its boring.
So can we just make a summary of all SC2 problems: Game has bad music and bad story. Bang, that's all.
The Terran space trucker music majestic. The rest is pretty middling.
On October 31 2013 01:24 scaban84 wrote: There was an RTS called Rise of Nations that had very tactical gameplay because the game punished deathballs and overkill. For every unit that was attacking a single target they would inflict less damage. So you had an incentive to keep the army spread out and attacking multiple targets. This is the only way to cure the deathball imo. The crappiest thing about SC2 is Bioballs bulldozing everything and concencrated fire sniping important units.
And whats with the games that used capture points, where there was constantly actions at 3 places at onces. They also cured Deathballs, so omg 2 ways proven to work already! The issue was you couldn't follow everything that was going on, so rather bad for spectators. Especially if the obs just caught the moments where the player didn't payed attention.
Sc2 also punishes overkill heavily by the way and targeting the wrong unit. Thats why those units are not used alot, since the game is to fast paced that only the current top of the top can actually not mess it up. But macroing and using the newb friendly units is just easier. And of course not fighting against the game pathfinding.
It was common in BW to do fight the pathfinding. But in Sc2 people gave into the pathfinding and life with it, despite the game being mechanical less demanding and deathballs usually being easy to abuse on alot of the maps.
WCS S3 finals were absolutely fantastic. I hope tournaments continue to look that way as time goes on. The better players have realized multi-pronged aggression wins games. Somehow Dear v HerO made Colossus v Colossus look awesome (never thought I'd say that). Also, I think the map pool is much better than it's ever been.
On October 31 2013 01:57 drkcid wrote: Ok, now I think that we have a huge mess with all threads about Sc2 problems. Every few pages I read totally oposite ideas/solutions a few examples:
- AOE units should be more powerfull <---> AOE are too powerfull because all units move together. - Mules, warp and larvas make achieve 200/200 army too easy <---> if you lose you army, maxing again 200/200 its too hard. - More advantages for defenders!!! <----> dont let people turtle!!, they will be making deathballs and its boring.
Did you expect something else?
Though my favorite posts are always the random BW videos that show the highlights of 10years of Broodwar and then conclude what's wrong with SC2 when they compare them to the (subjectively) worst gameplay aspects that can happen in SC2. I think watching all VoDs in this thread should be comprehensive before posting any video of a different game http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=419703
On October 28 2013 16:16 flashimba wrote: The deathball is fine as it is. With skill levels rising, we are progressively seeing more and more dynamic gameplay. Look at any match from <insert top 10 player>.
How many years did it take for BW to evolve? 7 years for iloveoov macro, 8 years for Zerg to be revolutionized.
SC2 has only been out for 2 years, which is NOTHING compared to the evolution of BW. Alas, we are all impatient and dismiss any faults we see without giving the game a chance to evolve on its own.
I don't think that games are better now than they were in 2010-11 skillwise.
On October 31 2013 01:57 drkcid wrote: Ok, now I think that we have a huge mess with all threads about Sc2 problems. Every few pages I read totally oposite ideas/solutions a few examples:
- AOE units should be more powerfull <---> AOE are too powerfull because all units move together. - Mules, warp and larvas make achieve 200/200 army too easy <---> if you lose you army, maxing again 200/200 its too hard. - More advantages for defenders!!! <----> dont let people turtle!!, they will be making deathballs and its boring.
Problem is a lot of the issues are intertwined and people are trying to pin all of SC2s problems on a single thing. AOE should be more powerful but you can't implement that without changing the pathing (which would increase micro potential too). 200/200 is too easy to achieve, but terran has a more difficult time remaxing than zerg creating an imbalance so larva mechanic needs to be nerfed in combination with lowering some unit supply stats or increasing supply cap. But then Terran would be too strong so you'd have to rebalance it, perhaps nerf mules. p.s. when people say remaxing is too hard they mean its too difficult to make a comeback after losing a 200/200 fight because of the snowball effect.
SC2 lacks space control units and defenders advantage but because you only need a 3 base economy and the first 3 expos are easy to take especially for P with forcefields, increasing defenders advantage would only make it more turtle-y. So you'd have to change the optimal harvester count and map & base layouts in tandum with an defender's advantage change (not to mention a unit redesign for collo/sentry/mothership core).
tl;dr a lot of changes would have to be made simultaneously to fix the perceived problem in SC2. There's no silver bullet.
EPT
