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| Savio United States. March 17 2010 06:44. Posts 1845 | Profile # |
On March 16 2010 14:02 Ronald_McD wrote:
StarCraft 1 had a great high ground advantage. I've hated SC2's high ground line of sight bullshit right from the start.
no one is talking about removing the los mechanic. That is a great mechanic. What we are talking about is adding a miss chance to the los mechanic. |
| | The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of the blessings. The inherent blessing of socialism is the equal sharing of misery. – Winston Churchill |
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| HydroZ United States. March 17 2010 06:47. Posts 34 | Profile # |
| Nice post, Daigomi. Well-thought and well-presented. Thanks for doing this! |
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| theconartist March 17 2010 07:52. Posts 62 | Profile Blog # |
A good general never fights a battle he hasn't already won.
If you losing the game seriously depends on the chance to hit uphill it means you've already lost the game by not securing that position, or you are doing something reckless with your army.
Example A:
Your opponent secured the high ground outside your base and you are now contained.
- If your strategy isn't prepared to deal with this (recall, shuttles, hidden expansions, zealot leg speed, etc.) then you have already lost by giving up an important position which was crucial to you winning the game.
Example B:
Your opponent is turtling at his expansion and the balance of units between you is close enough that you can lose the battle if he gets enough luck with his high ground advantage (i.e. you cant crush him with zealot bombs and stasis).
- Don't attack him like an idiot, just keep map control and expand. Have you learned nothing from Day[9]?
Any situation where that rule wouldn't apply requires either you are playing a superior opponent that you need luck to win against, or that the game/map has an imbalance in it that needs to be fixed.Last edit: 2010-03-17 07:53:05 |
| | <Patch> You never even hit A, tca <Patch> QQ, sounds like you just suck. |
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| pankwindu United States. March 17 2010 08:01. Posts 7 | Profile # |
I find it a bit comical that there is such a large sentiment against the "get a big ball of units and attack" mentality, but then conversely such support for a mechanic that encourages larger army sizes. A random miss chance has a disproportionate effect in small numbers and only "evens out" over large numbers, thus encouraging larger army play to overcome the effects of randomness.
Take the 10 shots example. It's a bit disingenuous to use the ALL 10 shots scenario to dismiss concerns - of course the odds are very slim (yet even so, it can still happen, and WILL happen over the course of thousands of players playing thousands of games). Rather, let's consider the chance of missing HALF of your shots.
With 10 shots, your chance of missing at least half of them is about 8% - a fairly significant number and far from "lottery" odds.
With 20 shots, your chance of missing at least half is about 1%.
With 100 shots, chance of missing half is microscopic. The more units/shots, the more the actual army effectiveness will converge on its true expected value.
If you attack with a small army, you have a disproportionate chance of having a complete disaster occur through pure luck of the draw. Penalizing small army play with increased randomization risk seems counterproductive to good/entertaining gameplay.Last edit: 2010-03-17 09:36:17 |
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| RPGabe United States. March 17 2010 08:54. Posts 188 | Profile # |
I don't understand the defense of random elements as a "necessary fact of life". Just because scarabs sometimes failed to explode in SC1 doesn't mean we should desire that type of cryptic gameplay.
If we can find a solution that doesn't involve a random miss chance, all the better. Critical Hits, Resists, Avoidance etc were incredibly infuriating when trying to play arena games competitively. Sure, most of the time everything evened out, but occasionally you will be robbed. If you play 100 or 1000 games, which a serious player will, you will eventually lose to a random element.
And it feels awful and ultimately takes away the player's enjoyment from the game.
I'm not saying that high ground shouldn't have an advantage - it should, and it should be significant. I still don't understand why having that advantage be a random element would be desirable over another equally strong solution that is not random.Last edit: 2010-03-17 08:54:58 |
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| fmagrave United States. March 17 2010 09:21. Posts 5 | Profile # |
Your assertion about "Miss Chance and Damage Reduction" is incorrect.
Let's take a look at your assertion
-A tank does 35 damage a shot, marines have 40hp.
-Normal: Two shots kill a marine.
Your claim
-50% miss: Four shots kill a marine (on average).
-50% less damage: Three shots kill a marine (17.5 * 3 = 52.5).
My claim
-50% miss: Three shots kill a marine
-50% less damage: Three shots kill a marine
Justification
Average=Expected Value= Sum(X_i*P(X=i))/n for i=1 to n
P(X=i)=P(hit)=.5 for all i
X_i=Damage=35 for all i
The game is to find the lowest value of n s.t. n*Expected Value>=40 (40 comes from the life of the marine)
n*Expected Value= n*sum(X_i*P(X=i))/n
= n*n*35*.5/n since for all i, P(X=i)=.5 and X_i=35.
=35*.5n
=17.5*n
17.5*n>=40
n>=2.285
Since n must be an integer,
n=3
What you did was assume a sequence of Hit then miss, hit then miss, hit then miss... etc. which is not an accurate model of 50% miss rate.
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| Unentschieden Germany. March 17 2010 09:31. Posts 1144 | Profile # |
On March 17 2010 06:18 Louder wrote:
high ground still fails to provide any tactical advantage in most situations, though it should do so.
The current mechanic is a huge advantage, if a enemy engages but fails to protect his spotters he will get demolished. Yeah you don´t get a "free" advatage for being on high ground anymore but why was that a good thing? Shure good positioning should be rewarded but it should be a bit more challenging than "hold your ramp". Impassable Terrain and FoW are already in favour of the defender/highlander, does he really need/deserve more?
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| | LoL codes work once per Server, so US friends share with your EU friends like me ;). |
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| Angra United States. March 17 2010 09:32. Posts 2076 | Profile Blog # |
At this point in SC2, it is INCREDIBLY difficult to defend with a lesser force. If you don't have as many units as your opponent, you simply lose an engagement no matter what, even if you're the one defending. This narrows down the possible openings/strategies/build orders you can perform to a very slim amount. In SC1, part of the genius that top players had were cutting as many corners as possible in their builds and army sizes earlier on to gain an advantage. Things such as fast teching, fast harassment, and fast expanding relied entirely on cutting corners with your army size based on the knowledge that you could just barely defend with a lesser force, because you had the defender's advantage. If you try to cut ANY corners with your army size in SC2 at this point, you will lose 9 out of 10 times if he attacks, because he just has more stuff than you. It makes the game a lot more linear in terms of what you can and can't do, and doesn't open up experimentation or risky corner-cutting at all. You're forced to pump out units all game right from the start, because if you don't, you lose. It puts a huge strain on trying to do any other sort of strategy early on, like teching or harassing, because the investment into those things will surely cut your army size that you could have spent that money on, and once your opponent attacks, you will lose.
And while I completely agree that high ground advantage is a huge part of defender's advantage, and that miss % is probably the best option for making that work, I think there are a lot of other factors involved also.
Another thing that I've been thinking of lately is the fact that there are no "defensive" oriented units anymore, and there are no units that have multiple purposes, one being defending. Some examples from SC1 would be: Lurkers in ZvT being able to hold expansions against a much larger force because of their splash damage and being up a ramp or in a choke, mines in TvP being able to hold off a much larger force because of the P needing to take the time to clear them before being in your face, Reavers in PvZ being able to hold against a Hydra all-in or holding an expansion.
All these things are a much smaller force holding off against a much larger force because the units are versatile and have the ability to be used as a defensive tool, which allows you to spend your resources in other ways while you hold off against that larger force. Imagine in SC1 if in ZvT, rather than being able to hold off from the T's massive MnM army with lurkers and dark swarm, you had to just spam hydralisks to stay alive. The ZvT style as we know it would never have existed, because there would be no breathing room for expanding or teching. You would need all your larva and money to spam those hydralisks to stay alive.
There are so fewer units that can be used as defensive tools in SC2. Almost every unit is just simple damage that does nothing else besides that. The only diversity, if you'd even call it that, is the whole +damage to light/armored units (which I think is retarded and makes it feel so rock-paper-scissors like).
Anyway, the main point of this post is, a lack of a high ground advantage combined with a lack of units that can be used for multiple roles, one of those roles being defense, makes for a really limited amount of strategies that can be used, and almost completely nullifies the ability to cut corners to gain an advantage, except in the situation where your opponent is stupid and doesn't realize you're cutting corners, which won't happen in higher levels of play. You're forced to spam units just to stay alive. It puts a strain on your resources, making fast teching and expanding hard, and it puts a strain on your building production facilities, making early harassment hard (if you're building harassing units out of your buildings, you aren't building your core army units, which you need to stay alive). It makes SC2 seem a lot more one-dimensional than SC1. |
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| sword_siege United States. March 17 2010 10:14. Posts 617 | Profile # |
| Amen brother. Hopefully this idea gains momentum and Blizzard makes a change. I remember they only changed the high ground mechanic within the last several months so there's still an opportunity for them to change it back. Unfortunately, the window for that opportunity is closing the closer we get to the end of the beta. Last edit: 2010-03-17 10:16:33 |
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| Conquest101 United States. March 17 2010 11:00. Posts 1208 | Profile Blog # |
| What's with all these lurkers coming out to dispute the math? Way to "miss the point". What you should be taking away from that example is the fact that, with damage reduction, in many cases, there is NO effect because many units overkill their targets as it is. So some units would be greatly affected and some much less so, or not at all. With the miss chance, it doesn't matter if it takes a particular unit 4 hits or 3 hits, or 11 hits or whatever to kill another unit. The distinction that's important here is that ALL units are affected proportionally by miss chance. |
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 Manifesto7 Osaka. March 17 2010 11:42. Posts 24962 | Profile Blog # |
At this point in SC2, it is INCREDIBLY difficult to defend with a lesser force. If you don't have as many units as your opponent, you simply lose an engagement no matter what, even if you're the one defending. This narrows down the possible openings/strategies/build orders you can perform to a very slim amount. In SC1, part of the genius that top players had were cutting as many corners as possible in their builds and army sizes earlier on to gain an advantage. Things such as fast teching, fast harassment, and fast expanding relied entirely on cutting corners with your army size based on the knowledge that you could just barely defend with a lesser force, because you had the defender's advantage. If you try to cut ANY corners with your army size in SC2 at this point, you will lose 9 out of 10 times if he attacks, because he just has more stuff than you. It makes the game a lot more linear in terms of what you can and can't do, and doesn't open up experimentation or risky corner-cutting at all. You're forced to pump out units all game right from the start, because if you don't, you lose. It puts a huge strain on trying to do any other sort of strategy early on, like teching or harassing, because the investment into those things will surely cut your army size that you could have spent that money on, and once your opponent attacks, you will lose.
For those wondering why this article was written, this is the reason. |
| | @Manifesto7 - Who says terran is underpowered! I'm #1 Gold |  |
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| aznboi918 United States. March 17 2010 11:47. Posts 66 | Profile # |
| ok... first of all I didn't know they got rid of the miss chance... wow that's really bad. That's part of what created the depth of the game we gotta keep that. Good post very though provoking. :D |
| | "I want to share my bloody tears with those who cry because the road they chose was too difficult, or those that gave up their dreams to take the road that was a little easier." (Lim Yo Hwan) |  |
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| Rah United States. March 17 2010 11:49. Posts 892 | Profile # |
On March 17 2010 02:39 mnofstl007 wrote:
I like the speed reduction tho it doesnt make much sense in realization,
Marine A "Why are we shooting so slow?"
Marine B "Because they are standing on the high ground"
Marine A "And that affects my ability to pull the trigger and reload?"
Marine B "Apparently"
I was thinking more along the lines of they take longer to line up a clear shot, or to track enemy troop movement and fire. Which would make sense to me, and the math's easier than other methods. |
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| fmagrave United States. March 17 2010 12:11. Posts 5 | Profile # |
On March 17 2010 11:00 Conquest101 wrote:
What's with all these lurkers coming out to dispute the math? Way to "miss the point". What you should be taking away from that example is the fact that, with damage reduction, in many cases, there is NO effect because many units overkill their targets as it is. So some units would be greatly affected and some much less so, or not at all. With the miss chance, it doesn't matter if it takes a particular unit 4 hits or 3 hits, or 11 hits or whatever to kill another unit. The distinction that's important here is that ALL units are affected proportionally by miss chance.
Over the long run, there is no difference in the number of hits required in both a chance miss system and a percent damage reduction system. the only difference is that one has a spread, whereas the other is a constant effect (and thus has no variability/sd/spread).
PS I did not "miss the point". Arguing against one of the claims presented to support an assertion is a legitimate dispute. I agree with the overall notion that there needs to be some greater high ground advantage. I'm just pointing that the assertion that a chance system takes more hits to kill a unit than a flat percentage decrease is simply not true. These two are the same except one has luck associated with it and the other does not. Last edit: 2010-03-17 12:19:00 |
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| Deviation United States. March 17 2010 12:32. Posts 134 | Profile # |
ETA on that high ground mechanic?  |
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| Glider China. March 17 2010 12:41. Posts 1067 | Profile Blog # |
On March 17 2010 09:32 Angra wrote:
At this point in SC2, it is INCREDIBLY difficult to defend with a lesser force. If you don't have as many units as your opponent, you simply lose an engagement no matter what, even if you're the one defending. This narrows down the possible openings/strategies/build orders you can perform to a very slim amount. In SC1, part of the genius that top players had were cutting as many corners as possible in their builds and army sizes earlier on to gain an advantage. Things such as fast teching, fast harassment, and fast expanding relied entirely on cutting corners with your army size based on the knowledge that you could just barely defend with a lesser force, because you had the defender's advantage. If you try to cut ANY corners with your army size in SC2 at this point, you will lose 9 out of 10 times if he attacks, because he just has more stuff than you. It makes the game a lot more linear in terms of what you can and can't do, and doesn't open up experimentation or risky corner-cutting at all. You're forced to pump out units all game right from the start, because if you don't, you lose. It puts a huge strain on trying to do any other sort of strategy early on, like teching or harassing, because the investment into those things will surely cut your army size that you could have spent that money on, and once your opponent attacks, you will lose.
exactly
can someone please make sure the blizz developers understand this...between this and incontrol's earlier thread, someone's got to get the word out. I see this as #1 problem they need to fix right now.Last edit: 2010-03-17 12:45:16 |
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| Conquest101 United States. March 17 2010 12:53. Posts 1208 | Profile Blog # |
On March 17 2010 12:11 fmagrave wrote:
Show nested quote +On March 17 2010 11:00 Conquest101 wrote:
What's with all these lurkers coming out to dispute the math? Way to "miss the point". What you should be taking away from that example is the fact that, with damage reduction, in many cases, there is NO effect because many units overkill their targets as it is. So some units would be greatly affected and some much less so, or not at all. With the miss chance, it doesn't matter if it takes a particular unit 4 hits or 3 hits, or 11 hits or whatever to kill another unit. The distinction that's important here is that ALL units are affected proportionally by miss chance.
Over the long run, there is no difference in the number of hits required in both a chance miss system and a percent damage reduction system. the only difference is that one has a spread, whereas the other is a constant effect (and thus has no variability/sd/spread). PS I did not "miss the point". Arguing against one of the claims presented to support an assertion is a legitimate dispute. I agree with the overall notion that there needs to be some greater high ground advantage. I'm just pointing that the assertion that a chance system takes more hits to kill a unit than a flat percentage decrease is simply not true. These two are the same except one has luck associated with it and the other does not.
No, there is a difference. Going with the siege tank example.
33% miss: Three shots kill a marine (on average).
33% less damage: Two shots kill a marine (23 * 2 = 46).
I don't care to do the math, but even if 33% miss does not result exactly in 3 shots on average, it certainly does not result in 2 shots on average, which would be the necessary result to match damage reduction in this case. Even if, as you say, the 50% miss example is not correct, my guess would be that there are plenty of other unit "matchups" that WOULD result in the above scenario.
The thing is, the example doesn't matter. It's unfortunate that his math was wrong, but it doesn't change anything. The point Daigomi was trying to make was:
"Because units do more damage than is needed, damage reduction can have little to no impact on the number of shots required to kill a unit. On the other hand, with the miss-dynamic, the number of shots required to kill a unit increases proportionately with the chance to miss."
One effect varies by unit (omg variability). One doesn't. This still remains true.Last edit: 2010-03-17 12:55:11 |
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 cartoon]x United States. March 17 2010 13:00. Posts 606 | Profile # |
It is blatant stupidity to think you can make a statistical suggestion for balancing the ground mechanic. Basically your 25 percent miss ratio amounts to a wild guess. If you think theory crafting is bad, then you have to agree this article is worse.. Do any of you truly realize the balancing implications of changing the ground mechanic?
User was temp banned for this post.
Last edit: 2010-03-17 13:30:20 |
| | It is not enough to conquer; one must learn to seduce. | |
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| stink123 United States. March 17 2010 13:08. Posts 176 | Profile # |
Zato-1 hit the biggest issues spot on. If Blizzard wanted to, I believe they could design some kind of system involving misses and/or damage reduction to make things fair.
Not only is the miss system much more complicated for balance than the current system. The best example is in TvT, where in SC:BW its never a good idea to attack sieged tanks on a cliff with tanks. Even if you do have a considerable army advantage, you may suffer huge casualties before you can even do damage. But then, we have cases such as PvP where goons can just bust a ramp by just having 2 or 3 more goons.
Another issue that blizzard cares deeply about is the intuitiveness. They want to make the game easier to pick up and play, and a high ground miss chance is much less intuitive than requiring sight above a hill before you can shoot them. Not everyone notices the "miss" animation above their units in a battle, and there's no easy way to teach (in game) that the miss chance is 30%.
And finally, changing the current system will not have a definite change on the way the game is played. Currently 1 base builds are much more popular not solely because of high ground advantage, but more because of the harassment options available, the lack of good defensive units, and the current maps.
Also, in the end ramps are a choke, and ARE a significant advantage. It just shouldn't be played the same way as in brood war. |
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| fmagrave United States. March 17 2010 14:27. Posts 5 | Profile # |
On March 17 2010 12:53 Conquest101 wrote:
No, there is a difference. Going with the siege tank example.
33% miss: Three shots kill a marine (on average).
33% less damage: Two shots kill a marine (23 * 2 = 46).
I don't care to do the math, but even if 33% miss does not result exactly in 3 shots on average, it certainly does not result in 2 shots on average, which would be the necessary result to match damage reduction in this case. Even if, as you say, the 50% miss example is not correct, my guess would be that there are plenty of other unit "matchups" that WOULD result in the above scenario.
The thing is, the example doesn't matter. It's unfortunate that his math was wrong, but it doesn't change anything. The point Daigomi was trying to make was:
"Because units do more damage than is needed, damage reduction can have little to no impact on the number of shots required to kill a unit. On the other hand, with the miss-dynamic, the number of shots required to kill a unit increases proportionately with the chance to miss."
One effect varies by unit (omg variability). One doesn't. This still remains true.
Now that I think about a bit more, his overall assertion that the number of hits required to kill a unit will increase due to overkill may be true.
PS .
I think the probability model of a miss rate system would be.
Probability(Target will die in N shots)=(N-1 choose k-1)*p^k*(1-p)^(N-k)
where
p is hit rate
k is the number of shots unit A needs to kill unit B (assuming 100% hit rate).
On the other hand, the calculation for percent damage reduction is simply linear. |
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