Not sure if this is general SC2 or LotV, but since Blizzard seems to be willing to test and develop things they never considered before I'm gonna try and place it here.
I remember reading that blizzard tested a dps reduction of all units in LotV in order to make battles last longer as they felt that battles tended to end too quickly.
I've been thinking about this lately, especially in connection with Brood War, which tended to have much longer battles, despite the fact that splash damage in BW was much more brutal than in SC2.
I've made a VOD to explain my theories on why it is so, and also some general thoughts on how SC2 can improve if they wish to have longer lasting battles.
Would love to hear your views and feedback on this.
EDIT: Some main points from the VOD for those who don't want to watch:
Battles tent to last longer in BW than SC2 and blizzard is both aware of this fact and have tried to change this at least once before in LotV aplha.
It's not just a game-speed change as battles also are longer in Starbow which has engagements very similar to BW, but with a speed very similar to SC2.
There are many reasons for this, but one that is rarely considered as to do with the strength of fragile units with high damage burst (not necessarily high dps).
BW had many more support units with very high damage which were fragile or had other interesting disabilities. Some examples are: Lurker, Reaver, High Templar, Siege Tank and Defilers (Plague). Some of these units are in SC2 as well, but they deal less damage.
SC2 have more units with "generic" stats. That is, average health, average movement speed with average damage. Some examples are: Stalkers, Roaches and Marauders.
Battles in BW tent to last longer, not because a-move vs a-move was that much longer, but because a-moving into a good army composition was usually a death sentence. Most of the time int he mid/late-game, engagement strategies were focused on picking off these targets / baiting out the high damage abilities before the actual battle took place, which gives the illusion of a longer battle (depending on how you define "battle ofc).
Some examples of this. Making a muta flock in ZvP mid-game to pick off HT's / bait out storm. Sending in smaller groups of hydras/lings to bait out storm/pick off HT's. Dropping zealots on tanks which overkilled each other before attacking into terran mech in PvT. Terran science vessels irradiating defilers and lurkers before moving in with marines.
There are, like I said before, many other factors as well, but these are more known. They include, but are not limited to: Damage types which scales down, rather than up. Unit pathing. 12 unit selection limitation. No smart-casting. But these factors are much less likely to be done in SC2 than giving burst damage units even more damage, but making sure they have some interesting weakness which can be exploited.
I am generally a very busy person, and hence I just made the VOD to get my thoughts "out there" before I forgot them. Sorry for not including these written points in the original OP.
I'm not sure if I agree with what you're saying. Yes, what you say is true, but that's not the only reason. For example, High Templars did more damage, but there was also more stuff to storm in the first place.
For me, the short battles is mostly because 2 reasons: 1) A smaller army. In SC2, you just max out so quickly. You have a) more workers than in BW b) most units have increased supply cost for no real reason. In BW, Zerg had a single 1 supply unit, which was the Hydralisk. Other than that it were 0,5 supply units, 2 supply units and then the Ultralisk at 4. Looking at SC2, we pretty have a few low supply units and the rest are high supply units. We have Roach, Hydra, Ling and Baneling at 2 or less supply. All the rest have incredibly high supply requirements. Ravager, is high. Hydra, Lurker, Ultralisk, Broodlord all have had their supply costs increased with their BW counterparts. The same goes for the other races (Siege tank from 2->3 for example)
2) A worse defender's advantage. In BW: 2 lurkers can hold a ramp versus Terran. And if he's using mech, you add a Defiler, and terran is just not coming on that ramp for a long time. In SC2 that just doesn't happen. You make sure you either have a wall as terran or protoss, or you have a very fast army that can get anywhere on the map really quickly. Holding a position with just some units, is something that's very hard to do.
So, all in all, I don't think your solution would help all that much actually. If we look at the High Templar, it's as vulnerable in Sc2 as it was in BW, but still had its damage lowered considerably.
I tend to agree with what you are saying in general. There are a few concerns I have that mostly have to do with other factors influencing battle speed as well.
Map layout: AOE units can be made extremely strong, but with the current map design it would still not be enough. Most bases beyond the natural tend to have a lot of space to maneuver your units on. Double wide ramps, a wide open location etc. It does not matter if you can kill more units faster with aoe if it can still be dodged as easily and the unit doing the AOE damage dies a lot faster than before. Maps would have to be redesigned with certain bases having tight chokes but less resources, where others are more open but are more rewarding. But with the current game design things like force field would have to be changed to accomodate for vastly stronger but more fragile AOE.
Travel time removed (Protoss, High Templar specific): In the special case of High templars being warpable, a key part of the weakness of AOE units gets removed: Having to move these fragile but powerful units across the map. With good warp-in planning, you can have a fresh wave of 75 energy HT's coming up on you shortly after you have dealt with the first wave (35 seconds of charging energy while keeping them at the back of the army). An argument can be made that you can focus on sniping the pylon or prism instead of cutting off reinforcements but a mobile, flying, warp-in unit like the Prism would complicate things in this particular case.
Generic unit alteration: There are a lot of generic units in SC2 with medium health/damage/speed right now. Marauders, Hellbats, Roaches, Adepts are a couple of examples. If you buff AOE and make the AOE units more fragile, you would need to either tone down stats or change the roles of all generic units, or buff the AOE to such a level that every unit other than a generic unit would be grossly inefficient (talking effort and actions required to dodge AOE vs just applying AOE), forcing generic units to be produced en masse. Options may become very limited vs AOE, fragile simple units like the marine will become more niche and we would get the same thing that happened in BW: Bio being almost non-viable vs Protoss for example, where only mech can properly hold up. While I do love the BW dynamics, I would like to do better with SC2 by trying to figure out a way to have more options open. So I'd love a change of role of generic units but that's a lot of work in combination with map alterations and a new economy.
All in all I would love for AOE changes to take place in combination with map alterations and role alterations of generic units. I do not think there is much of a chance to make it work otherwise. Let's hope there is enough incentive for so much change in the Beta. Nice vid!
This is one of my big complaints about SC2. Battles are over so quickly there's no ability to react if you're losing. It makes comebacks more difficult and the game a little unsatisfying because you have ~10 minutes of buildup and it's all over in like 5 seconds. The sex joke basically makes itself here. I also think that if you slow the game down there's more opportunity for micro. That's what they want in LOTV right?
The reason splash and storm and things could be more brutal in BW was the pathing. Units were never really that close together. Splash damage had to be brutal to have an effect. In SC2 marines and roaches and gateway units make such an airtight ball that splash damage is more effective by nature.
I have constantly said that pathing is the real, underlying problem with sc2 and no one seems to notice. All of this Zergling, Marine balls moving around in big super tight clusters is what breaks everything. Pathing that was more broodwaresque would spread out the game more all by itself. Though, the game would look totally different so I can understand this would probably never happen.
Double Harvest and reducing overall damage output would be small bandaids, but with the current pathing, deathballs and 1 battle endings and basetrades are not going anywhere.
BW had short battles as well, the moment a Terran is on the map the battles are short. And if you take positioning as part of the battle then every battle in Sc2 is long. But every race plays out like BW Terran in Sc2. Positioning is important and you crush your opponent. There is no Zerg that loses 1/3 of his army before the fight even starts or a Protoss army that cannot be stopped you just have to throw stuff at them until they run out of energy. There is just Terran in Sc2 tons of damage that dies fast. And because Sc2 wants different races to all have the same options there isn't even much difference in the races apart from a few stats and graphics.
This is my only issue with Sc2, that every race can do the same. They mixed it up so that each races baneling feels and plays different and you get it at different points. But it is a step back design wise if you compare it to earlier titles. Atleast for me, thats why i prefer WoL still the most, because HotS basically traded units to the other races made them mirror each other more.
And LotV goes the same path. Gives Zerg the Colossus (Lurker), yes I am aware that the Colossus is an inverted Lurker and it was there before. Protoss gets a Baneling, since that worked good for Terran in HotS. And they give Terran an Air unit that splashes air and single targets ground units. They should name it Alpha Tempest . Can't wait when they give it 22 Range and rename it Beta Tempest.
I think units clustering is the biggest contributor to 10 second battles. Because it causes
- For ranged units, increased dps per area. This is what causes meatgrinders and cause air units to lose terrain advantage against ground units. Back in BW, ground units didn't clump up so enemy units (especially melee) lasted much longer, and air units always had superiority against ground units because air units could clump up but ground units couldn't. It allowed mutalisks to snipe away marines one by one with good micro and carriers to be strong against almost every ground unit except goliaths (in which case they were even).
- Nerfed splash damage/radius. Back in BW storms dealt 120 damage (1.5x the health of hydras) and had a huge AOE. While it could change the tide of battle, it was not as overpowered as units were spread out so there were less units being hit. Meanwhile in SCII because units completely clump up, even if psionic storm deals less damage (80) and smaller radius, it can devastate an entire army if the opponent is not careful. On the other hand, because of how small the radius is, the opponent can just split his army effectively and the storms won't really do much. So you get two extreme results in SCII, while in BW you had less extreme results which allowed for better gameplay.
- Reduced defenders advantage Gone are the days where you can hold a chokepoint with 2-3 seige tanks, or lurkers. This is actually a result of combination of both improved pathing and nerfed AOE, holding a chokepoint with 3-4 splash units no longer works unless you are protoss, but even then it is through the usage of forcefields and that makes the game even more boring.
I think fixing the pathing would change the game hugely (or more specifically, fixing units clumping up)
You say AoE would be too strong, because of pathing, but why can't players just learn to split, it doesn't have to be in battle, they can just send 3 units forward at a time. Wouldn't powerful AoE's in SC2 just function better, because it requires more micro from the opponent: pre-splitting, splitting in battle, make your units not walk clumped, which is really hard to do. Magic Boxing and so on. You just have to give every race capable AoE, so there's not racial imbalance. Stupid SCV pulls wouldn't work, with 112 dmg storms and Disruptors.
On May 17 2015 00:32 ejozl wrote: You say AoE would be too strong, because of pathing, but why can't players just learn to split, it doesn't have to be in battle, they can just send 3 units forward at a time. Wouldn't powerful AoE's in SC2 just function better, because it requires more micro from the opponent: pre-splitting, splitting in battle, make your units not walk clumped, which is really hard to do. Magic Boxing and so on.
This.
I think Starbow is the perfect example of this. Yes, we have some pathing in Starbow, but it is not near as brutal as in BW. In earlier Starbow stages, we were very careful with adding the full splash effect of BW AoE because we were afraid it would be too good with smart-cast + SC2 unit clumping. It turns out that we were wrong. We have basically 100% BW stats on AoE and in my opinion, this is much better, even in the SC2 engine because of the interesting interactions it promotes.
Unlimited unit selection seems to balance smart-casting out as well.
I know that fragile high-damage units is not the only way to increase the duration of battles ofc, but I think it's one of those factors that we rarely consider.
I see so many good suggestions for LOTV, be it this thread, the economy, etc...
Problem is, SC2 was so f@#ked up from the beginning that no single suggestion alone will fix it. DKim and Dustin Browder, et al, will say they tested it but it didn't make much difference, refusing to admit they were wrong. The design of SC2 is so bad that fixing one thing falls short of untangling the mess. But ofcourse they'll say "Changing too many things at once is too drastic, let's try this cool new unit that's like a flying tank and see how it goes."
On May 17 2015 02:02 jotmang-nojem wrote: I see so many good suggestions for LOTV, be it this thread, the economy, etc...
Problem is, SC2 was so f@#ked up from the beginning that no single suggestion alone will fix it. DKim and Dustin Browder, et al, will say they tested it but it didn't make much difference, refusing to admit they were wrong. The design of SC2 is so bad that fixing one thing falls short of untangling the mess. But ofcourse they'll say "Changing too many things at once is too drastic, let's try this cool new unit that's like a flying tank and see how it goes."
There's only one way to fix SC2: FIRE THEM!!!
I'm all for getting rid of the design team, but I don't think SC2 was that bad at the beginning. Actually, I thought it was awesome. Sure it needed major changes to balance it, but it was working and it got many of the design changes it needed (sadly, not all).
Battles used to be much slower, the game used to be more reactive. Just watch games from the first half dozen GSL Seasons and TSL3. As I've said in other posts, you're going to see a lot more skillful and meaningful micro opportunities in a PvP where one play is proxy 2 gating the other, than you will in a late game Colossus War.
But things went down hill as players realized that managing spells was more important than microing combat units in the late game. Blizzard contributed their part to this by making late game units A-move units (Colossus, Thor, Broodlord, Carrier, Battle Cruiser, Ultra, ect). And those casters have hugely damaging spells (EMP, HSM, Storm, Fungal) that annihilate armies quickly.
HOTS exacerbated this problem with spells like Photon Overcharge replacing defensive micro skill for Protoss and Vipers rendering properly positioned and well microed units useless and LOTV makes it even worse.
So went from awesome micro battles between Marine/Tank/Medivac and Ling/Bane/Muta into Infestors fungaling everything and Broodlord A-moving. With HOTS, we got Widow Mines (essentially a caster) blowing stuff up instead of Tanks, and doing it in a gimmicky and random way that doesn't nearly reward positioning and skillful usage as much as Siege Tanks did. Siege Tanks are awesome because they require very special micro that is unlike anything else (save Lurkers). Widow Mine don't mimic that well, especially with drilling claws, they are just a gimmicky caster.
Defensive tools need to get fixed first in order to make it viable to attack early again, while not impossible to expand. That will fix the problem of the lack of action in the early game which is forcing these economy changes that rush the early game. Double harvesting is a great solution to the later 3 base problem, but the tier three units need to be changed and rebalanced to encourage skillful usage.
If all of that happens, we'll have the best RTS of all time.
Well, the way I see it, the biggest problem from the beginning was the emphasis of "Cool" over tried and tested RTS fundamentals. Not only that but the arbitrary decisions on what constitutes "Cool" by the Browder.
So somehow tanks suddenly became uncool but laser pew pew is. Natural movement became uncool because amorphous liquid movement is. Naturally formed frontlines in an RT-Strategy game is uncool because Map/terrain negating units (blink, warpgate, medivac) are. The simple and elegant damage model of BW is uncool but a convoluted and retarded one is.
Time compression Resource compression Hardcounters Uncounterable situations HARASSMENT HARASSMENT HARASSMENT ACTION ACTION ACTION ... the list goes on forever
It's like one of those movies where the trailer is better than the movie. I must admit, I was also wowed by the cool new things in the previews but they turned out to be hallow gimmicks. The cynic in me almost suspects a deliberate marketing ploy! You know you want to buy it, look at all the shiny lazuuuuuuurs.
One thing I've noticed about these threads is that they always devolve into nitpicking and theorycrafting. If this unit and this unit blah blah. No but this unit and this unit blah blah...
NO! This game already violated too many tenets of RTS. It needs a compreshensive review of its fundamentals, which will never happen as long as DKim and Browder are around.
On May 17 2015 00:32 ejozl wrote: You say AoE would be too strong, because of pathing, but why can't players just learn to split, it doesn't have to be in battle, they can just send 3 units forward at a time. Wouldn't powerful AoE's in SC2 just function better, because it requires more micro from the opponent: pre-splitting, splitting in battle, make your units not walk clumped, which is really hard to do. Magic Boxing and so on.
This.
I think Starbow is the perfect example of this. Yes, we have some pathing in Starbow, but it is not near as brutal as in BW. In earlier Starbow stages, we were very careful with adding the full splash effect of BW AoE because we were afraid it would be too good with smart-cast + SC2 unit clumping. It turns out that we were wrong. We have basically 100% BW stats on AoE and in my opinion, this is much better, even in the SC2 engine because of the interesting interactions it promotes.
Unlimited unit selection seems to balance smart-casting out as well.
I know that fragile high-damage units is not the only way to increase the duration of battles ofc, but I think it's one of those factors that we rarely consider.
It's not just about being able to split/avoiding AOE damage. It's also about what the really "good" pathing does to reduce space control. Picture 20 marines studder-step microing perfectly up a ramp to break 2 siege tanks on the top. Easy, the units move like water. 2 tanks on top of a ramp in BW would not be broken by marines.
Broodwar was about controlling space and building map control, SC2 is just about unit composition and good engagements.
edit: another good example is walling. If you wall off completely in SC2 you are safe from zerglings. But, if you have 1 gap, ALL the Zerglings get in instantly. There isn't much grey area. 1 gap is pretty much the same as 5 gaps. The space control is not exactly on a continuum, its black and white. On the other hand in Broodwar, there is a huge difference between 1 gap, 2 gaps 3 gaps in walls - when defending against zerglings or zealots etc.
My thoughts. First off, i would keep promoting starbow I think its more interesting. Secondly I disagree with your idea- units should have more damage and be more fragile. I don't think that's how the battles will last longer. My mind just says that does not make sense unless the move before hitting a. This is sort of what made hots not as fun. Widow mines, oracles, storm, just units that do mass damage and die quickly. Like one widow mine hit early ends the game and its really hard to avoid with the boost on the medivacs, since if its placed on the unit when it burrows, they cannot actually run away from it.
RTS Control-
Honestly no other rts really feels as nice to control the units as starcraft. So you think it would be the most enjoyable game since the game is mostly unit control/decision making once everyone gets to a certain level. That said, I don't enjoy starcraft 2 as much as brood war, but my reasoning is kind of the opposite as you. I hate the high dps/low fragility/aoe/counterless stuff. Widow mines, forcefields, warp mechanic, laser/storm battles, Fungal/blinding cloud, raven/tank/bc. Its just once you get the ability if the other side has not had a large lead, you win unless you throw.
Very little micro is involved usually for the winning side, while a lot of micro is necessary from the often losing side.
Race design-
Protoss is kind of dumb in starcraft 2 in heart of the swarm. Like its a race the warp in mechanic is just retarded. There is no penalty for warping your entire army across the map, and most strats are about abusing it. Even in lotv the current meta changes have been proxying a pylon, adept oracle play while turtling to an aoe army. You could punish them as zerg with swarm hosts to make them have to be active but all the protoss complained they had to look at their army and multitask even though win rates with swarm hots at the highest level were low.
Most NA protosses either allin or mass aoe and when the game goes late, unless you had an unsurmountable lead, you cannot really kill them as zerg, terran, or protoss. Its like a race designed to sit, get aoe units into a certain spot, then drop a ton of AOE. Its very frustrating because you have better upgrades and a larger army, a huge lead, but lose all the time because of the AOE. Most popular streamers complain about having to play protoss, but not near as much the other races. (I.E. puckk, minigun, naniwa, Nathanias, Rotterdam, qxc, avilo, scarlett, suppy, winter are some that come to mind)
In the boxer analogy its like the race that butts heads and hits below the belt. The entire race design is about having hidden things all over and then getting a cheap fight. Proxy pylongs, oracles, dts, into some sort of blink/mass aoe. Its just a race design that in a boxing analogy is one that does not go toe to toe with the other races. Its degrading to watch a replay and the guy barely looks at his army just his base once in a blue moon he warps in and forgets zealots or dts. Then they f2 their army after not even watching the harass and win with mass aoe. After the fight is done, you lose and wonder if there was any point in having rules. Many times in the replays they never actually really controlled their units didn't really pay attention to the minimap, but won. Its very frustrating to the players and when you see a pro lose to it, you just turn off the stream.
Better community focus-
Aside, I digress to what i would rather talk about. I think that the best way to progress is to not have balance be run by the one and done/aoe loving, microless blizzard balance people. I would prefer to have a ladder for the wc3 mod and starbow. Queue times are already several minutes for ladder games, so why not wait a couple more to have something fun?
On May 17 2015 11:27 tokinho wrote: Better community focus-
Aside, I digress to what i would rather talk about. I think that the best way to progress is to not have balance be run by the one and done/aoe loving, microless blizzard balance people. I would prefer to have a ladder for the wc3 mod and starbow. Queue times are already several minutes for ladder games, so why not wait a couple more to have something fun?
I would love to see an in-game ladder option for arcade games as well. In the meantime, we do have a ladder on eros.starbowmod.com which should very soon be done with its basic development.
Can you please write it down, so that I can easily reread things, skim or pay more attention to different parts, and in general go through it in the pace I want? In general, if you are not ready to take the time to write down what you want to say in a structured way, then you probably shouldn't be making the OP to start with. :/ Back in the days threads like these, with the OP being nothing but a link to a youtube, were closed on sight.
On May 17 2015 16:35 Cascade wrote: Can you please write it down, so that I can easily reread things, skim or pay more attention to different parts, and in general go through it in the pace I want? In general, if you are not ready to take the time to write down what you want to say in a structured way, then you probably shouldn't be making the OP to start with. :/ Back in the days threads like these, with the OP being nothing but a link to a youtube, were closed on sight.
2nd'ed. It's amazingly annoying with just a youtube clip.