Alright, Chirus is the creator of this map but he suggested I create a new topic for it.

The concept of the game is basically Hero-based Soccer. Every unit you can pick from has 2 unique abilities, plus the "shove" and "kick' abilities- the goal is to score.

Here are my initial thoughts on balance for the units.

General Concepts:
- You need to be able to see what units your team has selected at the start of the game. This is key.
- Ranged units are too strong because they can just hammer everyone. Make it so that units which don't have the ball take less damage from attacks, to prevent this from being such a dramatic thing.
- Units in general that just seem like they only autoattack (Thor, Immortal) are dumb for the game, I don't think many people would want to play those heroes. Defenders need to have offensive capabilities, too.
- It's very hard to receive passes because you can't tell when the ball will stop. It needs to gradually slow like a real ball does or at least change color to indicate how much inertia it has.
- I like the way that passes are skill-demanding, don't change that.
- One thing that you could do to prevent the "max distance" complaints with kicking the ball is to implement separate keys for shooting and for passing. Passes go to where you click, shots go to max range. That way shots won't stop short of the goal. This is really something simple to avoid, though, I figured it out really quickly and don't have a problem with it, but a lot of people did.
- Shove should be more effective when used by big defensive units. It doesn't make sense that the best offensive heroes are equally good at stealing the ball.

Probe
Most imbalanced unit as far as I've seen so far. Graviton Beam ability is ridiculously powerful because it's an automatic steal on a very short cooldown. Offensively you can do this and then just shoot or pass right away, superbly powerful. My suggestion would be to make this target an area rather than a unit, so it's not a guaranteed steal. Just clicking the ball is very, very simple, and too rewarding. Possibly make it so you can't target the ball at all, then it might be balanced?

Stalker
Blink is ridiculous. Just knock the range down a bit, the Stalker's other ability is garbage so that's really all he has going for him, but Blink is still too strong as is, it gives tons of utility.

Reaper
This guy is good, his mines are essentially useless but the speed boost is all he needs. I'd like to see another ability but he'd probably be too good, then.

Zergling
If people actually start "dribbling" his first skill will be much weaker, so that's something to consider. Other than that his second ability is meh, he doesn't need attack speed because his attack is very weak. He's still good though because he's so fast.


That's all for the units I've played so far, I don't want to judge the ones I've only played against. I would really like to play more though, it was a lot of fun and 5v5 could get really really exciting if it doesn't turn into a ranged killfest. I'll bump this post whenever Chirus wants to get games going in channel SEN.

Thank you for all the feedback Decency, although I'd like to give some responses to the points you made.


This has already been implemented, but I've made a few changes that should make this more noticable in the next version. When you are still selecting your unit it shows a dialog in the top two corners displaying what characters people have already selected. When you've already selected your unit, you can pretty much just look around you to see what your allies picked.


Ranged units actually have to pause between each attack to move, whereas melee units will move to attack again quickly after they have made an attack. I do agree that ranged units are slightly more powerful in terms of basic attacks than melee units, but I've hoped to balance around that. I like your idea of making it so that units that don't have the ball don't take as much damage from attacks, and I'll probably implement something like that soon.


The Thor isn't made for auto-attacking by any means and is actually better suited as an offensive midfield player to kick the ball a good distance down the field with his "Power Shot" ability. That ability has a short loading time that allows opponents to actually move in front of the Thor to intercept the ball. The Thor's main attack also has a short delay before it initiates the first attack, which hampers his ability to kite down units.

The Immortal is basically a fighter, yes. He's meant to balance his damage reducing shield with his movement speed increasing ability, but after tweaking him and still seeing people never use the shield I think I'm going to redesign his playing style. He was actually one of the first units I built when I was still learning the new editor.


You can tell which direction it is going, and a smart passer will usually kick it as far from enemy units as he can. I plan on implementing some unit abilities (on existing units or new ones) that allow for "better" passes, like a homing pass.

The reason the ball moves quickly and stops rather suddenly is because when I initially tested the ball physics at slow speeds, some units were moving almost as fast as the ball moves. It seemed to make passing kind of pointless. And if the ball moved fast and stopped slowly to counter this, you could kick the ball practically across the entire arena.


I've seen other soccer maps in WCIII where separate buttons for shooting/passing just seemed to confuse players more.


Bigger units push units in a bigger radius, although the distance from the edge of the unit is about the same. The main thing is that they are harder to steal the ball from by pushing, but then again you can steal it from them by simply running over the ball.


There are a couple of units that counter the Probe's beam, and players with quick reaction times and fast movement speeds can be in the Probe's face before he even has a chance to go anywhere with the ball. The main thing is to be mindful of the Probe's position and be ready to counter its steal. What I am thinking about doing is reducing the strength of the steal overall, but making it better when in range of a Pylon. That way, the Probe will have to use the ability more defensively (because you can't plant a Pylon on the opponent's side and have it stay there between rounds).


I may reduce its range, but if I do I'd also like to reduce the duration of the phase in debuff.


I've actually seen mines stun enemy units to prevent them from scoring a goal on a breakaway. The idea is that they can help the defense without the reaper actually being there.


His first skill increases movement speed while holding the ball (passive) and his second skill increases movement speed while not holding the ball (casted). If you learn to combine them at the right moments then you'll see he's actually a rather strong player right now.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jan 13 2011, 9:30 am by Chirus.

For making 'selected units' more visible: there exists an Actor for the Selection Circle that is displayed on units that you select (hopefully you know what I mean) You can simply make an actor event that will attach this selection circle to a unit that is selected by a player, tint it to his color (or team color) And remove it when that unit is unselected. This would probably be the best way to do this.

Unreal Tournament had a game mode in which you basically had to throw a ball through a hoop at opposite ends of the map. All the while other team members are gunning for you and trying to steal the ball. When a player picks up the ball he gains a small movement speed bonus but his weapons are disabled.

My two supply. Didn't fully read the op and your reply Chirus - but needless to say I want to play this...

Mostly a lack of understanding on my part, then, for a lot of things, and a lot of things we agree on that just haven't been done yet, so that's good to hear. I hope to be able to play this more in the near future so I can give you some more specific examples. There's a few things I should elaborate on, though.

Ranged units that are well microed (the Reaper especially) can animation cancel their attacks. ("Stutter Step", "Orbwalk" etc... if you don't know what this means I'll find a video). When combined with a high speed they can kite people with no problem at all. I can do this with pretty much every Terran unit in melee, Marine/Marauder/Viking all included. I'll be able to go more in depth after playing more.

Most of my issue stems with wanting to catch passes in stride. Instead of being able to just keep going and hope your teammate made a good pass, it would be nice to be able to account for passes that are too short or too far, rather than running past the ball which suddenly stops and have to turn around. That's about it, but it's a huge factor in teamwork.

Wouldn't it be possible to start the ball at a high speed and lower the speed over time? It should easily be possible to find a balance so that people can't catch up to passes but they're predictable to a recipient. It's just silly to have to deal with passes essentially hitting a wall with no warning.

Ideally I wouldn't even want the debuff at all, it's a silly artificial limitation. You'd probably have to knock down the range and cooldown, but that's find to make it a more skillful ability anyway.


Thanks for the feedback, looking forward to playing again.

I do know that you can time your attacks to move between each attack (if that is what you're talking about). I don't quite think that makes ranged units overpowered, but I would like to reduce harassing tactics in general. So, I'll implement a % reduction to attack damage on units other than the ball holder in the next update, and we can see if that doesn't change your opinion on ranged units.


I don't quite know what to say, you have a good point. I like that, currently, a successful pass is a difficult and rewarding thing to accomplish. But I don't want it to be so difficult that a successful pass almost never happens. I've been toying around with the idea of having two main modes for this game - a "Novice" mode and an "Expert" mode. I could change things in the Novice mode so that passing is a bit easier, either by allowing players to see where the ball will stop or changing the mechanics of the game in some other way.


My kicking system is adaptable so I could do that rather easily. I'd like to do some private testing, though, before I think about implementing it.


Blink is a very OP skill in this game when the phasing debuff is completely removed. I saw people blinking instantly in front of people and stealing the ball, blinking in front of a goal to block a shot, kicking past people and blinking ontop of the ball (which is still possible, but the stalker has to wait while he phases in, giving the other team a lot of time to react). It was like having one button that could do everything. I tried reducing the range and increasing the energy cost at first, but people could still easily "surprise" others by blinking suddenly. I felt that I needed to offset the surprise and cut out some of the utility of the ability, which is why I added in the phasing debuff.


Glad to hear I've made someone happy.

I did not know about that yet, but it is interesting feature and I may use it if I can find a need for it.


I should be around the SEN channel in the later hours of the evening, and I'm going to start trying to make this map more popular by putting together games when I have the chance. That Unreal Tournament mode sounds interesting, and I think I might've played it before...

Okay, some more stuff.

Thor
- His first ability doesn't fit his role. He doesn't need long bursts of speed, just a very short burst to get to the ball. Some sort of power slide tackle or something would be really fitting.
- If you don't like the above, what about just making it impossible to push him, so you have to actually steal it?
- I like your idea of making his power shot into a sort of punt that goes over nearby people, I think that'll be really good to define him.

Viking
- Convert is too cheap, you can pretty much spam it and just fly back and forth. It doesn't need to be too much more expensive, maybe up it to 30 or 35 and that'd be fine. As it is he can usually fly around easily and still have enough mana to drop and use his barrage.

Immortal
- The -25% hurt this guy more than probably anyone else. He's a pretty useless hero now. =p

Probe
- Good change, he's in a perfect place now imho. I would like to see the targeting reticule smaller, as it's somewhat strange now, but I don't know if that's possible.

Same comments as I've always said

Too much of a Clusterfuck
Not enough focus on core gameplay

I'm Jyushee btw

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Tho I haven't played the recent ver, so it remains to be seen

A slide tackle would be very similar to a mix of what the Sentry and the Zealot have now. The Sentry can "phase out", allowing it to move through units and be unpushable. The Zealot now has a new ability that is essentially a second, more stronger version of Push (I felt he was the weakest unit in the game, even behind Immortal). I've had trouble coming up with a good secondary skill for the Thor since the dawn of this game, and the new (buffed) Actuation Drive should be more useful now.


I could also change the flight speed, but I think an energy increase would be best. I'll up it to 30 and play with him a bit.


He still damages the ball holder well, but I agree. Playing him just isn't fun and in the next version I will be giving him some new and interesting skills to help him out.


I'm also looking into nerfing his steal into a more acceptable state (I think it's pretty balanced with the new patch) and upping his Pylon's effect as necessary. One of the problems with the Probe is that he becomes much more useful when there are less players and less damage to throw around, making his "weaknesses" minute. I think the best way to balance around this is to buff the Pylon's effect and nerf the steal's, since the Pylon becomes more useful with more players. I don't want to make his steal useless, though.


I've been making some changes to fix this, and with good players there seems to be less attacking overall. I may add in additional damage reduction for when there are 4-5 players.


The ability to pass and push effectively makes a huge impact on who wins the game. I may add in an additional mode for those who would like a more basic game (with no attacking, everyone having a choice of just a few simple abilities, and more realisitc soccer-like physics) but I'm not sure yet exactly how I'd like to implement it.


Glad to have all the feedback from you Jyushee, and I'll try to make the game more fun for you and everybody else with the upcoming versions.

Realistic soccer physics may better the gameplay to an extent
Always remember that you're dealing with an RTS game, not a real-life Soccer things.
For example, you don't get the rush, the social pressure, or the perspectives of a real soccer game
Therefore, things must be substituted in order to heighten the gameplay.

Take a look a typical game of Super Mario Strikers

Pushing and shoving is well integrated in the game, but there is definately no cluster fuck, and more about setting up the ball.
Why? Because pushing an opponent is essential for two things.
1. To take possession of the ball
2. To stop them from charging up and shooting the ball with a much higher chance of a goal.
The problem in your map is that pushing and shoving is almost the Only way to get possession of the ball.
Mostly because the ball doesn't bounce around.
I think you definately need it so that pushing or shoving an opponent will likely make the ball bounce away towards the direction that the opponent was shoved

Passing or intercepting felt very stiff and hard to control.
Notice the lack of space. Compared with your map, your map is huge. Not saying that this is a bad thing, but from my previous play through, everyone just sort of scrunch up together. This may be because there aren't that many players, so they all kinda just choke themselves together.
But one thing I DO Know is that it is because we can't even pass the ball far enough. This is probably b/c the ball doesn't continue to roll.
(Maybe I'm wrong, cause I only played 1 character, and other characters can pass much further.)

Anyway, I'll try this again tomorrow and see what else can be improved.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jan 22 2011, 12:41 am by UnholyUrine.

You also don't get the lag in real soccer.


You can walk directly over the ball to steal it from an enemy, but you pretty much have to do this at an angle. Believe it or not, walking over the ball used to be the ONLY way to pick up the ball.

I've thought hard about this and I may end up putting in some kind of automatic ability for goalkeepers that "saves" the ball. I want to allow people to defend their goals easier, which will in turn allow me to increase kicking distance. I've implemented the SCV and the Drone for these reasons, but I'd also like to add a baseline ability that only happens in the goal range. If not, a ball that loses its speed slower but has a higher range may help with this.

I agree Star Strikers is really a more crowded game than other soccer games on different platforms. Hopefully I can make some gradual changes to alleviate this, in conjunction with what I'm doing already. The key, in my opinion, is finding what is the most fun and playable on this RTS platform. I feel that I can't really design the game to play like Super Mario Strikers because there will always be delayed actions due to Battle.net lag.

This is because it's one player on each team controlling every player with the AI spreading out as necessary. It's a silly comparison.

I'm pretty convinced that good players WILL spread out in TSS once they've become accustomed to their teammates defending and then making outlet passes like in real soccer. This just hasn't happened yet because the majority of players are bad.


@ Chirus: saves should not be automatic. You have the ball speed at a point right now where essentially the only way to make a save is to be in front of the shooter- that's the problem. If you could make a sort of charge up ability for kicking like the Mario game, that could actually work out really well.

Watch it on 720p, not 1080p because it lags.

Still looks like a big clusterfuck

@Faz-
That's true. But this also mean that there aren't enough incentives to pass around.
You can argue that passing may be better.. but if people aren't doing it, then that means they don't feel they'd be better off passing.

What you could do is designate a Goalie, and he/she will get a very powerful unit that can block a lot of shots and stuff .. like in Mario Strikers. But will be restricted in an area.. or be a lot slower outside of area, but a possible strategy? This way, you can definately increase kicking distance

You can play with different things to see...
i'd try changing the ball's speed and deceleration.. I'd try lowering both
also ... I still think the ball should roll longer.

It's experimental tho... you'd have to find the sweet spot.

You'd also need some incentives to make passing more effective..
Again, allowing the ball to be kicked further will help
Another thing would be to sharpen ball possession, making it easier to steal another person's ball would be incentive to keep ball away from person.
In Mario Striker, you get stunned from 1 hit. It may be better to do that for certain characters?

Try it out

I've got some minor changes across the board implemented for the next version. I may make additional changes if I don't feel the current ones are enough. Hopefully we can beta test them for map night. Here are the major balancing changes:

- Clustering now reduces movement speed, in additional to the reduction of damage already in place.
- 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.
- The physics for kicking have changed. As a result, the maximum range of Kick has been further increased to 15.
- 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.

I've also revamped the Immortal and plan on further revamping him, the Marauder, and the Queen more before the next version. I'll also be fixing a lot of problems with the AI (making them spread out and take offensive and defensive positions, kick on the goal and pass with greater intelligence, have difficulity levels, and overall use less CPU by performing less computations) in either the next version or the version after that.

Honestly,

A lot of improvements. While they're all subtle, they do make the game a bit smoother.

Biggest problems are still ball possession, and some clustering.
I still don't see how attacking fits with the whole game. Personally, I think it detracts from the gameplay... as players have to stop and attack. It is also somewhat imbalanced for melee units, and I especially hate it when my drone chases an enemy to attack it while I wanted it just to stay put.

The gameplay still needs focusing. Do you want it to be a fighting/cluster map or a passing/kicking/pushing map, with maybe a little bit of attacking? All in all, I am in total disagreement with you putting attacks into the game, and I wish you'd see fit to remove it.

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to put the ball possession more in focus...
One problem is that the area in which the small units can get the ball should be enlarged.
Second thing is that pushing a person while behind them seldom releases the ball. It is a little hard for players to get that.. Also, the ball just stays put after being pushed... so everyone just sort of CLUSTER into that area.

I've mentioned this before, is that the ball should move a little bit away from the area of collision. As in the ball should roll off after being pushed off of possession. You can make the ball move somewhat randomly.. or make it move vaguely in the direction that it is pushed. This, again, is just to stop the clustering.

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FInally, with the Throw mechanic, you have a choice to incorporate a "Lob" as an ability for every player to lob the ball over opponents (very useful in a cluster, and will again decrease clustering). Lob will obviously cover much less distance than a normal kick.
You can also use this mechanic for balls that are pushed away, as mentioned above.

Post has been edited 1 time(s), last time on Jan 31 2011, 10:04 pm by UnholyUrine.

I hate to double post.

But I want you to do me a favor, Chirus.

Can you make a version of your map..


It should be simple. You just gotta remove and tweak things and put the Throw as a Lob ability. Maybe use the "F" key.

And just play it with other players on the next mapnight
do an unbiased vote (try to get players who've never played either version)
and see which one's better.

I just want you to try it. Please ? <3

Could be interesting.

I'm not sure what is happening but at the present moment, the probe bothers me, that theiving thing with the graviton beam and ball

3v3.
Me and RedFox, all others were CPUs.

First of all, let me report a bug: CPU ignores walls (SCV's or Event's).
Secondly, I thought about an alternative for the Probe:
Replace the first spell (Steal) by an AoE that creates a medium Push at the target point. It pushes all units (except probe?) away from that point, and the ball holder loses control of the ball.
Modify second spell so it allows all allies within the range of the Pylon to Push without any cooldown.