EPTDepth of Micro - Page 31
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bo1b
Australia12814 Posts
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naastyOne
491 Posts
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A3iL3r0n
United States2196 Posts
On November 02 2013 10:14 naastyOne wrote: My problem is, when you make a case about how SC2 can become a better game, you do not need to add comparisons to any other game. When you say that "i could micro units like this in SC, and can not in SC2", you are making a case based on nostalgia. The point of a video is not well integrated into SC2 meta. The point doesn`t try to solve any of SC2s own flaws with death ball, on contrary, the way vikings are microed in the video, and the way autor tries to make it would only make a problem of an deathball of units worse. You do not have a BW controll group limitation. Thus, a tight ball of air units would became the ultimate deathball, since you could cram in a max supply of air units. Imagine you would have a BW-esque mutalisks. So, you`re microing 150ish supply worth stack of mutas. It would be terribly overpowered. The way SC2 air units behave largely is a responce to the fact that such stacks would be ridiculously broken under what author of a video deems as microable units. Splash damage takes care of stacked flying units. | ||
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bo1b
Australia12814 Posts
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A3iL3r0n
United States2196 Posts
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dutchfriese
2554 Posts
On November 02 2013 10:08 bo1b wrote: It just boggles my mind that there are so many people against having more microable units. On November 02 2013 10:22 A3iL3r0n wrote: Micro is the flashiest part of the game. And I think SC2 has a real opportunity to be that type of game, on steroids. With powerful macro control built in to the UI, I think players could spend more time on micro. The "fun stuff" that Blizzard wants to emphasize. +1. I'm not even sure why this is being debated as it should be a no brainer. | ||
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naastyOne
491 Posts
On November 02 2013 10:17 A3iL3r0n wrote: Splash damage takes care of stacked flying units. Yes, the same way Storms did deal with Muta in BW(well, they didn`t). In a battle of air units, ones with longer range/speed/splash will always win. in case of ground units splash wouldn`t be enought, as you will need a fire dencity to one-shot-kill a stack that is at maximum range from which an air unit stack can attack, and currently only thours are maybe close in case of fighting muta. "the broodwar level controll level " would ensure that a stack of air units can avoid any castble spell, as they did in BW, if you id it right. So you have ground units. That have to have AA splash, and you should be capable to cram enought AA units in attack range of a stack, to vipe it out instantly, othervise air units would just avoid that and pick you`r units apart, hence such units would make Air useless altogather. So, the author advocates for either ridiculously broken air units, or almost completely useless, and forcing a game to have a tonne of "archon-toilet style cases", where you`ll either get a great splash on enemy air stack and win,or you will not, and loose completely. Great thinking. | ||
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WombaT
Northern Ireland27478 Posts
The strength (and weakness) of the video is that you don't have Lalush going BW < SC2 but is just him showcasing potentially cool unit interactions. I for one am all for units being both more microable, but also for them to behave differently and need certain finesse to control correctly. Most micro in the game is the same, only with units that vary in effectiveness in terms of microability. Again don't necessarily ripoff BW, but as is often pointed out SC2 was conceived as an E-sports vehicle. It has a predecessor which had elements that were conducive to a good spectator spectacle. Sc2 has its great games too, look at what made them thrilling, look at the players and play styles that thrilled the spectators. Try and figure what are the good, exciting games and try to make the game more targeted towards those kind of players and skills. Forget about competing with MOBAs too, there are elements worth looking at, even small things. I for one would like to ladder with a favoured team colour on, how many of you in customs always pick the same colour? It's the easiest customisation to implement ever. Fucking fix Bnet 2.0, horrible. Tbh my exodus from SC2 is more due to fatherhood and other commitments, but equally if I really enjoyed it I'd find the time. It's a bit monotonous and playing Protoss is especially annoying. I do love the race though, I am not allows to race switch  0 | ||
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decemberscalm
United States1353 Posts
Let me try to answer some of them in a single post. First one brought up just by is: Air Stacking: The author is by no means advocating air stacking like in BW. Removing seperation radius from units means they do not separate on their own, it is the only way to fix the loss of momentum. The entire point is that units should keep their momentum after shooting regardless of being even the tiniest bit overlapped with another air unit. When getting dirty and fighting battles it is hard to maintain perfect seperation for no dead stops upon attacking because ALL weapons have a small random delay in attack. This means that if you have 5 perfectly seperated units, it will SOME TIMES by random chance dead stop some units due to random delays cause one unit to fire slightly faster(causing them to initiate deceleration) which leads them to overlap. THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE. Separation radius needs to be fixed, not set to 0 for everything. Units will still spread out. Overkill prevent: Why does overkill prevention exist? So you don't waste 30 shots on a single unit. What is overkill prevention not supposed to do? Stop the units who don't kill the weakened unit. Enough said. It is a bug. Even worse is that if you simply had only the unit with the killing blow selected, it wouldn't have stopped the others, why should selection cause this behavior? It doesn't exactly open up new cool maneuvers, it gets in the way of game play. It isn't like muta micro where you have more options, it only randomly hurts current game play. Balance vs Design:All tweaks or fixes here would have an impact on balance whether big or small. Changing the design of the units for the better is a long term effect, but only a short term effect on balance. Yes it will change the meta, but yes Blizzard can manage that effect. More micro opportunities, better handling units, these are good design choices that shouldn't be frowned upon because they might effect current balance. Blizz is a damn good balance team. I have full faith in their ability to both incorporate these changes AND maintain balance. SC2 is probably the most balanced RTS title that has ever existed. These changes will not drastically alter the game or save sc2, nor will it turn SC2 into BW The video does however encourage blizz to look how the units are actually built, how they handle. The actual physical characteristics of units are largely ignored in favor of tweaking HP, damage, damage bonus, range. Has blizzard ever used these very raw unit handling stats to balance or tweak design? Damage point being default across the board at an usually large number sugguest no. The non functional turret sugguests no. This video helps to illuminate how the engine and sc2's current units don't go in depth. Hopefully the video communicates that Blizzard SHOULD look into this completely untapped potential pool of modification when building Legacy of the Void. For instance, how less annoying would it be if drones were able to actually moving shot at a small range when probes are trying to block your hatchery? What if the banshee were made slightly more maneuverable, but less incredible dps so that actually using the banshee is a bit more fun to play with? I want to see a really fun SC2 when the last expansion comes out, the most fun SC2 possible. | ||
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naastyOne
491 Posts
On November 02 2013 10:33 decemberscalm wrote: Air Stacking: The author is by no means advocating air stacking like in BW. Removing seperation radius from units means they do not separate on their own, it is the only way to fix the loss of momentum. The entire point is that units should keep their momentum after shooting regardless of being even the tiniest bit overlapped with another air unit. When getting dirty and fighting battles it is hard to maintain perfect seperation for no dead stops upon attacking because ALL weapons have a small random delay in attack. This means that if you have 5 perfectly seperated units, it will SOME TIMES by random chance dead stop some units due to random delays cause one unit to fire slightly faster(causing them to initiate deceleration) which leads them to overlap. THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE. Separation radius needs to be fixed, not set to 0 for everything. Units will still spread out. In theory, BW had air stacking separation. However, since movement was a priority, it allow air unit stacking. You can not have both. Either unstacking get`s the priority over movement(SC2), or movement takes the priority over unstacking(BW). | ||
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WombaT
Northern Ireland27478 Posts
I may be wrong on this, but the impression I get is Blizzard don't seem to actually understand these high-level micro tricks/bug exploitation and why players and spectators like them. Similarly with whoever brought up the John Carmack/bunny hopping one. If this does nothing else but make the devs go 'hmm' and actually look more at the issue it's done a job. | ||
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A3iL3r0n
United States2196 Posts
On November 02 2013 10:30 naastyOne wrote: Yes, the same way Storms did deal with Muta in BW(well, they didn`t). In a battle of air units, ones with longer range/speed/splash will always win. in case of ground units splash wouldn`t be enought, as you will need a fire dencity to one-shot-kill a stack that is at maximum range from which an air unit stack can attack, and currently only thours are maybe close in case of fighting muta. "the broodwar level controll level " would ensure that a stack of air units can avoid any castble spell, as they did in BW, if you id it right. So you have ground units. That have to have AA splash, and you should be capable to cram enought AA units in attack range of a stack, to vipe it out instantly, othervise air units would just avoid that and pick you`r units apart, hence such units would make Air useless altogather. So, the author advocates for either ridiculously broken air units, or almost completely useless, and forcing a game to have a tonne of "archon-toilet style cases", where you`ll either get a great splash on enemy air stack and win,or you will not, and loose completely. Great thinking. Assuming that Blizzard would implement such a drastic change to the way the game fundamentally plays, why wouldn't the game be re-balanced to provide the appropriate anti-air to every race as well? | ||
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decemberscalm
United States1353 Posts
On November 02 2013 10:39 naastyOne wrote: In theory, BW had air stacking separation. However, since movement was a priority, it allow air unit stacking. You can not have both. Either unstacking get`s the priority over movement(SC2), or movement takes the priority over unstacking(BW). Wrong. BW had air unit seperation. It was constant, even when moving. Your units kept momentum upon firing. Stacking only existed because the engine let you abuse the magic box to keep all units travelling to the same location. Unlike BW you can click inside the magic box in between all of your units and units will all travel there. The more aggressive air separation of SC2 makes this less of a problem. Look at SC2BW for an example of constant air stacking with a separation radius of 0. Your argument is a flase dichotomy. Games do what they are programmed to. I call the overlapping attacking movement problem a bug in how the engine handles deceleration and momentum. | ||
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decemberscalm
United States1353 Posts
On November 02 2013 10:40 Wombat_NI wrote: If this does nothing else but make the devs go 'hmm' and actually look more at the issue it's done a job. Seriously this. Consider how many people play and watch Starcraft 2 on a daily basis. How many people have noticed the turrets and how awkward they work in Starcraft 2? Think the dev's have? | ||
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A3iL3r0n
United States2196 Posts
On November 02 2013 10:48 decemberscalm wrote: Seriously this. Consider how many people play and watch Starcraft 2 on a daily basis. How many people have noticed the turrets and how awkward they work in Starcraft 2? Think the dev's have? +1 That turret footage in the video is ugly. | ||
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WombaT
Northern Ireland27478 Posts
Hell, Blizz gave the Phoenix the auto-move shot, so at least they tacitly show that they like the concept. | ||
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NightOfTheDead
Lithuania1711 Posts
On November 02 2013 10:08 bo1b wrote: It just boggles my mind that there are so many people against having more microable units. There's nothing wrong in 'fixing' bugs, dead stops and unresponsiveness. However, 'adding micro' to already solid units is equivalent of effectively "rebalancing" the game and perhaps introducing unwanted results. | ||
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RampancyTW
United States577 Posts
On November 02 2013 10:48 decemberscalm wrote: I do agree with this.Seriously this. Consider how many people play and watch Starcraft 2 on a daily basis. How many people have noticed the turrets and how awkward they work in Starcraft 2? Think the dev's have? The turret thing especially would be good to play around with. Tank might have 360 degree swivel capability, but Immortal only 180 degree etc. Could be cool for adding character to the units. Similarly I think fixing inconsistencies in air unit behavior and perhaps adding more responsive micro units to the game with the next expansion would be things to look into. I do, however disagree with majorly changing existing unit behavior, because I think it would be too disruptive to the game with no guarantee of an actual gameplay payoff. | ||
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RampancyTW
United States577 Posts
On November 02 2013 11:00 NightOfTheDead wrote: This is 100% my concern.There's nothing wrong in 'fixing' bugs, dead stops and unresponsiveness. However, 'adding micro' to already solid units is equivalent of effectively "rebalancing" the game and perhaps introducing unwanted results. Edit: Expanding on this, part of the reason why I like the turret suggestions is because it adds micro possibilities and character to units that are currently pretty bland on the micro front. I'm all for making currently unexciting units more exciting/usable in skilled hands, and I don't think that would break the game. I just don't think units that already have high utility and micro-ability need to be pushed any further in that direction. | ||
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WombaT
Northern Ireland27478 Posts
Nah, joking aside though non WC3 players probably think I'm exaggerating but they made a metric fuckton of changes to so many aspects of the game with TFT, it's hard to overstate how big an overhaul that was. | ||
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