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On October 28 2013 20:28 Grumbels wrote:Show nested quote +On October 28 2013 17:47 Cheren wrote:On October 28 2013 15:53 Pandain wrote:
I don't think deathball is playing as big of a role as you think it is lately. Same, there were very few deathball games at WCS. I don't even know how it is considered acceptable that after over three years of development of the game, which is incomparable to the same time period in Brood War's history because of improved knowledge, dedication, organization, that we are finally seeing less death ball play in some match-ups only at the very top level. This from the same community that wants a foreigner only WCS NA/EU, shouldn't we want the potential for interesting games on all levels of play?
"Bad" players want to sit back, build a large army, and then attack with it. That happens in every RTS, even Broodwar.
You cannot force interesting games on all levels of play.
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On October 28 2013 20:34 S1eth wrote:Show nested quote +On October 28 2013 20:28 Grumbels wrote:On October 28 2013 17:47 Cheren wrote:On October 28 2013 15:53 Pandain wrote:
I don't think deathball is playing as big of a role as you think it is lately. Same, there were very few deathball games at WCS. I don't even know how it is considered acceptable that after over three years of development of the game, which is incomparable to the same time period in Brood War's history because of improved knowledge, dedication, organization, that we are finally seeing less death ball play in some match-ups only at the very top level. This from the same community that wants a foreigner only WCS NA/EU, shouldn't we want the potential for interesting games on all levels of play? "Bad" players want to sit back, build a large army, and then attack with it. That happens in every RTS, even Broodwar. You cannot force interesting games on all levels of play.
I think the big problem is the league system in SC2. C- in BW iccup basically starts at high diamond in SC2. If not even worse. So people think "Well it was even exciting to see C level players but watching platinum players sucks!" So people get the impression that BW was exciting even at low level of play...
Well, the difference between platinum and bronze is not as big as people might think. The difference between B and D howver is huge.
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On October 28 2013 20:03 Rabiator wrote:
Unit density is at the heart of the problem and behind that we have
- pathing and and unit selection plus
- economy/(over)production
Unit density is only one of the issues. Others were mentioned in the article linked in the OP and response to it I mentioned in my previous post here.
I agree with "economy/(over)production" point, but pathing and unit selection are not necessarily the problem. You can have an RTS game with both unlimited selection and good pathing, that would still discourage deathballing. How to do it is exactly what was explained in the article, response to it I linked before, and even here(this thread and some other threads on this issue at TL forums).
I'm not defending SC2 pathing. I agree that Blizzard overdid it. But it is very much possible to deter deathballs without reverting to the shitty pathing that we had in some older games like SC1.
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Deathball armies Reign supreme in sc2 though. Like take for instance Maru vs Dear Match 1. Maru was dropping his heart out kiting zealots doing eco damage at every round but in the end he lost why? #1 yes his trades seemed somewhat cost efficient but he was trading units for eco which would be decent if he was building his own deathball behind it. The reality though Dear had the 3 Insta-kill weapons in PvT Templar + Colo + Archons. It could be argued that if maru had split better in the last engagement he would have been massively ahead but as Terran your control has to be 100% every engagement and you have most of the time kill a death ball (maybe a weakened one) 3 times before you win as Terran whereas Protoss 1 convicingly won fight is gg....
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What about some kind of spell for Terran similar to fungal,and buff fungal vs shealds (and maybe increse fungal area vs shealds).
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I dont think "deathballs" are really the problem, in my opinion it all comes down to balance. Protoss is forced to deathball vs terran unless they are playing defensive. Terran bio is so ridiculously strong and can stand up to just about anything in the game for basically 0 cost relative to what the protoss player needs to defend it. I don't think the idea of increased aoe damage would be such a bad idea. I myself would like to possibly see storms do the 80 damage they deal, faster than it is now which i believe is 4 seconds. Or even making them stackable does not seem to me to be an issue. Would be nice to have a zerg chime in on the thought of stackable storms or 80dmg < 4 seconds. I play random from time to time but mostly terran so i can really only speak from this perspective.
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On October 28 2013 20:54 Pirfiktshon wrote:
Deathball armies Reign supreme in sc2 though. Like take for instance Maru vs Dear Match 1. Maru was dropping his heart out kiting zealots doing eco damage at every round but in the end he lost why? #1 yes his trades seemed somewhat cost efficient but he was trading units for eco which would be decent if he was building his own deathball behind it. The reality though Dear had the 3 Insta-kill weapons in PvT Templar + Colo + Archons. It could be argued that if maru had split better in the last engagement he would have been massively ahead but as Terran your control has to be 100% every engagement and you have most of the time kill a death ball (maybe a weakened one) 3 times before you win as Terran whereas Protoss 1 convicingly won fight is gg....
You don't understand the first thing about tech, do you?
Why SHOULDN'T Dear win fights when he continutally techs behind the engagements and continues creating more expensive, higher tech units?
Maru elected to forgo his own tech (Ghosts and Vikings) that would have allowed him to fight against Dear's nearly maxed, high tech army in order to continue doing his low cost, high mobility drops. If he would have chosen to stop medivac/marauder production for about a minute or so and instead used those resources to put down a Ghost Academy or even a second Starport, he would have been in a better position to win another engagement.
It's called strategy and resource management, and the game that Maru played is focused on picking apart the Protoss before he maxes out on t3 tech. His strategy failed, and he didn't have the right units to engage during the final push.
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Some time ago I was thinking of a mechanic that would make units deal less damage to their target if other units were in the attacker's line of fire. This would discourage players to keep their army in one tight ball.
A simplified example: a marine is shooting a zealot, and two other marines obscure his line of fire; the mentioned marine deals 4 points of damage to the zealot instead of the normal 6.
But, it would be too simple and unbelievable to leave this mechanic at that (a giant colossus shouldn't deal less damage to the enemy units even if it is surrounded with friendly gateway units for example), so to counter this every ground unit would gain a new property -- HEIGHT.
A unit's damage output would be modified only if its line of fire was obscured by units (allied or enemy) with greater or equal height than the attacking unit.
Examples:
A single marauder is tightly surrounded by friendly marines -- the marauder deals full damage the zealots fighting at the outer edge of the "bio ball".
A tank in siege mode is attacking a distant building, but a colossus is standing just between the tank and the building under siege -- the tank's damage output is reduced.
Only ground units would be affected by this mechanic -- a blob of marines would still deal full damage to a tightly stacked flock of mutalisks.
That's probably too significant to implement in current sc2, I fear... but I'd definitely like to see something like that in some other RTS. Anyway, what do you guys & girls out here think of such an idea?
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People who say this tournament was not as deathballish as before.
We talk general games here, not exeptions.
Mech in tvp is not viable, even if "a few games" worked. Right?
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On October 28 2013 21:32 Tritanis wrote:
Some time ago I was thinking of a mechanic that would make units deal less damage to their target if other units were in the attacker's line of fire. This would discourage players to keep their army in one tight ball.
A simplified example: a marine is shooting a zealot, and two other marines obscure his line of fire; the mentioned marine deals 4 points of damage to the zealot instead of the normal 6.
But, it would be too simple and unbelievable to leave this mechanic at that (a giant colossus shouldn't deal less damage to the enemy units even if it is surrounded with friendly gateway units for example), so to counter this every ground unit would gain a new property -- HEIGHT.
A unit's damage output would be modified only if its line of fire was obscured by units (allied or enemy) with greater or equal height than the attacking unit.
Examples:
A single marauder is tightly surrounded by friendly marines -- the marauder deals full damage the zealots fighting at the outer edge of the "bio ball".
A tank in siege mode is attacking a distant building, but a colossus is standing just between the tank and the building under siege -- the tank's damage output is reduced.
Only ground units would be affected by this mechanic -- a blob of marines would still deal full damage to a tightly stacked flock of mutalisks.
That's probably too significant to implement in current sc2, I fear... but I'd definitely like to see something like that in some other RTS. Anyway, what do you guys & girls out here think of such an idea?
I don't think that would be easy to understand when you're playing or when you're observing.
How do you explain such a concept to someone who is just watching Starcraft for the first time? How can a progamer be sure about the effectiveness of his timings and compositions when Height units provide such a large defender's advantage?
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On October 28 2013 21:32 Tritanis wrote:
Some time ago I was thinking of a mechanic that would make units deal less damage to their target if other units were in the attacker's line of fire. This would discourage players to keep their army in one tight ball.
A simplified example: a marine is shooting a zealot, and two other marines obscure his line of fire; the mentioned marine deals 4 points of damage to the zealot instead of the normal 6.
But, it would be too simple and unbelievable to leave this mechanic at that (a giant colossus shouldn't deal less damage to the enemy units even if it is surrounded with friendly gateway units for example), so to counter this every ground unit would gain a new property -- HEIGHT.
A unit's damage output would be modified only if its line of fire was obscured by units (allied or enemy) with greater or equal height than the attacking unit.
Examples:
A single marauder is tightly surrounded by friendly marines -- the marauder deals full damage the zealots fighting at the outer edge of the "bio ball".
A tank in siege mode is attacking a distant building, but a colossus is standing just between the tank and the building under siege -- the tank's damage output is reduced.
Only ground units would be affected by this mechanic -- a blob of marines would still deal full damage to a tightly stacked flock of mutalisks.
That's probably too significant to implement in current sc2, I fear... but I'd definitely like to see something like that in some other RTS. Anyway, what do you guys & girls out here think of such an idea?
Bad example with the tank. Colossus are (essentially) flying units. A tank can just shoot between its legs.
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I would say that splash damage rather decreases the possibilty of a deathball as you will take more damage if you have more units on a clump
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"---The only way to actually slay the dragon and remove the deathball gameplay pathology entirely is to have all units in the game be less efficient to use in very large groups."
this. i doubt they'll redesign every unit though. imagine how differently the game would play (not that this would be anything but a good thing). unless a new design team comes in, all we will see are slow, tiny tweaks which do very little to address this
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On October 28 2013 20:34 S1eth wrote:Show nested quote +On October 28 2013 20:28 Grumbels wrote:On October 28 2013 17:47 Cheren wrote:On October 28 2013 15:53 Pandain wrote:
I don't think deathball is playing as big of a role as you think it is lately. Same, there were very few deathball games at WCS. I don't even know how it is considered acceptable that after over three years of development of the game, which is incomparable to the same time period in Brood War's history because of improved knowledge, dedication, organization, that we are finally seeing less death ball play in some match-ups only at the very top level. This from the same community that wants a foreigner only WCS NA/EU, shouldn't we want the potential for interesting games on all levels of play? "Bad" players want to sit back, build a large army, and then attack with it. That happens in every RTS, even Broodwar. You cannot force interesting games on all levels of play.
Ding, ding, ding but I wouldn't really call Flash, or the Tornado Terran NaDa a bad player at BW. Honestly guys deathballs have been around for quite some time and it doesn't just pertain to one race either. Even though you'll still see a lot of hit squads in BW at the same time the death balls originated from BW in the macro eras and continued onward.
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Units are just too squishy in this game. Players are discouraged from skirmishing and poking because units get mowed down so easily. One slight slip-up and 500 resources of units disappear. Keep DPS the same and triple the HP of all units.
The other issue is food cap. It should be lowered to 100. Games would be more action-packed, because nobody's waiting around for 200/200. Your ball of units would also be more manageable from a control perspective. You could manage more micro (especially now that your units have triple the HP and don't evaporate in 2 seconds).
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On October 28 2013 21:38 Lunareste wrote:Show nested quote +On October 28 2013 21:32 Tritanis wrote:
Some time ago I was thinking of a mechanic that would make units deal less damage to their target if other units were in the attacker's line of fire. This would discourage players to keep their army in one tight ball.
A simplified example: a marine is shooting a zealot, and two other marines obscure his line of fire; the mentioned marine deals 4 points of damage to the zealot instead of the normal 6.
But, it would be too simple and unbelievable to leave this mechanic at that (a giant colossus shouldn't deal less damage to the enemy units even if it is surrounded with friendly gateway units for example), so to counter this every ground unit would gain a new property -- HEIGHT.
A unit's damage output would be modified only if its line of fire was obscured by units (allied or enemy) with greater or equal height than the attacking unit.
Examples:
A single marauder is tightly surrounded by friendly marines -- the marauder deals full damage the zealots fighting at the outer edge of the "bio ball".
A tank in siege mode is attacking a distant building, but a colossus is standing just between the tank and the building under siege -- the tank's damage output is reduced.
Only ground units would be affected by this mechanic -- a blob of marines would still deal full damage to a tightly stacked flock of mutalisks.
That's probably too significant to implement in current sc2, I fear... but I'd definitely like to see something like that in some other RTS. Anyway, what do you guys & girls out here think of such an idea? I don't think that would be easy to understand when you're playing or when you're observing. How do you explain such a concept to someone who is just watching Starcraft for the first time? How can a progamer be sure about the effectiveness of his timings and compositions when Height units provide such a large defender's advantage?
For me it's simple -- a unit doesn't deal full damage to something not directly in its line of fire.
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I actually like the deathball problem in BW alot. Made the game the great thing it was. But because people think death balls are a flaw it will make it almost impossible to recreate this masterpiece.
and wow the article is from 2013 and the author writes that the only way to remove the deathballs is to make units less effective in large groups, while there are a few rts games available that had different approaches.
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I think this is not an appropriate time to pull up the death-ball again, since what we've seen lately has only been beautiful Starcraft as of late.
I've always thought there were too many ranged units, give those damned Marauders some Sledgehammers!
AoE in my book, should break up the death-ball? and of course the much brought up topic, no need to get more than 3 base, so you can just sit in the one good position with your blob, defending all 3 bases at once.
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United Kingdom12022 Posts
The issue isn't so much that people attack in deathballs, it's the fact unlike BW where say you were a toss and you chipped away most of a mech army, the game didn't just instantly end and the Terran could defend long enough to come back into the game. In SC2, you lose the deathball fight and you usually lose it by landslide so they just instantly go to your base and you lose.
That's just not nearly as interesting.
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China6329 Posts
On October 28 2013 20:54 Pirfiktshon wrote:
Deathball armies Reign supreme in sc2 though. Like take for instance Maru vs Dear Match 1. Maru was dropping his heart out kiting zealots doing eco damage at every round but in the end he lost why? #1 yes his trades seemed somewhat cost efficient but he was trading units for eco which would be decent if he was building his own deathball behind it. The reality though Dear had the 3 Insta-kill weapons in PvT Templar + Colo + Archons. It could be argued that if maru had split better in the last engagement he would have been massively ahead but as Terran your control has to be 100% every engagement and you have most of the time kill a death ball (maybe a weakened one) 3 times before you win as Terran whereas Protoss 1 convicingly won fight is gg....
Go watch that game again please. Dear won because he handled Maru's aggression perfectly with his splendid crisis management, he won by having a superior tech army which should win because that's how the game works, what if Maru have Ghosts and Vikings?
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EPT
