I understand most people will think i'm a complete moron BUT i belive the pathfinding in SC2 is too good. Pathfinding has an extremly big impact on game play. Alot more then automine for instance.
Right now a group of units in SC2 walks just like it was one unit! Apart from looking extremly goofy, boring and unrealistic it also takes away alot of the fun things possible in SC1 because of the "bad" pathfinding.
Some of the things i belive perfect pathfindigt will ruin:
- Since five Zealots walk like one and do not spread out, dancing with marines or hydras will be ruined. - Using your scv's, probes or drones in fights will be ruined. - Harrasing peon lines will be ruined since perfect pathfindig, unlimeted selection and more time will make running away with your peons really easy. - Blocking ramps with units. - If the beloved Reaver would make a return it would be ruined.
Im sure Sc1 veterans can come up with alot more things that would be ruined with perfect pathfinding!
Conclusion:
Bad pathfindig in SC1 was one of those bugs that created alot of unexpected fun, much like rocket jumping in Quake. Rocket jumping later became a feature in the following quake games and i think they should consider "bad" pathfinding a feature of SC2. I don't think they should make the units really dumb, but i think units should spread out more and not walk like one for example. I think Blizzard should keep in mind that pathfinding has a HUGE impact on gameplay!
I can understand your point, but the way they more now isn't the best formation or something like that. I think it's still hard to flank with melee units, and although the don't move single file anymore, they dont spead out either...So while this definitely makes a difference, a great deal of micro is still required.
Wtf... this post fails at logic. First of all, spreading out zealots has nothing to do with pathfinding, but it's the magic boxes that are retained in SC. The rest are so situational, and pathfinding problems are about 10 times worse than whatever mentioned.
On April 04 2008 01:37 Famehunter wrote: There is nothing more frustrating than to order a line of tanks trough your choke just to find out 2 of them made it back to your mineral line...
I agree 100%, but bad pathfinding also creates ALOT of fun.
- You're forgetting that your rines/hydras will dance better too, not only the melees are changing - You can still use workers in defense efficiently, as seen in videos, just not "buggily" efficient - Worker pathing is already perfectly ideal in SC1, I see no change - You can still block ramps, why not? - Actually I think the scarab would be greatly favored by better pathing, it was what screwed it
Really, you still have the same micro opportunities but it will just feel more natural now. Not to mention it opens more opportunities now. Since you won't get your goons as stuck while trying to hit and run. The game looks awesomely fluid, faster and fun to micro in the videos. You don't wanna change that.
I feel the most optimal formation to balance between stupidity and over-intelligence is to have all units move in a parallel formation to one another. So, once you have your formation set up, it will be preserved as long as they're moving on open ground. If they have to go into a choke point, then they should go in a straight line and reconverge in their formation on the other side provided they have room to. That is essentially how units work in starcraft right now if you use the magical box principle. If you violate the magical box, the units will march in a straight line and cluster into a tight ball once they reach the destination - I suppose it would be logical if they still did this if you clicked on a point inside of your selection's formation, but not when travelling across map. I imagine they'd have still use magical boxes to set some threshold for the group (probably a screen's size) as well so that a unit crossmap doesn't get confused, but it'd be nice if having a few stray units outside of the magical box didn't cause the whole system to fall apart. Don't really know how you could program this, but there has to be some way.
I get really annoyed when I have all my goons in a nice line and they get all messed up when I move them along. From what I've seen in the videos so far, units work like Warcraft 3 where they converge into neat little boxes. This make them easy targets for AOE spam and it's probably the reason they feel they need to nerf psi storm so much, and also why they had to set damage caps on AOE spells in warcraft 3. I strongly believe that the AOE overpowered in old versions of wc3 had to do more with the unit pathfinding causing units to cluster - unless you issued orders to units one by one (which is what people seemed to end up doing at pro level) it was impossible to keep your units spread out.
What really worries me about SC2 pathing is that melee units seem to have some sort of auto-surround behavior that, while it looks cool, I think is going to ultimately going to be discarded. If ranged units also do the equivalent action of automatically focus fire then I'm going to flip my shit.
So you want units to be more clumsily basically, fuck that. I want to be able to move away my workers from harassment easily, not get frustrated because of retarded clumsiness. Also moving lots of units through a small space is a fucking ordeal in sc1, no single argument you posted justifies bringing that shit back.
I mean as a player I want my units to move intelligently like I'd want them to, I still want to micro myself but what you suggest is just making shit frustrating. (especially for newer players who'll just play another game instead)
On April 04 2008 01:43 VIB wrote: - You're forgetting that your rines/hydras will dance better too, not only the melees are changing - You can still use workers in defense efficiently, as seen in videos, just not "buggily" efficient - Worker pathing is already perfectly ideal in SC1, I see no change - You can still block ramps, why not? - Actually I think the scarab would be greatly favored by better pathing, it was what screwed it
Really, you still have the same micro opportunities but it will just feel more natural now. Not to mention it opens more opportunities now. Since you won't get your goons as stuck while trying to hit and run. The game looks awesomely fluid, faster and fun to micro in the videos. You don't wanna change that.
- Rines/hydras do not need better dancing abilities. - The buggily efficient worker fighting is whats fun, otherwise workers are just normal extremly bad figting units. - If you move to a different mineral patch maybe, but not if you want to move thru other peons to ground. - You can block a ramp with one scv from a zealot or dt. This will of course not be possible with perfect pathfinding.
I don't agree it will open alot of new opportunities. I think it will take away alot thou.
Magic boxes are a huge concern. Currently, they are not in, so all stuff clumps like hell. The reason for the storm nerf, I guess, was not smartcast, but "improved" pathfinding.
The: - improved pathfinding, - unit clumping, - very powerful AI attack move, - long attack animations, - changes (due to game engine) regarding air acceleration and deceleration (instant on attack) on air units - stacking changes (game engine) on air units,
are major gamebreakers at the moment which puts everything they've said so far about making a competitive game a lie.
If the player has very little room to improve upon the AI control aids, then it won't matter how pretty or cool features they have. The skill gap between players will be lowered and also the inherit race imbalances will be prevalent. In broodwar, the racial imbalance is a small concern simply due to the high "player input ceiling".
I've voiced this several times but still the major concern seem to amount to - "OMG MBS SUCKS!" Sure MBS changes a lot of things about the game, but it is smaller when compared to the fact that it matter less who is behind the controls.
For some reason Blizzard thinks that unit abilities is what micro amounts to. Micro is simply put all micromanaging tasks which gets a bigger benefit than allowing the AI to sort it out on its own. While lots of units in broodwar were simple movers and shooters, they all had different characteristics and stats which made them all play differently and utilized a lot more effiently in combat when controlled directly: - Direct versus animated attack. - Instant projectile hit versus travelling projectiles. - Cooldown. - Hitpoints. - Unit sizes. - Acceleration. - Speed. - Grouping behaviour. - Formation behaviour. - Pathing behaviour. - etc.
I think the pathfinding is fine; its just the grouping of the units that irks me. Its as if theyre moving in box formation, which makes them suspectible to splash, and may hinder overall movement. But Ill have to see how fast it goes into that form first.
On April 04 2008 03:59 useLess wrote: I think the pathfinding is fine; its just the grouping of the units that irks me. Its as if theyre moving in box formation, which makes them suspectible to splash, and may hinder overall movement. But Ill have to see how fast it goes into that form first.
The grouping of units and magic boxes are both part of pathfinding. Blizzard do not have programmers doing magic boxes and grouping of units. This is the pathfinding people.
This is getting really, REALLY ridicolus. Your advocating bad pathing now?
The hallmark of what determines a good RTS (or at least it used to be, check any old review.). And you want to make it worse? I imagine that if Blizzard see this topic they will immediatly stop listening to anything coming off teamliquid because this is absurd. You want the game to fuck you over because you think it would make it more competetive and raise the skill level? I mean if this isn't completly random gamebreaking things that ruins a fair figth and competetivness then what is?
This isn't about the skill gap, This is about you wanting it to be like exactly like Broodwar. But change happens and games improve and this topic is idiocy at it's worst.
On April 04 2008 05:04 CuddlyCuteKitten wrote: This is getting really, REALLY ridicolus. Your advocating bad pathing now?
The hallmark of what determines a good RTS (or at least it used to be, check any old review.). And you want to make it worse? I imagine that if Blizzard see this topic they will immediatly stop listening to anything coming off teamliquid because this is absurd. You want the game to fuck you over because you think it would make it more competetive and raise the skill level? I mean if this isn't completly random gamebreaking things that ruins a fair figth and competetivness then what is?
This isn't about the skill gap, This is about you wanting it to be like exactly like Broodwar. But change happens and games improve and this topic is idiocy at it's worst.
if you think this is an absurd post you don't check the blizzard forums very often...
On April 04 2008 05:04 CuddlyCuteKitten wrote: This is getting really, REALLY ridicolus. Your advocating bad pathing now?
The hallmark of what determines a good RTS (or at least it used to be, check any old review.). And you want to make it worse? I imagine that if Blizzard see this topic they will immediatly stop listening to anything coming off teamliquid because this is absurd. You want the game to fuck you over because you think it would make it more competetive and raise the skill level? I mean if this isn't completly random gamebreaking things that ruins a fair figth and competetivness then what is?
This isn't about the skill gap, This is about you wanting it to be like exactly like Broodwar. But change happens and games improve and this topic is idiocy at it's worst.
It's not about skill gap and it's not about being like broodwar. It's about problems arising in preventing strategies from being executed.
The link Zanno posted looks like something that definitely needs attention to me.
I have to disagree with some of the things stated by the topic creator:
AoX had pretty good pathfinding and it was really good because:
- moving your units around the map was much easier - blocking ramps etc. was still possible because enemy units aren't treated like your own for pathfinding - flanking had a lot impact in the game which requires quite a bit of skill/timing to perform nicely (check out the vid how fallen players use their lings to flank enemies) which led to some really entertaining matches especially that the terrain also had great impact on this (can I go around this tree clump to get into enemy army rear? What if that's exactly what he expects and I'm just gonna lose 1/3 of my army?)
EPT
