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MikeMM
Russian Federation221 Posts
And this thing that Dustin Browder suggests «I am of the opinion that pro players can and should spread out their units more by hand. The benefits are enormous.» is disguised limited selection cap. So why disguise it? Why not make limited selection cap? | ||
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Freeborn
Germany421 Posts
Because I can only think of the protoss ball and maybe of a terran mech "ball" in tvz. Teran bio works pretty well ins maller groups, same goes for most zerg compositions. Ok broodlords/infestor/corruptor is pretty clumped as well but thats mostly because the infestors have to cover and give AA cover. For protoss major reasons to stay clumped are the need to use forcefields and cover a maximum area and the fact that tightly grouped ranged units become extremely strong vs shortranged units. I think the same is true for like thor heavy mech armies, if spread out they can lose much more easily vs lings and roaches. In general longer ranged units will benefit from clumping vs short ranged units maximising the damage dealt before they can close in. I say buffing the siegedamage and maybe the AoE in exchange for longer mode switching time is the way to go for terran. This will not break the game. It will make it like BW, terrans will have to leapfrog their tanks to be effective but if they do they are strong. It will also discourage clumped armies from attacking, but you can still attack if you lead with small groups of units to absorb the first shots or use infested terrans or immortals to soak up the first shots. This would increase the options for micro while making mech better. For toss I think removing forcefields will have to be thought about at some point. And IMO a collossus nerf. If instead gateway units were more useful in smaller groups that would help. Zerg is not clumping that much anyway, mostly due to their low range units. | ||
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Kontys
Finland659 Posts
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Qwyn
United States2779 Posts
On November 12 2012 22:29 Kontys wrote: FRB That rendition doesn't even accomplish exactly what it set out to do. Lowering the mineral patches per base but keeping the mining rate the same accomplishes nothing. What you actually want to do is a combination of: a. Lowering income rate. b. Implementing a harsher saturation curve. | ||
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twiiistch
Switzerland5 Posts
User was warned for this post | ||
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Rabiator
Germany3948 Posts
On November 12 2012 22:35 Qwyn wrote: That rendition doesn't even accomplish exactly what it set out to do. Lowering the mineral patches per base but keeping the mining rate the same accomplishes nothing. What you actually want to do is a combination of: a. Lowering income rate. b. Implementing a harsher saturation curve. Lowering the income rate is only one side of the fence that is needed. You also need to get rid of the production speed boosts for the races, because ... 1. the economic boosts are connected with the production boosts, 2. the production boosts are asymmetric and this provides a certain imbalance between the races (making mech harder to use because Siege Tanks cant be mass-produced) AND 3. because the production boosts are the real reason why there are masses of units on the field. | ||
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i)awn
United States189 Posts
1-AOE abilities 2-Ablity to move in formation to control AOE 3-Amount of resources available 1- To punish deathballs, aoe abilities should be on par with those in BW. In BW aoe abilities dealt more damage, had larger radius and well there were MUCH more of them available, whether the damage dealing AOEs or other control or defensive AOEs. This will reduce the appeal of "death balls" or "grab all your army and hit all his army" because increasing the number will only increase your losses. It'll be more about distraction and little "high priority" target engagement while maybe pressuring the opponent to use his abilities and eventually run out of them. 2- To be able to play against such aoe, you should be able to move in formation, the way units move in SCII make it much harder to reduce or control aoe. Simply changing aoe in sc2 won't do. 3-Resources should be more scarce. Whether it's the collection rate or simply the amount availabe per expansion, reducing these will make you opt for a more "efficient" army, and more efficient engagement rather than simply a bigger one. Moreover, since less resources collection rate means slower army building, waiting until you have a much bigger army will simply be out of the question. Moreover spending money on low tier units will put you in a disadvantage somehow. | ||
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MasterCynical
505 Posts
On November 12 2012 21:36 Freeborn wrote: One question when everybody is talking about "deathballs" what are you thinking of? Because I can only think of the protoss ball and maybe of a terran mech "ball" in tvz. Teran bio works pretty well ins maller groups, same goes for most zerg compositions. Ok broodlords/infestor/corruptor is pretty clumped as well but thats mostly because the infestors have to cover and give AA cover. For protoss major reasons to stay clumped are the need to use forcefields and cover a maximum area and the fact that tightly grouped ranged units become extremely strong vs shortranged units. I think the same is true for like thor heavy mech armies, if spread out they can lose much more easily vs lings and roaches. In general longer ranged units will benefit from clumping vs short ranged units maximising the damage dealt before they can close in. I say buffing the siegedamage and maybe the AoE in exchange for longer mode switching time is the way to go for terran. This will not break the game. It will make it like BW, terrans will have to leapfrog their tanks to be effective but if they do they are strong. It will also discourage clumped armies from attacking, but you can still attack if you lead with small groups of units to absorb the first shots or use infested terrans or immortals to soak up the first shots. This would increase the options for micro while making mech better. For toss I think removing forcefields will have to be thought about at some point. And IMO a collossus nerf. If instead gateway units were more useful in smaller groups that would help. Zerg is not clumping that much anyway, mostly due to their low range units. It was a bit confusing when the term "deathball" was first used a couple of years ago widely, but after reading more threads it was clear that a lot of people were referring "deathball" as a playstyle even though they were trying to explain it as a unit composition. If 'deathball' was just a really powerful big ball of units that you make and then attack with, then there would be a HUGE number of deathballs in the game. What people actually mean, or at least what i think they mean is 'deathball oriented play' where the entire game is oriented around turtling up to get one unstoppable unit composition. Playstyles such as standard zerg play where your entire play is aimed at getting optimal defense and turtling towards your Broodlord Infestor deathball. Or how some Protoss players just sit on a few bases waiting to get a 200/200 colossus based deathball, but we see this somewhat less now. It results in boring games which most of the game doesn't have any action and ends in one or two big battles. People just want games that are saturated with medium sized battles which are highly back and forth like how it was in BW. | ||
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Qwyn
United States2779 Posts
On November 13 2012 01:31 Rabiator wrote: Lowering the income rate is only one side of the fence that is needed. You also need to get rid of the production speed boosts for the races, because ... 1. the economic boosts are connected with the production boosts, 2. the production boosts are asymmetric and this provides a certain imbalance between the races (making mech harder to use because Siege Tanks cant be mass-produced) AND 3. because the production boosts are the real reason why there are masses of units on the field. That is true. Well said. But such things can be adjusted, just like income rate. I like things which are mechanically demanding, but they should not have such an influence on the game... | ||
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Qwyn
United States2779 Posts
On November 12 2012 23:25 twiiistch wrote: I don't understand why they do not add flags of the nationality of players while playing in competition. It adds information about the player. User was warned for this post Lol I didn't understand why you were warned but then I went through your post history and saw you had posted the same thing 4 times in a row. It's supposed to be topic specific! Lololol. | ||
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Vegro
Germany19 Posts
I think one of the problems with deathball is, that there are so many units unable to function WITHOUT a deathball. Imagine a single colossus. Great right? It get sniped by a couple Maurauders, lings, Zealots.. There is no way this unit can be on its own. The same with A brood lord, or A tank. In BW the dmgoutput of a tank was massive. Imagine the following: Dmg per "area" of units. If you have a deathball - you have the maximum dps per area. Why would you break it up? If you break it up the enemys damage per area will kill you because the same area with units outdps your smaller area of units split up. Just imagine a circle and a looooong line of units. The circle will kill the line without taking massive dmg. Now imagine - just IMAGINE!!! for the sole purpose of demonstration a tank that make 200 splashdmg. Would you need 20 tanks to kill the enemy? No! You would maybe have like 2-3. Now what are you doing with the 17-18 tanks? You spread them over the map - getting control because the area the tank needs is able to dps evenly with an enemy deathball. Same with an HT who makes a 200 instastorm or instanuke for ghosts. You can spread it and have control because there is no REASON to keep them in you army. You are able to kill the enemy with fewer units because of SOME op units. This is how brood war was balanced. Now if you wanna say: Aight dog, but that aint balanced na'mean? I say: You are right my rapper friend! But its only a reason of numbers. Imagine a tank that makes enough dps per area that it would be bad to just blindly go in - 80 damage, maybe 60 - same with storm. Make storm + 50dmg against massive. Now let us enjoy the broodlord stacks and 1-2 storms killing them. They will NEED to spread BUT the damage per area will get lower and lower... suddenly... omg... the broodlord is not that tough anymore because you need to create a line. What are you going to to with it? You built fewer BL. Now you have more supply again. Nydusplay - maybe ultra as tanks. Multiprong attacks - etc etc. Do you think on daybreak you are not willing to attack the enemy army because of the 20 spines 23 bl and 10 infestor? No its the whole package - A psychological thread: The dps per area is MASSIVE! But if the Zerg would only have 19 bl, 9 infestors and 20 spines... you are just as fine as before. There is no mental change ala "Oh 2 BL less - lets head in, because the DPS per Area is still way bigger then everything you have. But now you have more supply to do damage on another point. Thats the problem with most "top zergs" who are not realizing the overcommitment of the "OP army" and why Life and stephano are so good. Stephano never overcommits on good units in the mid game (EXCEPT the "op" late game Brood/festor/spine). His zvt builds are bases around a splash of infestor to help his army - not to overwhelm. (As seen in LoneStarClash) and we all now his Roach timings where none of the "OP" units are needed to finish an enemy. tl;dr It took me time and and brainwork to write it - do the same. | ||
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MikeMM
Russian Federation221 Posts
Since units will clump up less Infestors and Colossus will become less effective. There will be more frequent, spread out engagements and microing of units during battles will become more important. | ||
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ElMeanYo
United States1032 Posts
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GinDo
3327 Posts
Heck WOL TvT is pretty much a game of Mass Marines. | ||
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Qwyn
United States2779 Posts
On November 17 2012 04:55 GinDo wrote: We need stronger positional units. It used to be that one could defend a base if a few lurkers/Tanks/Reaver. Try doing that in SC2. Mass units simply roll anysort of positional unit. Heck WOL TvT is pretty much a game of Mass Marines. TvT is IMO the best MU because siege tanks just obliterate the mass marines when sieged (that is, unless you are playing a pure bio composition, then it's ridiculous that marauders just obliterate a tank line)... it's insane to just see the back and forth as both players calculate where to go and how best to intercept unsieged tanks etc. | ||
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GARcher
Canada294 Posts
On November 17 2012 04:55 GinDo wrote: We need stronger positional units. It used to be that one could defend a base if a few lurkers/Tanks/Reaver. Try doing that in SC2. Mass units simply roll anysort of positional unit. Heck WOL TvT is pretty much a game of Mass Marines. You obviously don't know how to play TvT past silver league. | ||
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[]Phase[]
Belgium927 Posts
As long as sc2 becomes more entertaining to watch, ill be glad. Starting with a 'fix' for the deathball would be a nice start imo. Thanks for the thread, its nice to see a lot of ideas gathered here. | ||
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GARcher
Canada294 Posts
On November 17 2012 07:52 []Phase[] wrote: Well they pretty much destroyed positional play for a big part by removing the lurker, dark swarm and the reaver. The lurker, might I add, is one of the most original, unique and interesting unit ive ever seen in an RTS. I understand they dont want sc2 to be brood war, but why out of all units did they have to remove the units that gave bigger advantages to people who used a lot of positional play. If they had removed it and replaced it with something similar, I would have been glad. But removing it and not giving anything in its place is a damn shame. The changed highground mechanic partially touches this problem aswell. As long as sc2 becomes more entertaining to watch, ill be glad. Starting with a 'fix' for the deathball would be a nice start imo. Thanks for the thread, its nice to see a lot of ideas gathered here. Blizzard said they want to remove positional play. | ||
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andiCR
Costa Rica2273 Posts
Deathballimg is a natural state that will occur in sc2 because of clumping units on the pathfinding algorithm, where they are actually getting closer as you move the armies. This is the problem, this is what should be changed. Imo units should have a "comfort area" in addition to a collision area. This comfort area is basically the amount of spacing a unit wants to have upon arrival to a destination. Units would separate once they have arrived, as well as separate while on the move. Spamming move would squeeze them up to the collision area, but once idle, units would try to push each other again to their comfort zones. This would help by not restricting the pathfinding per se debut adding a simple ai behavior on top of the current system. I think this should be played with, and maybe mix it up with unit sizes. PD: writing from phone, excuse grammar! | ||
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GARcher
Canada294 Posts
On November 17 2012 08:18 iPAndi wrote: Deathballs is not a "playstyle", its when you can make an giant army that will move around in a small space. Sc2 makes it so that since units naturally get too close to each other, and as they move they get even closer, to render this very possible. The other day I tuned into a broodwwar stream, and i saw sooo much units, then looked at supply and I was amazed it was around 130. The army was so spread out it was several screens long. It had to do with unit movement as well, as the armies would not flow violently forward unless there was some degree of freedom. In briodwar people realized that clumping units was imba as fk, and that's why muta stacking was so popular. You could not stack, or place very closely, ground units. Deathballimg is a natural state that will occur in sc2 because of clumping units on the pathfinding algorithm, where they are actually getting closer as you move the armies. This is the problem, this is what should be changed. Imo units should have a "comfort area" in addition to a collision area. This comfort area is basically the amount of spacing a unit wants to have upon arrival to a destination. Units would separate once they have arrived, as well as separate while on the move. Spamming move would squeeze them up to the collision area, but once idle, units would try to push each other again to their comfort zones. This would help by not restricting the pathfinding per se debut adding a simple ai behavior on top of the current system. I think this should be played with, and maybe mix it up with unit sizes. PD: writing from phone, excuse grammar! The clumping is the result of trying to stop this sort of crap from happening. | ||
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