Dance Command

We are now able to diable dance.

Voted no, here is why:
Besides that it is just really funny to see units such as marines, zealots and zerglings dance, I think it's part of the game and should stay in there.
It only makes sense to dance in the early game, when you units just get crushed by the enemie cannon. If the opponent is to slow or to stupid to make units the first round, as a pro you should be able to use that for your advantage and gain extra income as well as a chance to damage the cannon by combining your wave with the next incoming allied wave.

To counter just build at least one unit already the first wave.

Sorry, but this is ridiculous. The dance command enables the team with the most terrans to quickly dispatch of the enemies cannon, which gives a quick mineral boost in the beginning. Simply making units WILL NOT COUNTER a fuckton of marines early game. It's an exploit that can easily give your enemy a big step ahead early game and it should definitely be removed. It's also heavily favoring the terran since dancing with zealots simply doesn't give you as big of an advantage since they're melee (and can therefor not attack the cannon with numbers greater than 4 or so at a time)

tl;dr It needs to be removed.


//Ino

That doesn't sound good. So if dancing can't be reduced to 3times per unit it has to be taken out of the game.

IMO it needs to go. It allows the very imbalanced 2-wave MM push (usually instant cannon death), or to almost indefinitely take the middle if you won your round and the enemy has no units (there are enough techer noobs as it is, no need to make it an even greater disadvantage)

Because of the above mentioned arguments, I also think it needs to go.

On a side note: it is "deactivate" with a c, not a k

Anyways, it is completely unbalanced to have the dance in because it can crowd up marines, making a nice deathball which will kill everything. Even if it's only 1 terran player doing that...a zerg or protoss player can easily back that strategy up with zealots, stalkers, zerglings, roach, queens and hydras, combining that with the marines is just too OP.

This is Desert Strike, not Nexus Wars. You're not supposed to be mixing units at the start. If armies combine late game, that's fine and that's a part of desert strike, but not early game.

So yes, i needs to go.

Is it really the wanted gameplay to build marines, stack with dance command and attack if you got tons of marines?

I guess no.
Please remove asap!

gl & hf
Curt

Also, I see more and more people leaving the game when they see people using the dance command. I am one of them, but I'm not alone in that it really sucks that it's still active.

I do recognize the problem of stacking marines in large groups. However, removing the dance command completely will give straight-to-tier-3 techers a great advantage, since the non-teching player can only hold mid for a short time untill his units will effortlessly suicide at enemy tower. There seems to be (at least) two solutions to this problem:

Remove dance command for marines (no need to remove it for any other units, as comments in this thread only concerns terran...)

Make the mid remain controlled after units are dead so that it is only neutral at the beginning. (which is not preferable)

Conclusion: Removing dance for all units will make the game less fun (and probably stop me from playing it) - removing it for marines will make it more balanced.

Angelus wrote:

Also, I see more and more people leaving the game when they see people using the dance command. I am one of them.

I am one of them, that will leave when my teammates don't train any troops the first 4 minutes...

The problem is that it is a half-feature right now. From a design perspective, either you CAN make units wait, or you CANNOT, not some units can wait, and only if you know the secret command, and only if you have selected them when you type it in, and only if you do it frequently because it only lasts so long...

I think if the devs decide this should be in, then certain low impact units should be able to do this, but it should be an explicit command, not a "chat-hack".
e.g.
Banelings can burrow in place and wait to blow up when something walks over them.
Reapers or Sentries can just stop where they are and chill.

This way, it is a lower impact unit that you are 'holding back', because even massing reapers won't do too much for you. I also think, there should be no option to tell them to move forward again. So they just hang out there until an enemy shows up.

Has a decision been made yet?

dance will be diabled soon

That is certainly a shame. Then there is no reason to actually watch/play the game since it can be played just as well by having it minimized 80 % of the time ...
It is a great day for tier3-techers though.

I just tried the new dance change, and it is VERY good! This way, you can still hold the middle, and yet not stack units! Good job Sylon!

Ino wrote:

I just tried the new dance change, and it is VERY good! This way, you can still hold the middle, and yet not stack units! Good job Sylon!

I completely agree. I thought /dance would just be removed, but your solutions seems to fix all the above mentioned problems - good work.

On a side note: The animation of the dancing units is now extremely slow and does not look like dancing at all. Could You change the animation rate without altering the duration? (this is not at all important...)

I agree, it is kind of a nice compromise: you can still do it to hold the middle longer, but dancing units will not be able to fight anymore in their lifetime.

agreed

This is not over.
So now it has been decided to stay in the game, it doesn't need to be hidden. Units able to do it, should have the ability (icon and hotkey).
This probably opens up a little micro for dancing formations xD

Well, I'm all for lessening the "Burden of Knowledge", so a dance button is certainly welcome. Also, you may add a help entry that explains how and why dance works.

I'll write a sample:

Quote :

Dancing or Cheering units:

By typing in /dance or /cheer into a standard chat message, while at least one of your units with dance or cheer moves is selected (marine, zergling, zealot, marauder, hydralisk, high templar, thor), you make the selected units dance or cheer, halting all their actions for the rest of their lifetime. In addition to serving as a taunt for your enemies, this has several benefits: it lets you hold the "middle bonus" advantage, and delay the enemy from reclaiming it, possibly forcing the combat to take placce on their territory, thus keeping the middle income bonus. It can also distract and delay enemy units long enough for your allies to catch up, and with your dancing units tanking the damage, your give your ally better chances of survival.

When to dance or cheer:

When you know your units will hold their own with a little disadvantage, but you also know that you don't have enough units to take the cannon down. You may dance all your units in an early game scenario, when you cross the middle line and no enemy forces are opposing you, saving your units to hold the middle line, and the enemy back a while longer, instead of just crashing into the cannon without any real damage.