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I'll take the hellion vs zergs example cause it's very common.
Currently the micro fro hellions is something like :
- move away, attack move back (or stop), PAUSE, move away, attack move back (or stop), PAUSE, ...
with 0 DP it would be just :
While your correct that DP does add more skill to Hellion vs Speedlings, your example is incorrect. The amount of time you stop is really irrevalnt for the diffciulty. If anything, when you need to do something more frequent, it's harder.
However, with the current damage point you need to deselect the injured Hellion in the front before you press stop or a-move as it otherwise would diw to the Speedlings. With 0 damagepoint you would simply just kite back with all of your helions and none of them would really die.
Same thing applies with the stimed bio, you need to move then attack (or stop) very fast but you need to pause a bit, this pause forces you to be more focused on your units and to have more skills.
I don't think you really know either what the damagepoint is. I expect you confuse it with the Phoenix moving shot. Marines and Mauruader have a damagepoint of 0.05 and 0 respectively which is very low. The fact that the bio units are so micraoble is a direct result of the low damagepoint.
A 0 damagepoint doesn't imply that the duration which they stand still is 0. There is still an attack animation, but it is just very brief which rewards players who are good enough to move around with them during the engagement.
The hellion vs speedlings is an exception due to the splash-attack, but for "normal" units the skillcap is almost always increased if you balance the game around 0 DP.
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The hellion vs speedling is a good example when damage point is good and where we want to keep it for certain unit behavior. On the other hand with a viking or a roach or an immortal it is really unnecessary and just makes them behave less accurate. On the hydralisk it is plainly bad (because low attack cooldown + damage point means 0.167seconds stopped per attack is very little possible micro).
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To quote a well-known cinematic : it's a worthy effort, but futile. I hope I'm wrong though, it would be awesome to see Blizzard actually paying attention to posts like this one or Uvantak's instead of "listening to the community" by reading random B.net posts.
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I think a lot of units could work well with a 0 DP, but there are some scenarios that would become insanely imbalanced, especially with the scan range changes.
Take stalker vs marine. Atm, stalkers can pick off marines with impunity, but it requires a lot of skill, and you'll very likely take damage, especially in larger scale engagements. With the scan range change, this becomes significantly easier. With the 0 DP change as well, it now becomes unbelievably easy and powerful. Before stim, there is absolutely no reason for a stalker to ever get hit by a marine, and that has incredible balance ramifications. You can't just fix this with a stat change either, because that has very far-reaching affects, whereas the core of this issue is only at the start of the game. Decreasing damage makes vikings even more powerful than the DP change would already make them. Reducing movement speed would screw with the entire concept of the stalker. Reducing it's life would make a late game deathball significantly weaker. There's no good change that would make them not imba vs marines, while making them equally useful for the rest of the game, except for damage point. I know that jakatak said that balance considerations should be made, but I think that the circumstances in which balance is a very strong consideration are more common than the OP insinuates.
However, this would certainly be an excellent change for hydralisks, as there's no need for them to be less microable than marines, and I can't think of any time where this would make them super imbalanced.
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There is a reason why the standard damage point is not 0 : lag over the internet
I guess this theory is worth testing. Thoughts Jak?
ps:
#WeWantLAN
pps:
I feel like this would get more attention, and fit better, in General rather than Strategy.
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Hellion and Ultra are 2 excellent examples of damage points that probably shouldn't be 0.
Units that have 0 damage point in HotS:
marauder, zealot, reaper, baneling, mutalisk
marine has 2nd lowest at 0.05
Maybe this should be moved to general. What do the TL MODS think?
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I'm not a mod, but I think this needs to get as much attention as possible. Not that Blizzard will listen, too busy watching SICK FORCEFIELDS, but if we can at least get people to understand why this is a interesting idea then that's good.
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On March 30 2015 03:36 JaKaTaKSc2 wrote:
Maybe this should be moved to general. What do the TL MODS think?
I'm not a mod either, but this not only deserves to be in General, but also fits there better than in Strategy. Excellent video btw. If Blizzard implemented the scan range increase because of that video of yours, there's certainly a chance they will at least consider this.
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Take stalker vs marine. Atm, stalkers can pick off marines with impunity, but it requires a lot of skill, and you'll very likely take damage, especially in larger scale engagements. With the scan range change, this becomes significantly easier. With the 0 DP change as well, it now becomes unbelievably easy and powerful.
I would reduce range of Stalkers to 5.5 along with 0 DP. The point here is that 0 DP makes a unit feel a lot more microable and I rather balance the game around with them having slightly weaker core stats while being more microable.
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At 600 APM, you're issuing 10 commands a second, or 100ms in between commands.
How fast would you have to play to actually notice this '0ms' damage point change? Are we suggesting that point attack, and issue a move command, in like 1 ms? Because, most hardware devices can't even keep that rate, let alone the human operating it.
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More mirco able armies means higher skill cap and better for observers. Gotta make this game impressive to watch if you want to succeed in esport steaming. blink stalkers vs marines would be easier for toss, but you know what, so was it in bw and u had to wait for a tank in order to defend. The meta will balance it out.
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On March 29 2015 23:21 OtherWorld wrote:
... instead of "listening to the community" by reading random B.net posts.
Just worth mentioning, that while TL holds itself in high regard, the official forums for Starcraft II, are the B.net forums. Obviously Blizzard reads those forums primarily, they *are* the primary forum for sc2 - it might be worth cross posting this to their, to make it more visible on their radar?
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On March 30 2015 05:58 hZCube wrote:
At 600 APM, you're issuing 10 commands a second, or 100ms in between commands.
How fast would you have to play to actually notice this '0ms' damage point change? Are we suggesting that point attack, and issue a move command, in like 1 ms? Because, most hardware devices can't even keep that rate, let alone the human operating it.
I'm not sure what you think damage points currently are, but the unit for damage point is seconds. The Adept has a 0.4 damage point, which means it has extra 400 ms delay before it attacks when it has to reacquire a target.
It's definitely not a 0-1 ms difference, it is hundreds of ms. It is noticeable even for players like me, and I'm not remotely good or fast.
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I haven't played the LOTV beta yet, so I don't really know how the Adept will play out. The baseline though, is 167ms? and many units are less than that 50ms for marine for example?
I wonder why the Adept is so high, at 400 - presumably they've done that for a specific reason rather than accidental? - My assumption is that the unit needs something to balance it from being too micro-able, and dominating other units?
[edit]
Also, it strikes me that people are only thinking that Damage Point is a bad thing? Surely it can add micro demands, and can create more useful units. For example, air units being able to do 'moving shot' and constantly move while shooting, isn't necessarily always a better thing. Having a trade off between mobility and damage makes total sense to me. It means you can have powerful units, albeit not highly mobile - but when they aren't damaging, they have increased mobility?
Isn't this what the damage point, particularly for air units, but also units like ultralisk, basically generates? A tradeoff between damage and mobility?
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I know for a fact that damagepoint on units can be good. Broodwar has it, starbow has it.
If i compare no damage point zealot vs hydralisk in starbow to backswing to zealot and hydralisk, the latter feels superior to both play and watch. And imo it increases the skill in how to use the units, it does not lower it.
Its hard to say for sc2 tho since the micro fights are usually imbalaanced. Lets take marine vs zealot for example, the zealot player cant really do any micro cuz of the super slow speed. If zealots had a faster movementspeed, it would be more fair to see how it really interacts with each other.
So those two testmaps are really important to try and stream etc imo.
An example of a unit in Sc2 that currently scales in power with the skill of the player controlling it is the blink stalker. Some of the most exciting moments in Sc2 games have come from a player with phenomenal blink control allowing them to win fights where all seemed lost by focusing their effort into their control. Fights that any lesser player would easily lose.
A bit unfair imo to take the blink stalker as an example since its a one-sided-micro-fest. The opponent cant do any micro against it.
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Having a trade off between mobility and damage makes total sense to me. It means you can have powerful units, albeit not highly mobile - but when they aren't damaging, they have increased mobility?
Well if the unit is too unresponsive, then it needs to be powerful through its stats when amoved. However, imo it becomes a lot more interesting if its highly rewarded too move it around during engagements and then instead it has slightly weaker core stats.
That said, the point here isn't that all units should have maximum mobility and responsiveness, but rather that it should be the default rule, and there should be really good reasons for exceptions.
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I think that's the bit we disagree on - that it should be the 'default rule'.
Strikes me that the 167ms default, isn't arbitrary, and Blizzard had some decent reasons for including it. I've already expressed why I think Damage Point adds value to units, by giving a compromise between damage and mobility.
I don't see any inherent reason why 'it should be the default' - other than opinion on how the game should play. I'm sure Blizzard have tested many permutations, and we certainly aren't privy to their decision making info - but, for me, I think units should have some damage point. It technically doesn't really 'remove' micro opportunity, it just changes it.
You think micro is moving with 0ms delay, I don't. I think you can still micro units even with a DP delay - it's just different.
In fact, DP delay can add micro skill. If you just blindly move instantly after attacking, then you actually 'waste' the attack - DP delay adds micro skill, by requiring the player to delay their action by a specific amount, in order to maximise their damage and still micro.
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On March 30 2015 06:58 hZCube wrote:
I think that's the bit we disagree on - that it should be the 'default rule'.
Strikes me that the 167ms default, isn't arbitrary, and Blizzard had some decent reasons for including it. I've already expressed why I think Damage Point adds value to units, by giving a compromise between damage and mobility.
I don't see any inherent reason why 'it should be the default' - other than opinion on how the game should play. I'm sure Blizzard have tested many permutations, and we certainly aren't privy to their decision making info - but, for me, I think units should have some damage point. It technically doesn't really 'remove' micro opportunity, it just changes it.
You think micro is moving with 0ms delay, I don't. I think you can still micro units even with a DP delay - it's just different.
In fact, DP delay can add micro skill. If you just blindly move instantly after attacking, then you actually 'waste' the attack - DP delay adds micro skill, by requiring the player to delay their action by a specific amount, in order to maximise their damage and still micro.
I suggest you go to the starcraft editor and experiment with the variable. It's not very hard to do, and it's very very easy to tell that in situations where micro wasn't rewarded, that it suddenly is now.
Jakatak actually asked why Blizzard added the DP, and the response was to fit with the attack animations.
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Oh, i thought it was a value that affected once the attack begun, how long that unit had to wait before being issued another command?
And if you do issue a command before that time, it will cancel the attack.
In what way am I misunderstanding it?
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On March 30 2015 07:04 hZCube wrote:
Oh, i thought it was a value that affected once the attack begun, how long that unit had to wait before being issued another command?
The unit needs to stand still before it attacks. That's the key point. It's not the same as a delay where everything reacts X second later (but the unit still behaves the same way).
This is why bio units are highly microable as you can attack --> move them around --> attack.
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EPT
