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On January 18 2014 15:23 pure.Wasted wrote: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."
In either scenario both players have the option to avoid "gambling". You make it sound like it's not the loser's fault if they engaged and lost vs a high ground army, but it is. A smart player doesn't engage vs highground without an overwhelming advantage, making that judgement is where skill comes in.
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4713 Posts
On January 18 2014 14:03 Veren wrote:
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.
Actually one principle of good design is that units have interesting advantages and disadvantages. Siege tanks advantage is that it deals huge damage in siege mode, but it takes time to siege, unsiege and move them, it can be played around or countered. Lurker advantage is that it can't be seen without detectors and deals great damage in a line, but it needs to be burrowed to attack, Reaver's advantage is that it deals huge burst aoe, its downside is super slow movement speed.
In all the above cases the advantages and disadvantages can be worked around in some way, often trough great micro on the other part, this is why I, in principle disagree with you wanting the Reaver to work fine on its own, if you do that then you make it a less interesting unit. And this is one argument I'd like to build up and use more as a counter to what you said is convoluted mechanics. These are actually great pieces of design, they have a clear purpose and affect the way you play or the way the game plays in general, in a positive way.
The reason casters have weak or no attacks is often to counter balance the fact that they have extremely powerful spells. The reason you have range upgrades in the game is so you can have units out on the map early, skirmishing, but then later into the game you can further distinguish the strengths and weaknesses of a race. You can't have dragoons start with range upgrade because then they would murder terrans bio and you'd have stale turtles, you also can't just compensate terran by giving them stim for free, because then terran all-ins could murder both toss and zerg and make a clusterfuck out of TvT.
All the "clucky" and "convoluted" mechanics actually have a clear purpose in mind, to facilitate better gameplay, and for the most part they succeed.
I don't agree with your damage types problem, I could kind of agree with maybe buffing up damage as opposed to scaling down, but I see no problem with damage type. I fail to see how its counter intuitive, certain attack types exist that are more efficient then certain armor types, this has even been true to a large extent in early medieval times, so if it works in real life, why can't it work in a game? And if it was intuitive in real life why would putting it in a game make it less intuitive?
Lastly I want to disagree with your point off "giving all races chronoboost makes the races feel less unique". I think racial traits should come in the form of how their tech tree works, what units they have and how their units work.
Good design should be that all units are reliable, responsive and consistent. That means that, even though thematically units are different, a exceptional player can and should be able to extract more value from a unit then a merely good player.
Zerg has a clear theme of biological, burrow, swarmy and quantity over quality. Protoss has a clear theme off technological, shields and quality over quantity, terran has a theme of adaptive, versatile, jack of all trades, steampunk technology.
So zerg has cheeper, lower supply and generally faster units, however cost efficiency wise they are just as effective strong in head to head fights vs protoss, who are expensive, high supply and slow units, because the resources per supply and the damage per supply ratio of both armies is very similar.
If however, you had say, larva inject, yes it does work into the theme of zerg, but since you are capable of producing so many units at a time then the resource per supply ratio or the damage per supply ratio of all units would have to be adjusted, and it would have many other negative outcomes. Individual units would be less powerful so you'd need large armies, since you need large armies you'd need huge area for your armies to engage in and be cost efficient and the army would also fall in power once maxed compared to a maxed army of the other race. So larva inject is fundamentally a bad designed mechanic, because it breaks the responsive, reliable and consistent cycle, for the same of more distinction the zerg race would become stronger in one are but weaker in others, but not in a way that benefits the stronger player.
I think fundamentally its good design that other races have near similar macro mechanics or production capabilities, it doesn't take away from their themes, and it means all races can be equal to each other where it matters most, having units that scale with your skill.
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On January 18 2014 16:56 Dubo wrote:Show nested quote +On January 18 2014 15:23 pure.Wasted wrote: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."
In either scenario both players have the option to avoid "gambling". You make it sound like it's not the loser's fault if they engaged and lost vs a high ground army, but it is. A smart player doesn't engage vs highground without an overwhelming advantage, making that judgement is where skill comes in.
I think you misread my example.
An inferior highground army fights a superior lowground army. The lowground player made the right call to engage because his army is overwhelmingly bigger. However, probability is not on his side that day, and instead of losing 50% damage output, he loses 70%. He loses the fight. He loses the game.
Why would you want to allow for the possibility of this happening, when with a different highground advantage we can still reward smart play and skill without introducing unnecessary dice rolling into the equation?
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4713 Posts
On January 18 2014 17:10 pure.Wasted wrote:Show nested quote +On January 18 2014 16:56 Dubo wrote:On January 18 2014 15:23 pure.Wasted wrote: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."
In either scenario both players have the option to avoid "gambling". You make it sound like it's not the loser's fault if they engaged and lost vs a high ground army, but it is. A smart player doesn't engage vs highground without an overwhelming advantage, making that judgement is where skill comes in. I think you misread my example. An inferior highground army fights a superior lowground army. The lowground player made the right call to engage because his army is overwhelmingly bigger. However, probability is not on his side that day, and instead of losing 50% damage output, he loses 70%. He loses the fight. He loses the game. Why would you want to allow for the possibility of this happening, when with a different highground advantage we can still reward smart play and skill without introducing unnecessary dice rolling into the equation?
While what you say is statistically possible, it becomes highly improbably because the law or large numbers dictates that the more units are fighting or the longer the battle lasts the more the number of shots missed should tend towards the 50% chance. Your fictive scenario where the attacking army gets a very unlucky volley is extremely unlikely to happen,
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On January 18 2014 17:13 Destructicon wrote:Show nested quote +On January 18 2014 17:10 pure.Wasted wrote:On January 18 2014 16:56 Dubo wrote:On January 18 2014 15:23 pure.Wasted wrote: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."
In either scenario both players have the option to avoid "gambling". You make it sound like it's not the loser's fault if they engaged and lost vs a high ground army, but it is. A smart player doesn't engage vs highground without an overwhelming advantage, making that judgement is where skill comes in. I think you misread my example. An inferior highground army fights a superior lowground army. The lowground player made the right call to engage because his army is overwhelmingly bigger. However, probability is not on his side that day, and instead of losing 50% damage output, he loses 70%. He loses the fight. He loses the game. Why would you want to allow for the possibility of this happening, when with a different highground advantage we can still reward smart play and skill without introducing unnecessary dice rolling into the equation? While what you say is statistically possible, it becomes highly improbably because the law or large numbers dictates that the more units are fighting or the longer the battle lasts the more the number of shots missed should tend towards the 50% chance. Your fictive scenario where the attacking army gets a very unlucky volley is extremely unlikely to happen,
It's only extremely unlikely if the battle is extremely prolonged. The fewer units engage, (ie, during an early game all in, or an end game desperation push - times when players have nothing to concentrate on BUT their control) the less predictable the results will be. Now don't that sound backwards?
Speaking of backwards, why don't you give me a compelling reason to actually keep luck in the game when (presumably) it can be excised and replaced.
edit: losing 70% damage output is actually a lot more likely than you think. 20/25 units could hit, but if those 20 were Marines and those 5 were Siege Tanks, it might very well be GG.
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The entire RNG aspect of the BW high ground advantage actually works in the favour of the defender on the high ground not only from a numbers perspective, but also from a mental/psychological perspective ("I know I have a numerical advantage here, but do I want to risk pressing it at this stage?"). Which is part of the reason it worked so well.
Flat % reductions in damage do not have such an effect upon high level players once they have played the game enough; instead the high level player assesses whether their advantage is sufficient to overcome the damage reduction, which is really no different to battles on level-ground where each player assesses their own army strength vs that of their opponent based upon their experience and feel in the game.
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On January 18 2014 17:05 Destructicon wrote:
[**] Also things like 200% damage to shields of light units… cannot get more convoluted than that.
This guy has a point. Specific damage buff to specific HP type of units with specific armor type... wtf is this? Any game that can't attract noobs would gradually die off, and Starbow looks like a casual gamer's nightmare already.
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On January 18 2014 17:36 pure.Wasted wrote:Show nested quote +On January 18 2014 17:13 Destructicon wrote:On January 18 2014 17:10 pure.Wasted wrote:On January 18 2014 16:56 Dubo wrote:On January 18 2014 15:23 pure.Wasted wrote: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."
In either scenario both players have the option to avoid "gambling". You make it sound like it's not the loser's fault if they engaged and lost vs a high ground army, but it is. A smart player doesn't engage vs highground without an overwhelming advantage, making that judgement is where skill comes in. I think you misread my example. An inferior highground army fights a superior lowground army. The lowground player made the right call to engage because his army is overwhelmingly bigger. However, probability is not on his side that day, and instead of losing 50% damage output, he loses 70%. He loses the fight. He loses the game. Why would you want to allow for the possibility of this happening, when with a different highground advantage we can still reward smart play and skill without introducing unnecessary dice rolling into the equation? While what you say is statistically possible, it becomes highly improbably because the law or large numbers dictates that the more units are fighting or the longer the battle lasts the more the number of shots missed should tend towards the 50% chance. Your fictive scenario where the attacking army gets a very unlucky volley is extremely unlikely to happen, [ ... ] edit: losing 70% damage output is actually a lot more likely than you think. 20/25 units could hit, but if those 20 were Marines and those 5 were Siege Tanks, it might very well be GG.
Except that the probability of 5 out of 5 Siege Tanks all missing their shot in the same volley is 0.5^5 = 0.031250, or 1 in 32 times. That is not what I call very likely. It can happen, sure, but not very likely.
Having said that, I would favor units just dealing 50% of their damage as well instead of giving them a miss change, but in order to achieve that you have to halve the damage after armor is applied and that was apparently difficult to achieve in the Editor, the developers mentioned earlier.
If you just halve the damage before armor you nerf low damage, fast firing units like the Marine too much.
Example; Marine deals 6 damage, defending unit has 2 armor:
Normal: 6-2 = 4 damage.
To high ground: (6*0.5) - 2 = 1 damage.
That's a 75% reduction instead of 50%.
Basically, if there is a way to simply halve the damage after armor that should be preferred to the miss change I think, unless people like a bit of randomness. If you can just halve damage after armor, the Marine with 6 damage vs the defending unit with 2 armor simply looks like this:
Normal: 6-2 = 4 damage.
To high ground: (6-2)/2 = 2 damage.
Exactly what we would expect 
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On January 18 2014 17:51 Cheerio wrote:Show nested quote +On January 18 2014 17:05 Destructicon wrote:
[**] Also things like 200% damage to shields of light units… cannot get more convoluted than that.
This guy has a point. Specific damage buff to specific HP type of units with specific armor type... wtf is this? Any game that can't attract noobs would gradually die off, and Starbow looks like a casual gamer's nightmare already.
? Pretty sure that doesn't really make any sense. Why would anyone pick Dota 2 over LoL then where one has so many convoluted skill interaction and mechanics that just don't make any sense. While consistency and simplicity is nice, not having them does not equate to a dead game.
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On January 18 2014 17:45 Brett wrote:
The entire RNG aspect of the BW high ground advantage actually works in the favour of the defender on the high ground not only from a numbers perspective, but also from a mental/psychological perspective ("I know I have a numerical advantage here, but do I want to risk pressing it at this stage?"). Which is part of the reason it worked so well.
Flat % reductions in damage do not have such an effect upon high level players once they have played the game enough; instead the high level player assesses whether their advantage is sufficient to overcome the damage reduction, which is really no different to battles on level-ground where each player assesses their own army strength vs that of their opponent based upon their experience and feel in the game.
But you haven't explained why it's good that the low ground attacker vs. miss chance says to himself "I know I have a numerical advantage here, but do I want to risk pressing it at this stage?"
Why don't you want the player to be able to base his decision on ten complex factors that he took the time to account for in practice matches? If you're worried about unpredictability disappearing, there's nothing to worry about; nothing short of making this game play like Chess would remove all unaccountable factors from matches, and even in Chess there's still a lot of luck, it just isn't as blatant. If you're worried about psychology disappearing from games... that's not going anywhere no matter what we do.
I don't see what is gained.
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On January 18 2014 17:51 Cheerio wrote:Show nested quote +On January 18 2014 17:05 Destructicon wrote:
[**] Also things like 200% damage to shields of light units… cannot get more convoluted than that.
This guy has a point. Specific damage buff to specific HP type of units with specific armor type... wtf is this? Any game that can't attract noobs would gradually die off, and Starbow looks like a casual gamer's nightmare already.
I think that deriving what is good counter for what from theory is a bad approach in the first place, so I think that criticism is unfounded. E.g. in Armies of Exigo (some may remember it) the damage/armor system was rather complex, much more so than in SC2 or BW, but it still did not take long until people discovered/figured out the proper counters. On top of that, like in BW and unlike SC2 (for the most part, there are exceptions), it was less about having the "correct" composition and more about using the units at your disposal correctly (what I mean is that e.g. you can break a Terran line of Tanks, Vults and Gols in a multitude of ways - Zealot mine drags, Reavers, HTs, Carriers, Arbiters, Zealot bombs and so on).
I think Starbow should strive to achieve that. The counter system is of secondary importance and should be used as balance tool, first and foremost.
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Vulture build time nerfed after less than a week of lots of people playing this...not a good sign lol.
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On January 18 2014 17:54 dani` wrote:Show nested quote +On January 18 2014 17:36 pure.Wasted wrote:On January 18 2014 17:13 Destructicon wrote:On January 18 2014 17:10 pure.Wasted wrote:On January 18 2014 16:56 Dubo wrote:On January 18 2014 15:23 pure.Wasted wrote: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."
In either scenario both players have the option to avoid "gambling". You make it sound like it's not the loser's fault if they engaged and lost vs a high ground army, but it is. A smart player doesn't engage vs highground without an overwhelming advantage, making that judgement is where skill comes in. I think you misread my example. An inferior highground army fights a superior lowground army. The lowground player made the right call to engage because his army is overwhelmingly bigger. However, probability is not on his side that day, and instead of losing 50% damage output, he loses 70%. He loses the fight. He loses the game. Why would you want to allow for the possibility of this happening, when with a different highground advantage we can still reward smart play and skill without introducing unnecessary dice rolling into the equation? While what you say is statistically possible, it becomes highly improbably because the law or large numbers dictates that the more units are fighting or the longer the battle lasts the more the number of shots missed should tend towards the 50% chance. Your fictive scenario where the attacking army gets a very unlucky volley is extremely unlikely to happen, [ ... ] edit: losing 70% damage output is actually a lot more likely than you think. 20/25 units could hit, but if those 20 were Marines and those 5 were Siege Tanks, it might very well be GG. Except that the probability of 5 out of 5 Siege Tanks all missing their shot in the same volley is 0.5^5 = 0.031250, or 1 in 32 times. That is not what I call very likely. It can happen, sure, but not very likely. Having said that, I would favor units just dealing 50% of their damage as well instead of giving them a miss change, but in order to achieve that you have to halve the damage after armor is applied and that was apparently difficult to achieve in the Editor, the developers mentioned earlier. If you just halve the damage before armor you nerf low damage, fast firing units like the Marine too much. Example; Marine deals 6 damage, defending unit has 2 armor: Normal: 6-2 = 4 damage. To high ground: (6*0.5) - 2 = 1 damage. That's a 75% reduction instead of 50%. Basically, if there is a way to simply halve the damage after armor that should be preferred to the miss change I think, unless people like a bit of randomness. If you can just halve damage after armor, the Marine with 6 damage vs the defending unit with 2 armor simply looks like this: Normal: 6-2 = 4 damage. To high ground: (6-2)/2 = 2 damage. Exactly what we would expect
Miss chance already doesn't affect all units equally. Glass cannons are hurt the most, because if their first volley misses, they aren't going to survive long enough to deal the damage. Marines are hurt more than Marauders for instance, because Marauders have the toughness to get out of an engagement that's going poorly, where they can be healed up by a Medic, but Marines aren't likely to survive. Protoss units are also hurt less than Zerg and Terran units (especially mech) over-all, because they can retreat after a volley and let their shields regenerate. That's true any time, but it's especially true when there's a giant wall separating the two players from one another, so the T or Z can't exactly give chase.
Any system is going to favor some units and disfavor others, that's inevitable, but miss rate isn't some great equalizer.
If we go with a % damage nerf before armor, Marines as you say are very heavily penalized, but isn't it also true that Siege Tanks are less penalized than any other ranged unit in the game? Does that not... balance itself out in the obvious way?
If this is no good in practice, how about giving a % damage buff to high ground? Same direct effect: Marines gain less benefit than Tanks. Very different result: we're not talking about aggression, we're talking about defense, so the balance is completely different. Worth checking out at least, if the devs haven't already, I imagine.
What about range buff to high ground units? Has that been tried?
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On January 18 2014 18:37 avilo wrote:
Vulture build time nerfed after less than a week of lots of people playing this...not a good sign lol.
Game has been around for 2 years...
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On January 18 2014 18:37 avilo wrote:
Vulture build time nerfed after less than a week of lots of people playing this...not a good sign lol.
Well to be fair, people have been playing this for two years. But in general, Starbow balance tweaks have ALWAYS been more frequent than Blizzard. It's a different approach, but Kabel often reverts changes if they don't work. Don't worry, it's just a different approach than Blizz's balance
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On January 18 2014 18:08 pure.Wasted wrote:Show nested quote +On January 18 2014 17:45 Brett wrote:
The entire RNG aspect of the BW high ground advantage actually works in the favour of the defender on the high ground not only from a numbers perspective, but also from a mental/psychological perspective ("I know I have a numerical advantage here, but do I want to risk pressing it at this stage?"). Which is part of the reason it worked so well.
Flat % reductions in damage do not have such an effect upon high level players once they have played the game enough; instead the high level player assesses whether their advantage is sufficient to overcome the damage reduction, which is really no different to battles on level-ground where each player assesses their own army strength vs that of their opponent based upon their experience and feel in the game. But you haven't explained why it's good that the low ground attacker vs. miss chance says to himself "I know I have a numerical advantage here, but do I want to risk pressing it at this stage?" Why don't you want the player to be able to base his decision on ten complex factors that he took the time to account for in practice matches? If you're worried about unpredictability disappearing, there's nothing to worry about; nothing short of making this game play like Chess would remove all unaccountable factors from matches, and even in Chess there's still a lot of luck, it just isn't as blatant. If you're worried about psychology disappearing from games... that's not going anywhere no matter what we do. I don't see what is gained.
From my perspective, what is gained is the ability to hold certain points on the map with numerically smaller forces (sometimes MUCH MUCH smaller forces) which encourages spread of units, more territory being taken, and frequent smaller skirmishes.
It stops it being a binary choice, adds some unpredictability. This can cause some second guessing on the part of the attacker in relation to that specific type of scenario. It strengthens the defender's advantage significantly. This promotes a better game IMO.
Take as an example the following:
5goons on high ground (opponent) vs 9 goons on low ground (me)
With 50% miss chance, I'm probably struggling to decide whether I should take this fight (unless I must due to game circumstances), because there's a reasonable prospect of enough misses occurring early in the fight which thins out my damage output and reduces the chance that I can bully my way up the ramp to remove the miss %.
With 50% damage reduction, I'm definitely taking that fight, I know my shots will hit, I know that I can ensure his goons will die, and I can thin his numbers quickly, reducing his damage output faster than mine will (think in terms of number of volleys of the phase disruptor required per kill) and reducing ramp real estate to the point where I can push up the ramp and destroy what remains of his forces.
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On January 18 2014 18:56 Beef Noodles wrote:Show nested quote +On January 18 2014 18:37 avilo wrote:
Vulture build time nerfed after less than a week of lots of people playing this...not a good sign lol. Well to be fair, people have been playing this for two years. But in general, Starbow balance tweaks have ALWAYS been more frequent than Blizzard. It's a different approach, but Kabel often reverts changes if they don't work. Don't worry, it's just a different approach than Blizz's balance
Blizz has put out patches a lot more frequently during betas, too. I'm sure they made changes really frequently during alpha, and the earlier starbow versions I think were much like an alpha, even on a public release, since it was pretty much released publicly from a very early stage. I'm not sure it's a different approach, really.
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On January 18 2014 19:10 Brett wrote:Show nested quote +On January 18 2014 18:08 pure.Wasted wrote:On January 18 2014 17:45 Brett wrote:
The entire RNG aspect of the BW high ground advantage actually works in the favour of the defender on the high ground not only from a numbers perspective, but also from a mental/psychological perspective ("I know I have a numerical advantage here, but do I want to risk pressing it at this stage?"). Which is part of the reason it worked so well.
Flat % reductions in damage do not have such an effect upon high level players once they have played the game enough; instead the high level player assesses whether their advantage is sufficient to overcome the damage reduction, which is really no different to battles on level-ground where each player assesses their own army strength vs that of their opponent based upon their experience and feel in the game. But you haven't explained why it's good that the low ground attacker vs. miss chance says to himself "I know I have a numerical advantage here, but do I want to risk pressing it at this stage?" Why don't you want the player to be able to base his decision on ten complex factors that he took the time to account for in practice matches? If you're worried about unpredictability disappearing, there's nothing to worry about; nothing short of making this game play like Chess would remove all unaccountable factors from matches, and even in Chess there's still a lot of luck, it just isn't as blatant. If you're worried about psychology disappearing from games... that's not going anywhere no matter what we do. I don't see what is gained. From my perspective, what is gained is the ability to hold certain points on the map with numerically smaller forces (sometimes MUCH MUCH smaller forces) which encourages spread of units, more territory being taken, and frequent smaller skirmishes.
??? miss chance doesn't cause this, high ground advantage in any form causes this.
It stops it being a binary choice, adds some unpredictability. This can cause some second guessing on the part of the attacker in relation to that specific type of scenario. It strengthens the defender's advantage significantly. This promotes a better game IMO.
The game is already unpredictable. I seriously doubt that there's a SC2 pro who can off the top of his head calculate exactly how many units will survive when 20 Marines with 1/1 but no Stim take on 10 Hydralisks with 2/2. And then if he did, show him the map and tell him "you don't know how your opponent will react." Does his calculation still hold up?
And if it does, if he really is that good, isn't that fucking awesome?
Unpredictability will always exist. Deliberately introducing luck into the game is not necessary.
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On January 18 2014 18:56 Beef Noodles wrote:Show nested quote +On January 18 2014 18:37 avilo wrote:
Vulture build time nerfed after less than a week of lots of people playing this...not a good sign lol. Well to be fair, people have been playing this for two years. But in general, Starbow balance tweaks have ALWAYS been more frequent than Blizzard. It's a different approach, but Kabel often reverts changes if they don't work. Don't worry, it's just a different approach than Blizz's balance
Blizzard was blamed for frequent changes, so they had to change how they work.
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I put in an example above, it makes it very clear why miss % is preferable for the defender.
The game is already unpredictable. I seriously doubt that there's a SC2 pro who can off the top of his head calculate exactly how many units will survive when 20 Marines with 1/1 but no Stim take on 10 Hydralisks with 2/2. And then if he did, show him the map and tell him "you don't know how your opponent will react." Does his calculation still hold up?
I don't know about that specific example personally, I'm not a pro, but of course they make these calculations in their head based upon experience. Of course, sometimes they fuck it up, but how else would they know when they should and shouldn't engage... Assuming pro's have seen their opponent's army and composition, there's nothing mystical about their ability to determine whether or not their own army is capable of winning an engagement; it's experience telling them 'yes fight' or 'no don't'. But there is higher uncertainty when miss % is added from high ground.
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EPT
