In the first bot game I played this test weekend I found the pathfinding and collision to be way improved.
In small to medium groups units moved exactly how I thought they should.
The only issue I had was when it was late game and in very large armies I would have 1 or 2 artillery cubes get stuck trying to path around when trying to attack the nexus.
Overall the unit collision feels really good this test.
I did not feel the pathfinding or unit collision when I moved my army
It felt so organic the only, minor thing that happened to me in game, was my army splitting up when I clicked on a place on the mini map and half my army died because I thought my whole army was going one way. :*(
While playing as Grath, when I activated the terrapin troopers dash as a group the units would just run into each other without moving forward until the ability went on cooldown. It made me feel like using the ability to charge all your units onto one section would be much more difficult and just a bit clunky overall. Something I thought of that could help improve this would be to maybe have each terrapin ignore unit collision with other allied terrapins during the dash attack. At the end of the dash if each of the terrapins are right on top of one another maybe try and force their landing locations to adhere to collision.
Impressions are made after playing one game(Celesta won game), studying the Day9tv game tutorial, then playing one more game(Celesta won game)
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Playing Celesta, the Purifier handles awkwardly --- I feel like the model does not reflect the hitbox, and as a result pathfinding feels awkward. Celesta's squad seems kinda micro intensive being so low health and high dmg --- Increase the model of the Purifier might make the pathfinding feel better
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Purifiers don't seem able to queue root orders --- I wanted to queue up my movements when I was splitting my forces to cover my expansion and take another neutral camp. --- Enable a way to queue up root actions at the end of movement
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The AI bots frequently glitch back and forth --- sometimes when watching the bots vs each other, they just spam back and forth for entire minutes at a time, and happened multiple times over the two games I played --- I dont even know how you would fix it :D
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Thanks again -EmperorRahem
Not specifically pathing, but I found when attacking a neutral camp defending resources for my expo, if I moved back just far enough for them to leash, I could continually attack them while they simply looped in a leash-agro state. I was playing as Vela with just hero-raptor squad at the time, but I could repeat this easily.
@HipAndWithIt said:
While playing as Grath, when I activated the terrapin troopers dash as a group the units would just run into each other without moving forward until the ability went on cooldown. It made me feel like using the ability to charge all your units onto one section would be much more difficult and just a bit clunky overall. Something I thought of that could help improve this would be to maybe have each terrapin ignore unit collision with other allied terrapins during the dash attack. At the end of the dash if each of the terrapins are right on top of one another maybe try and force their landing locations to adhere to collision.
Can you give me a replay link + time so I can see where this occurs?
It occurs if you have a wave of units attack in front, then another wave behind. Rather than building a large convex arc, units stay behind each other whether you're using dash, or directly targeting something. Its like they don't take the units in front of themselves under consideration in pathing.
In other wards, build about 10 units. Put them all into a clump and then just 'a' click on an enemy. The first 6-7 hit the enemy. The back 3-4 just dance around behind the first line. If you use dash or other movement based abilities, they run strait into their buddies without moving.
I have found the individual path finding and general movement for lack of a better word "correct". Everything seems to turn and react as I would expect them to on their own.
The only real issues I have run into that I feel are not my fault is sometimes when I and trying to regroup a smaller squad back into my death ball they like to either become outcasts and not want to group back up nicely or push units out of the way and make those units look like outcasts (this could be me not piloting properly due to years of SC click in the middle of the group and call it day)
And secondly, when 2 allied armies try to go past each other it can be catastrophic, units everywhere or just generally frozen in place running into each other until you go through and tell them not to.
After my first game with Vela, I felt like the core of the army/theme is about kiting or hit and run tactics and punishing opponents for retreating or being out of position by exploiting the squads high range. I like the feel of that and think it provides a fun gameplay dynamic. However the biggest issue I had while trying to execute this tactic was the collision of friendly units not allowing others to pass by. It felt like instead of having units slip by each other when you'd expect them too, when there was a gap between 2 units, the unit trying to pass would just walk back and forth moving nowhere. I found this very frustrating when I had a melee ally trying to engage the enemies army while I was attempting to maneuver away to stay out of range. It felt like a hammer and anvil, where my bot ally was playing the anvil by simply trying to engage the enemy.
When moving units across the map, pathfinding feels quite good. Units stay generally arranged in good formations and seem to respect any micromanagement you impose through box-selecting and moving groups, then ~ all selecting and moving collectively. As a specific example, playing as Vela's squad with Raider Mercs, I found it fairly easy to keep a purchased Guardian Cube or two in front of all of my Raptors before attacking TItan camps.
Others have mentioned it above, but to echo, the problems I've encountered with pathing have all happened during engagements with enemy Squads, once units are stopping and planting to attack while units further back out of range try to path around them. As Alder, I had a particularly unsatisfying experience once I had finally trained a Bramblethorn Goliath. I very rarely ever got it into the fray, as it was frequently stuck behind or pinned between my Seedbots or my allies units. Being pinned felt particularly frustrating, because the solution was not just to manually order the Goliath around its obstacle, but to box-select and stutter-step the ranged units that had trapped it out of the way, then move the Goliath. When allied units accidentally trapped it, I simply had to wait for them to pass, since I couldn't order them out of the way. It made the Goliath feel mostly like a waste, and I never got a proper sense of its strength since it rarely fought anything.
Coming from Starcraft 2, one of the pathing features I found myself missing was the ability of units to shove their way through others. Now, to be fair, I think if I'm remembering correctly Starcraft's pathing system only let's them do this out of combat as the same issue of attacking units acting rooted and refusing to get out of the way in favor of prioritizing launching attacks and dealing damage is still there, but it is nice for arranging formations with less box-selecting.
I don't like box-selection. (will make a larger post about that specifically, if I can get myself to do the writeup and demo I'd like to for it)
Hello! Just played a few games and wanted to give my thoughts on something I found pretty annoying.
When my army is grouped or attacking in a concave and I want to micro my Hero mercenary guy away from aggro-ing fire, they seem to get stuck on the small units that are attacking. So instead of allowing the unit I want to micro back, the other units are blocking the way.
I feel like the more "important" units (such as my hero unit or larger, more expensive ones) should have priority on where to move in a group to allow for this seamless micro.
For reference, replay id G15fbd128192143e7a43044ee3060ce38.
At the beginning, I kited neutrals to my tower. They aggroed on my workers and killed workers instead. Felt annoyed. Classifying as neutral pathing.
At about 35 minutes in, I just tried to move my hero away from the enemy tier 1 mid tower, but got stuck trying to path around my own units. My hero dies. Feels bad man. Tried to find exact time in replay, but replay dies around 17 minutes in.
Not sure if this counts as pathing or not, but the healer is doesn't heal if you're moving. Feels annoying. Healers should always heal. Its in the name.
@DoomsDay said:
... However the biggest issue I had while trying to execute this tactic was the collision of friendly units not allowing others to pass by. It felt like instead of having units slip by each other when you'd expect them too, when there was a gap between 2 units, the unit trying to pass would just walk back and forth moving nowhere.
I also found that when attempting to control my units as a large group, they would often end up getting "stuck" on the other units. Like two very polite and awkward people trying to pass each other in a narrow hallway and always trying to move out of the other person's way. This is very frustrating as this usually happens when in a mass retreat to get to some reinforcements. I have noticed it with multiple unit types in every game I have played. Occasionally the same thing happens when a unit with less range is trying to get in to attack, but the more ranged units have already set up a semicircle. The less ranged unit just runs back and forth along the arch trying to get in.
I have to echo the above sentiments. I have found that pathing in general is excellent while on the move but seem to run into issues once units have stopped to attack. The attacking units completely block out other units from being able to either get away or to engage. Usually this happens when I am trying to pull a mercenary away from a titan and it gets caught up in my attacking units.
The resource pools can overlap unit health bars. I was fighting a titan that had gotten close to the pool, and couldn't tell if I was close to finishing him, or should retreat and regroup.
For flying units, I'm uncertain whether to target the unit or it's base (where the bars appear) Makes me feel confused an hesitant.
I want to chime in on the terrapin issue (I don't have a specific replay right now but I can fetch one later if needed).
The first few times I used the charge maneuver it was just a silly mess - I ordered the whole group to do it at once and they all just went flying about willy-nilly. Either they would end up on the wrong side of the battle or they would just get stuck ramming into the back of whatever allied unit was in front of them. Most of the time the spell was wasted and I just felt silly.
Having the whole group of them charge at once reminds me of accidentally telling a group of high templars in broodwar to psi storm and just facepalming when they all do it in the exact same spot. Since the point of the charge is to stun the enemy it almost makes sense to have a single unit (the closest one, with line of sight) execute the command. Once I got the hang of it, I would do that - just click on the single unit which I wanted to charge, and tell him to do it. This works but I'm not sure how micro-intensive you guys are going for.
My suggestion is a simple change that would clarify things for users without changing the playstyle. When you hit Q (or whatever the hotkey was), make all of the selected terrapins highlighted with a clearly visible path which they would take to your cursor. This would give you a heads-up as to whether they're too far from the action, or blocked by allied players, or whether they actually have a clear path to the target. I hope that explanation is clear enough!
I had a really hard time microing units as Hydros because they would run into each other and get stuck. This was particularly problematic in camps where they would all try to mass around a single unit and I wouldn't be able to withdraw the unit that was taking the brunt of the fire.
Not exactly pathfinding, but early in my playing, I felt a little confused and frustrated about setting a spawning point on my hero and having my hero die and then having a spawn point in the middle of nowhere.
I watched Day9 play in the tutorial and noticed you could spawn to your hero (which I think is a terrific idea). In the midst of a battle, my hero died. I then spawned more units and quickly lost them and kind of forgot about them, since I was used to them just grouping to my hero. But since my hero had died, they just went to his last point and quickly died since I had forgotten about them.
After a few more games, I knew to reset my spawn point once my hero had died, but I think it would be more user friendly if your hero dies and the spawn is set on him, then it resets to right in front of your buildings at the main base.
Comments
In the first bot game I played this test weekend I found the pathfinding and collision to be way improved.
In small to medium groups units moved exactly how I thought they should.
The only issue I had was when it was late game and in very large armies I would have 1 or 2 artillery cubes get stuck trying to path around when trying to attack the nexus.
Overall the unit collision feels really good this test.
I did not feel the pathfinding or unit collision when I moved my army
It felt so organic the only, minor thing that happened to me in game, was my army splitting up when I clicked on a place on the mini map and half my army died because I thought my whole army was going one way. :*(
While playing as Grath, when I activated the terrapin troopers dash as a group the units would just run into each other without moving forward until the ability went on cooldown. It made me feel like using the ability to charge all your units onto one section would be much more difficult and just a bit clunky overall. Something I thought of that could help improve this would be to maybe have each terrapin ignore unit collision with other allied terrapins during the dash attack. At the end of the dash if each of the terrapins are right on top of one another maybe try and force their landing locations to adhere to collision.
Impressions are made after playing one game(Celesta won game), studying the Day9tv game tutorial, then playing one more game(Celesta won game)
'
Playing Celesta, the Purifier handles awkwardly --- I feel like the model does not reflect the hitbox, and as a result pathfinding feels awkward. Celesta's squad seems kinda micro intensive being so low health and high dmg --- Increase the model of the Purifier might make the pathfinding feel better
'
'
Purifiers don't seem able to queue root orders --- I wanted to queue up my movements when I was splitting my forces to cover my expansion and take another neutral camp. --- Enable a way to queue up root actions at the end of movement
'
'
The AI bots frequently glitch back and forth --- sometimes when watching the bots vs each other, they just spam back and forth for entire minutes at a time, and happened multiple times over the two games I played --- I dont even know how you would fix it :D
'
Thanks again -EmperorRahem
Not specifically pathing, but I found when attacking a neutral camp defending resources for my expo, if I moved back just far enough for them to leash, I could continually attack them while they simply looped in a leash-agro state. I was playing as Vela with just hero-raptor squad at the time, but I could repeat this easily.
Can you give me a replay link + time so I can see where this occurs?
It occurs if you have a wave of units attack in front, then another wave behind. Rather than building a large convex arc, units stay behind each other whether you're using dash, or directly targeting something. Its like they don't take the units in front of themselves under consideration in pathing.
In other wards, build about 10 units. Put them all into a clump and then just 'a' click on an enemy. The first 6-7 hit the enemy. The back 3-4 just dance around behind the first line. If you use dash or other movement based abilities, they run strait into their buddies without moving.
I have found the individual path finding and general movement for lack of a better word "correct". Everything seems to turn and react as I would expect them to on their own.
The only real issues I have run into that I feel are not my fault is sometimes when I and trying to regroup a smaller squad back into my death ball they like to either become outcasts and not want to group back up nicely or push units out of the way and make those units look like outcasts (this could be me not piloting properly due to years of SC click in the middle of the group and call it day)
And secondly, when 2 allied armies try to go past each other it can be catastrophic, units everywhere or just generally frozen in place running into each other until you go through and tell them not to.
After my first game with Vela, I felt like the core of the army/theme is about kiting or hit and run tactics and punishing opponents for retreating or being out of position by exploiting the squads high range. I like the feel of that and think it provides a fun gameplay dynamic. However the biggest issue I had while trying to execute this tactic was the collision of friendly units not allowing others to pass by. It felt like instead of having units slip by each other when you'd expect them too, when there was a gap between 2 units, the unit trying to pass would just walk back and forth moving nowhere. I found this very frustrating when I had a melee ally trying to engage the enemies army while I was attempting to maneuver away to stay out of range. It felt like a hammer and anvil, where my bot ally was playing the anvil by simply trying to engage the enemy.
When moving units across the map, pathfinding feels quite good. Units stay generally arranged in good formations and seem to respect any micromanagement you impose through box-selecting and moving groups, then ~ all selecting and moving collectively. As a specific example, playing as Vela's squad with Raider Mercs, I found it fairly easy to keep a purchased Guardian Cube or two in front of all of my Raptors before attacking TItan camps.
Others have mentioned it above, but to echo, the problems I've encountered with pathing have all happened during engagements with enemy Squads, once units are stopping and planting to attack while units further back out of range try to path around them. As Alder, I had a particularly unsatisfying experience once I had finally trained a Bramblethorn Goliath. I very rarely ever got it into the fray, as it was frequently stuck behind or pinned between my Seedbots or my allies units. Being pinned felt particularly frustrating, because the solution was not just to manually order the Goliath around its obstacle, but to box-select and stutter-step the ranged units that had trapped it out of the way, then move the Goliath. When allied units accidentally trapped it, I simply had to wait for them to pass, since I couldn't order them out of the way. It made the Goliath feel mostly like a waste, and I never got a proper sense of its strength since it rarely fought anything.
Coming from Starcraft 2, one of the pathing features I found myself missing was the ability of units to shove their way through others. Now, to be fair, I think if I'm remembering correctly Starcraft's pathing system only let's them do this out of combat as the same issue of attacking units acting rooted and refusing to get out of the way in favor of prioritizing launching attacks and dealing damage is still there, but it is nice for arranging formations with less box-selecting.
I don't like box-selection.
(will make a larger post about that specifically, if I can get myself to do the writeup and demo I'd like to for it)
Hello! Just played a few games and wanted to give my thoughts on something I found pretty annoying.
When my army is grouped or attacking in a concave and I want to micro my Hero mercenary guy away from aggro-ing fire, they seem to get stuck on the small units that are attacking. So instead of allowing the unit I want to micro back, the other units are blocking the way.
I feel like the more "important" units (such as my hero unit or larger, more expensive ones) should have priority on where to move in a group to allow for this seamless micro.
For reference, replay id G15fbd128192143e7a43044ee3060ce38.
At the beginning, I kited neutrals to my tower. They aggroed on my workers and killed workers instead. Felt annoyed. Classifying as neutral pathing.
At about 35 minutes in, I just tried to move my hero away from the enemy tier 1 mid tower, but got stuck trying to path around my own units. My hero dies. Feels bad man. Tried to find exact time in replay, but replay dies around 17 minutes in.
Not sure if this counts as pathing or not, but the healer is doesn't heal if you're moving. Feels annoying. Healers should always heal. Its in the name.
I also found that when attempting to control my units as a large group, they would often end up getting "stuck" on the other units. Like two very polite and awkward people trying to pass each other in a narrow hallway and always trying to move out of the other person's way. This is very frustrating as this usually happens when in a mass retreat to get to some reinforcements. I have noticed it with multiple unit types in every game I have played. Occasionally the same thing happens when a unit with less range is trying to get in to attack, but the more ranged units have already set up a semicircle. The less ranged unit just runs back and forth along the arch trying to get in.
I have to echo the above sentiments. I have found that pathing in general is excellent while on the move but seem to run into issues once units have stopped to attack. The attacking units completely block out other units from being able to either get away or to engage. Usually this happens when I am trying to pull a mercenary away from a titan and it gets caught up in my attacking units.
The circular collision boxes feel a little big and a little annoying for melee champs.
The resource pools can overlap unit health bars. I was fighting a titan that had gotten close to the pool, and couldn't tell if I was close to finishing him, or should retreat and regroup.
For flying units, I'm uncertain whether to target the unit or it's base (where the bars appear) Makes me feel confused an hesitant.
I want to chime in on the terrapin issue (I don't have a specific replay right now but I can fetch one later if needed).
The first few times I used the charge maneuver it was just a silly mess - I ordered the whole group to do it at once and they all just went flying about willy-nilly. Either they would end up on the wrong side of the battle or they would just get stuck ramming into the back of whatever allied unit was in front of them. Most of the time the spell was wasted and I just felt silly.
Having the whole group of them charge at once reminds me of accidentally telling a group of high templars in broodwar to psi storm and just facepalming when they all do it in the exact same spot. Since the point of the charge is to stun the enemy it almost makes sense to have a single unit (the closest one, with line of sight) execute the command. Once I got the hang of it, I would do that - just click on the single unit which I wanted to charge, and tell him to do it. This works but I'm not sure how micro-intensive you guys are going for.
My suggestion is a simple change that would clarify things for users without changing the playstyle. When you hit Q (or whatever the hotkey was), make all of the selected terrapins highlighted with a clearly visible path which they would take to your cursor. This would give you a heads-up as to whether they're too far from the action, or blocked by allied players, or whether they actually have a clear path to the target. I hope that explanation is clear enough!
I had a really hard time microing units as Hydros because they would run into each other and get stuck. This was particularly problematic in camps where they would all try to mass around a single unit and I wouldn't be able to withdraw the unit that was taking the brunt of the fire.
Not exactly pathfinding, but early in my playing, I felt a little confused and frustrated about setting a spawning point on my hero and having my hero die and then having a spawn point in the middle of nowhere.
I watched Day9 play in the tutorial and noticed you could spawn to your hero (which I think is a terrific idea). In the midst of a battle, my hero died. I then spawned more units and quickly lost them and kind of forgot about them, since I was used to them just grouping to my hero. But since my hero had died, they just went to his last point and quickly died since I had forgotten about them.
After a few more games, I knew to reset my spawn point once my hero had died, but I think it would be more user friendly if your hero dies and the spawn is set on him, then it resets to right in front of your buildings at the main base.