Terrain/movement types? I want more Hover strategy!

Oh I see. So, if I move my units to a location near to their base getting ready for my attack, let me just go back to my base and build some more...wait, I'm under attack? I don't see anybody on the minimap....OH GOD MY UNITS ARE DYING MOVE MOVE MVOE MVOE"

Yeah, real fun.

And of course, all the newbs are going to spend their time memorizing the map, not what units do what.

And saying anybody that thinks damaging units will be worth it in the end is just someone who hasn't played enough is pretty self rightous. Stiming is a lot more of a strategic piece than reaching your destination a few seconds earlier. Hell, if you want that sort of thing, why not make the short way REALLY bottlenecky, so you can get the crap blown out of you easily by the people on the other side. You can be faster, but if you're not scouting right, it's going to hurt!

 

ah. so you assume everyone's a newb, and will remain a newb forever. i mean, they look on the minimap and see "hmm, blue stuff, i keep clicking on it my my units won't move there? what the hell's going on?" then they see some different terrain (yellow or something) and think, hmm, why are my units getting damaged? why does this happen EVERY SINGLE TIME? i don't see a pattern! this will take YEARS to master. like building units from multiple buildings. a simple computer/cerebrate/conclave voice guy saying "our troops are taking damage." is too hard to understand.

and bottlenecks are not the same thing as damaging terrain. like cliffs are not the same as water. there's a reason there's different terrain types already. taking guaranteed damage crossing an area is not the same thing as fighting your opponent at a highly contested area of a map.

oh, and i regularly send my units to the enemy base, then walk them all the way back when i prepare to attack. yes. you're still deliberately ignoring what i'm saying and just waving your hands, shouting "NOBODY WILL HAVE FUN!!!!! ALL MY UNITS ARE DYING!!! DYING! THE HORROR! OH, THE HUMANITY!"

 

I NEVER said "nobody" will have fun. Quit trying to take my words out of context for your own gain. I said I can't see how anybody would have fun..because..well, it's just that. I can't find how that is enjoyable at all.

I'm saying Blizzard are doing whatever they can in order to make this game as newb friendly as possible. They even said the reason they are not going to do damaging terrain was because...oh ****, what was I saying. NEWBS.

NEWBS will not have fun. That will just piss them off, and we will be back into the same stance we are now. Not many new players are trying to get into the pro scene because it just frustrates them.

 

i don't see how it will be so confusing or frustrating that it will scare newbs off. it's not a new or revolutionary concept, many other games have them, custom maps have them, etc. i'd just like to see it as an official feature.

also, just because you don't see it as fun, doesn't mean it isn't fun. as i've said before- other games have this concept (ever heard of command and conquer?) and people ENJOY those games.

and before you say "OMG, this is starcraft, not C&C" i'll just say that this is no big change. it's one or two new types of terrain. in a sequel to a game that already has several types, including high/low ground, build/unbuildable, and now destructible and vision-blocking. it's not complicated. it's not hard to learn. i don't know why you keep insisting that something like this will scare off newbs, over-complicate the game, or just make it unenjoyable.

 

Yeah, C&C is fun. And I speak from personal experience when I was a newb playing that game. Always keeping an eye on your units, making sure your infantry got the hell out of the Tiberium in time before it was too late, they are pretty much dying in a shot or two. Even when I walk towards a place in the map....I have to stare at them, who knows where some undiscovered Tiberium is, then I'm neglecting my base, so the computer/other players are just going to walk over you, because they are massing.

Custom maps having this is no real problem at all. I've been telling you all along that it would be ok in a single player setting. once you incorporate something like that into the MP/pro scene...it really has no place there. It was said that they don't want the person to die by anything 'random'. They want you to die by the simple fact of "You were out classed".

Again, I'm all for SP/custom games with those damaging textures. MP? No.

 

by "random" i'm pretty sure they mean random events, varying damage (like critical hits), etc. if a terrain has a known, preset damage amount, and the terrain doesn't change, i wouldn't call it random. especially if the terrain is marked on the minimap. i'm not calling for things like, say, volcano eruptions that happen every 42.31 seconds or something. that would be unpredictable and not very fun (especially in multiplayer). but damaging terrain is not chance occurrence, it would be very well defined and known.

if you "accidentally" manouevred your units into a damaging area, that's your fault, not a random occurrence. it would be like "randomly" walking into a bottleneck on the map, or "randomly" walking into seige tank range. if an enemy kited you INTO a damaging area, that's not random either. that's making good use of terrain, much like taking advantage of the high ground.

 

There was actually a recent interview by Dustin Browder where he said that they are trying to keep the game from getting too complex. For example, they are not going to have weather effects and the like because they'd have to re-balance the entire game (slowing or damaging effects affect each race a little bit differently). I'd imagine that damaging terrain would fall into this category, which is another argument for CyberPitz's position.

That said, Blizzard also insinuated that the single-player campaign might incorporate elements like damaging terrain in order to achieve a more rich experience. It just wouldn't be a good idea for multiplayer.

So asdf, I wouldn't be surprised if damaging terrain or more "hover-unit" strategy was in the single-player campaigns, but Blizzard is very averse to doing anything that could further complicate multiplayer, especially at this point in Starcraft II's development.

 

i suppose they can throw tons of features into SP and give it a "wait-and-see" attitude. pretty much any new feature will be a balancing and complexity problem.

if a lot of people enjoyed certain SP levels with neat features (weather or terrain?) and how the mapmaking community uses it, they could start to incorporate it (in an expansion or the next SC3... let's hope that's not another 10 years away). i'm almost expecting to see a "tower defense" or maybe "bunker defense" scenario in one of the terran campaigns...

 

They did include those destructible environments from what we see in pro maps these days. Stacked towers that lead so a lucrative location.

As for people enjoying a certain feature and bringing it over to MP...since SP isn't going to be anything like MP *build your base/units and attack*, it's going to be more like a fun/challenging UMS map now. Having the same kind of fun with features in SP and MP will be quite the different reactions, I'd assume.

Weather would be kind of cool in certain maps...like rain or what not. As long as it really didn't hinder any of the mechanics like speed/attack/sight/etc.

 

i hope they add something like this i mean all teh campaign was kill all these people with more forces than you in this amount of time bleh throw something at me

 

In the last Browder interview, he seemed really opposed to any movement impairing or damaging environmental effects in multiplayer (single player will definitely have them). The reason why is that they never want a player to lose or win because of something the map did to you. Units auto-pathing over a tiberium field comes to mind here, but he mentioned some SC scenarios as examples.

http://www.incgamers.com/Videos/781/StarCraft-2-Dev-Interview-Part-2

Rough transcript @ 4:20 into the video:

Q: "I've heard a lot about weather effects, is there the potential for having any of these effects do anything for gameplay whatsoever?"

A: "If anyone could tell me how that would be fun, I'd go for it. We've talked about it and I just think it's the worst idea ever. Like I think it's a terrible idea... The zerg and protoss (with their Zealots) rely on their speed. They NEED it. If you start saying "everybody slows down a little bit," that REALLY destabilizes the game. We have to rebalance the entire game now for that one mode... And somehow, you have to communicate that to the player. (WTF)? OOOOH RIGHT, I'm in SNOW MODE. Marines have 10 less health in snow mode... Seems like just an awful idea."

He goes on to say:
"In terms of the map eating things, if units automatically path around it that kinda defeats the purpose, right? If units autopath right over it, then what the hell? My units just walked into a death trap? That's just insane. It's a control issue, it's something we've definitely talked about. We might talk about it again. We generally try to have something happen to you on the map because of something somebody else did to you. "I killed you with X, that why you lost your units," as opposed to "oh no the map just ate half of my units." It just doesn't seem that fun."

 

And that is what I've been trying to explain all along.