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On January 08 2012 02:37 TheKefka wrote:
Your A and B points are common misconceptions in my opinion.
Since the beta people talk about units clumping and army movement and how it was harder to control units in BW due to the mechanics of the game.
First of all,there is nothing stopping you from dividing your army into 4 control groups.If I want I can make the game hard for myself on my own,the same as it was in BW if I want.
As far as unit clumping goes.
Try out this.Go into a sc2 game,divide a 120 supply army into 4 control groups,set the units in a line and a-move into a direction,but not by clicking into a direction directly,but move them by a-move clicking on the map far away from your location and observer what happens.You'll get yourself a BW army movement.
I have no idea who in the right mind thinks right now that its advantages to have your army fight in a ball at high supply numbers.You will eat fungals,storms,EMPs and you will die.
One of the reasons why we see balls fighting right now in starcraft 2 is because people are bad.Really bad.People need to realize this,no one right now in starcraft 2 is playing the game MECHANICALLY correct right now.Pros have so many bad habits due to the simplification of the way the game works and no one is bothering themselves to correct it and I would even dare to say that most are too lazy to attempt to correct it or don't have time due to tournaments or whatever.
Oh and almost forgot,another thing people are commonly bitching about is how sc2 graphics and that it hinders micro.
Go into your option for graphics,turn everything to low,turn the gama slightly up and there you go.You'll have a nice,clean,clear and crisp looking game with no flashy shit.This is how I play at least and I seen many other pros do the same,like Hasuobs and Mana for instance.I would even go further and do this with broadcasted game for the viewers,but at this point it seems slightly impossible because of how many people are used to the way the game looks and if you turn the graphics down,they will just bitch about it.
Now the real problem in stacraft 2 and the reason why people are playing the way they are right now is the unit design.
The starcraft 2 unit design is by far the worst part of the game and if the game at some point dies out and people call it quits,in my opinion,it will be due to the Dustin Browders idea off "cool" unit design.
There are more badly designed units in sc2 than there are good ones right now and its what causes the game to break at a mechanical level.I can't analyze this unless I make my own thread and make a huge post of how sc2 units cause the game to be volatile and force players to play a certain way right now.
The defenders advantage and high ground mechanics become obsolete not because of how blizzard intended it to be or didn't intend it to be,it fails because of a certain way each race and its units are designed.
I may be crazy but this to me is the main problem that sc2 has and,get this,blizzard can actually solve this problem,but it would involve them having to admit basically that they made huge mistakes and I'm not so sure that that will ever happen.The expansion are the perfect opportunity to fix these problems but from the units I saw at the HoTs presentation Blizzard clearly has different ideas.
People advocate that blizzard should change the way the game AI works,the units selection,army movement and what not,no.It's just not logical to think this way.
Units like marauders,colossus,sc2 marines,concussive shell,amulet,the insanely high dps of some units,+something damage against a certain armor types,hard counters,gimmicks like forcefields,etc. is what is wrong with the game and they are lowering the skill ceiling and not the mechanics of the game.
+1. Seriously. Sickest post in this thread.
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the overall problem with sc2 is lack of prolonged fights. in sc2 you dont WANT to have a BW style attack Thekefa because its not as good as a ball.
the game has no chance of recovery since once you lose a battle u get crushed and its game ending 90 percent of the time. in BW the fights lasted longer because units streamed in in small groups and so new rallys and new spawns can fend off the small units that are here now and when you win a fight because it doesnt take 1 second to attack a new base the player can make an attempt to recover and regroup up.
also the defender has the advantage. this is a huge aspect missing in sc2. yes defenders in sc2 have the advantage but not like they should. you should REALLY have to do something special to push a ramp in scBW because simply they are already grouped in the highest level of dps per inch of screen while you are streaming in. This leads to macro games. a macro game is 3+ base not 2. sc2 is centered around 2 base play really. most games can easily easily end before 1-2 bases and in no way are these builds risky.
the fact that making units is easy in sc2 and controlling them is even easier sc2 is just too easy. now you can go look at BW stats and see how in the Pro leagues the TOP pros have 70 plus win ratios while in sc2 a good pro has nothing close to this vs other pros. its too volatile of a game. they need to slow down the game without slowing down the game. do this by making unit keybind caps.
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On January 08 2012 07:02 ohokurwrong wrote:
in sc2 you dont WANT to have a BW style attack Thekefa because its not as good as a ball.
What?No.....That's just not true at all.A ball of units is such a bad formation and always should loose to a good concave,unless its like a ball of marauders with medivacs against a concave of stalkers,than it doesn't matter.
People have this "ball of units" phobia because of how PvZ was in the past where the "deathball" was the answer to anything,it doesn't work like that anymore.
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I am merely providing some analysis as to why things are what they are.
And your text is simply a rant about BW being better than sc2. I actually read the whole thing looking for your opinion why mechanics were updated.
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On January 08 2012 07:46 TheKefka wrote:Show nested quote +On January 08 2012 07:02 ohokurwrong wrote:
in sc2 you dont WANT to have a BW style attack Thekefa because its not as good as a ball.
What?No.....That's just not true at all.A ball of units is such a bad formation and always should loose to a spread army,unless its like a ball of marauders with medivacs against a concave of stalkers,than it doesn't matter. People have this "ball of units" phobia because of how PvZ was in the past where the "deathball" was the answer to anything,it doesn't work like that anymore.
no you dont want a ball vs a concave but i would rather have a ball then a stream of units
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It is a very interesting post but I will try to cite some parts which I disagree partly or wholly with:
A) Unit Clumping and Formation Movement
+ Show Spoiler + "Not only is this visually unappealing when every army looks the same, but it makes combat extremely deterministic. After all, if engagements only can arise out of one formation, it makes sense that units will behave in one way as they fight in that formation. This determinism takes away a large amount of excitement and thrill from fights, because often the winner is known before the battle even starts."
1. Players should be punished for clumping up units, that is why we have AOE and splash, the question is if the punishment is harsh enough. Also the blob has the disadvantage of troops in the back not firing and that it takes a finite time for firing units to spread out.
2. Very often does battle-prediction get wrong.
3. This part seems to be based on the premise that two homogenous blobs engage each other with no micro, when the blobs are heterogenous and controlled by players trying to optimally utilize their units.
4. If the AI automatically clumps up units and clumping up units is punished one could view it as central challenge of the game to try to break up that ball, then it is a question of: is it too hard to manually break up the clump?
Should Blizzard make this easier?
B) Unlimited Unit Selection
+ Show Spoiler +
"First, this means that small armies which are easier to control, and are well controlled, can do a lot of damage to much larger armies, and as such, there is an efficiency incentive to use multiple smaller forces rather than one giant blob of death."
Why is this different in SC2, doesn't the blob from the previous section get more inefficient as to the percentage of the units able to shoot as it grows?
"Second, as the game progresses and more units enter the battlefield, it becomes harder and harder to push a small advantage for a win, because the very act of trying to do anything with your army causes you to make mistakes."
Couldn't this be achieved with better defensive units and better maps which punish clumping?
C) Defender's Advantage and High Ground Mechanics
+ Show Spoiler +
"While I think SC2's high ground system leads to a lot of good strategic play and interesting micro, I also think it traded a solid defender's advantage that added another dimension to strategy and tactical combat for gimmicky mechanics."I think mechanics can be good and deciding without being gimmicky. Think of the Napoleonic' Wars. Cavalry forced the Infantery to form Carré (or Infantery Square) or be ridden down - this took time to deploy (I wish more units would have a vulnerable phase like the Siege tank) and made it vulnerable to artillery fire (splash) and also made it some more vulnerable to other infantery since not every musket could be fired at the enemy (this making skirmishers valuable). What interesting dynamic! A nice thing would be by making splash directional, having artillery which punishes the depth of the clumps, forcing the enemy to advance on line, the Hellion has the right idea but is not an artillery unit. The Lurker has an ideal attack. The Siege tank should in my opinion have an elongated shape to it's splash and the other races given similar units. An Infestor with similar splash pattern would be interesting also. A vulnerable transformation period for units which can be forced from one mode to another for some units is way to mimic the dynamics (similar to Siege tank not being able to shoot during transformation).
So in conclusion:
I think it is not necessary to have to revert to BW-style game-rules to have BW-esque play providing that the pros are good enough, clumping is punished enough and transformations and formations can be forced by the opponent.
I had some suggestions for changes:
1. Change the shape of splash damage to punish a clump even more, preferably with great range, forcing the opponent to move in a certain formation. Don't really like brood lords as a ranged artillery for this reason.
2. Vulnerable transformation periods which can be forced could be a way to improve the defenders advantage.
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I really think brood-war style high ground would be SO MUCH BETTER for this game. Air vision is not equal amongst the races, and at different stages of the game you can just... hide everything you have, by being on greater elevation. An example of this, is a protoss colossus deathball parked on the watchtower in Antiga shipyard. Without air units, you basically can never approach it, or know the exact amount/composition.
In brood war, it was still just as difficult to push up a defensive position on higher ground, but at least you could see what was there and make an intelligent decision about it.
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i dont think it can be disputed that sc2 is by far more casual friendly as is every other blizzard game that was released recently and most games that will be released in the future. the days of hard video games are over.
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My main problem with these threads can be summed up by a quote from the OP, of all places:
However, I think they went too far. By removing some of the mechanical barriers, they removed some of the complexity which separated good players from bad, and added depth to the game. Skills which were essential in Broodwar were trivialized, which I think is a major reason why gameplay can look and feel extremely stale at times.
This is entirely opinion. You have provided perfectly valid reasons for why you may feel this way, but you've provided absolutely no reasons why I should agree with you. No examples from current games, no real specific examples at all, really. You kind of just assert it as if we should all agree with it. I, for one, don't see the gameplay as stale at all. I don't think it's very hard to tell the good from the bad at all, and even further, I can usually tell the clear difference between a pro and someone who is just a very good player.
Every objection you raise seems to have this feeling to it to: that you like it this way so that is necessarily the better way. Then it seems you go back to justify why that way is the better way with the objections. Instead of looking at problems and calling the game inferior based on that, it seems you're calling the game inferior and then looking for problems to display how.
Now, what if we make it so that instead, there is only one form the units can be arranged in? That's what SC2 does. There is only one formation in SC2, and it is the ball.
I understand what you're getting at, but I still disagree. The default is the ball, ok, but that is not the only formation you can use. In fact, part of what separates very good players from decent players is how they position the units within and without the ball. Most decent players have great micro with their ball. Very good players have great micro that often results in breaking up the ball. Basically, instead of the game making formations for you, it forces you to make them and constantly apply them. To me, this is not only realistic, but desirable (as a spectator).
Not only is this visually unappealing when every army looks the same, but it makes combat extremely deterministic. After all, if engagements only can arise out of one formation, it makes sense that units will behave in one way as they fight in that formation. This determinism takes away a large amount of excitement and thrill from fights, because often the winner is known before the battle even starts.
It seems to me that I hear this espoused as fact way too much. The ball doesn't look visually unappealing to me, and I've spoken to others who feel the same way. I understand that a lot, probably even a majority, feel like it is visually unappealing. Please understand that having a majority of people agree with you about an aesthetic value does not make it suddenly an objective law.
Also, I hear the "winner is known before the battle starts" way too much. For one thing, a lot of times it is just not true. And I'm sorry but I don't like the idea of a clearly superior army being destroyed by a crappy game engine. I saw this one video of a BW game where a single dragoon(?) not only held off like thirty marines, but killed every single one of them and then went on to win the game. ONE UNIT killed the ENTIRE rush. Not even a "hard-counter". I'm sorry but I just don't think that is legitimate or realistic at all.
Broodwar games end up being a lot closer, even when one side has a large advantage, because pressing that advantage actually has its own costs, and is much harder to do.
I'm sorry, but IMO, a large advantage should almost always result in a win. I don't like the idea of a guy who is ahead by 100 supply being afraid of moving out because a 3 supply unit could wreck the entire thing. Sure, it CAN happen in SC2, but it's going to be a LOT rarer.
Other than that, I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that Blizzard will NEVER limit the amount of units that you can select in a group in SC2.
This meant that the name of the game became about territory control, something SC2 greatly lacks. An army in SC2 is only as good as the units that comprise it, and position just does not seem to matter greatly, outside of camping in your main early on.
Unlike your other assertions, which were mainly opinion being passed off as facts, this one I feel is just straight up untrue. The name of the game is, and has always been, territory control. Or do you actually think that there will be no difference between engaging tanks that are covering a choke on an elevated position and engaging those same tanks in an open field where they are completely spread out, not covering each other? Positioning is all-important in 99.999% of all engagements in SC2.
Also, I HATE, absolutely HATE the idea of randomly missing shots because the guy happens to be on top of a hill. If I have vision, my shots should hit. IMO, this mechanic would break the game. It would make assaulting certain positions just straight up impossible, and would also encourage huge turtle games where no one wants to move out because attacking is almost impossible. I don't see how that would make games more exciting...
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On January 08 2012 07:55 ohokurwrong wrote:Show nested quote +On January 08 2012 07:46 TheKefka wrote:On January 08 2012 07:02 ohokurwrong wrote:
in sc2 you dont WANT to have a BW style attack Thekefa because its not as good as a ball.
What?No.....That's just not true at all.A ball of units is such a bad formation and always should loose to a spread army,unless its like a ball of marauders with medivacs against a concave of stalkers,than it doesn't matter. People have this "ball of units" phobia because of how PvZ was in the past where the "deathball" was the answer to anything,it doesn't work like that anymore. no you dont want a ball vs a concave but i would rather have a ball then a stream of units
Yea but,you don't stream your units into a line of siege tanks either in BW that's not how it works......
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Im gettting kinda sick of these points, they are just hidden "BW is better sc2" threads. Yeah the army clumps a bit more, but that doesnt stop players for splitting them. They aren't doing this because people are still to bad. Just like people arent doing micro stuff because they are to bad. With time people will split armys much more, micro much more and everything will be fine in the world!
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On January 08 2012 08:10 aderum wrote:
Im gettting kinda sick of these points, they are just hidden "BW is better sc2" threads. Yeah the army clumps a bit more, but that doesnt stop players for splitting them. They aren't doing this because people are still to bad. Just like people arent doing micro stuff because they are to bad. With time people will split armys much more, micro much more and everything will be fine in the world!
No it won't.....because Blizzard has a terrible mindset when they are designing units...
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On January 08 2012 08:10 aderum wrote:
Im gettting kinda sick of these points, they are just hidden "BW is better sc2" threads. Yeah the army clumps a bit more, but that doesnt stop players for splitting them. They aren't doing this because people are still to bad. Just like people arent doing micro stuff because they are to bad. With time people will split armys much more, micro much more and everything will be fine in the world!
Demanding from players to split their armies won't let them do that. Problem: The fights are way too fast. There is just not enough time to split reasonably. So my suggestion: More HP for all units but same damage.
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On January 08 2012 08:18 ProbeEtPylon wrote:Show nested quote +On January 08 2012 08:10 aderum wrote:
Im gettting kinda sick of these points, they are just hidden "BW is better sc2" threads. Yeah the army clumps a bit more, but that doesnt stop players for splitting them. They aren't doing this because people are still to bad. Just like people arent doing micro stuff because they are to bad. With time people will split armys much more, micro much more and everything will be fine in the world! Demanding from players to split their armies won't let them do that. Problem: The fights are way too fast. There is just not enough time to split reasonably. So my suggestion: More HP for all units but same damage.
ehm it will change because the first person to do it will win much more. Its kinda simple.
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I agree with the unit position part for sure. Would be awesome if they changed that in HotS.
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On January 08 2012 08:23 aderum wrote:Show nested quote +On January 08 2012 08:18 ProbeEtPylon wrote:On January 08 2012 08:10 aderum wrote:
Im gettting kinda sick of these points, they are just hidden "BW is better sc2" threads. Yeah the army clumps a bit more, but that doesnt stop players for splitting them. They aren't doing this because people are still to bad. Just like people arent doing micro stuff because they are to bad. With time people will split armys much more, micro much more and everything will be fine in the world! Demanding from players to split their armies won't let them do that. Problem: The fights are way too fast. There is just not enough time to split reasonably. So my suggestion: More HP for all units but same damage. ehm it will change because the first person to do it will win much more. Its kinda simple.
But why is there so few army splitting?
Either your assuption that splitted army > blob is wrong (don't think so) or there must be other reasons for not splitting:
Fights are over in the blink of a second => Not enough time to split properly.
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I think people are misinterpreting what my point with unit clumping is, so I will reiterate again in a different way:
First, I do not say that clumped up units are always desirable. I just say that it is the default formation in the game. Clumped units are the best for dealing with melee (least surface area) and air (less stragglers and more ground able to hit any given air unit), and they are the best formation for moving around the map, since you have less chance of stragglers and wandering units getting picked off.
Balls are worse in range vs range than arcs/lines. They are bad vs splash damage.
Obviously some times you want a ball and some times you don't. There is certainly a great amount of skill involved in making the ball into not a ball, whether it's arcing stalkers or splitting marines vs banelings. However, most combat, or at least army movement, still takes place in the ball.
What nonuniform formations do for a game is allow multiple variations on the starting point for armies, so your micro is different every time, and unit movement is more dynamic. The reason clumping is so bad is not because it makes the game easier, but because it means every army micro using the same techniques, and every army function roughly the same in every situation so long as the army compositions on both sides are similar. You're going to arc and engage with marauders the same as roaches and the same as stalkers.
However, if you start from more random and chaotic formations, the micro does not play out the same in every situation, and as such players have to improvise and practice more than one type of army splitting. Yes, it is harder, but the real benefit is that it's more varied and more decisions are necessary.
On January 08 2012 08:14 TheKefka wrote:Show nested quote +On January 08 2012 08:10 aderum wrote:
Im gettting kinda sick of these points, they are just hidden "BW is better sc2" threads. Yeah the army clumps a bit more, but that doesnt stop players for splitting them. They aren't doing this because people are still to bad. Just like people arent doing micro stuff because they are to bad. With time people will split armys much more, micro much more and everything will be fine in the world! No it won't.....because Blizzard has a terrible mindset when they are designing units...
I also agree, the unit design is exceptionally problematic, far beyond the mechanical problems in the game. I will talk in great depth about the major flaws in unit design in either the next or third part, though Day[9] did a great job of showcasing one serious concern with SC2 units in his video blog.
Also, I think the unit design problems are something that is most easily remedied by an expansion, and something we need to be talking about adamantly. Remember how heavy the redesign for War3 was when TFT came out. Major unit redesign is very possible and sometimes much needed, even according to Blizzard themselves.
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I definitely agree that SC2 could use some fundamental changes that would lead to more epic fights/games and that there are some really interesting ideas in this thread... so now ,as always, the question is how do we get Blizzard to consider these arguments and tinker around to figure out what works? Especially because HotS is most likely almost to the beta stage so the time window in which Blizzard would be willing to change things around that much is rapidly closing.
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I agree that the aesthetics of unit clumping are bad, but it's very wrong to think it's the only formation in SC2, let alone being the optimal one.
As for limitless unit selection, I really dislike "mechanics" that force you to fight with the UI. Mechanics should focus on "carrots" like creep tumors instead of "sticks" like UI limitations. In any case, it's obviously not optimal to keep your whole army under a single hotkey.
I do wish terrain had more of an impact, but I don't like the random nature of the high ground advantage in BW. Furthermore, you're completely exaggerating when you say that "position just does not seem to matter greatly" - unit positioning is extremely important in SC2, especially with the fast pace of battles and the various abilities that limit movement (e.g. force fields). TvT in particular, can look very similar to BW (if both players go mech, which is happening more and more frequently).
With all that said, it is harder for a high level SC2 to reach the epicness of a high level BW game. TvZ and TvT are the best matchups that lead to such situations IMO.
I agree with Kefka that the primary flaws of SC2 is unit design. Terran unit design is fine for the most part. Zerg sorely lacks a terrain-controlling unit like the Lurker. Protoss is screwed with the warp gate mechanic and the Colossus - there already are plenty of other threads on this.
Apart from that, I wish SC2 would up the unit cap due to the need for more workers than BW, and a 10% slowdown in game speed to allow more micro in battles (anti-clumping and formations).
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On January 08 2012 09:05 lbmaian wrote:
I agree that the aesthetics of unit clumping are bad, but it's very wrong to think it's the only formation in SC2, let alone being the optimal one.
Read the edit update which addresses that misinterpretation of what I'm saying about clumping.
On January 08 2012 09:05 lbmaian wrote:
As for limitless unit selection, I really dislike "mechanics" that force you to fight with the UI. Mechanics should focus on "carrots" like creep tumors instead of "sticks" like UI limitations. In any case, it's obviously not optimal to keep your whole army under a single hotkey.
A very good point with the carrots and sticks analogy. However, there is a huge advantage for many compositions, especially protoss, in keeping their army on one hotkey, so that it can move cohesively as an army, and attack simultaneously, especially from multiple flanking positions. You may not want a giant ball formation, but even so, having the whole army on one hotkey is very powerful and very useful.
On January 08 2012 09:05 lbmaian wrote:
I do wish terrain had more of an impact, but I don't like the random nature of the high ground advantage in BW. Furthermore, you're completely exaggerating when you say that "position just does not seem to matter greatly" - unit positioning is extremely important in SC2, especially with the fast pace of battles and the various abilities that limit movement (e.g. force fields). TvT in particular, can look very similar to BW (if both players go mech, which is happening more and more frequently).
I don't like the RNG of high ground in BW, but there are alternatives and many were discussed in beta when this was a hot issue. I think "position just doesn't seem to matter" is perhaps a poor wording, because of course relative army position between armies is VERY important. However, the terrain they fight on does not seem to have any meaningful impact much of the time. You could put all sorts of permutation of hills on and in between them and it won't have any effect on the outcome.
On January 08 2012 09:05 lbmaian wrote:
I agree that the aesthetics of unit clumping are bad, but it's very wrong to think it's the only formation in SC2, let alone being the optimal one.
Read the edit update which addresses that misinterpretation of what I'm saying about clumping.
On January 08 2012 09:05 lbmaian wrote:
As for limitless unit selection, I really dislike "mechanics" that force you to fight with the UI. Mechanics should focus on "carrots" like creep tumors instead of "sticks" like UI limitations. In any case, it's obviously not optimal to keep your whole army under a single hotkey.
A very good point with the carrots and sticks analogy. However, there is a huge advantage for many compositions, especially protoss, in keeping their army on one hotkey, so that it can move cohesively as an army, and attack simultaneously, especially from multiple flanking positions. You may not want a giant ball formation, but even so, having the whole army on one hotkey is very powerful and very useful.
On January 08 2012 09:05 lbmaian wrote:
With all that said, it is harder for a high level SC2 to reach the epicness of a high level BW game. TvZ and TvT are the best matchups that lead to such situations IMO.
I agree with Kefka that the primary flaws of SC2 is unit design. Terran unit design is fine for the most part. Zerg sorely lacks a terrain-controlling unit like the Lurker. Protoss is screwed with the warp gate mechanic and the Colossus - there already are plenty of other threads on this.
Apart from that, I wish SC2 would up the unit cap due to the need for more workers than BW, and a 10% slowdown in game speed to allow more micro in battles (anti-clumping and formations).
TvZ and TvT definitely are the best matchups to watch and play in SC2. That's because there's strong elements of map control in both matchups. Defender's advantage keeps both sides from just killing each other, and so you actually get multiple and complex engagements.
Unit design is the biggest culprit, I agree, especially in the role of area control.
SC2 doesn't need a higher unit cap, so much as a readjustment to mining/macro mechanics.
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