1.Stronger positional units for better space control: game will become a 1-hour turtlefest. Which will boring be positioning and repositioning.
2. Different unit pathing: Meaning artificially mess up AI, not a good solution. But less clumping would help a bit.
3. New units with huge AOE and low DPS: HT, Infestors, Tank, Ghosts are all AOE, but they all got NERFED! why? because they were op, kill stuff too fast.
4. Stronger existing units with AOE: Make HT, Infestors, Tank, Ghosts op again, no pls.
5. Different map pool: 2,5 years with vast amount of different sets of maps didn't change deathballs. I doubt it'll help ever.
6.Highground advantage: Not sure about this, plus it puts lots restrictions on mapmaking.
7. Reduced unit supply costs / larger armies: Even bigger death ball!!! LOL!
8. Limited unit selection: Again, artificially limiting players capabilites? Lets remove unit ctrl binding that will be fun. NO.
10. More overkill: Change design of attack projectiles and animation timings? This is a bit too extreme.
11. Improved targeting AI for AOE units: this is ambigous. Plus it will make Colossi even more deadly.
I will address 1, 5, and 6, since I'm the guy pushing really hard for better space control.
1) Space control generally doesn't exist until the midgame, meaning that the early-game is fairly unaffected. This means that it's still quite possible to do aggressive openings and punish players who expand early and try to turtle. Better space control results in a more interesting midgame, as players will be able to expand more quickly and safely, and gameplay will be based on strategic positioning rather than having a better composition (meaning that you can still break defenses, even if you have the "inferior army" to your opponent's main army). The lategame becomes more of an issue of economic warfare, rather than preparing for the big maxed versus maxed battle (which, of course, can still happen if both players opt to only protect 1-2 expos). Initially, we'd probably see more turtling, but as the game evolves, players (especially Koreans) will learn to play very aggressively and break open those defenses that seemed easier to hold before, and the game would slowly start to resemble BW again.
5) With better space control and the ability to secure more expansions more quickly, I think we'll see a shift in the way maps are made. I always expect, that in the long run, maps to serve the flow of the game, not dictate them. With the ability to expand more rapidly in the midgame and the eventual buff that would accompany AoE units to provide better space control, we will see larger maps with more expansions (and probably more asymmetrical expansions like Atlantis Spaceship and wider open spaces around those expansions to facilitate multiple attack angles. Certainly the idea of more powerful seige tanks or locusts that spawn every 15 seconds is a scary thought on a map like Daybreak, but would seem almost not important on a map as big as Tal'Darim Altar.
6) How does one deal with upgraded space control used offensively? For example, if terran does a 1-base tank push against a player who has early expanded, how can the expanding player hold? The simple and elegant solution to this is real highground advantage. 2 tanks on the high ground versus 2 tanks on the low ground will always win, whether the implementation is highground range, highground damage, or highground miss chances (BW style). I think it's quite obvious this should be added to the game, but which of the 3 solutions is the best? That's still up for grabs. Right now all highground advantage is taken away with any amount of flyers + scans + obs, effectively making highground vision TOO EASY. In any case, a real highground advantage allows players to take advantage of high ground during engagements, base defense, etc.
For the record, I like adding +1/2 range to units on the high ground. This allows terrans to break seige lines using terrain, allows all-ins to be stopped a little more effectively, while not producing a HUGE difference in large battles.
Hope you like my suggestions! It's all about space control! Only way to have a game reminiscent of chess or BW!
Limited unit selection is a stupid and archaic idea. You can try and physically restrict deathballs all you want, but people are still going to use them because it is the most efficient way to play a lot of the time. You need to incentivise splitting up of the army by doing stuff like designing more powerful AoE, introducing units that are cost efficient in small numbers so that multi pronged aggression is the best way to play. Artificially trying to restrict it by limiting unit selection won't do anything, people will still keep their whole army together; it will just take a few extra actions to move out the army around.
1.Stronger positional units for better space control: game will become a 1-hour turtlefest. Which will boring be positioning and repositioning.
2. Different unit pathing: Meaning artificially mess up AI, not a good solution. But less clumping would help a bit.
3. New units with huge AOE and low DPS: HT, Infestors, Tank, Ghosts are all AOE, but they all got NERFED! why? because they were op, kill stuff too fast.
4. Stronger existing units with AOE: Make HT, Infestors, Tank, Ghosts op again, no pls.
5. Different map pool: 2,5 years with vast amount of different sets of maps didn't change deathballs. I doubt it'll help ever.
6.Highground advantage: Not sure about this, plus it puts lots restrictions on mapmaking.
7. Reduced unit supply costs / larger armies: Even bigger death ball!!! LOL!
8. Limited unit selection: Again, artificially limiting players capabilites? Lets remove unit ctrl binding that will be fun. NO.
10. More overkill: Change design of attack projectiles and animation timings? This is a bit too extreme.
11. Improved targeting AI for AOE units: this is ambigous. Plus it will make Colossi even more deadly.
I will address 1, 5, and 6, since I'm the guy pushing really hard for better space control.
1) Space control generally doesn't exist until the midgame, meaning that the early-game is fairly unaffected. This means that it's still quite possible to do aggressive openings and punish players who expand early and try to turtle. Better space control results in a more interesting midgame, as players will be able to expand more quickly and safely, and gameplay will be based on strategic positioning rather than having a better composition (meaning that you can still break defenses, even if you have the "inferior army" to your opponent's main army). The lategame becomes more of an issue of economic warfare, rather than preparing for the big maxed versus maxed battle (which, of course, can still happen if both players opt to only protect 1-2 expos). Initially, we'd probably see more turtling, but as the game evolves, players (especially Koreans) will learn to play very aggressively and break open those defenses that seemed easier to hold before, and the game would slowly start to resemble BW again.
5) With better space control and the ability to secure more expansions more quickly, I think we'll see a shift in the way maps are made. I always expect, that in the long run, maps to serve the flow of the game, not dictate them. With the ability to expand more rapidly in the midgame and the eventual buff that would accompany AoE units to provide better space control, we will see larger maps with more expansions (and probably more asymmetrical expansions like Atlantis Spaceship and wider open spaces around those expansions to facilitate multiple attack angles. Certainly the idea of more powerful seige tanks or locusts that spawn every 15 seconds is a scary thought on a map like Daybreak, but would seem almost not important on a map as big as Tal'Darim Altar.
6) How does one deal with upgraded space control used offensively? For example, if terran does a 1-base tank push against a player who has early expanded, how can the expanding player hold? The simple and elegant solution to this is real highground advantage. 2 tanks on the high ground versus 2 tanks on the low ground will always win, whether the implementation is highground range, highground damage, or highground miss chances (BW style). I think it's quite obvious this should be added to the game, but which of the 3 solutions is the best? That's still up for grabs. Right now all highground advantage is taken away with any amount of flyers + scans + obs, effectively making highground vision TOO EASY. In any case, a real highground advantage allows players to take advantage of high ground during engagements, base defense, etc.
For the record, I like adding +1/2 range to units on the high ground. This allows terrans to break seige lines using terrain, allows all-ins to be stopped a little more effectively, while not producing a HUGE difference in large battles.
Hope you like my suggestions! It's all about space control! Only way to have a game reminiscent of chess or BW!
I really do like your suggestions! Sounds cool.
I'd just add that space control units have to become not only stronger, but also slower to re-position, so that it does not become a pure chess turtle-fest, and quick dynamics and fast aggressive action is kept past mid-game.
I wouldn't want death-balls gone completely, let them become situationally viable in some cases to diversify gameplay.
On October 15 2012 22:54 bokeevboke wrote: I was in the process of creating this topic (death ball problem) for week now. Seems I wasted my time I'll just summarize it here.
More or less I don't think the problem is the deathball itself, rather what forces us to use deathball. Answer being very simple: There is no workaround to deathball in sc2, the only answer to deathball is a bigger deathball or lose the game. Everyone agrees on that.
1.Stronger positional units for better space control: game will become a 1-hour turtlefest. Which will boring be positioning and repositioning.
2. Different unit pathing: Meaning artificially mess up AI, not a good solution. But less clumping would help a bit.
3. New units with huge AOE and low DPS: HT, Infestors, Tank, Ghosts are all AOE, but they all got NERFED! why? because they were op, kill stuff too fast.
4. Stronger existing units with AOE: Make HT, Infestors, Tank, Ghosts op again, no pls.
5. Different map pool: 2,5 years with vast amount of different sets of maps didn't change deathballs. I doubt it'll help ever.
6.Highground advantage: Not sure about this, plus it puts lots restrictions on mapmaking.
7. Reduced unit supply costs / larger armies: Even bigger death ball!!! LOL!
8. Limited unit selection: Again, artificially limiting players capabilites? Lets remove unit ctrl binding that will be fun. NO.
10. More overkill: Change design of attack projectiles and animation timings? This is a bit too extreme.
11. Improved targeting AI for AOE units: this is ambigous. Plus it will make Colossi even more deadly.
Before I throw my theory at you, lets break down deathball. What makes deathball a DEATHBALL? Here are factors: 1. Its invincible, it can't be weakened by anything, except another deathball (which is by far our problem). 2. It doesn't need sustain. Simply put when you get your 200/200 army with 3/3 upgrades you don't care if you have any income. you can walk over entire map and kill everything the enemy has.
In the above listing factor 1 greatly contributes to factor 2. So we can narrow it down to one problem: INVINCIBILITY. Its very simple, once you get some sort of deathball (say 4 colossi+gateway units) you don't take any damage unless opponet throws same amount of units at you. Now imagine this: what if opponent could wear your ball down, with less but frequent attacking army (Everytime he attacks, he kills some gateway units). Obviously your ball weakens and you need too pour some fresh blood in it, therefore you need a healthy economy. What if, the opponent who was wearing down your deathball was dropping in to your base and killing workers same time. You lose. This is pretty much all we need, make balls less invincible and it should require sustain.
So one and only problem is: why balls can't be weakened by constantly attacking forces in todays' sc2??? Because they kill stuff too fast. Everything you throw at the ball gets vaporized in seconds with no damage done. Simply put, balls have too much damage output a.k.a Terrible damage syndrome (the term we used to use back in the days). But seriously when you think of terrible damage output all problems start to make sense: You can't fight enemy ball if you have less supply army, if you do you outright lose the game, because your damage to ball is minimal. Hence you have to keep your army together all the time. And only option is ball to ball fight.
If you look through SC2 patching history damage has always been nerfed, you can see the pattern, but maybe its only tip of the iceberg, did we nerf them enough? All we know is we found some balance between units, but they still do too much damage to each other. Blizzard just left it there.
TL DR My solution is to lessen overall damage of all units, so that: Death balls won't be invincible, and can be weakened with lesser forces. Harassing economy will be more impactful, since deathballs will require sustain. Big fights are microable, and positioning is very much relevant. Breaking up your army and attacking multiple locations will be much better option, since attacking with a single ball could be inefficient, ball will be weakened and slowed down by constant skirmishes.
I don't see how it would help at all. If damage is decreased for all units, units in a deathball will always be able to kill any smaller groups without losses via a bit more micro (pull damaged units behind your deathball etc). You suggestion increases micro potential, but it also magnifies the death ball problem greatly. With lower damage overall only death balls will be used in this game without any exception.
I think you completely oversee what I'm trying to tell. Suppose this: you have an expansion with couple of spine crawlers and bunch of roach+infestors against bigger colossi/gateway army. And you have some mutas for harassing purposes, which are killing probes at enemy base. In high dps scenario (today's scenario), enemy will roll over your expansion, then pull back or proceed to attack rest of your base. Your production cycle won't be enough since his army will barely notice them (killing too fast). Now think if damage was reduced. Your initial spine crawler and bunch of roaches/infestor will buy enough time for your mutas to comeback and hold the enemy, which will let you have more production cycle to reach a sufficient supply to retaliate the attack. Resulting in: he lost probes, you didn't. Army-wise you're equal. But you are in economy lead now.
I know this is too much theory.I'll try to find a way to prove that with less dps you have more chance to scratch a deathball. But I think its pretty simple to understand. With high dps they're gonna one shot everything. For example: Roaches can't get close enough to shoot (0 damage), with low dps they can reach their targets and do some damage. This is pretty simple but it adds up.
On October 15 2012 22:54 bokeevboke wrote: I was in the process of creating this topic (death ball problem) for week now. Seems I wasted my time I'll just summarize it here.
More or less I don't think the problem is the deathball itself, rather what forces us to use deathball. Answer being very simple: There is no workaround to deathball in sc2, the only answer to deathball is a bigger deathball or lose the game. Everyone agrees on that.
1.Stronger positional units for better space control: game will become a 1-hour turtlefest. Which will boring be positioning and repositioning.
2. Different unit pathing: Meaning artificially mess up AI, not a good solution. But less clumping would help a bit.
3. New units with huge AOE and low DPS: HT, Infestors, Tank, Ghosts are all AOE, but they all got NERFED! why? because they were op, kill stuff too fast.
4. Stronger existing units with AOE: Make HT, Infestors, Tank, Ghosts op again, no pls.
5. Different map pool: 2,5 years with vast amount of different sets of maps didn't change deathballs. I doubt it'll help ever.
6.Highground advantage: Not sure about this, plus it puts lots restrictions on mapmaking.
7. Reduced unit supply costs / larger armies: Even bigger death ball!!! LOL!
8. Limited unit selection: Again, artificially limiting players capabilites? Lets remove unit ctrl binding that will be fun. NO.
10. More overkill: Change design of attack projectiles and animation timings? This is a bit too extreme.
11. Improved targeting AI for AOE units: this is ambigous. Plus it will make Colossi even more deadly.
Before I throw my theory at you, lets break down deathball. What makes deathball a DEATHBALL? Here are factors: 1. Its invincible, it can't be weakened by anything, except another deathball (which is by far our problem). 2. It doesn't need sustain. Simply put when you get your 200/200 army with 3/3 upgrades you don't care if you have any income. you can walk over entire map and kill everything the enemy has.
In the above listing factor 1 greatly contributes to factor 2. So we can narrow it down to one problem: INVINCIBILITY. Its very simple, once you get some sort of deathball (say 4 colossi+gateway units) you don't take any damage unless opponet throws same amount of units at you. Now imagine this: what if opponent could wear your ball down, with less but frequent attacking army (Everytime he attacks, he kills some gateway units). Obviously your ball weakens and you need too pour some fresh blood in it, therefore you need a healthy economy. What if, the opponent who was wearing down your deathball was dropping in to your base and killing workers same time. You lose. This is pretty much all we need, make balls less invincible and it should require sustain.
So one and only problem is: why balls can't be weakened by constantly attacking forces in todays' sc2??? Because they kill stuff too fast. Everything you throw at the ball gets vaporized in seconds with no damage done. Simply put, balls have too much damage output a.k.a Terrible damage syndrome (the term we used to use back in the days). But seriously when you think of terrible damage output all problems start to make sense: You can't fight enemy ball if you have less supply army, if you do you outright lose the game, because your damage to ball is minimal. Hence you have to keep your army together all the time. And only option is ball to ball fight.
If you look through SC2 patching history damage has always been nerfed, you can see the pattern, but maybe its only tip of the iceberg, did we nerf them enough? All we know is we found some balance between units, but they still do too much damage to each other. Blizzard just left it there.
TL DR My solution is to lessen overall damage of all units, so that: Death balls won't be invincible, and can be weakened with lesser forces. Harassing economy will be more impactful, since deathballs will require sustain. Big fights are microable, and positioning is very much relevant. Breaking up your army and attacking multiple locations will be much better option, since attacking with a single ball could be inefficient, ball will be weakened and slowed down by constant skirmishes.
Exactly what I wanted to say about what makes balls so strong and so necessary. With the ball being so tightly clumped up, normally almost all units can attack at once. This leads to it being the by far the strongest formation for attacking or defending. Like you said the only way to beat a ball is with another ball. This has to change. The colossus is a prime example showing that Blizzard was either keen on the ball or has/had no idea how to fix it. The colossus can stand on top of other units and hence makes the ball smaller for toss and more destructive because again; the whole ball can attack at once almost. So its balls vs balls unless some major change is made.
Changing pathing like in the post below is a step in the right direction, however it doesn't change the fact that armies CAN still clump up into balls which are more powerful. So in the end players will just have to do some more clicking to have the most powerful ball mechanic again. So possibly alongside this change to pathing we need another solution.
On October 15 2012 18:57 Don.681 wrote:
Linking the video so everyone sees. Much better unit movement if the game setting "Formation Diameter" is set to 50.
Yes! This is not a mod, just one setting in the game! Easily put in one patch and just as easily reverted. Might not even need a patch download!
If you like it, +1 and request for sticky this Bnet Thread.
Strong positional units allowing for positional play is in theory a great idea. This seems to be the way Blizzard is trying to fix the ball problem with widow mines and swarm host (by the way Blizzard where is toss' strong positional unit.) The widow mine and swarm host are able to do damage to a bigger army if used well. So why do I think it will not work in practice? It's because these new units can still be incorporated into the ball. This just makes the ball stronger especially in the case of swarm hosts. I would agree that the widow mine is not really usable with the bio-ball but its being used with tanks and hellbats in a larger ball pretty effectively. I would have to assume that the sentry is supposed to be protoss' positional unit, as it can split armies and do the other defensive stuff that it does. However it cannot damage armies in the way that the widow mine or swarm host potentially can.
So what is the other missing element that could make the deathball suboptimal. I think the problem lies in how close units are to one another when moved to an area. Even if the pathing was changed, as in the video above, the potential would still be there for the units to clump into a ball. And if there is a potential the good players will make a deathball if they can and if it is the optimal way to engage. I feel the one element that could stop the ball superiority is by increasing the unit collision radius and making the colossus have a collision radius too. This would spread out the units making the ball bigger and mean that units at the rear of the ball cannot engage until the ones in front of it die. Obviously this already happens, but definitely not to the degree that it should.
So why would this stop the ball. Well, if the rear of your army is doing nothing its better to split it up and try and sandwich the opposing army so that all the units can engage. Furthermore a smaller army would be able to damage a larger one (if not sandwiched - by being in a favourable position perhaps) because not all of the opposing force is engaging your smaller army. Also, if your positioning was very good and engaged in a favourable manner with a smaller army you might actually be able to force them to retreat or lose your whole army but also take out an equal or greater amount of theirs. This would promote positional play because a few smaller better position armies could over time take down a bigger one or be more cost effective. And I think everyone would agree that positional play with smaller battles all over the map is more fun to watch and promotes skillful micro play that will set higher level players further apart from lower level players.
Blizzard obviously wants to keep the game noob friendly but this change will not decrease lower ranked players ability to play the game, lower ranked players can still ball up their armies and fight. However it won’t be the most effective way to play. Two fat balls would just take longer to kill each other, which would possibly make it a little more noob friendly as players have more time to react when sending a full strength army vs another. The fact that battles would take longer is also what is wanted for spectator. So its win win.
Lastly, from a realistic and visual point of view it makes sense that units don’t stand on top of each other. Yes, the Spartans did well standing on top of each other in the Phalanx formation but that did get beaten by the looser roman legion formation Imagine being a marine standing shoulder to shoulder with your friend in battle. Your friend behind you is pushing you in the back because he’s so close and you’re basically mounting the guy in front of you. This would not be good in the real world for battle, which of course SC2 isn’t, but it should be somewhat based on realistic possibilities. Firstly it would hinder my ability to move around in battle and aim, and secondly would be great for the opposing side because aiming to kill would be unnecessary. This is all obvious, but it seems Blizzard hasn’t figured it out. Marines do stand on top of one another and a colossus can nonchalantly walk around on top of a tightly packed army without standing on anything or anyone.
This clumping mechanic looks ridiculous, damages the duration of battles and inevitably leads to the deathball. Blizzard just needs to make unit collision radius bigger in relation and do some rebalancing and we’ll have a much more dynamic skill intensive game on our hands. With the addition of changing the pathing mechanic slightly too, such as in that youtube video above, we could very easily be back to the BW look of game play with lengthy smaller sized battles all across the map.
On October 15 2012 22:54 bokeevboke wrote: I was in the process of creating this topic (death ball problem) for week now. Seems I wasted my time I'll just summarize it here.
More or less I don't think the problem is the deathball itself, rather what forces us to use deathball. Answer being very simple: There is no workaround to deathball in sc2, the only answer to deathball is a bigger deathball or lose the game. Everyone agrees on that.
1.Stronger positional units for better space control: game will become a 1-hour turtlefest. Which will boring be positioning and repositioning.
2. Different unit pathing: Meaning artificially mess up AI, not a good solution. But less clumping would help a bit.
3. New units with huge AOE and low DPS: HT, Infestors, Tank, Ghosts are all AOE, but they all got NERFED! why? because they were op, kill stuff too fast.
4. Stronger existing units with AOE: Make HT, Infestors, Tank, Ghosts op again, no pls.
5. Different map pool: 2,5 years with vast amount of different sets of maps didn't change deathballs. I doubt it'll help ever.
6.Highground advantage: Not sure about this, plus it puts lots restrictions on mapmaking.
7. Reduced unit supply costs / larger armies: Even bigger death ball!!! LOL!
8. Limited unit selection: Again, artificially limiting players capabilites? Lets remove unit ctrl binding that will be fun. NO.
10. More overkill: Change design of attack projectiles and animation timings? This is a bit too extreme.
11. Improved targeting AI for AOE units: this is ambigous. Plus it will make Colossi even more deadly.
Before I throw my theory at you, lets break down deathball. What makes deathball a DEATHBALL? Here are factors: 1. Its invincible, it can't be weakened by anything, except another deathball (which is by far our problem). 2. It doesn't need sustain. Simply put when you get your 200/200 army with 3/3 upgrades you don't care if you have any income. you can walk over entire map and kill everything the enemy has.
In the above listing factor 1 greatly contributes to factor 2. So we can narrow it down to one problem: INVINCIBILITY. Its very simple, once you get some sort of deathball (say 4 colossi+gateway units) you don't take any damage unless opponet throws same amount of units at you. Now imagine this: what if opponent could wear your ball down, with less but frequent attacking army (Everytime he attacks, he kills some gateway units). Obviously your ball weakens and you need too pour some fresh blood in it, therefore you need a healthy economy. What if, the opponent who was wearing down your deathball was dropping in to your base and killing workers same time. You lose. This is pretty much all we need, make balls less invincible and it should require sustain.
So one and only problem is: why balls can't be weakened by constantly attacking forces in todays' sc2??? Because they kill stuff too fast. Everything you throw at the ball gets vaporized in seconds with no damage done. Simply put, balls have too much damage output a.k.a Terrible damage syndrome (the term we used to use back in the days). But seriously when you think of terrible damage output all problems start to make sense: You can't fight enemy ball if you have less supply army, if you do you outright lose the game, because your damage to ball is minimal. Hence you have to keep your army together all the time. And only option is ball to ball fight.
If you look through SC2 patching history damage has always been nerfed, you can see the pattern, but maybe its only tip of the iceberg, did we nerf them enough? All we know is we found some balance between units, but they still do too much damage to each other. Blizzard just left it there.
TL DR My solution is to lessen overall damage of all units, so that: Death balls won't be invincible, and can be weakened with lesser forces. Harassing economy will be more impactful, since deathballs will require sustain. Big fights are microable, and positioning is very much relevant. Breaking up your army and attacking multiple locations will be much better option, since attacking with a single ball could be inefficient, ball will be weakened and slowed down by constant skirmishes.
I don't see how it would help at all. If damage is decreased for all units, units in a deathball will always be able to kill any smaller groups without losses via a bit more micro (pull damaged units behind your deathball etc). You suggestion increases micro potential, but it also magnifies the death ball problem greatly. With lower damage overall only death balls will be used in this game without any exception.
I think you completely oversee what I'm trying to tell. Suppose this: you have an expansion with couple of spine crawlers and bunch of roach+infestors against bigger colossi/gateway army. And you have some mutas for harassing purposes, which are killing probes at enemy base. In high dps scenario (today's scenario), enemy will roll over your expansion, then pull back or proceed to attack rest of your base. Your production cycle won't be enough since his army will barely notice them (killing too fast). Now think if damage was reduced. Your initial spine crawler and bunch of roaches/infestor will buy enough time for your mutas to comeback and hold the enemy, which will let you have more production cycle to reach a sufficient supply to retaliate the attack. Resulting in: he lost probes, you didn't. Army-wise you're equal. But you are in economy lead now.
I know this is too much theory.I'll try to find a way to prove that with less dps you have more chance to scratch a deathball. But I think its pretty simple to understand. With high dps they're gonna one shot everything. For example: Roaches can't get close enough to shoot (0 damage), with low dps they can reach their targets and do some damage. This is pretty simple but it adds up.
Thank for your input, bokeevboke. You might be right, but it still seems limited to very few specific cases. Even in your example, a protoss deathball with decreased overall damage might not be able to kill the defences, but it will be able to soften them to the point when returning mutas might not be enough to hold. On the other hand, a protoss deathball in this example would not be softened almost at all, since with decreased damage a protoss player would be able to return most damaged units to the back of his deathball (provided that he is careful with infesters) and allow them to regenerate shields. So overall the economic damage made by mutas may be not worth it even with decreased damage for all units.
It is all pure speculation as well, but I don't see why reduced overall damage definitely makes deathballing less optimal. It might do it in one or two cases (and in some other cases make deathballs even stronger), but I doubt it would help in general.
More important concept seems to be not the damage itself, but rather the damage density:
On October 06 2012 04:42 Cloak wrote: DPS density is the core issue, or written another way, DPS/Surface Area. You either tackle ways of lowering the DPS, lower range, over kill, AoE that kills the DPS indirectly, or you lower the operable surface area, pathing, unit range, or physical space occupancy. Any other changes wouldn't have an effect really unless they lower that ratio down for all 3 races. SC2 is just a lot cleaner and smoother, so you get these unnaturally fluid army dynamics. We've hit the uncanny valley of army simulations, so now we need artificial blemishes to make it more interesting and aesthetic.
On October 15 2012 22:54 bokeevboke wrote: I was in the process of creating this topic (death ball problem) for week now. Seems I wasted my time I'll just summarize it here.
More or less I don't think the problem is the deathball itself, rather what forces us to use deathball. Answer being very simple: There is no workaround to deathball in sc2, the only answer to deathball is a bigger deathball or lose the game. Everyone agrees on that.
1.Stronger positional units for better space control: game will become a 1-hour turtlefest. Which will boring be positioning and repositioning.
2. Different unit pathing: Meaning artificially mess up AI, not a good solution. But less clumping would help a bit.
3. New units with huge AOE and low DPS: HT, Infestors, Tank, Ghosts are all AOE, but they all got NERFED! why? because they were op, kill stuff too fast.
4. Stronger existing units with AOE: Make HT, Infestors, Tank, Ghosts op again, no pls.
5. Different map pool: 2,5 years with vast amount of different sets of maps didn't change deathballs. I doubt it'll help ever.
6.Highground advantage: Not sure about this, plus it puts lots restrictions on mapmaking.
7. Reduced unit supply costs / larger armies: Even bigger death ball!!! LOL!
8. Limited unit selection: Again, artificially limiting players capabilites? Lets remove unit ctrl binding that will be fun. NO.
10. More overkill: Change design of attack projectiles and animation timings? This is a bit too extreme.
11. Improved targeting AI for AOE units: this is ambigous. Plus it will make Colossi even more deadly.
Before I throw my theory at you, lets break down deathball. What makes deathball a DEATHBALL? Here are factors: 1. Its invincible, it can't be weakened by anything, except another deathball (which is by far our problem). 2. It doesn't need sustain. Simply put when you get your 200/200 army with 3/3 upgrades you don't care if you have any income. you can walk over entire map and kill everything the enemy has.
In the above listing factor 1 greatly contributes to factor 2. So we can narrow it down to one problem: INVINCIBILITY. Its very simple, once you get some sort of deathball (say 4 colossi+gateway units) you don't take any damage unless opponet throws same amount of units at you. Now imagine this: what if opponent could wear your ball down, with less but frequent attacking army (Everytime he attacks, he kills some gateway units). Obviously your ball weakens and you need too pour some fresh blood in it, therefore you need a healthy economy. What if, the opponent who was wearing down your deathball was dropping in to your base and killing workers same time. You lose. This is pretty much all we need, make balls less invincible and it should require sustain.
So one and only problem is: why balls can't be weakened by constantly attacking forces in todays' sc2??? Because they kill stuff too fast. Everything you throw at the ball gets vaporized in seconds with no damage done. Simply put, balls have too much damage output a.k.a Terrible damage syndrome (the term we used to use back in the days). But seriously when you think of terrible damage output all problems start to make sense: You can't fight enemy ball if you have less supply army, if you do you outright lose the game, because your damage to ball is minimal. Hence you have to keep your army together all the time. And only option is ball to ball fight.
If you look through SC2 patching history damage has always been nerfed, you can see the pattern, but maybe its only tip of the iceberg, did we nerf them enough? All we know is we found some balance between units, but they still do too much damage to each other. Blizzard just left it there.
TL DR My solution is to lessen overall damage of all units, so that: Death balls won't be invincible, and can be weakened with lesser forces. Harassing economy will be more impactful, since deathballs will require sustain. Big fights are microable, and positioning is very much relevant. Breaking up your army and attacking multiple locations will be much better option, since attacking with a single ball could be inefficient, ball will be weakened and slowed down by constant skirmishes.
Exactly what I wanted to say about what makes balls so strong and so necessary. With the ball being so tightly clumped up, normally almost all units can attack at once. This leads to it being the by far the strongest formation for attacking or defending. Like you said the only way to beat a ball is with another ball. This has to change. The colossus is a prime example showing that Blizzard was either keen on the ball or has/had no idea how to fix it. The colossus can stand on top of other units and hence makes the ball smaller for toss and more destructive because again; the whole ball can attack at once almost. So its balls vs balls unless some major change is made.
Changing pathing like in the post below is a step in the right direction, however it doesn't change the fact that armies CAN still clump up into balls which are more powerful. So in the end players will just have to do some more clicking to have the most powerful ball mechanic again. So possibly alongside this change to pathing we need another solution.
Linking the video so everyone sees. Much better unit movement if the game setting "Formation Diameter" is set to 50.
Yes! This is not a mod, just one setting in the game! Easily put in one patch and just as easily reverted. Might not even need a patch download!
If you like it, +1 and request for sticky this Bnet Thread.
Strong positional units allowing for positional play is in theory a great idea. This seems to be the way Blizzard is trying to fix the ball problem with widow mines and swarm host (by the way Blizzard where is toss' strong positional unit.) The widow mine and swarm host are able to do damage to a bigger army if used well. So why do I think it will not work in practice? It's because these new units can still be incorporated into the ball. This just makes the ball stronger especially in the case of swarm hosts. I would agree that the widow mine is not really usable with the bio-ball but its being used with tanks and hellbats in a larger ball pretty effectively. I would have to assume that the sentry is supposed to be protoss' positional unit, as it can split armies and do the other defensive stuff that it does. However it cannot damage armies in the way that the widow mine or swarm host potentially can.
So what is the other missing element that could make the deathball suboptimal. I think the problem lies in how close units are to one another when moved to an area. Even if the pathing was changed, as in the video above, the potential would still be there for the units to clump into a ball. And if there is a potential the good players will make a deathball if they can and if it is the optimal way to engage. I feel the one element that could stop the ball superiority is by increasing the unit collision radius and making the colossus have a collision radius too. This would spread out the units making the ball bigger and mean that units at the rear of the ball cannot engage until the ones in front of it die. Obviously this already happens, but definitely not to the degree that it should.
So why would this stop the ball. Well, if the rear of your army is doing nothing its better to split it up and try and sandwich the opposing army so that all the units can engage. Furthermore a smaller army would be able to damage a larger one (if not sandwiched - by being in a favourable position perhaps) because not all of the opposing force is engaging your smaller army. Also, if your positioning was very good and engaged in a favourable manner with a smaller army you might actually be able to force them to retreat or lose your whole army but also take out an equal or greater amount of theirs. This would promote positional play because a few smaller better position armies could over time take down a bigger one or be more cost effective. And I think everyone would agree that positional play with smaller battles all over the map is more fun to watch and promotes skillful micro play that will set higher level players further apart from lower level players.
Blizzard obviously wants to keep the game noob friendly but this change will not decrease lower ranked players ability to play the game, lower ranked players can still ball up their armies and fight. However it won’t be the most effective way to play. Two fat balls would just take longer to kill each other, which would possibly make it a little more noob friendly as players have more time to react when sending a full strength army vs another. The fact that battles would take longer is also what is wanted for spectator. So its win win.
Lastly, from a realistic and visual point of view it makes sense that units don’t stand on top of each other. Yes, the Spartans did well standing on top of each other in the Phalanx formation but that did get beaten by the looser roman legion formation Imagine being a marine standing shoulder to shoulder with your friend in battle. Your friend behind you is pushing you in the back because he’s so close and you’re basically mounting the guy in front of you. This would not be good in the real world for battle, which of course SC2 isn’t, but it should be somewhat based on realistic possibilities. Firstly it would hinder my ability to move around in battle and aim, and secondly would be great for the opposing side because aiming to kill would be unnecessary. This is all obvious, but it seems Blizzard hasn’t figured it out. Marines do stand on top of one another and a colossus can nonchalantly walk around on top of a tightly packed army without standing on anything or anyone.
This clumping mechanic looks ridiculous, damages the duration of battles and inevitably leads to the deathball. Blizzard just needs to make unit collision radius bigger in relation and do some rebalancing and we’ll have a much more dynamic skill intensive game on our hands. With the addition of changing the pathing mechanic slightly too, such as in that youtube video above, we could very easily be back to the BW look of game play with lengthy smaller sized battles all across the map.
Sounds relevant. Do you however think it might lead to problems with ramps and the need to totally rebalance all AOE and ranged units? Also isn't larger radius sort of equivalent to smaller range for ranged units?
On October 15 2012 22:54 bokeevboke wrote: I was in the process of creating this topic (death ball problem) for week now. Seems I wasted my time I'll just summarize it here.
More or less I don't think the problem is the deathball itself, rather what forces us to use deathball. Answer being very simple: There is no workaround to deathball in sc2, the only answer to deathball is a bigger deathball or lose the game. Everyone agrees on that.
1.Stronger positional units for better space control: game will become a 1-hour turtlefest. Which will boring be positioning and repositioning.
2. Different unit pathing: Meaning artificially mess up AI, not a good solution. But less clumping would help a bit.
3. New units with huge AOE and low DPS: HT, Infestors, Tank, Ghosts are all AOE, but they all got NERFED! why? because they were op, kill stuff too fast.
4. Stronger existing units with AOE: Make HT, Infestors, Tank, Ghosts op again, no pls.
5. Different map pool: 2,5 years with vast amount of different sets of maps didn't change deathballs. I doubt it'll help ever.
6.Highground advantage: Not sure about this, plus it puts lots restrictions on mapmaking.
7. Reduced unit supply costs / larger armies: Even bigger death ball!!! LOL!
8. Limited unit selection: Again, artificially limiting players capabilites? Lets remove unit ctrl binding that will be fun. NO.
10. More overkill: Change design of attack projectiles and animation timings? This is a bit too extreme.
11. Improved targeting AI for AOE units: this is ambigous. Plus it will make Colossi even more deadly.
Before I throw my theory at you, lets break down deathball. What makes deathball a DEATHBALL? Here are factors: 1. Its invincible, it can't be weakened by anything, except another deathball (which is by far our problem). 2. It doesn't need sustain. Simply put when you get your 200/200 army with 3/3 upgrades you don't care if you have any income. you can walk over entire map and kill everything the enemy has.
In the above listing factor 1 greatly contributes to factor 2. So we can narrow it down to one problem: INVINCIBILITY. Its very simple, once you get some sort of deathball (say 4 colossi+gateway units) you don't take any damage unless opponet throws same amount of units at you. Now imagine this: what if opponent could wear your ball down, with less but frequent attacking army (Everytime he attacks, he kills some gateway units). Obviously your ball weakens and you need too pour some fresh blood in it, therefore you need a healthy economy. What if, the opponent who was wearing down your deathball was dropping in to your base and killing workers same time. You lose. This is pretty much all we need, make balls less invincible and it should require sustain.
So one and only problem is: why balls can't be weakened by constantly attacking forces in todays' sc2??? Because they kill stuff too fast. Everything you throw at the ball gets vaporized in seconds with no damage done. Simply put, balls have too much damage output a.k.a Terrible damage syndrome (the term we used to use back in the days). But seriously when you think of terrible damage output all problems start to make sense: You can't fight enemy ball if you have less supply army, if you do you outright lose the game, because your damage to ball is minimal. Hence you have to keep your army together all the time. And only option is ball to ball fight.
If you look through SC2 patching history damage has always been nerfed, you can see the pattern, but maybe its only tip of the iceberg, did we nerf them enough? All we know is we found some balance between units, but they still do too much damage to each other. Blizzard just left it there.
TL DR My solution is to lessen overall damage of all units, so that: Death balls won't be invincible, and can be weakened with lesser forces. Harassing economy will be more impactful, since deathballs will require sustain. Big fights are microable, and positioning is very much relevant. Breaking up your army and attacking multiple locations will be much better option, since attacking with a single ball could be inefficient, ball will be weakened and slowed down by constant skirmishes.
Exactly what I wanted to say about what makes balls so strong and so necessary. With the ball being so tightly clumped up, normally almost all units can attack at once. This leads to it being the by far the strongest formation for attacking or defending. Like you said the only way to beat a ball is with another ball. This has to change. The colossus is a prime example showing that Blizzard was either keen on the ball or has/had no idea how to fix it. The colossus can stand on top of other units and hence makes the ball smaller for toss and more destructive because again; the whole ball can attack at once almost. So its balls vs balls unless some major change is made.
Changing pathing like in the post below is a step in the right direction, however it doesn't change the fact that armies CAN still clump up into balls which are more powerful. So in the end players will just have to do some more clicking to have the most powerful ball mechanic again. So possibly alongside this change to pathing we need another solution.
Linking the video so everyone sees. Much better unit movement if the game setting "Formation Diameter" is set to 50.
Yes! This is not a mod, just one setting in the game! Easily put in one patch and just as easily reverted. Might not even need a patch download!
If you like it, +1 and request for sticky this Bnet Thread.
Strong positional units allowing for positional play is in theory a great idea. This seems to be the way Blizzard is trying to fix the ball problem with widow mines and swarm host (by the way Blizzard where is toss' strong positional unit.) The widow mine and swarm host are able to do damage to a bigger army if used well. So why do I think it will not work in practice? It's because these new units can still be incorporated into the ball. This just makes the ball stronger especially in the case of swarm hosts. I would agree that the widow mine is not really usable with the bio-ball but its being used with tanks and hellbats in a larger ball pretty effectively. I would have to assume that the sentry is supposed to be protoss' positional unit, as it can split armies and do the other defensive stuff that it does. However it cannot damage armies in the way that the widow mine or swarm host potentially can.
So what is the other missing element that could make the deathball suboptimal. I think the problem lies in how close units are to one another when moved to an area. Even if the pathing was changed, as in the video above, the potential would still be there for the units to clump into a ball. And if there is a potential the good players will make a deathball if they can and if it is the optimal way to engage. I feel the one element that could stop the ball superiority is by increasing the unit collision radius and making the colossus have a collision radius too. This would spread out the units making the ball bigger and mean that units at the rear of the ball cannot engage until the ones in front of it die. Obviously this already happens, but definitely not to the degree that it should.
So why would this stop the ball. Well, if the rear of your army is doing nothing its better to split it up and try and sandwich the opposing army so that all the units can engage. Furthermore a smaller army would be able to damage a larger one (if not sandwiched - by being in a favourable position perhaps) because not all of the opposing force is engaging your smaller army. Also, if your positioning was very good and engaged in a favourable manner with a smaller army you might actually be able to force them to retreat or lose your whole army but also take out an equal or greater amount of theirs. This would promote positional play because a few smaller better position armies could over time take down a bigger one or be more cost effective. And I think everyone would agree that positional play with smaller battles all over the map is more fun to watch and promotes skillful micro play that will set higher level players further apart from lower level players.
Blizzard obviously wants to keep the game noob friendly but this change will not decrease lower ranked players ability to play the game, lower ranked players can still ball up their armies and fight. However it won’t be the most effective way to play. Two fat balls would just take longer to kill each other, which would possibly make it a little more noob friendly as players have more time to react when sending a full strength army vs another. The fact that battles would take longer is also what is wanted for spectator. So its win win.
Lastly, from a realistic and visual point of view it makes sense that units don’t stand on top of each other. Yes, the Spartans did well standing on top of each other in the Phalanx formation but that did get beaten by the looser roman legion formation Imagine being a marine standing shoulder to shoulder with your friend in battle. Your friend behind you is pushing you in the back because he’s so close and you’re basically mounting the guy in front of you. This would not be good in the real world for battle, which of course SC2 isn’t, but it should be somewhat based on realistic possibilities. Firstly it would hinder my ability to move around in battle and aim, and secondly would be great for the opposing side because aiming to kill would be unnecessary. This is all obvious, but it seems Blizzard hasn’t figured it out. Marines do stand on top of one another and a colossus can nonchalantly walk around on top of a tightly packed army without standing on anything or anyone.
This clumping mechanic looks ridiculous, damages the duration of battles and inevitably leads to the deathball. Blizzard just needs to make unit collision radius bigger in relation and do some rebalancing and we’ll have a much more dynamic skill intensive game on our hands. With the addition of changing the pathing mechanic slightly too, such as in that youtube video above, we could very easily be back to the BW look of game play with lengthy smaller sized battles all across the map.
Sounds relevant. Do you however think it might lead to problems with ramps and the need to totally rebalance all AOE and ranged units? Also isn't larger radius sort of equivalent to smaller range for ranged units?
Yes, ramps and AOE would need to be looked at. And yes larger collision radius does equate to shorter range for ranged units. However, it depends on the situation, bigger radius would almost act as a nerf to ranged units but is dependant on how big the army is. If you think about it 1 unit against 1 unit range isn't changed at all. So for smaller armies, the "range nerf" is almost negligible, but as the army grows the "range nerf" has more of an impact. This is exactly what we need to nerf the ball. It means that the bigger the ball the more range is nerfed. So players who are able to split up their army well and attack or defend in favourable positions/formations with the smaller armies will have the advantage. We need the advantage to be not the deathball, that is how we will see its demise in higher level play.
Obviously this will change the games dynamics considerably and a lot of balancing would need to be done. But it seems pretty obvious too that only a drastic change will stop deathballing at this stage. A few better positional units is not going to cut it, nor are AOE spells which just lead to momentary splitting. Blizzard is attempting to stop the deathball with AOE and positional units, but I feel it won't be enough. Fungal, storm, blinding cloud, etc haven't seemed to dissuade players from deathballing. And as I said before positional units seem to only add to the deathball in certain situations. I really feel that this change, although somewhat drastic, is what is needed to stop the deathball.
Lastly, if you look at BW, armies took up more surface area per supply than in WOL for a few reasons. The weak pathing system, the larger unit counts (due to lower supply units) and possibly that unit collision radius was larger most of the time (not so sure if this is totally true). The reason there was no deathball in BW seems to be largely due to the fact that it just wasn't possible and wouldn't have been optimal. Changing this one simple value for most WOL units would make things look and work a little more like BW.
What do you think all? Are there other issues that I'm overlooking? Would this be too drastic a change? Does my logic seem sound? I'm keen to discuss this as I think it is a viable option.
On October 15 2012 22:54 bokeevboke wrote: I was in the process of creating this topic (death ball problem) for week now. Seems I wasted my time I'll just summarize it here.
More or less I don't think the problem is the deathball itself, rather what forces us to use deathball. Answer being very simple: There is no workaround to deathball in sc2, the only answer to deathball is a bigger deathball or lose the game. Everyone agrees on that.
1.Stronger positional units for better space control: game will become a 1-hour turtlefest. Which will boring be positioning and repositioning.
2. Different unit pathing: Meaning artificially mess up AI, not a good solution. But less clumping would help a bit.
3. New units with huge AOE and low DPS: HT, Infestors, Tank, Ghosts are all AOE, but they all got NERFED! why? because they were op, kill stuff too fast.
4. Stronger existing units with AOE: Make HT, Infestors, Tank, Ghosts op again, no pls.
5. Different map pool: 2,5 years with vast amount of different sets of maps didn't change deathballs. I doubt it'll help ever.
6.Highground advantage: Not sure about this, plus it puts lots restrictions on mapmaking.
7. Reduced unit supply costs / larger armies: Even bigger death ball!!! LOL!
8. Limited unit selection: Again, artificially limiting players capabilites? Lets remove unit ctrl binding that will be fun. NO.
10. More overkill: Change design of attack projectiles and animation timings? This is a bit too extreme.
11. Improved targeting AI for AOE units: this is ambigous. Plus it will make Colossi even more deadly.
Before I throw my theory at you, lets break down deathball. What makes deathball a DEATHBALL? Here are factors: 1. Its invincible, it can't be weakened by anything, except another deathball (which is by far our problem). 2. It doesn't need sustain. Simply put when you get your 200/200 army with 3/3 upgrades you don't care if you have any income. you can walk over entire map and kill everything the enemy has.
In the above listing factor 1 greatly contributes to factor 2. So we can narrow it down to one problem: INVINCIBILITY. Its very simple, once you get some sort of deathball (say 4 colossi+gateway units) you don't take any damage unless opponet throws same amount of units at you. Now imagine this: what if opponent could wear your ball down, with less but frequent attacking army (Everytime he attacks, he kills some gateway units). Obviously your ball weakens and you need too pour some fresh blood in it, therefore you need a healthy economy. What if, the opponent who was wearing down your deathball was dropping in to your base and killing workers same time. You lose. This is pretty much all we need, make balls less invincible and it should require sustain.
So one and only problem is: why balls can't be weakened by constantly attacking forces in todays' sc2??? Because they kill stuff too fast. Everything you throw at the ball gets vaporized in seconds with no damage done. Simply put, balls have too much damage output a.k.a Terrible damage syndrome (the term we used to use back in the days). But seriously when you think of terrible damage output all problems start to make sense: You can't fight enemy ball if you have less supply army, if you do you outright lose the game, because your damage to ball is minimal. Hence you have to keep your army together all the time. And only option is ball to ball fight.
If you look through SC2 patching history damage has always been nerfed, you can see the pattern, but maybe its only tip of the iceberg, did we nerf them enough? All we know is we found some balance between units, but they still do too much damage to each other. Blizzard just left it there.
TL DR My solution is to lessen overall damage of all units, so that: Death balls won't be invincible, and can be weakened with lesser forces. Harassing economy will be more impactful, since deathballs will require sustain. Big fights are microable, and positioning is very much relevant. Breaking up your army and attacking multiple locations will be much better option, since attacking with a single ball could be inefficient, ball will be weakened and slowed down by constant skirmishes.
Exactly what I wanted to say about what makes balls so strong and so necessary. With the ball being so tightly clumped up, normally almost all units can attack at once. This leads to it being the by far the strongest formation for attacking or defending. Like you said the only way to beat a ball is with another ball. This has to change. The colossus is a prime example showing that Blizzard was either keen on the ball or has/had no idea how to fix it. The colossus can stand on top of other units and hence makes the ball smaller for toss and more destructive because again; the whole ball can attack at once almost. So its balls vs balls unless some major change is made.
Changing pathing like in the post below is a step in the right direction, however it doesn't change the fact that armies CAN still clump up into balls which are more powerful. So in the end players will just have to do some more clicking to have the most powerful ball mechanic again. So possibly alongside this change to pathing we need another solution.
Linking the video so everyone sees. Much better unit movement if the game setting "Formation Diameter" is set to 50.
Yes! This is not a mod, just one setting in the game! Easily put in one patch and just as easily reverted. Might not even need a patch download!
If you like it, +1 and request for sticky this Bnet Thread.
Strong positional units allowing for positional play is in theory a great idea. This seems to be the way Blizzard is trying to fix the ball problem with widow mines and swarm host (by the way Blizzard where is toss' strong positional unit.) The widow mine and swarm host are able to do damage to a bigger army if used well. So why do I think it will not work in practice? It's because these new units can still be incorporated into the ball. This just makes the ball stronger especially in the case of swarm hosts. I would agree that the widow mine is not really usable with the bio-ball but its being used with tanks and hellbats in a larger ball pretty effectively. I would have to assume that the sentry is supposed to be protoss' positional unit, as it can split armies and do the other defensive stuff that it does. However it cannot damage armies in the way that the widow mine or swarm host potentially can.
So what is the other missing element that could make the deathball suboptimal. I think the problem lies in how close units are to one another when moved to an area. Even if the pathing was changed, as in the video above, the potential would still be there for the units to clump into a ball. And if there is a potential the good players will make a deathball if they can and if it is the optimal way to engage. I feel the one element that could stop the ball superiority is by increasing the unit collision radius and making the colossus have a collision radius too. This would spread out the units making the ball bigger and mean that units at the rear of the ball cannot engage until the ones in front of it die. Obviously this already happens, but definitely not to the degree that it should.
So why would this stop the ball. Well, if the rear of your army is doing nothing its better to split it up and try and sandwich the opposing army so that all the units can engage. Furthermore a smaller army would be able to damage a larger one (if not sandwiched - by being in a favourable position perhaps) because not all of the opposing force is engaging your smaller army. Also, if your positioning was very good and engaged in a favourable manner with a smaller army you might actually be able to force them to retreat or lose your whole army but also take out an equal or greater amount of theirs. This would promote positional play because a few smaller better position armies could over time take down a bigger one or be more cost effective. And I think everyone would agree that positional play with smaller battles all over the map is more fun to watch and promotes skillful micro play that will set higher level players further apart from lower level players.
Blizzard obviously wants to keep the game noob friendly but this change will not decrease lower ranked players ability to play the game, lower ranked players can still ball up their armies and fight. However it won’t be the most effective way to play. Two fat balls would just take longer to kill each other, which would possibly make it a little more noob friendly as players have more time to react when sending a full strength army vs another. The fact that battles would take longer is also what is wanted for spectator. So its win win.
Lastly, from a realistic and visual point of view it makes sense that units don’t stand on top of each other. Yes, the Spartans did well standing on top of each other in the Phalanx formation but that did get beaten by the looser roman legion formation Imagine being a marine standing shoulder to shoulder with your friend in battle. Your friend behind you is pushing you in the back because he’s so close and you’re basically mounting the guy in front of you. This would not be good in the real world for battle, which of course SC2 isn’t, but it should be somewhat based on realistic possibilities. Firstly it would hinder my ability to move around in battle and aim, and secondly would be great for the opposing side because aiming to kill would be unnecessary. This is all obvious, but it seems Blizzard hasn’t figured it out. Marines do stand on top of one another and a colossus can nonchalantly walk around on top of a tightly packed army without standing on anything or anyone.
This clumping mechanic looks ridiculous, damages the duration of battles and inevitably leads to the deathball. Blizzard just needs to make unit collision radius bigger in relation and do some rebalancing and we’ll have a much more dynamic skill intensive game on our hands. With the addition of changing the pathing mechanic slightly too, such as in that youtube video above, we could very easily be back to the BW look of game play with lengthy smaller sized battles all across the map.
Sounds relevant. Do you however think it might lead to problems with ramps and the need to totally rebalance all AOE and ranged units? Also isn't larger radius sort of equivalent to smaller range for ranged units?
Yes, ramps and AOE would need to be looked at. And yes larger collision radius does equate to shorter range for ranged units. However, it depends on the situation, bigger radius would almost act as a nerf to ranged units but is dependant on how big the army is. If you think about it 1 unit against 1 unit range isn't changed at all. So for smaller armies, the "range nerf" is almost negligible, but as the army grows the "range nerf" has more of an impact. This is exactly what we need to nerf the ball. It means that the bigger the ball the more range is nerfed. So players who are able to split up their army well and attack or defend in favourable positions/formations with the smaller armies will have the advantage. We need the advantage to be not the deathball, that is how we will see its demise in higher level play.
Obviously this will change the games dynamics considerably and a lot of balancing would need to be done. But it seems pretty obvious too that only a drastic change will stop deathballing at this stage. A few better positional units is not going to cut it, nor are AOE spells which just lead to momentary splitting. Blizzard is attempting to stop the deathball with AOE and positional units, but I feel it won't be enough. Fungal, storm, blinding cloud, etc haven't seemed to dissuade players from deathballing. And as I said before positional units seem to only add to the deathball in certain situations. I really feel that this change, although somewhat drastic, is what is needed to stop the deathball.
Lastly, if you look at BW, armies took up more surface area per supply than in WOL for a few reasons. The weak pathing system, the larger unit counts (due to lower supply units) and possibly that unit collision radius was larger most of the time (not so sure if this is totally true). The reason there was no deathball in BW seems to be largely due to the fact that it just wasn't possible and wouldn't have been optimal. Changing this one simple value for most WOL units would make things look and work a little more like BW.
What do you think all? Are there other issues that I'm overlooking? Would this be too drastic a change? Does my logic seem sound? I'm keen to discuss this as I think it is a viable option.
Actually I like your logic. It wouldn't change much for units with really big range, such as colossi or brood-lords (in fact it doesn't help vs air deathballs at all, but we are seeing many air deathballs anyway). Other than that it seems to be a good change.
I apologise if this has already been mentioned, but I for one would like to see small tweaks to create more divergence in the speed units move. I mean, the Protoss ball bar Templars moves at a pretty consistent rate, especially after charge is researched as well. For example, if Collosus move a good bit slower than they currently do, it would require constant re-positioning for a start.
This would be a small step in, at the very least making deathball positioning and control harder, without touching pathing and the spacing of units. While these and other fundamental issues also need addressed, this small change could have a surprisingly large impact in and of itself. Not to mention it can really easily be done and tested.
The main problem is the natural spacing/path-finding of the units. The fact that units in SC2 can stand shoulder-to-shoulder so close together creates so many problems...
it's so advantageous to keep units clumped up into a deathball where they can produce the most dps, whereas in sc:bw the units were always kind of separated, and so clumping them up was impossible. This made it silly to keep your units all in one army all the time. If only so many units can shoot at once in one area anyway, might as well spread them out across the map, right?
The problem is, if you could only fit 20 marines into the same area where you can fit like 50 or 80 marines now, the bio ball wouldn't play nearly the same way.... splash from colossus and templar and fungal wouldn't play nearly the same way... banelings wouldn't have the same effect... in other words, all of the key units of each race would have to be redesigned (which IMO would be the best thing Blizzard could do for their game right now).
So yeah, that's my 2 cents. Wish they would implement this for HOTS, but I'm probably not going to see that come to fruition.
Making stalkers able to fire and move almost instantly or atleast to the point that you could replicate dragoons in BW would be a subtle buff that would greatly increase the worthwhileness of using the stalker in smaller groups with a lot of active attention.
I think, by concept, deathball with right composition should be strongest. It should ,however, be punish on the mobility side. Two max army fighting, deathball with right composition and micro win. There is nothing wrong with it. The thing is that max death ball army should be really slow. Something like max terran army from sc bw. Player can choose to have super strong army with very slow mobility or few less powerful armys with better movement speed. As of now all deathball can cross the map in 30 sec which is way too fast in my opinion.
Colossi should do damage or kill friendly units that it "steps on." Just like war elephants in real life had some "friendly fire."
I like the idea of changing the unit grouping/pathing to limit deathball density. Perhaps, the grouping could be dense when the units are stationary but if in motion, they spread out? Like when cars in stopped traffic are allowed to move. The front ones pull ahead and their is some space between the cars before the ones in the back can move.
So it would be the whole strength or mobility give and take. Also, it wouldn't totally make things like banelings useless (or have to be redesigned,) as tight groups would still exist.
Ooooh I just thought of this, maybe limit the rate of fire of units firing from behind/through friendly units. Like in real life, a marine behind 5 rows of other marines, wouldn't be able to fire as freely as one in the front row. Both his field of fire and rate of fire would be reduced.
So some sort of algorithm, that would better balance the advantage of having units in front to 'tank' damage and act as shields, with the disadvantage of blocking ones own fire. Furthermore, unit size/height (plus I guess whether the target is on same level, high ground or in air) can be taken into effect. For example, a Stalker can shoot over the head of a zealot, and a Roach over a zergling, and maybe Marauder over a marine. But then, if one extrapolates out, one could argue that ranged units should have trouble hitting enemy units that are already being engaged by melee units (the melee units getting in the way.)
But I think i have the kernel of an idea there. But I don't know how difficult it would be to implement nor a great grasp on all of the ramifications.
Finally a ZERG thread in HOTS! I feel sick about all the Protoss and Terran threads in HOTS, whining about this and that, while ZERG is getting literally nothing except gimmick units (viperlol and swarlolmhost) that are sure to be nerfed or will be the clowns of the game when HOST is released.
While everyone looks to Protoss for the best Deathball because Colossus and HT paired with sentry stalker archon is probably the super Deadball. It is beaten by Infestor Corruptor Broodlord. I am bot sure what Blizzard could put in to help breaking that up. With the introduction of Vipers that deathball is only stronger. Using tempests doesn't help fight that deathball it only provokes them to attack you. Even with the Bonus to massive upgrade Tempest still do not deal decent damage vs Broodlords and they cut down on your stalker/archon count.
What about Terran They only really have vikings, or Marines but for Mech they don't have a decent Anti-Air unit Thors are aren't even a shadow of what Goliaths were to air in Broodwar. Maybe bringing back a warhound with anti-air and making Thors more siege line breaking without anti-air and shorting ground range with more HP
More splash damage is exactly the opposite of what the game needs.
Everyone is talking about the "deathball", but that is mostly a cosmetic issue. The real problem is:
1) Things have too much DPS, meaning armies die instantly
2) Abilities like force field and fungal essentially make engagements boil down to 2 seconds of spell casting. Everything after that is irrelevant
3) Gateways makes it so that winning one engagement = winning the game since as soon as you get an advantage all you need is to reinforce and it snowballs
The result is that you have those silly games where both players macro for 10 minutes then there's one engagement that lasts for seconds and the game is over. A major difference is that in BW things happened a lot slower.
To answer the question, I think units like the Swarm Host, Viper, Tempest and Mothership Core can be part of the solution, but it's not enough. As long as the deathball style is possible and so strong, people will chose that because it's the easiest and most solid way to play the game. Things need to be nerfed (the rooting ability of Fungal - and I'm a Zerg player btw; the gateway mechanic needs some limitation, same thing for the Collossus and the sentry although that last one will be hard to change) so that other ways to play get more viable.
On October 22 2012 17:09 SigmaoctanusIV wrote: While everyone looks to Protoss for the best Deathball because Colossus and HT paired with sentry stalker archon is probably the super Deadball. It is beaten by Infestor Corruptor Broodlord. I am bot sure what Blizzard could put in to help breaking that up. With the introduction of Vipers that deathball is only stronger. Using tempests doesn't help fight that deathball it only provokes them to attack you. Even with the Bonus to massive upgrade Tempest still do not deal decent damage vs Broodlords and they cut down on your stalker/archon count.
What about Terran They only really have vikings, or Marines but for Mech they don't have a decent Anti-Air unit Thors are aren't even a shadow of what Goliaths were to air in Broodwar. Maybe bringing back a warhound with anti-air and making Thors more siege line breaking without anti-air and shorting ground range with more HP
Tweaking Fungal could go a long ways to fixing the Infestor+Broodlord deathball. The combination of being both a damage-dealing and immobilizing spell shuts down a lot of counters to the Corruptors and Brood Lords. Hopefully, they'll be a rework of Fungal when the developers start making their rounds of changes to the existing WoL units in the HotS beta.
I'm okay with Terran anti-air right now, actually. To me, Vikings are the real spiritual successors to Goliaths while Thors are kinda more akin to Valkyries for their anti-air roles, which I'm fine with. Maybe bringing back the old Blizzcon version of the Warhound could be interesting since the Thor is pretty unwieldy.
EPT
that will be fun. NO.
I'll just summarize it here.
Imagine being a marine standing shoulder to shoulder with your friend in battle. Your friend behind you is pushing you in the back because he’s so close and you’re basically mounting the guy in front of you. This would not be good in the real world for battle, which of course SC2 isn’t, but it should be somewhat based on realistic possibilities. Firstly it would hinder my ability to move around in battle and aim, and secondly would be great for the opposing side because aiming to kill would be unnecessary. This is all obvious, but it seems Blizzard hasn’t figured it out. Marines do stand on top of one another and a colossus can nonchalantly walk around on top of a tightly packed army without standing on anything or anyone.
