On January 17 2014 01:42 Killcani wrote: I would be careful to take balance feedback from forums like these as most people posting have no clue what they are talking about. I just think you should strive to make this game more exciting(slower battles, more micro, reavers shots etc) and APM intensive(so better players can shine) as those were two areas that I felt sc2 really lacked in.
apm says who is better player. lol.
yes it does if the game requires a certain amount of apm to be played good.
Yes but what skill level are we talking? You said "so better players can shine"
Brains vs hands? Who you wanna win? Brains for me ofc.
brains and hands combined for the top level and hands with very little brains for everyone else or otherwise it becomes too easy
Units clump in every game. They clump in dota, company of heroes and dawn of war. They even clumped in BW, but that game was on a grid, so it looked like they has space between them. It's just the way path finding works. If you force units to not clump, you run the risk of limiting the players ability to control them.
On January 17 2014 02:02 Big J wrote: I don't quite understand the discussions about smartcast, pathing and unit selection. Aren't those some of the main things that set Starbow apart from BW (and the SC2BW mod)? I mean, sure Starbow can toy around with that kind of stuff. But wouldn't it be more interesting to balance Starbow around being Starbow, instead of just going back to BW whenever a problem (or some theoretical arguement why there could be a problem) occurs?
Edit: Not to get missinterpreted. If the question is only whether units should move a little more spread etc. I'm all for (at least discussing/testing) it. Just not the extreme let's-solve-it-with-BW approaches for things that may be solveable more comfortably.
I prefer powerful hard to cast spells than average everyone can spam it spells
Well, but isn't that first-and-foremost a question of spelldesign? Can't such problems get solved individually for the problem-spells? I mean, if turning of smartcast was the only way to balance e.g. storm, you could just turn it off for that one spell alone.
Also remember, we also have no selection limit currently. To a certain degree, the easier to cast storms/irradiates/dark swarms/... get balanced out by being able to control armies faster and more accurately. It's easier to pull out of a storm too. And I think it's actually more interesting to see one player casting storms and the other one dodging them, instead of seeing less storms and less dodging.
On January 17 2014 01:42 Killcani wrote: I would be careful to take balance feedback from forums like these as most people posting have no clue what they are talking about. I just think you should strive to make this game more exciting(slower battles, more micro, reavers shots etc) and APM intensive(so better players can shine) as those were two areas that I felt sc2 really lacked in.
apm says who is better player. lol.
yes it does if the game requires a certain amount of apm to be played good.
Yes but what skill level are we talking? You said "so better players can shine"
Brains vs hands? Who you wanna win? Brains for me ofc.
Turn Based Strategy
No, but seriously, mechanical skill should be and is very important in RTS games and especially Starcraft. Thinking of harassing your opponent from their third and main is pretty easy for your brain to grasp but not so simple for your hands to perform along with all other tasks. Setting up Lurker flanks also takes your hands to direct the army there while simultaneously focusing on your main forces. An important unit to showcase mechanical skill would be the Reaver which displays high damage from long range with the weakness of immobility which is solved by using your hands to maneuver the unit across the battlefield with the use of your Shuttle/Warp Prism. It also turns out that most of the more interesting strategies require you to have really good mechanical control of your army among other things.
Strategy and Mechanical Skill are intertwined in a RTS game and always should be.
On January 17 2014 01:42 Killcani wrote: I would be careful to take balance feedback from forums like these as most people posting have no clue what they are talking about. I just think you should strive to make this game more exciting(slower battles, more micro, reavers shots etc) and APM intensive(so better players can shine) as those were two areas that I felt sc2 really lacked in.
apm says who is better player. lol.
yes it does if the game requires a certain amount of apm to be played good.
Yes but what skill level are we talking? You said "so better players can shine"
Brains vs hands? Who you wanna win? Brains for me ofc.
that's like the worst analogy possible. And a good game is one where you need to use your hands to use the full potential of your brain
On January 17 2014 02:02 Big J wrote: I don't quite understand the discussions about smartcast, pathing and unit selection. Aren't those some of the main things that set Starbow apart from BW (and the SC2BW mod)? I mean, sure Starbow can toy around with that kind of stuff. But wouldn't it be more interesting to balance Starbow around being Starbow, instead of just going back to BW whenever a problem (or some theoretical arguement why there could be a problem) occurs?
Edit: Not to get missinterpreted. If the question is only whether units should move a little more spread etc. I'm all for (at least discussing/testing) it. Just not the extreme let's-solve-it-with-BW approaches for things that may be solveable more comfortably.
I prefer powerful hard to cast spells than average everyone can spam it spells
Well, but isn't that first-and-foremost a question of spelldesign? Can't such problems get solved individually for the problem-spells? I mean, if turning of smartcast was the only way to balance e.g. storm, you could just turn it off for that one spell alone.
Also remember, we also have no selection limit currently. To a certain degree, the easier to cast storms/irradiates/dark swarms/... get balanced out by being able to control armies faster and more accurately. It's easier to pull out of a storm too. And I think it's actually more interesting to see one player casting storms and the other one dodging them, instead of seeing less storms and less dodging.
That's a good idea, we could start with turning off smartcast for irradiate.
It seems fairly shady and inconsistent to have smartcast enabled only for some spells though. (like I mentioned before, perhaps a consistent way to do it would be to allow some spells to stack but with smartcast disabled, since conceptually that makes more sense).
On January 17 2014 01:42 Killcani wrote: I would be careful to take balance feedback from forums like these as most people posting have no clue what they are talking about. I just think you should strive to make this game more exciting(slower battles, more micro, reavers shots etc) and APM intensive(so better players can shine) as those were two areas that I felt sc2 really lacked in.
apm says who is better player. lol.
yes it does if the game requires a certain amount of apm to be played good.
Yes but what skill level are we talking? You said "so better players can shine"
Brains vs hands? Who you wanna win? Brains for me ofc.
Turn Based Strategy
No, but seriously, mechanical skill should be and is very important in RTS games and especially Starcraft. Thinking of harassing your opponent from their third and main is pretty easy for your brain to grasp but not so simple for your hands to perform along with all other tasks. Setting up Lurker flanks also takes your hands to direct the army there while simultaneously focusing on your main forces. An important unit to showcase mechanical skill would be the Reaver which displays high damage from long range with the weakness of immobility which is solved by using your hands to maneuver the unit across the battlefield with the use of your Shuttle/Warp Prism. It also turns out that most of the more interesting strategies require you to have really good mechanical control of your army among other things.
Strategy and Mechanical Skill are intertwined in a RTS game and always should be.
"brain vs hands" is so dumb, as if e.g. playing piano doesn't require a high level of cognitive ability
when jaedong plays at 400apm he's constantly thinking about the flow of his game, he's not mindlessly executing rote movements.
On January 17 2014 02:02 Big J wrote: I don't quite understand the discussions about smartcast, pathing and unit selection. Aren't those some of the main things that set Starbow apart from BW (and the SC2BW mod)? I mean, sure Starbow can toy around with that kind of stuff. But wouldn't it be more interesting to balance Starbow around being Starbow, instead of just going back to BW whenever a problem (or some theoretical arguement why there could be a problem) occurs?
Edit: Not to get missinterpreted. If the question is only whether units should move a little more spread etc. I'm all for (at least discussing/testing) it. Just not the extreme let's-solve-it-with-BW approaches for things that may be solveable more comfortably.
I prefer powerful hard to cast spells than average everyone can spam it spells
Well, but isn't that first-and-foremost a question of spelldesign? Can't such problems get solved individually for the problem-spells? I mean, if turning of smartcast was the only way to balance e.g. storm, you could just turn it off for that one spell alone.
Also remember, we also have no selection limit currently. To a certain degree, the easier to cast storms/irradiates/dark swarms/... get balanced out by being able to control armies faster and more accurately. It's easier to pull out of a storm too. And I think it's actually more interesting to see one player casting storms and the other one dodging them, instead of seeing less storms and less dodging.
That's a good idea, we could start with turning off smartcast for irradiate.
It seems fairly shady and inconsistent to have smartcast enabled only for some spells though. (like I mentioned before, perhaps a consistent way to do it would be to allow some spells to stack but with smartcast disabled, since conceptually that makes more sense).
Cloaking, Stim and Blink are not smartcasted abilities already though. I guess most people do not consider non-energy spells to need smartcasting but cloaking is already there.
On January 17 2014 02:12 Plansix wrote: Units clump in every game. They clump in dota, company of heroes and dawn of war. They even clumped in BW, but that game was on a grid, so it looked like they has space between them. It's just the way path finding works. If you force units to not clump, you run the risk of limiting the players ability to control them.
By all means they should clump if you tell them to clump, but them clumping on their own all the time is not good either. Obviously both options should exist in the game. The pathing in the video is just about right in my opinion, it has the clumping and the spreading in the correct situtations.
On January 17 2014 02:31 Slardar wrote: Is anyone else's Starbow lagging like crazy? Not quite sure what's going on, the entire SC2 is freezing periodically 2-3 seconds.
I don't know about freezing that much, but in late game situations it seems that the game microstutters, probably because of the mechanism that keeps unit from clumping. It's nothing unplayable but it's still noticeable.
On January 17 2014 02:12 Plansix wrote: Units clump in every game. They clump in dota, company of heroes and dawn of war. They even clumped in BW, but that game was on a grid, so it looked like they has space between them. It's just the way path finding works. If you force units to not clump, you run the risk of limiting the players ability to control them.
By all means they should clump if you tell them to clump, but them clumping on their own all the time is not good either. Obviously both options should exist in the game. The pathing in the video is just about right in my opinion, it has the clumping and the spreading in the correct situtations.
On January 17 2014 02:12 Plansix wrote: Units clump in every game. They clump in dota, company of heroes and dawn of war. They even clumped in BW, but that game was on a grid, so it looked like they has space between them. It's just the way path finding works. If you force units to not clump, you run the risk of limiting the players ability to control them.
By all means they should clump if you tell them to clump, but them clumping on their own all the time is not good either. Obviously both options should exist in the game. The pathing in the video is just about right in my opinion, it has the clumping and the spreading in the correct situtations.
On January 17 2014 02:12 Plansix wrote: Units clump in every game. They clump in dota, company of heroes and dawn of war. They even clumped in BW, but that game was on a grid, so it looked like they has space between them. It's just the way path finding works. If you force units to not clump, you run the risk of limiting the players ability to control them.
By all means they should clump if you tell them to clump, but them clumping on their own all the time is not good either. Obviously both options should exist in the game. The pathing in the video is just about right in my opinion, it has the clumping and the spreading in the correct situtations.
On January 17 2014 02:12 Plansix wrote: Units clump in every game. They clump in dota, company of heroes and dawn of war. They even clumped in BW, but that game was on a grid, so it looked like they has space between them. It's just the way path finding works. If you force units to not clump, you run the risk of limiting the players ability to control them.
By all means they should clump if you tell them to clump, but them clumping on their own all the time is not good either. Obviously both options should exist in the game. The pathing in the video is just about right in my opinion, it has the clumping and the spreading in the correct situtations.
That looks really great actually. I was always led to believe it was impossible to create behavior like that because of the videos that I had seen for SC2BW where the zergling movement was very odd and clumsy after Maverick tried to have pathfinding more similar to BW's, and I never thought that his implementation was acceptable. But that was a very old video, so maybe that's outdated information on my part.
Anyone knows why Starbow isn't using this implementation?
I should say that maybe "clumping" is an inaccurate way of putting it. Personally the following three problems bother me: 1. if you send a move command the units will clump on arrival instead of maintaining the original formation 2. units can move in lock-step which looks completely unrealistic, in real-life there is such a thing as bumper distance 3. units are made of butter and can slide past each other and therefore is no blocking micro such as existed in warcraft 3. (and 4. the colossus, void ray, .. take up no space, but starbow already solved that. I suppose they also solved #1. #3 for me isn't that high priority, so that just leaves #2)
I don't mind if units can be made to clump and I don't think that units should have huge collision sizes.
On January 17 2014 02:12 Plansix wrote: Units clump in every game. They clump in dota, company of heroes and dawn of war. They even clumped in BW, but that game was on a grid, so it looked like they has space between them. It's just the way path finding works. If you force units to not clump, you run the risk of limiting the players ability to control them.
By all means they should clump if you tell them to clump, but them clumping on their own all the time is not good either. Obviously both options should exist in the game. The pathing in the video is just about right in my opinion, it has the clumping and the spreading in the correct situtations.
What is the role of zerglings in starbow ? i feel zerglings are too weak currently especially there is no creep speed and vultures are hard counters for them. Technically zerg is forced to go for quick hydras skipping lings. Can anyone elaborate on it ?
On January 17 2014 03:00 saltis wrote: What is the role of zerglings in starbow ? i feel zerglings are too weak currently especially there is no creep speed and vultures are hard counters for them. Technically zerg is forced to go for quick hydras skipping lings. Can anyone elaborate on it ?
Uh, trust me, Zerglings are like much better in SB than in SC2. They have a lot of less counters and actually deal damage because they attack faster and every other unit has less HP.
Vultures and Zealots do great against them, that still doesn't mean that you won't be able to fight them. Vultures counter them hard only because they are faster and even when they are faster if you manage to corner them, you will trade better. Besides, you won't see Vultures in TvZ every game, majority of the TvZ games are Bio + Tanks or Bio + SV from the Terran.
On the other hand, Zerglings can actually fight Bio balls and won't just all die without doing any damage, and in the late game with Adrenal glands, they just melt stuff beneath the Dark Swarm. I just wish that Zerglings in SC2 are half as good as they are in SB/SC2BW/BW...
They are useful for banelings and cheap harass. But otherwise yeah, lings in BW were mostly used late game because they were fucking insane with adrenal upgrade. Watching 1 control group of lings with a defiler take out a cannoned up protoss expo before dark swarm wears off was pretty nuts.