Formation Movement should be in the main game too

General Discussion
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So, the developers introduced a new patch for the editor which among other very exciting things presented a Formation Movement.
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I was thinking about possibilities this change can bring to the gameplay if the development team decides to transfer this into the main game.

Benefits

I will be discussing only a staggered formation, as it seems that it is the only one currently in game. Although in Age of Empires 2, for example, there are four different formations that were in the game for two decades already.

It’s a running trend to complain about units that deal AoE. Tanks, banelings, templars, mines, lurkers, disruptors, you name it and there was definitely a thread on this forum that said that one unit or another is OP and should be nerfed, deleted or even given to some other race.

Formations are a simple but elegant solution that won’t negate AoE, but will make it less punishing for all players.

  • Protoss won’t suffer from banelings in PvZ as much or disruptor shots in PvP that can literally change the game from an “already won” one to a “somewhat behind” one.

  • Terran will be able to stagger marines, so they won’t be as easily killed by banelings or other types of AoE.

  • Zergs will be able to stagger banes, so they won’t be all killed by one mine/disruptor/lurker. Stagger mutalisks, so they won’t all die to 2 mines or thors.

  • The fights will look much more awesome.

It’s just the tip of the iceberg, there is so much more. And it’s just with one formation. In AoE2 there are a box formation, a flank formation (units create a “\ /” shape), a line formation, where melee units go forward and range go behind them.

This addition will benefit every race, without even touching a balance.

Concerns

  • Won’t staggered formation render small AoE obsolete?

Back lines won’t be able to fire when staggered, so the player would have to decide in which way he decides to engage. More safe, but with less DPS or otherwise.

  • Won’t it make starcraft less “skillful”?

I don’t think it will. I suppose this will make engagements a bit easier, but at the same time more complex too. You will have to decide to which group put in which formation, should you stagger this group of marines or maybe you should break the formation for this group of stalkers, so they will deal more DPS. You can decide to not enter any formation at all. As shown by Age of Empires 2 it will make fights more tactical, without impairing the skill requirements.* Formations won’t create concaves for you, they won’t set up engagements for you or look out for an enemy army.

*And don’t say that AoE2 is a dead game. It’s as alive as starcraft and starcraft is very much alive, no matter what some people say to accentuate their aggravation with some balance decisions.

So, what’s your thoughts? Should we be vocal about it to the development team or is it just a gimmick and won’t add much to the game if added?

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I feel like It’s one of those things where if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

This would actually hugely impact balance and the meta - and I can’t see any real gain from it except it looks cool to enter battle in formation.

Maybe I’m just used to it being like it is, and I don’t want to change that.

I have several concerns with this.
For example, Wouldn’t marines & marauders benefit the absolute most from this change? Ranged units with high DPS and high susceptibility to AOE.

How about Void Rays going in formation to avoid AOE?

Oh dear God, imagine the Mutas in ZVT when you can have them pre-spread. The horror!

It’d impact so much in all matchups that I’m not really sure what exactly would happen, but my concern is that It’d seriously mess up balance and necessitate multiple huge balance patches just for this function to exist. I just don’t think it’s worth the effort that is better spent elsewhere, and much too big a risk of causing irreversible damage to balance.

Tldr: While I think it’d be cool, I don’t think it’s worth the effort and potentially huge impact on balance. I believe a game should be designed with this functionality in mind, not have it added as an afterthought.

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I think this is interesting because it was one of my thoughts too. I mean, so many RTS games have this feature already.

However, it leads to 2 key questions that need to be addressed:

  1. How do you determine unit priorities? Different people have different ideas on which unit should go first / middle / back, etc.
  2. How will it affect pro level gameplay? The game is balanced based on pro level, not the casual gamer level (because anything below pro is assumed to likely be a skill issue). Will multi-clicking the move command cause the templar to keep walking back and forth to cast storm? (As an example.)
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The first one is quite easy to answer, I suppose. The unit that has less range goes forward. The units with the same range are on the same “line”.

The second one is a bit trickier to answer. Can’t really tell without pros actually trying it. It works fine on pro level in other games, though. But Starcraft 2 is Starcraft 2.

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Well, and you are not wrong. However, this is just 1 answer because my definition might be different from yours. I can prefer my casters to be on row 1 or 2 instead of row 3 or 4 because I want them to be able to cast faster (rather than walk to the front). This is actually what I meant by determining unit priorities hahaha. :slight_smile:

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Well, it is those “decisions” in the engagement that I talked about. In other games casters usually go to the last row. Pros in those games usually bind them to the different key (as it’s already done in sc2 with templars/infestors/ghosts etc) or select and cast already in the fight.

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Yep, we are on the same page here.

So when it comes to formations, how will we determine if it going according to Pro A’s preference or Pro B’s preference? Because if we were to just go with yours, it is just one Pro’s preference for e.g… And if we stick just with this as the generic, then it leads to another question of, why does it have to benefit only 1 perspective in this matter?

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It’s not the preference, actually. It’s just a mechanic that is present in a lot of RTS games. Microsoft didn’t change it for someone’s preference in AoE2 for two decades. Melee in front, range after that and casters are last. You have to work with this or around as a player. It’s as simple as that, like any other mechanic.

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Yep it is a mechanic. And therefore the lack thereof can also be considered a form of mechanic. So for someone who prefers not to have formation, they might also claim that someone who wants formations “have to work around it” themselves.

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Your argument was about “preferences” in this mechanic. But it already works fine as is in a lot of other games, so there should be no reason to reinvent the wheel. Having or not having formations is another matter entirely.

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Having or not having formations is also a form of preference.

For your view to be valid, the opposite must exist as well because yours come from a perspective of ‘other RTS games’. In order words, from a SC2 perspective, it is working well without formations too.

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First things first. You were talking about “preferences” of unit positions in a formation. “Reinventing the wheel” phrase was about that.

I never said it’s not.

Again, I never said it’s not. I totally agree that it’s working fine as it is. As I told in the starting post, all I wanted is to discuss if it would bring more to the starcraft or not.

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Two months ago I watched some age of empires 2 streams, apparently top player games, and the micro was pretty basic, something you could find on mid master, and the amazing split button, as a starcraft player I can’t understand how people can live with that, that game is slower and somehow they have a button to split units, meanwhile in starcraft splitting is a necessary skill and its seen as something that can change the games.

Formations, while being cool,I think wouldn’t really work on sc2, there is a lot of damage in the game, splitting denies part of the game, and then playing with no formation allows players to pick up misspositioned units and good players will poistion their units on a safer place. One of the best things in starcraft is the micro,necessary,hard ,and rewarding thats why a ton of people see starcraft as a clickfest.

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I feel like it has a place in games like AoE 3 or DoW 40k where units are trained and controlled in batches, but in sc2 you are encouraged to manually control everything as the micro potential for everything is so much greater.

Not as familiar with AoE 2, but from my single player experience I would’ve preferred more maneuverability for individual units over formations.

Imo it’s a matter of whether you prefer RTS to reward strategy or control more.

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This topic is too important to die and those recent updates shows Blizzard interest to the game again.

So we as a comunity should be more vocal about this since it’s a great change in the balance.

The movement pattern is one of the biggest difference between BW and SC2, be due to the 12 unit selection or the pre split unit movement or the derp AI movements unit had that would still allow wide open maps to be viable, some Zerg and Protoss units can be buffed like Hydras to compensate the natural power loss of the banelings, some core Protoss units, maybe give some AOE spell to Terran idk, it would be a chance for Blizzard to show they can still be creative.

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