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On January 18 2014 13:03 Kabel wrote:Small patchBug fixes:+ Show Spoiler +
- fixed Siege Tanks (Siege Mode) not being able to target fire
- fixed Overcharge duration time bug
- fixed Reactor requirement bug
Terran+ Show Spoiler +
- Spider mine missile moves slightly faster
- Spider mines unburrow during 4.5 seconds instead of 5 seconds
(We will look even closer at Spider mines soon, and maybe do a redesign if possible. Right now we take very small steps)
- Reactor has no tech tree requirement anymore and has the same build-time of 50 seconds, no matter if built on a Barrack, Factory or Starport. (Earlier there were different values and different requirements on all Reactors..)
- Vulture BT increased from 26 seconds to 32.
Keep in mind Overcharge + Reactors work properly now for the first time. We will look closer at how macro mechanics affect the races, but for now we made the judgement that this should be kinda fair compared to the strength of Inject + Chrono boost. Need to see and play more games to properly test this.
Viking life increased from 125 to 140. Just a small buff that we´ve been discussing for a while, partly since this unit it as fragile as Wraiths in BW, but does not benefit from the same mobility.
- Null sphere placed by Sentinel affects friendly units too when it explodes (be careful how you place them!)
- Null sphere deal 35 dmg to all targets and x2 vs shields. (Instead of 20 vs light, 30 vs medium, 40 vs armored, 60 vs massive and x2 vs shields.) The values were just too messy and did not have any real purpose. We try a flat value instead and then takes it from here to see if further adjustements are needed. We are keeping our eyes on more potential balance/design issues, and we keep our ears open for more bugs or problems. Be sure to let us know if you find anything!
Cool! Again much appreciated for all of your hard works. You guys are definitely working harder than Blizzard's employees.
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On January 18 2014 13:05 Xiphos wrote:Show nested quote +On January 18 2014 13:03 Kabel wrote:Small patchBug fixes:+ Show Spoiler +
- fixed Siege Tanks (Siege Mode) not being able to target fire
- fixed Overcharge duration time bug
- fixed Reactor requirement bug
Terran+ Show Spoiler +
- Spider mine missile moves slightly faster
- Spider mines unburrow during 4.5 seconds instead of 5 seconds
(We will look even closer at Spider mines soon, and maybe do a redesign if possible. Right now we take very small steps)
- Reactor has no tech tree requirement anymore and has the same build-time of 50 seconds, no matter if built on a Barrack, Factory or Starport. (Earlier there were different values and different requirements on all Reactors..)
- Vulture BT increased from 26 seconds to 32.
Keep in mind Overcharge + Reactors work properly now for the first time. We will look closer at how macro mechanics affect the races, but for now we made the judgement that this should be kinda fair compared to the strength of Inject + Chrono boost. Need to see and play more games to properly test this.
Viking life increased from 125 to 140. Just a small buff that we´ve been discussing for a while, partly since this unit it as fragile as Wraiths in BW, but does not benefit from the same mobility.
- Null sphere placed by Sentinel affects friendly units too when it explodes (be careful how you place them!)
- Null sphere deal 35 dmg to all targets and x2 vs shields. (Instead of 20 vs light, 30 vs medium, 40 vs armored, 60 vs massive and x2 vs shields.) The values were just too messy and did not have any real purpose. We try a flat value instead and then takes it from here to see if further adjustements are needed. We are keeping our eyes on more potential balance/design issues, and we keep our ears open for more bugs or problems. Be sure to let us know if you find anything! Cool! Again much appreciated for all of your hard works. You guys are definitely working harder than Blizzard's employees.
I'm pretty sure Blizzard employees are working pretty hard on Heroes of the Storm!
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On January 18 2014 13:05 Xiphos wrote:
Cool! Again much appreciated for all of your hard works. You guys are definitely working harder than Blizzard's employees.
No offense, with all the Blizzard bashing saying they're not working hard is a really low blow. I mean you don't really know what they do over there (and it's not your business to know), what their work load is like and how many people are actually able to work on this game (Heart of the Swarm) and not working on Legacy of the Void or other projects. It's like how everyone says that 99% of foreign players are really lazy and that is why they don't get results when that's not true. There's a million and one other factors as to why foreign players are not as good and why Blizzard is slow to react to what are mostly design problems of SC2.
As for the developers of Starbow, thank you guys for setting aside the time to be able to create, patch, and fix the mod up. Really have been enjoying this and the fact that playing against protoss is actually enjoyable.
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On January 18 2014 12:11 nukkuj wrote:
o.O The wiki doesn't mention any ebay requirements for reactor, tooltip are same for factory and starport but different for rax. Is this intended?
It's a pretty weird restriction and since you can just put a reactor on your barracks and swap it really just an annoyance.
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Won't the sentinel change make it very hard to defend mineral lines with them?
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sentinels are really strong in pvp o_o
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I'm loving StarBow so far, but I think it falls victim of two major mistakes:
1. Being too much Broodwar nostalgic: and I am saying this coming from the BW era. A lot of things that people nowadays consider the great characteristics of Broodwar were absolutely unintentional; take the Reaver: the unit is simply a badly designed one. Very smart pro players happened to figure out that it would become an amazing unit when paired with the Shuttle; also, the pair happens to have great spectating potential, due to requiring great micro.
Both of these things are great, but I don't think those Broodwar characteristics should be replicated verbatim. Sure, we learn great design principles from those things, which we can then apply to intelligent unit design. Specifically, I don't think the Reaver should require the presence of the Shuttle to function properly; certainly, the combo is great to see, and an all-time favourite, but the fact that it is a requirement bothers me[*].
Also, there are plenty of gimmicky mechanics, and I am happy to see that the developers are realizing that and removing them (like Reactor having different costs and requirements, or messy damage output from the Sentinel); I hope that they all get removed and fixed soon, but there is especially one that I dislike which again shows a kind of pointless nostalgia for Broodwar: the damage types. It is counter-intuitive how some units have these damage types which scale down their damage output in percentage against other unit types. Scaling up, and giving wholenumber bonuses clearly shown on the weapon tooltip is much more consistent and intuitive. Maybe I am missing a point, but I really don't understand the reasoning behind this (at least they are not hidden like in BW!)[**].
Few other examples off the top of my head: The 65% increase in speed of larva production, Recall/Rift limit by unit count and not by area and Matrix giving different shield amounts to Bio or Mech. I think, as a design philosophy in general, simplifying is much better than having convoluted mechanisms.[***]
2. Forgetting about race identity: this is not necessarily tied to game balance or spectator-value, but I think, design-wise, more attention should be given to each race's unique identity, and work it down from there. With things like Chronoboost for everyone there is a risk of making the races feel less special and unique. For one thing, I don't see why they chose to give the Stalker the Khala-themed skin, when they retained (or even enhanced!) the assassin/shady/mobility aspect.
It seems like small things, but I think in this regard, for example, OneGoal does a much better job: they have a very specific and explicit statement of what they think the races should feel like, and they work from there. I think, in the long run, this lead to much more exciting results and, overrall, inspires good design decisions.[****]
[*] Also, there are a lot of complaints on SC2 biggest sin of being too much casual-friendly, but I would like to remind that not every player is a pro player. Rather, the majority is not: a game should certainly scale up according to your skill, but not make things outright impossible for lower-skilled players.
[**] Also things like 200% damage to shields of light units… cannot get more convoluted than that.
[***] On that note I also think that, while it is great to see high ground advantage, I think that 50% miss chance is a bit of a convoluted mechanic. For one thing, there is no visual feedback of whether I missed or not, which I think is huge; secondly, I think chance-based mechanics shouldn't have a place in an esport: there should be no situation in which one could blame it on the roll of a dice. There are other alternatives for high ground advantage, such as damage buff or range buff. But I am sure ideas can come up, but this has to come again in discussion.
[****] Unlike the ones that inspired, for example, HotS changes (“oh, Protoss is having trouble with Colossi and Broodlords? Let's give them the Tempest!” or “We should give a way to Protoss to kill workers: let's make the Oracle!”). I think that SC2 started with a great step towards the right direction, and even failed attempts at this — such as the Mothership, or the Warp Gate mechanics (or arguably the current larva model) — have failed just because Blizzard wasn't responsive and perceptive enough to act and fix those things.
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I'm seeing a lot of posts that are making balance suggestions and it's really starting to piss me off.
There is a difference between fixing something that's game breaking and "fixing" something that either you don't like or you can't win against.
I'm also sick of seeing "X isn't the same broodwar pls change"
STARBOW IS A NEW GAME ITS NOT A BROODWAR REMAKE SO STOP IT
Play the game, get better and work for your victories.
Also props to the mod team for fixing bugs asap.
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On January 18 2014 14:03 Veren wrote:
[***] On that note I also think that, while it is great to see high ground advantage, I think that 50% miss chance is a bit of a convoluted mechanic. For one thing, there is no visual feedback of whether I missed or not, which I think is huge; secondly, I think chance-based mechanics shouldn't have a place in an esport: there should be no situation in which one could blame it on the roll of a dice. There are other alternatives for high ground advantage, such as damage buff or range buff. But I am sure ideas can come up, but this has to come again in discussion.
Do you have a suggestion for a clear visual representation of misses?
Also, which useful information do you gain when you see that a unit missed? How does it effect your play, if you see a unit missing?
Also, adding a visual representation might be rather cumbersome as SC2 has no direct support of a conditional miss chance. You might have to duplicate everything that is involved with all attacks in the game, so all effect chains and visuals.
Other alternatives for a defenders advantage might be more or less bad for some units. Range doesn't work for melee units. Half damage punishes units with low attack damage. Damage buffs might make armor upgrades more irrelevant.
Also, there are many e-sport titles that contain random elements. In FPS games, the weapon's bullet spraying pattern isn't static, it's often randomized (much less in quake games). MOBA games like DOTA2 and LoL have critical damage which triggers randomly instead of with a clear pattern like every # hit.
Even SC2 contains randomization as ALL weapons have a randomized duration of their attack period.
I think that randomization is acceptable as long as the players know the odds and its not clearly deciding the game or if it is even avoidable with strategies to accept the gamble.
For example, in Starbow, the high ground is visible, so you know when your opponent has that advantage. You can either chose to go around or not to engage to avoid the gamble. If your enemy turtles on the high ground, you contain him and expand your advantage instead of gambling by committing into a final attack. If you are behind, you might try to hope the attacker will take a gamble where he can potentially lose. The miss chance is something you have to incorporate into your play. The better player should be able to handle it.
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On January 18 2014 14:52 Kaos_StarCraft wrote:
I'm seeing a lot of posts that are making balance suggestions and it's really starting to piss me off.
There is a difference between fixing something that's game breaking and "fixing" something that either you don't like or you can't win against.
I'm also sick of seeing "X isn't the same broodwar pls change"
STARBOW IS A NEW GAME ITS NOT A BROODWAR REMAKE SO STOP IT
Play the game, get better and work for your victories.
Also props to the mod team for fixing bugs asap.
+1 I've mentioned this a couple times in this thread. This is a pretty important time for Starbow and the modding community. The beta just went public and mainstream. It's gaining traction and people are enjoying it.
All of this could also be completely derailed and screwed up by our community of nerds (of which I include myself) getting too anal-retentive, analytical and pushy in the opening stages of this games debut. The game is not Brood War and it is not Starcraft 2. It's a new game. It needs to be played for a while. I'm not talking about playing it for years in order to make changes, not even months. But at least weeks. Certainly not days, as is the current situation.
The game attracts players form both Brood War and Starcraft 2 because it has elements that both communities enjoy. Neither community needs to shit on the game and suggest that he be "more like _________". Let it be it's own thing. Discover the meta, be patient. And certainly cut the "game is broken" bullshit after playing only a handful of games against random players without using a ranking system.
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It is important to know the outcome of each fire shots.
JD zvz for example, he never miss judge his early game ling vs ling engagement, even if he can't count the lings exactly.
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I'm loving StarBow so far, but I think it falls victim of two major mistakes:
1. Being too much Broodwar nostalgic: and I am saying this coming from the BW era. A lot of things that people nowadays consider the great characteristics of Broodwar were absolutely unintentional; take the Reaver: the unit is simply a badly designed one. Very smart pro players happened to figure out that it would become an amazing unit when paired with the Shuttle; also, the pair happens to have great spectating potential, due to requiring great micro.
Both of these things are great, but I don't think those Broodwar characteristics should be replicated verbatim. Sure, we learn great design principles from those things, which we can then apply to intelligent unit design. Specifically, I don't think the Reaver should require the presence of the Shuttle to function properly; certainly, the combo is great to see, and an all-time favourite, but the fact that it is a requirement bothers me[*].
Also, there are plenty of gimmicky mechanics, and I am happy to see that the developers are realizing that and removing them (like Reactor having different costs and requirements, or messy damage output from the Sentinel); I hope that they all get removed and fixed soon, but there is especially one that I dislike which again shows a kind of pointless nostalgia for Broodwar: the damage types. It is counter-intuitive how some units have these damage types which scale down their damage output in percentage against other unit types. Scaling up, and giving wholenumber bonuses clearly shown on the weapon tooltip is much more consistent and intuitive. Maybe I am missing a point, but I really don't understand the reasoning behind this (at least they are not hidden like in BW!)[**].
Few other examples off the top of my head: The 65% increase in speed of larva production, Recall/Rift limit by unit count and not by area and Matrix giving different shield amounts to Bio or Mech. I think, as a design philosophy in general, simplifying is much better than having convoluted mechanisms.[***]
2. Forgetting about race identity: this is not necessarily tied to game balance or spectator-value, but I think, design-wise, more attention should be given to each race's unique identity, and work it down from there. With things like Chronoboost for everyone there is a risk of making the races feel less special and unique. For one thing, I don't see why they chose to give the Stalker the Khala-themed skin, when they retained (or even enhanced!) the assassin/shady/mobility aspect.
It seems like small things, but I think in this regard, for example, OneGoal does a much better job: they have a very specific and explicit statement of what they think the races should feel like, and they work from there. I think, in the long run, this lead to much more exciting results and, overrall, inspires good design decisions.[****]
[*] Also, there are a lot of complaints on SC2 biggest sin of being too much casual-friendly, but I would like to remind that not every player is a pro player. Rather, the majority is not: a game should certainly scale up according to your skill, but not make things outright impossible for lower-skilled players.
[**] Also things like 200% damage to shields of light units… cannot get more convoluted than that.
[***] On that note I also think that, while it is great to see high ground advantage, I think that 50% miss chance is a bit of a convoluted mechanic. For one thing, there is no visual feedback of whether I missed or not, which I think is huge; secondly, I think chance-based mechanics shouldn't have a place in an esport: there should be no situation in which one could blame it on the roll of a dice. There are other alternatives for high ground advantage, such as damage buff or range buff. But I am sure ideas can come up, but this has to come again in discussion.
[****] Unlike the ones that inspired, for example, HotS changes (“oh, Protoss is having trouble with Colossi and Broodlords? Let's give them the Tempest!” or “We should give a way to Protoss to kill workers: let's make the Oracle!”). I think that SC2 started with a great step towards the right direction, and even failed attempts at this — such as the Mothership, or the Warp Gate mechanics (or arguably the current larva model) — have failed just because Blizzard wasn't responsive and perceptive enough to act and fix those things.
Great post. Do you have any background in design?
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Do you have a suggestion for a clear visual representation of misses?
Also, which useful information do you gain when you see that a unit missed?
It can be something as simple as a smokey effect coming out of the unit. I understand it might be difficult to implement, but I think it is important. As for which useful information you gain, is the same useful information that you gain for the other visual feedbacks you get: from the zerglings with speed have wings, to the little lightning on units using Stim, down to the very subtle ripple effect of a unit entering under a guardian shield.
Those are small details, but trust me, they make a huge subconscious difference (I am an interface designer, and I know a thing or two about those things).
there are many e-sport titles that contain random elements.
Indeed there are; the mechanic itself was borrowed from Broodwar. I am not saying it is not there; I am arguing that it shouldn't. It's not like in Chess you have to throw a dice when a piece tries to capture another one. I think that, in an esport, given the exact same conditions, you should have the exact same result (of course, esports are so dynamic that exact same conditions never apply).
I might be wrong on that and I might change my mind; also, your points against my proposals are all valid. I was not necessarely proposing a solution, I was just underlining the need to discuss alternatives, in my opinion.
Range doesn't work for melee units.
Wait a minute: does the 50% miss chance apply to melee units? If it does, that hardly makes sense. I understand that melee units might also have a slight advantage when fighting from an elevation compared to another unit, I don't think that the advantage should be so massive as a 50% miss chance.
Great post. Do you have any background in design?
Thank you CutTheEnemy, I appreciate the praise. ^^ As I mentioned here, I am a Web Designer with a focus on Interface and User Experience Design. I also enjoy designing tabletop games as an hobby.
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On January 18 2014 14:55 Ahli wrote:Show nested quote +On January 18 2014 14:03 Veren wrote:
[***] On that note I also think that, while it is great to see high ground advantage, I think that 50% miss chance is a bit of a convoluted mechanic. For one thing, there is no visual feedback of whether I missed or not, which I think is huge; secondly, I think chance-based mechanics shouldn't have a place in an esport: there should be no situation in which one could blame it on the roll of a dice. There are other alternatives for high ground advantage, such as damage buff or range buff. But I am sure ideas can come up, but this has to come again in discussion.
Other alternatives for a defenders advantage might be more or less bad for some units. Range doesn't work for melee units. Half damage punishes units with low attack damage. Damage buffs might make armor upgrades more irrelevant.
You make it sound like miss chance doesn't negatively and arbitrarily impact anything, when of course it does just like any other alternative. Miss chance is worse for glass cannons like Marines or Stalkers than tough units like Marauders and Dragoons, because if their burst damage fails to make the necessary dent in the enemy army, their low HP means they're going to lose a lot of firepower before they can regroup.
And if we've established that no alternative is objectively superior... all that leaves is miss chance being luck-based. Which is a terrible thing, despite your defense of it. Will miss chance ruin Starbow? No, of course not. But if it can be removed and replaced with a predictable mechanic that pros can actually practice and prepare for, why not do that?
Would you rather hear a caster say "The Protoss gambled that high ground would help him win that fight and lead to a comeback, and it did! The Terran units looked like they were doing no damage at all in that fight! What a comeback." or "The Protoss knew that Stalkers on high ground outrange Marines and took advantage of this to whittle down the Terran's front line. It looks like the Terran miscalculated and getting into range cost him a huge chunk of his army. What a comeback."
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4713 Posts
On January 18 2014 15:23 pure.Wasted wrote:Show nested quote +On January 18 2014 14:55 Ahli wrote:On January 18 2014 14:03 Veren wrote:
[***] On that note I also think that, while it is great to see high ground advantage, I think that 50% miss chance is a bit of a convoluted mechanic. For one thing, there is no visual feedback of whether I missed or not, which I think is huge; secondly, I think chance-based mechanics shouldn't have a place in an esport: there should be no situation in which one could blame it on the roll of a dice. There are other alternatives for high ground advantage, such as damage buff or range buff. But I am sure ideas can come up, but this has to come again in discussion.
Other alternatives for a defenders advantage might be more or less bad for some units. Range doesn't work for melee units. Half damage punishes units with low attack damage. Damage buffs might make armor upgrades more irrelevant. Your statement makes it sound like miss chance does not negatively and arbitrarily impact "some" other "units" the way other alternatives would, when of course it's no different. Miss chance is worse for glass cannons like Marines or Stalkers than tough units like Marauders and Dragoons, because if their burst damage fails to make the necessary dent in the enemy army, their low HP means they're going to lose a lot of firepower before they can regroup. And if we've established that no alternative is objectively superior... all that leaves is miss chance being luck-based. Which is a terrible thing, despite your defense of it. Will miss chance ruin Starbow? No, of course not. But if it can be removed and replaced with a predictable mechanic that pros can actually practice and prepare for, why not do that? Would you rather hear a caster say "The Protoss gambled that high ground would help him win that fight and lead to a comeback, and it did! The Terran units looked like they were doing no damage at all in that fight! What a comeback." or "The Protoss knew that Stalkers on high ground outrange Marines and took advantage of this to whittle down the Terran's front line. It looks like the Terran miscalculated and getting into range cost him a huge chunk of his army. What a comeback."
Actually I think you are wrong, miss chance affects all units equally, it only appears that fast and weak units with high rate of fire are at a disadvantage because the visual effect of their failure is very visible, they don't have lots of HP they might live trough a burst but might not survive the 2nd. However dragoons or, slow units with beefy HP and slow rate of fire still are at the same disadvantage, because it takes them longer to get in range due to the speed and if their attacks fail also takes longer until they reload or move out, so in the end it all balances out and all unit types take equal damage. You work with the premise that the weak units are more punished because if they don't burst a target they die, but a slow unit also risks dying by the same margin, because even though it has more HP it has a slower attack rate, so it will be in the line of fire for longer and take more damage, and its retreat will be slower, this is why a 50% miss chance is actually fair to all units.
If SC2 could calculate damage reduction after armor then a flat 50% damage reduction would work from low ground to high ground, however SC2 can only calculate damage reduction before armor, so a 50% miss chance works just as well, other things like range, damage multipliers, armor etc punish other units unfairly.
Also, nobody ever thinks the way you try to portray it in your last comment, everybody in BW simply associated high ground with defenders advantage and if you tried to muscle your way trough you where going to be punished, nobody ever qqed it was because off 50% miss chance, it was just something you had to incorporate into your play and work around.
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On January 18 2014 14:03 Veren wrote:
[***] On that note I also think that, while it is great to see high ground advantage, I think that 50% miss chance is a bit of a convoluted mechanic. For one thing, there is no visual feedback of whether I missed or not, which I think is huge; secondly, I think chance-based mechanics shouldn't have a place in an esport: there should be no situation in which one could blame it on the roll of a dice. There are other alternatives for high ground advantage, such as damage buff or range buff. But I am sure ideas can come up, but this has to come again in discussion.
Well first of all there is a visual representation for hits..look at the health of the unit your attacking and see if it goes down. Second of all, no one is making you attack up a ramp. If you have your opponent pinned up on high ground somewhere, either expand or flank. All the high ground advantage is doing is giving the defender an advantage in defending that specific spot. So if you don't have a largely superior army, you shouldn't be attacking him there anyways. It wouldn't matter what kind of advantage the defender had, he should win anyways, so the fact that its based on a random hit chance doesn't really matter in the end. I for one love the fact that it's based on this, for the added reason that it takes some power away from the deathball style of play. You cant just look at you opponents army and say "oh I have enough units to beat that" like you can in SC2, and it takes a more flexible strategy to win.
And on a side note, random damage effects play a huge role in very successful games such as Dota 2, and by no means should it not have a place in esports.
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On January 18 2014 15:23 pure.Wasted wrote:Show nested quote +On January 18 2014 14:55 Ahli wrote:On January 18 2014 14:03 Veren wrote:
[***] On that note I also think that, while it is great to see high ground advantage, I think that 50% miss chance is a bit of a convoluted mechanic. For one thing, there is no visual feedback of whether I missed or not, which I think is huge; secondly, I think chance-based mechanics shouldn't have a place in an esport: there should be no situation in which one could blame it on the roll of a dice. There are other alternatives for high ground advantage, such as damage buff or range buff. But I am sure ideas can come up, but this has to come again in discussion.
Other alternatives for a defenders advantage might be more or less bad for some units. Range doesn't work for melee units. Half damage punishes units with low attack damage. Damage buffs might make armor upgrades more irrelevant. You make it sound like miss chance doesn't negatively and arbitrarily impact anything, when of course it does just like any other alternative. Miss chance is worse for glass cannons like Marines or Stalkers than tough units like Marauders and Dragoons, because if their burst damage fails to make the necessary dent in the enemy army, their low HP means they're going to lose a lot of firepower before they can regroup. And if we've established that no alternative is objectively superior... all that leaves is miss chance being luck-based. Which is a terrible thing, despite your defense of it. Will miss chance ruin Starbow? No, of course not. But if it can be removed and replaced with a predictable mechanic that pros can actually practice and prepare for, why not do that? Would you rather hear a caster say "The Protoss gambled that high ground would help him win that fight and lead to a comeback, and it did! The Terran units looked like they were doing no damage at all in that fight! What a comeback." or "The Protoss knew that Stalkers on high ground outrange Marines and took advantage of this to whittle down the Terran's front line. It looks like the Terran miscalculated and getting into range cost him a huge chunk of his army. What a comeback."
The former does sound much more exciting.
The miss chance is the risk the low ground army takes to overcome the enemy. It will lead to not only exciting engagements for the viewers, but forces more risks and tactical positioning to overcome the high ground advantage and for the army on the high ground to do whatever it takes to keep it's position with the miss chance advantage.
Alternatives like damage reduction or range reduction would likely lead stalemates due to the low ground army knowing that if he gets any closer to the cliff, his army will not be able to touch it.
There's also those smaller engagements like a single siege tank on high ground defending off goons or marines to hold an area. Without miss chance, that siege tank would have just been bullied off easily, forcing the defending player to dedicate more forces than he would have wanted meaning less units in the main army and/or unable to hold off another area because any less would just mean the opposing army can just bullrush a "weak" defense because of a lack of proper high ground advantage system. Now, this wouldn't be the only factor, but I can imagine that this would too lead to more deathball vs deathball, because neither players can rely on a smaller group of units to hold a position.
Then, of course, there's attacking and defending bases... which I pretty much explained most of it above.
Edit: fix
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By the way, I just mentioned the high-ground miss-chance on an end-note, and I think it would perhaps require a dedicated discussion. High ground advantage should be a thing, as should defender advantage (they are not always the same thing); I like a lot that it has been considered, and I just think that the way it was applied should perhaps be at the center of a larger discussion.
HOWEVER, my point was: gimmicky or convoluted mechanics taken out of BW, which was a convoluted game. I think there should be a simplification of those mechanics, which by no means mean a flattening of the amazing possibilities and design principles that have been successfully applied to the game (defenders advantage being one of them).
(Also, my post had more important points, I feel like :D)
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On January 18 2014 16:17 Destructicon wrote:Show nested quote +On January 18 2014 15:23 pure.Wasted wrote:On January 18 2014 14:55 Ahli wrote:On January 18 2014 14:03 Veren wrote:
[***] On that note I also think that, while it is great to see high ground advantage, I think that 50% miss chance is a bit of a convoluted mechanic. For one thing, there is no visual feedback of whether I missed or not, which I think is huge; secondly, I think chance-based mechanics shouldn't have a place in an esport: there should be no situation in which one could blame it on the roll of a dice. There are other alternatives for high ground advantage, such as damage buff or range buff. But I am sure ideas can come up, but this has to come again in discussion.
Other alternatives for a defenders advantage might be more or less bad for some units. Range doesn't work for melee units. Half damage punishes units with low attack damage. Damage buffs might make armor upgrades more irrelevant. Your statement makes it sound like miss chance does not negatively and arbitrarily impact "some" other "units" the way other alternatives would, when of course it's no different. Miss chance is worse for glass cannons like Marines or Stalkers than tough units like Marauders and Dragoons, because if their burst damage fails to make the necessary dent in the enemy army, their low HP means they're going to lose a lot of firepower before they can regroup. And if we've established that no alternative is objectively superior... all that leaves is miss chance being luck-based. Which is a terrible thing, despite your defense of it. Will miss chance ruin Starbow? No, of course not. But if it can be removed and replaced with a predictable mechanic that pros can actually practice and prepare for, why not do that? Would you rather hear a caster say "The Protoss gambled that high ground would help him win that fight and lead to a comeback, and it did! The Terran units looked like they were doing no damage at all in that fight! What a comeback." or "The Protoss knew that Stalkers on high ground outrange Marines and took advantage of this to whittle down the Terran's front line. It looks like the Terran miscalculated and getting into range cost him a huge chunk of his army. What a comeback." Actually I think you are wrong, miss chance affects all units equally, it only appears that fast and weak units with high rate of fire are at a disadvantage because the visual effect of their failure is very visible, they don't have lots of HP they might live trough a burst but might not survive the 2nd. However dragoons or, slow units with beefy HP and slow rate of fire still are at the same disadvantage, because it takes them longer to get in range due to the speed and if their attacks fail also takes longer until they reload or move out, so in the end it all balances out and all unit types take equal damage. You work with the premise that the weak units are more punished because if they don't burst a target they die, but a slow unit also risks dying by the same margin, because even though it has more HP it has a slower attack rate, so it will be in the line of fire for longer and take more damage, and its retreat will be slower, this is why a 50% miss chance is actually fair to all units.
P1: A unit can deal 100% of its damage with only 1% life.
P2: A unit with more HP is better equipped to miss its first volley and retreat than a unit with less HP unless it is considerably slower.
P3: A stimmed Marauder isn't considerably slower than a stimmed Marine.
C1: Therefore, a Marine is more disadvantaged if/when shit goes south.
Pretty sure I'm right.
edit: P1 doesn't actually support C1 the way it's worded... but it's late and I'm sure you can reword it in your brain to make some kind of better connection. ;D
Also, nobody ever thinks the way you try to portray it in your last comment, everybody in BW simply associated high ground with defenders advantage and if you tried to muscle your way trough you where going to be punished, nobody ever qqed it was because off 50% miss chance, it was just something you had to incorporate into your play and work around.
The same way we simply shrug at how luck-based Widow Mine engagements can be. But nobody likes it.
If SC2 could calculate damage before armor then a flat 50% damage reduction would work from low ground to high ground, but since it doesn't then 50% miss chance works just as well, other things like range, damage multipliers, armor etc punish other units unfairly.
Dang, that sucks.
What about applying a % damage buff to the highlander? Is that possible? Or giving him a range increase?
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I just went for a 3 gate stalker rush in my first game and won. Stalkers are fucking awesome now, not only do they actually seem to do damage to stuff, but I felt like the micro ceiling for them has been raised.
My only wish is that the shields of stalkers revert to the shield mechanics of SC2. As in, if they do not take damage for awhile, they regain shields very quickly. This I think would make the stalker even more different from the dragoon, and make them far more usable.
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EPT
