I have a job now so I haven't been able to work on Strikers quite as much as I was before. I have been trying to do updates to the game, but since it's about a days worth of work to rebalance a single unit and a lot of tested changes are giving me problems it's taking forever for me to implement anything. They're also scheduling me on saturdays from 3 to 11 PM so I'm not sure if I'll ever be able to do map night again.


Yes, this is a deficiency in the AI and will be fixed. I was kind of hoping to avoid making the AI's do a lot of calculations (like determining which spot on the goal is pathable), but since kicking in the goal is a rare event it probably won't cause a lot of lag. There's also the problem that I don't want AI's to be too good at avoiding path blockers that they make SCV players useless.


I've thought about many different alternate probe abilities and I actually considered implementing the first change you described already. The problem is that it would serve too similar a function to what the Zealot has now, and would be even better than the Zealot's ability.

That second idea is pretty interesting, but I feel the effects may not be very apparent to the non-probe players. If I did implement it, I would want to change the Probe's first skill to something that isn't as useful as his steal, instead of my current gameplan of trying to implement something as useful as the skill but less annoying and more balanced for newbie players.

I'm considering adding alternate modes that would be available as options in the beginning of the game, including a no-attacking/simplified mode, but I don't want to have to balance and update two different games at this point if I can help it. I would probably take the SCV, Drone, and Probe (as UU mentioned) and give them 3 of the most "fun" skills in the game right now. I'd also prefer making push use energy instead of making it do damage to enemies, since any bonuses/buffs to Push that I've implemented or tested just encourage clustering (which is something I'm trying to tone down). I'd also increase the radius that the SCV, Drone, and Probe pick up the ball to be more in line with medium sized units.

@this:


I really shouldn't have to hard-sell this.
The reason behind this is because I want you to see your map's greatest potential.
Doing the changes I listed above will allow you to see the main gameplay mechanics that OUGHT to govern your map.
There is nothing to lose from doing this. Just create a new map and name it something else entirely apart from Star Strikers.

You're still holding on to the illusion that all the other mumbo-jumbo gameplay mechanics that you added in are worth it to destroy the basic football/soccer game mechanics. All the Attacking, Different sorts of Players.. their cons outweight their pros immensely. Moreover, you've sacrificed a lot for them.. like having no Goalies.. limiting the roll of the ball, and etc.

I just want you to remove all that just so you can see what's most important in your map.

I'm not telling you to make an alternate mode. Please do not do that. Don't try to escape the truth. Just try it, and if you still feel that you want to go back to the Cluster-fuck that ruined your game, then go ahead.
But as long as you haven't stripping your map to its core, you may never experience its true potential.

Fixes and Changes 5.0
(Fix) A bug that allows the lobbies to be uneven should be fixed.
(Fix) Subbed units will no longer remain idle in the arena.
(Fix) Corrected a few tooltips.
(Fix) Fixed a bug with the AI that caused them to not evaluate the position of the enemy goal correctly.
(Fix) Fixed a bug where players could kick the ball into the areas where subbed units move, causing play to stop.
(Fix) Fixed a bug with the SCV's Holo-Wall.
(Fix) The Ball is no longer targetable or selectable. This means that you do not have to click past the ball to move over it; instead, you can simply click on top of the ball.
(Fix) Making a goal right as half time occurs should no longer cause problems.


(Balance) The Immortal has been revamped. His "Reroute Power" skill is no longer permanent, but increases his movement speed more greatly and reduces his attack damage. His "Hardened Shield" ability has also been replaced with a "Photon Missiles" ability that deals 20 damage to a single target and makes that target unable to kick for 4.5 seconds.
(Balance) The Queen's Slither skill is now a casted ability. It costs 20 health and spawns a creep spawn at the Queen's location. The creep spawns also increase the Queen's movement speed by 12%; however, there is a limit of five.
(Balance) The Marauder has been redesigned. His "Punish" skill is now a casted ability that pushes all nearby units away from a target point, and removes control of the ball from the ball holder if it is in that area. His "Emergency Medkit" is now just "Medkit" and restores 15 health for 15 energy over 2.5 seconds, and stacks up to 20 times.
(Balance) The Zealot's Intercept ability now increases his movement speed by 2, but only lasts for 3 seconds.
(Balance) Reduced the charge-up time of the Archon's Overwhelm ability to 1.5 seconds. In addition, the Archon's Shockwave ability now slows for 5 seconds.
(Balance) The Drone's Tunnel ability now does not initiate a cooldown when it fails to cast, but instead drains 0.5 energy. This is to discourage people from holding the ability down and removing an aspect of skill in its use. The Drone also cannot tunnel for up to 4 seconds after kicking the ball.
(Balance) The Thor's Power Shot ability now fires the ball over units, but now only travels 20% longer than a normal kick. It also makes him immune to pushing effects and stealing of the ball while casting.
(Balance) The Marine's Stimpack ability now increases movement speed by 0.65 units per second.
(Balance) The casting range of the SCV's Holo-Wall has been increased.
(Balance) The Sentry now becomes immune to pushing and stealing of the ball while Distortion is active. However, the duration of Distortion has been decreased to 4.
(Balance) The Hydralisk's Corrosive Needles ability now does 33% more base damage and reduces the target's armor by 2.
(Balance) Pushing now costs less and slows for more for heavy units. It has the opposite effect for light units. In addition, the pushing radius is now less for medium and light units.
(Balance) The physics for kicking have changed. As a result, the maximum range of Kick has been further increased to 15.
(Balance) Clustering now reduces movement speed, in additional to the reduction of damage already in place.
(Balance) Halves of the game now last for 10 minutes.
(Balance) Overtime is now 2 minutes long.
(Balance) Half-time has been reduced to 20 seconds.


(Addition) Added a "Random" button to the sub-out menu.
(Addition) A glowing white ring below the ball now indicates when the ball aquires a new holder. It also denotes when the ball will not change to a new holder by automatic pickup.
(Addition) The ball is now thrown in when it goes out of bounds at the point it went out of bounds. This includes a new "Throw" skill that replaces the "Kick" skill for the player throwing the ball in.
(Addition) The AI has been improved. They will spread out and take multiple positions, are now a lot smarter about passing and kicking on the goal, and will also correctly throw the ball in from out of bounds or get open for a throw. They will also play as the Thor, the Zergling, and the Stalker.
(Addition) A special music track now plays during the normal play.
(Addition) The game will now automatically select the player's unit after they choose a player or sub out. It will also add their unit to a control group.
(Addition) The Loading Screen and Minimap Image have been changed.
(Addition) The tips menu has been updated slightly.

Looks like an awesome update.
However, I see no changes related to Probe.

Sweet, now you just have to figure out to get it playable by large amounts of people at once. -.-

I played a game of this this afternoon. It was pretty fun even though I sucked at it (due to noobishness and laggy computer). I can see what the others said about it being all clustered up, but I think good players would learn pretty quickly to spread out same as real soccer, instead of acting like 5 year olds and mobbing the ball. Once spread out, passing the ball would destroy the other team if they tried to bunch up.

One thing that might help a bit is a bit wider field, or perhaps a larger-on-every-side field.

That's what I keep telling my team and if they listen we always win. People are always afraid to trust a defender to do his job because some players don't know what they're doing, but once you get two teams of good players the game will look a lot more fluid. I think the size of the map is fine.


One thing I thought about was making defined roles by position rather than race. For example, Probe/SCV/Drone would be goalies, Viking/Thor would be defenders, Reaper and Zergling would be strikers, etc.

That would probably make the game more structured with people knowing how to position themselves and not just running after the ball. You should pick a time for people to play, and I'm going to start using the suggested channel. Hopefully that can start happening.

Drone and Probe are actually two units that can do very well on the offensive level.

2 great reviews made about the map: http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/2140445451?page=1#1
Also, Chirus, I think it's time for you to write a thread about your map in the "Map Showcase" forum.

My one biggest issue right now is still that to block a shot you have to be right in between them and the goal. This makes it basically a race to get in front of the player before he gets in range of the goal. Even a tiny charge up to kick the ball (more charge for more distance) seems like it would help to balance this out very very well. If a player wants to shoot from max range, it needs to be a good shot. If not, the defender has more time to catch up. I'm talking a very short amount of time though, maybe 500-750 milliseconds for a max power shot.

I agree that the probe and drone can be offensive, but that's kind of due to their currently too strong abilities. I think Chirus has agreed with that and said we're going to see changes to those shortly.

Channel: Strikers

Definitely get in there and keep it populated! (And use the away state correctly.)

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Feb 25 2011, 7:13 am by FaZ-.

First of all, Chirus, I've sent you a PM.

Secondly, two bugs related to the Drone hero:
1) Not sure if that's what caused it, but I was moving around while holding 'Z' key down to make sure I'd intercept any shot and somehow, my drone stayed burrowed (but I could move and people were seeing me)
2) when morphing into Guardian form, the team's symbol at the hero's feet lifts up a bit and isn't on the ground anymore. The guardian flies through it all the time.
Reverting to Drone sets it back to the proper Z-offset.

There's no need to "nerf" the Probe

Instead, what you need to do is make his ability harder to use.

Instead of an instant steal once the probe is in the area, make it so that the probe fires a Missile (can be w/e.. photon cannon missile maybe?) towards the area.
If the missile gets close to the ball, Then the ability activates. This makes it so that the probe hero will have to time its ability. He will be immobile while the missile's shot.
Make it so that if the missile misses, it returns, and no E is used. The punishment for missing is being immobile.
This will make it more challenging w/o losing the ability's potential.

Anyway.
You're probably not going to listen to my suggestions cause you don't like them and I'm a big meanie. But still, Try adding a Lob function and just play with it to see if you think it's worth it to add an extra button to the mix. All you'd have to do is copy the "Throw" ability and rename it to "Lob" and assign a cmd card to it right? (you're the expert here)... I assume it's ez to do. Just make it so that Lobs cover much less distance than the regular kick. I think it'll be a great way to lessen clustering.

Also.. srsly.. remove the 2ndary abilities... pylons, turrets, xenomorph, etc.... they're rarely used and contributes more to confusion that to the gameplay. Just keep the interesting ones.

Argh maybe I should say what I've always said -
Don't take things too personally, I wouldn't be posting ideas here if I don't see the potential in your map.

All ideas suggested in there actually look very great.
However, I haven't played enough heroes to state that all the 2nd abilities are useless.
Lob looks interesting, and it could push people to use more often the Massive units.
And that'd be a really cool ability for the probe.

Ah, we have be careful about this, Payne.

I never said the 2nd abilities were Useless. This would cause Chirus to feel unhappy that he spent so much time on something that I feel is "useless". In order to dissolve this conflict, he would either listen to me, or think that I'm talking out of my ass. Cognitive Dissonance. Look it up.

Anyway, what I'm saying is that the 2ndary abilities should be remove because they don't play into the game well enough. As Probe/SCV/Drone, I NEVER use the Pylon/Turret/Xenomorph. And, judging from >10 playthroughs now, I can safely say that most people don't use those 2ndary abilities to an extent that warrants them to be in the game.

Also, it is just more streamlined to have 1 ability per character in a SOCCER game. It'll make your game feel even more polished, and will cause the players to focus on mastering that single ability + the game's core mechanics. This is where the old phrase "Simple, but hard to master" comes in again.

Which brings me back to why I wanted you to remove Attacking/HP changes, because they're not the game's core mechanics. I'm done arguing about this, b/c you don't want to change it.

So instead, lets look at "Lob". Lob provides another way to move the ball. Since moving the ball to the goal is the primary goal of the game, it is part of the core gameplay. It adds depth because it creates a choice for the player - to more safely deliver the ball to his partner by lobbing it over the opponents, or have a great team setup so that you can kick the ball further to your partner. Lastly, it makes Clustering less likely to happen, as Lobbing will allow the players to kick the ball out of a cluster.

Chirus, don't take UnholyUrine seriously because Star Strikers is awesome and one of the best maps on battlnet. The balance is definately improving.

And making the probe's ball steal weaker is a must. Making it so that there is a delay before the ball is stolen (but the animation plays, giving the player with the ball a chance to kick it before it is stolen) is one way it could be weaker. Also, is it possible to stop the ball steal using push? (That could be another way to make it weaker.) But you said you had your own ideas on what to do with it so I look forward to them.

"they're rarely used and contributes more to confusion that to the gameplay."

Lies, I use both the reaper's abilities all the time.

Edit: sorry, haven't played the new version.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Mar 1 2011, 2:58 am by iiequalsexpipi.

Probe was already changed yesterday, don't talk about it until you've seen the new version.

I think it's pretty good.

Removing secondary abilities is dumb, it lowers the skill cap tremendously. Lob seems like it might be cool, but I really haven't had a problem with too much clustering recently.

Wretched comments.

Secondary abilities aids nothing to the skill cap. You can argue about it, but I stand by the tried and true notion "Easy to learn but Hard to Master".

In a less theoretical way, if the single ability is designed well in a way that requires a lot of skills, then it is already enough.

You have to remember that there's still the big bad design that I feel totally hinders the game. And that is being able to attack the other units. It yeilds nothing to the gameplay, and it is unbalanced between melee/ranged units and annoying. It also promotes clustering, which you've already acknowledged as something you want to get rid of. Since You don't want to remove that, I started looking into other things that can be removed to make new players focus more on the "Soccer" part of the game. After all, it is a Soccer game.

Remember that newbies will have a different perspective when they play the game. You must take all of our comments with a grain of salt.

Sorry to be mean, but you did it first. Chirus, don't take the person who hasn't listen to MOST of the Comments on the Hero Attack thread seriously . Not to mention, there's always room for improvements.

Why not have no abilities, then, with that logic? First abilities don't add to the skill cap either. Nor does push. Let's just have kick and if you can run over the ball you take it. If you want to give an argument, give an argument, don't just rattle off bullshit.

Half of the characters would barely be playable with just one of their abilities: Roach, Zealot, Sentry, Viking, Immortal, Archon, Queen, etc. I agree that some are clearly more focused on one of their skills, but I don't think that's a problem at all, it just adds another way that good players can separate themselves from weaker players by intelligent use of their subskill. Having two makes the game harder to learn, sure, but there's only going to be ~20 heroes with 2 abilities, which is like 2 games worth of learning. I don't think you have to stoop that low to cater to b.net pubs.

About clustering: please pass more. I haven't had issues with clustering at all for a while. I can see it maybe being an issue in 5v5 or 6v6 but otherwise I think it's just people being bad. Mostly, in a serious game I can only see it being a problem if teams stack ranged nukers, like Marauder, Marine, Hydralisk, Viking or something. A combo like that could just instagib people repeatedly, and there's a lot of units that have high powered spells. That's more of an issue than autoattacks, to me, but if it proves to be an issue I'm sure Chirus will do something about it.

The % reduction from attacking people who don't have the ball makes doing so take you out of the play unless they're at low life, and you can pass a lot faster than people can run. The only reason this is an issue at all is because of bad people who try to dribble down the entire field and only pass as a last resort. The game doesn't need to be modified to account for people who don't understand team sports. I could maybe agree with a further % reduction based on the number of players in the game, but on top of that there's also already a measure that reduces movespeed and attack damage when you're close to two or more allies. About that debuff, I'd rather if it scaled based on how many you're near, rather than simply being a boolean, which is meh.

I do agree there is a discrepancy between ranged and melee units, not really sure how to fix that though. Maybe make melee units not get that clustering debuff, since they don't really work as well in focus fire strategies?

Other than suggestions to remove all my items and half my heroes, what comments haven't I taken seriously?

The probe's pylon increases the effect of his new skill, so it's actually pretty useful at the moment. It alters the way it works just enough so that it will pull the ball to the Probe if the ball is kicked from the center of the field, versus needing the ball to be kicked from outside the field to bring it to the probe. That minor buff makes placing the pylon worthwhile and a useful skill.

The SCV's turrets are similar in that, if someone is trying to wait out the duration of your wall your turrets can be attacking them. You'd be surprised at the amount of damage a turret might do over the course of the game, and although it isn't nearly as powerful as his main skill (the wall), it isn't meant to be.

I hear a lot that the drone's alternate form is useless. It isn't. It increases his hp regen by enough that it regenerates the health lost from pushing almost immediately, as well as giving the drone a ranged attack and a slightly increased radius (greater pushing distance). It's not a hugely powerful skill, but if you use it in moments where you won't need to intercept the ball, it can make the drone a slightly more offensive and powerful player.

Abilities are generally balanced on an individual scale as well as how situationally useful a combination of abilities are. Some units have two abilities that are generally useful (like the sentry) but not incredibly useful in any one situation, while some units (like the thor) have one ability that is really useful in some situations. I don't want abilities to be only useful in VERY specific situations, and some abilities don't always find their full usefulness, depending on the allied players someone has and the enemy players they are facing. I've been trying to address this by changing abilities that were too useful (probe's steal) or not useful enough (ultralisk's attack damage bonus) to more interesting and balanced abilities.

A lot of different ability choices gives replay value and different options in how people want to play, even if it does raise the skill cap quite a bit. Attacking, at least in interval, is supposed to be a valid strategy. It gives newbs something to do when they don't quite understand all of the aspects of the game, and some units (like marines and the archon) are only useful when attacking is in the game. I've been moving away from attacking at least in some sense, and I won't be implementing any more units who have the focus of attacking if I can help it. I think that attacking adds a different dynamic to the game, which limits the power of some abilities (like pushing for example) and allows new strategies of gameplay, but can get annoying when someone attacks constantly. With the new mode selection I plan on implementing in the next version, I will include a mode that puts a toll of some kind on attacking (so that attacking constantly isn't useful at all), as well as a mode that outright disables people from executing their auto-attacks. I will not be balancing around these modes for now.