EternaLLegacy Profile Blog Joined December 2011 United States 410 Posts Last Edited: 2012-01-08 00:12:38 #1 Starcraft 2 and the Philosophy of Design



Introduction:



Hello Teamliquid! Starcraft 2 is exiting its youth. Balance patches have slowed dramatically, the pro scene has had its kings emerge and the one-trick ponies have fallen from glory. All in all, the scene is developed, the game is well explored, and the players are pushing themselves to the limit of their abilities. However, I know exactly what's on the mind of thousands of players and viewers. Namely, something feels lacking.



RTS games are about more than just strategy. RTS combines speed and awareness, mechanical skill, tactical ability, and strategic decision making. RTS stands apart from games like chess, which do not have a mechanical component, and apart from many FPS genre games, which are far less about strategic decision making and more reliant on mechanics. Does Starcraft 2 really fill the role of a well designed RTS, one which balances the mechanical with the strategic? That's the big question we have to answer, and so I will attempt to shine a light on what I think are the most glaring problems for the game from a design perspective.



I also urge everyone who hasn't seen it to check out Day[9]'s video on design (he's got great insight):



IMPORANT: This is explicitly not a balance or game design suggestion post. I am merely providing some analysis as to why things are what they are. It's up to Blizzard to design their own game. If the community thinks these are legitimate problems, our voices can be heard by them.



I am going to break up this discussion into four sections, as there is too much to talk about in one post. They are: Mechanics, Macro Mechanics, Unit Design, and Map Design.



One last caveat before I embark: This is not supposed to be a Broodwar vs SC2 post, but unfortunately the comparisons are simply unavoidable, and so a lot of what I will talk about is contrasts between the games. Broodwar was an amazing game, and if we fail to understand why it was so great, it'll be impossible to reproduce that greatness. I refuse to accept that SC2 is incapable of living up to its predecessor. I want SC2 to be as good as possible. Unfortunately, simply dismissing all comparisons with “they're different games but neither is better” provides no useful feedback.



Part 1: Mechanics





Sorry, not that kind of mechanic.



Mechanics are the fundamental skills that all RTS players must have. Fast hands, good memorization of hotkeys, good use of rallies and unit groups, and general speed of execution are all components of mechanical skill. Without these, execution of your plan in an RTS is impossible. From a game design point of view, mechanics are primary components in the accessibility of the game. In addition, game mechanics provide the methods by which choices are generated for players. Every mechanic presents new options for each player on how to utilize it. The more mechanics there are, the more demanding the game is. A game that is too easy requires little practice and is both unexciting to play and unexciting to watch, from a visual entertainment perspective. While a game that is easy can be intellectually interesting, like chess, it is not “edge of your seat” excitement. On the other hand, if a game is too hard, it will be too difficult to carry out the strategic plans that the player has in mind, which makes the game both frustrating as well as “noob unfriendly.”





This is not simply Starcraft 2 at 0.2 APM.



The latter scenario is frequently a complaint about Starcraft: Broodwar. Simply put, the game is ridiculously hard, notoriously unforgiving, and sometimes it feels like you're fighting two battles – one vs your opponent and one vs the AI. It can be extremely daunting for new players, and so we saw the emergence of a large casual scene centered around money maps (Big Game Hunters, Fastest Map Ever, Zero Clutter), which often including “no rush” rules, and custom games. Blizzard clearly wanted people to actually play the game no matter how good they were, so they tried to lower the mechanics requirement to play the game. However, I think they went too far. By removing some of the mechanical barriers, they removed some of the complexity which separated good players from bad, and added depth to the game. Skills which were essential in Broodwar were trivialized, which I think is a major reason why gameplay can look and feel extremely stale at times.



A) Unit Clumping and Formation Movement



This isn't the first article addressing the “clumping” problem in SC2. Whether it's a design flaw that leads to bad gameplay, or simply something new we have to get used to – that's the debate. I believe that it is a critical design flaw, and for some very simple reasons.



Take two units. We can arrange them in one type of formation, a line. They can be close or far apart, but they're always in a line. Add a third unit, and now you have two types of formations, a line and a triangle. I am simply treating units like vertexes and the formations as resulting shapes. The number of possible formations increases dramatically as you add more units, or vertexes. The number of possible shapes a 20 vertex group can take is absolutely mindbogglingly high. This is how Broodwar units feel so organic. There are nearly infinite permutations of positions that units can be in, and no (large) army ever looks exactly the same.





Look! Shapes!



Now, what if we make it so that instead, there is only one form the units can be arranged in? That's what SC2 does. There is only one formation in SC2, and it is the ball. You can use precious APM to break the ball up, as players do with marines vs banelings, but the default is always the same, a big blob of units.



Not only is this visually unappealing when every army looks the same, but it makes combat extremely deterministic. After all, if engagements only can arise out of one formation, it makes sense that units will behave in one way as they fight in that formation. This determinism takes away a large amount of excitement and thrill from fights, because often the winner is known before the battle even starts.





This is a familiar sight.





But this... this looks much more interesting.



I won't even delve into the balance problems caused by extremely tight formations of units, since that's been beaten into the ground multiple times over. We all know that ranged units benefit, melee fares worse, and AOE is empowered astronomically, and the problems that causes for balance.



I think if we want more interesting combat and more decisions in fights, unit movement formations have to be changed. In addition, the way units move in large groups – with each unit pushing the others out of the way – could be changed. It seems to enable clumping. That, above all, may be the biggest offender.



EDIT (copied from a comment later in the thread):



I think people are misinterpreting what my point with unit clumping is, so I will reiterate again in a different way:



First, I do not say that clumped up units are always desirable. I just say that it is the default formation in the game. Clumped units are the best for dealing with melee (least surface area) and air (less stragglers and more ground able to hit any given air unit), and they are the best formation for moving around the map, since you have less chance of stragglers and wandering units getting picked off.



Balls are worse in range vs range than arcs/lines. They are bad vs splash damage.



Obviously some times you want a ball and some times you don't. There is certainly a great amount of skill involved in making the ball into not a ball, whether it's arcing stalkers or splitting marines vs banelings. However, most combat, or at least army movement, still takes place in the ball.



What nonuniform formations do for a game is allow multiple variations on the starting point for armies, so your micro is different every time, and unit movement is more dynamic. The reason clumping is so bad is not because it makes the game easier, but because it means every army micro using the same techniques, and every army function roughly the same in every situation so long as the army compositions on both sides are similar. You're going to arc and engage with marauders the same as roaches and the same as stalkers.



However, if you start from more random and chaotic formations, the micro does not play out the same in every situation, and as such players have to improvise and practice more than one type of army splitting. Yes, it is harder, but the real benefit is that it's more varied and more decisions are necessary.



B) Unlimited Unit Selection



This is something I don't see talked about much, but I think is the source of a great number of woes. Every Broodwar player remembers the horrors of having to move 80 zerglings into battle. It was damn near impossible to do in an orderly manner. Controlling large terran bio armies was a complete nightmare. 12 unit selection felt inadequate so often, and it so severely limited what you could do with micro that it defined mutalisk use (11 muta + an overlord in a group was the norm).



Fast forward to SC2, and we can now control unlimited flocks of mutas, entire screens full of zerglings, and a maxed army all with a single command. Sounds great, right? This will make the game much more accessible for new players, correct? It sure as hell makes army movement easier. But, we lose something very important when we let a player command unlimited units at once.





That actually required 2000 APM to pull off.



As forces get bigger, and more units are on the battlefield, limited unit selection forces players to make more choices and increases the complexity of simple tasks like moving your army from point A to point B. This causes large armies to behave extraordinarily inefficiently as compared to small ones.



First, this means that small armies which are easier to control, and are well controlled, can do a lot of damage to much larger armies, and as such, there is an efficiency incentive to use multiple smaller forces rather than one giant blob of death.



Second, as the game progresses and more units enter the battlefield, it becomes harder and harder to push a small advantage for a win, because the very act of trying to do anything with your army causes you to make mistakes. This makes battles more forgiving and leads to more engagements and more opportunities, giving rise to this epic struggle for survival that makes Broodwar games so enjoyable to watch. Broodwar games end up being a lot closer, even when one side has a large advantage, because pressing that advantage actually has its own costs, and is much harder to do.



Now people might find the idea of 12 unit selection groups to be antiquated and ridiculous, but that doesn't mean we can't limit them to something. Selection limits should keep the game from being too unfriendly to newcomers, but still retain some level of increasing complexity with increasing force size. All I know is that, as of right now, SC2 is missing that dimension of control.



C) Defender's Advantage and High Ground Mechanics



Those of us who were present in beta remember the huge arguments that ensued about the implementation of Blizzard's new high ground mechanic. While I think SC2's high ground system leads to a lot of good strategic play and interesting micro, I also think it traded a solid defender's advantage that added another dimension to strategy and tactical combat for gimmicky mechanics.





And the lurker says, "Respect the high ground."



I think one of the most interesting aspects to Broodwar was the strength of the high ground. Controlling high ground areas was vital, and making pushes into high ground areas required fantastic effort and careful planning. This meant that the name of the game became about territory control, something SC2 greatly lacks. An army in SC2 is only as good as the units that comprise it, and position just does not seem to matter greatly, outside of camping in your main early on. Terrain should be there as an augmentation to the army controlling it. The lack of a terrain-based augmentation to the combat strength of units, makes map design less interesting, area control less important, and especially leads to more fights that are predetermined. Again, this is another dimension to gameplay that seems to have been completely cut. I think it's worth having the discussion on this issue some more.



In Conclusion:



I think the biggest problems with the game from a mechanical standpoint stem from a lack of dynamic position. As a spectator, it's uninteresting to see different players control their armies when they are always roaming around in the “one true formation to rule them all.” As a player, it's uninteresting to have every battle start from the same point, since I apply the same tactics every time, rather than having to improvise on the spot. I want combat to be fresh and dynamic, where every battle feels unique, visceral, and organic.





Obligatory funny picture of Artosis.



Part 2 will focus on macro-mechanics and macro in general. I hope you all enjoyed this article and that it brings good discussion.



P.S.) I don't know how demonstrable these mechanical changes can be. I know that SC2BW custom maps include an attempt to limit unit selection and possibly change pathing, but the implementation is pretty imperfect (not that I can do better). I would love to see an implementation of limited unit selection and formation locking in Starcraft 2, if for no other purpose than to have directly comparable situations. If you feel up to the task, feel free to do it and let me know about it. It would be really nice to see. I know it's been done before for other mechanics.



Also, I know pros are hesitant to criticize the game they play for money, but their insight is far more valuable to the community and to Blizzard than legions of casual players. I strongly insist that everyone respect and take with heavy consideration any posts from the players at the top. No pro wants to be criticized by the hordes of derp, so please refrain from attacking them so we can actually hear their opinions on these issues. Thank you. Hello Teamliquid! Starcraft 2 is exiting its youth. Balance patches have slowed dramatically, the pro scene has had its kings emerge and the one-trick ponies have fallen from glory. All in all, the scene is developed, the game is well explored, and the players are pushing themselves to the limit of their abilities. However, I know exactly what's on the mind of thousands of players and viewers. Namely, something feels lacking.RTS games are about more than just strategy. RTS combines speed and awareness, mechanical skill, tactical ability, and strategic decision making. RTS stands apart from games like chess, which do not have a mechanical component, and apart from many FPS genre games, which are far less about strategic decision making and more reliant on mechanics. Does Starcraft 2 really fill the role of a well designed RTS, one which balances the mechanical with the strategic? That's the big question we have to answer, and so I will attempt to shine a light on what I think are the most glaring problems for the game from a design perspective.I also urge everyone who hasn't seen it to check out Day[9]'s video on design (he's got great insight): http://blip.tv/day9tv/day-9-s-musings-game-design-baseballs-vs-frisbees-5837982 : This is explicitlya balance or game design suggestion post. I am merely providing some analysis as to why things are what they are. It's up to Blizzard to design their own game. If the community thinks these are legitimate problems, our voices can be heard by them.I am going to break up this discussion into four sections, as there is too much to talk about in one post. They are: Mechanics, Macro Mechanics, Unit Design, and Map Design.One last caveat before I embark: This is not supposed to be a Broodwar vs SC2 post, but unfortunately the comparisons are simply unavoidable, and so a lot of what I will talk about is contrasts between the games. Broodwar was an amazing game, and if we fail to understand why it was so great, it'll be impossible to reproduce that greatness. I refuse to accept that SC2 is incapable of living up to its predecessor. I want SC2 to be as good as possible. Unfortunately, simply dismissing all comparisons with “they're different games but neither is better” provides no useful feedback.Sorry, not that kind of mechanic.Mechanics are the fundamental skills that all RTS players must have. Fast hands, good memorization of hotkeys, good use of rallies and unit groups, and general speed of execution are all components of mechanical skill. Without these, execution of your plan in an RTS is impossible. From a game design point of view, mechanics are primary components in the accessibility of the game. In addition, game mechanics provide the methods by which choices are generated for players. Every mechanic presents new options for each player on how to utilize it. The more mechanics there are, the more demanding the game is. A game that is too easy requires little practice and is both unexciting to play and unexciting to watch, from a visual entertainment perspective. While a game that is easy can be intellectually interesting, like chess, it is not “edge of your seat” excitement. On the other hand, if a game is too hard, it will be too difficult to carry out the strategic plans that the player has in mind, which makes the game both frustrating as well as “noob unfriendly.”This is not simply Starcraft 2 at 0.2 APM.The latter scenario is frequently a complaint about Starcraft: Broodwar. Simply put, the game is ridiculously hard, notoriously unforgiving, and sometimes it feels like you're fighting two battles – one vs your opponent and one vs the AI. It can be extremely daunting for new players, and so we saw the emergence of a large casual scene centered around money maps (Big Game Hunters, Fastest Map Ever, Zero Clutter), which often including “no rush” rules, and custom games. Blizzard clearly wanted people to actually play the game no matter how good they were, so they tried to lower the mechanics requirement to play the game. However, I think they went too far. By removing some of the mechanical barriers, they removed some of the complexity which separated good players from bad, and added depth to the game. Skills which were essential in Broodwar were trivialized, which I think is a major reason why gameplay can look and feel extremely stale at times.A)This isn't the first article addressing the “clumping” problem in SC2. Whether it's a design flaw that leads to bad gameplay, or simply something new we have to get used to – that's the debate. I believe that it is a critical design flaw, and for some very simple reasons.Take two units. We can arrange them in one type of formation, a line. They can be close or far apart, but they're always in a line. Add a third unit, and now you have two types of formations, a line and a triangle. I am simply treating units like vertexes and the formations as resulting shapes. The number of possible formations increases dramatically as you add more units, or vertexes. The number of possible shapes a 20 vertex group can take is absolutely mindbogglingly high. This is how Broodwar units feel so organic. There are nearly infinite permutations of positions that units can be in, and no (large) army ever looks exactly the same.Look! Shapes!Now, what if we make it so that instead, there is only one form the units can be arranged in? That's what SC2 does. There is only one formation in SC2, and it is the ball. You can use precious APM to break the ball up, as players do with marines vs banelings, but the default is always the same, a big blob of units.Not only is this visually unappealing when every army looks the same, but it makes combat extremely deterministic. After all, if engagements only can arise out of one formation, it makes sense that units will behave in one way as they fight in that formation. This determinism takes away a large amount of excitement and thrill from fights, because often the winner is known before the battle even starts.This is a familiar sight.But this... this looks much more interesting.I won't even delve into the balance problems caused by extremely tight formations of units, since that's been beaten into the ground multiple times over. We all know that ranged units benefit, melee fares worse, and AOE is empowered astronomically, and the problems that causes for balance.I think if we want more interesting combat and more decisions in fights, unit movement formations have to be changed. In addition, the way units move in large groups – with each unit pushing the others out of the way – could be changed. It seems to enable clumping. That, above all, may be the biggest offender.EDIT (copied from a comment later in the thread):I think people are misinterpreting what my point with unit clumping is, so I will reiterate again in a different way:First, I do not say that clumped up units are always desirable. I just say that it is the default formation in the game. Clumped units are the best for dealing with melee (least surface area) and air (less stragglers and more ground able to hit any given air unit), and they are the best formation for moving around the map, since you have less chance of stragglers and wandering units getting picked off.Balls are worse in range vs range than arcs/lines. They are bad vs splash damage.Obviously some times you want a ball and some times you don't. There is certainly a great amount of skill involved in making the ball into not a ball, whether it's arcing stalkers or splitting marines vs banelings. However, most combat, or at least army movement, still takes place in the ball.What nonuniform formations do for a game is allow multiple variations on the starting point for armies, so your micro is different every time, and unit movement is more dynamic. The reason clumping is so bad is not because it makes the game easier, but because it means every army micro using the same techniques, and every army function roughly the same in every situation so long as the army compositions on both sides are similar. You're going to arc and engage with marauders the same as roaches and the same as stalkers.However, if you start from more random and chaotic formations, the micro does not play out the same in every situation, and as such players have to improvise and practice more than one type of army splitting. Yes, it is harder, but the real benefit is that it's more varied and more decisions are necessary.B)This is something I don't see talked about much, but I think is the source of a great number of woes. Every Broodwar player remembers the horrors of having to move 80 zerglings into battle. It was damn near impossible to do in an orderly manner. Controlling large terran bio armies was a complete nightmare. 12 unit selection felt inadequate so often, and it so severely limited what you could do with micro that it defined mutalisk use (11 muta + an overlord in a group was the norm).Fast forward to SC2, and we can now control unlimited flocks of mutas, entire screens full of zerglings, and a maxed army all with a single command. Sounds great, right? This will make the game much more accessible for new players, correct? It sure as hell makes army movement easier. But, we lose something very important when we let a player command unlimited units at once.That actually required 2000 APM to pull off.As forces get bigger, and more units are on the battlefield, limited unit selection forces players to make more choices and increases the complexity of simple tasks like moving your army from point A to point B. This causes large armies to behave extraordinarily inefficiently as compared to small ones.First, this means that small armies which are easier to control, and are well controlled, can do a lot of damage to much larger armies, and as such, there is an efficiency incentive to use multiple smaller forces rather than one giant blob of death.Second, as the game progresses and more units enter the battlefield, it becomes harder and harder to push a small advantage for a win, because the very act of trying to do anything with your army causes you to make mistakes. This makes battles more forgiving and leads to more engagements and more opportunities, giving rise to this epic struggle for survival that makes Broodwar games so enjoyable to watch. Broodwar games end up being a lot closer, even when one side has a large advantage, because pressing that advantage actually has its own costs, and is much harder to do.Now people might find the idea of 12 unit selection groups to be antiquated and ridiculous, but that doesn't mean we can't limit them to something. Selection limits should keep the game from being too unfriendly to newcomers, but still retain some level of increasing complexity with increasing force size. All I know is that, as of right now, SC2 is missing that dimension of control.C)Those of us who were present in beta remember the huge arguments that ensued about the implementation of Blizzard's new high ground mechanic. While I think SC2's high ground system leads to a lot of good strategic play and interesting micro, I also think it traded a solid defender's advantage that added another dimension to strategy and tactical combat for gimmicky mechanics.And the lurker says, "Respect the high ground."I think one of the most interesting aspects to Broodwar was the strength of the high ground. Controlling high ground areas was vital, and making pushes into high ground areas required fantastic effort and careful planning. This meant that the name of the game became about territory control, something SC2 greatly lacks. An army in SC2 is only as good as the units that comprise it, and position just does not seem to matter greatly, outside of camping in your main early on. Terrain should be there as an augmentation to the army controlling it. The lack of a terrain-based augmentation to the combat strength of units, makes map design less interesting, area control less important, and especially leads to more fights that are predetermined. Again, this is another dimension to gameplay that seems to have been completely cut. I think it's worth having the discussion on this issue some more.I think the biggest problems with the game from a mechanical standpoint stem from a lack of dynamic position. As a spectator, it's uninteresting to see different players control their armies when they are always roaming around in the “one true formation to rule them all.” As a player, it's uninteresting to have every battle start from the same point, since I apply the same tactics every time, rather than having to improvise on the spot. I want combat to be fresh and dynamic, where every battle feels unique, visceral, and organic.Obligatory funny picture of Artosis.Part 2 will focus on macro-mechanics and macro in general. I hope you all enjoyed this article and that it brings good discussion.I don't know how demonstrable these mechanical changes can be. I know that SC2BW custom maps include an attempt to limit unit selection and possibly change pathing, but the implementation is pretty imperfect (not that I can do better). I would love to see an implementation of limited unit selection and formation locking in Starcraft 2, if for no other purpose than to have directly comparable situations. If you feel up to the task, feel free to do it and let me know about it. It would be really nice to see. I know it's been done before for other mechanics.Also, I know pros are hesitant to criticize the game they play for money, but their insight is far more valuable to the community and to Blizzard than legions of casual players. I strongly insist that everyone respect and take with heavy consideration any posts from the players at the top. No pro wants to be criticized by the hordes of derp, so please refrain from attacking them so we can actually hear their opinions on these issues. Thank you. Statists gonna State.