On March 01 2010 13:10 thopol wrote:
If banelings do friendly fire the unit clumping AI will make them suck. They'll get in their little blob, the front one will blow up, and half of your banelings will be gone (though maybe it would encourage them to be used burrowed more). Your change idea totally redefines the unit, making them like infested Terrans in SC:BW. I don't think redefining the place a unit holds in the game is necessarily a bad thing, but it should certainly be well considered. People aren't using banelings to their full potential right now to begin with. I'd like to see baneling drops and more burrow use, for example. There is strategic innovation to be had before major changes are made.
I think your comments about D8 Charge and the Stalker needing a buff of some kind make sense. I'd like to see a health buff for Stalker, just because everything dies so fast. If things are getting buffs to make them see more use, why not hit two birds with one stone and make it so they're more used because they don't die instantly like virtually every other unit.
I think broodlords are one of the-- perhaps the-- coolest units in the game. They have flavor, utility, and look awesome. I don't see what's not to like.
Finally, to address the premise that seems to form the core of your post, I don't think that abilities on units are the answer to bringing micro back. I think that lots of players aren't used to the game (duh, right?) and aren't making the full use of their units. I almost never see blink except to hop up a cliff for a big game-winning attack, while I would expect it to be used to back your damaged units up like you do with dragoons in SC:BW. I rarely see burrow, even though roaches are all over the place and are much much more effective when microed with burrow. So in some cases I don't feel that there isn't micro to do, I just think that people aren't comfortable enough to be doing it.
I wouldn't discount that people are all saying there isn't enough micro capability, but adding abilities isn't really the answer. Lets think about the underlying causes of this lack of micro problem. I see them as primarily twofold: First, that units micro themselves. If you're microing your units you don't want to be decreasing their efficacy while doing so. Second, units die too quickly. There is some quality blob-making AI that makes units stack into compact balls that die really quickly to AoE and a high average damage rating of units. I won't suggest fixes for these things, because both are complex issues. It would be good for the game, but bad for marketing the game to decrease the AI quality, for example. It is important to identify underlying causes for problems though so that your efforts in suggesting solutions are not misplaced.
I want to talk about the highlighted. You couldn't be more mistaken. There is no need to decrease the AI (perhaps for the auto-surround on zerglings since I've heard rumors that you can't snipe units with them anymore....). The inverse skill is since units have better pathing, that instead of babysitting your units because the AI is horrible, now you have to babysit your units because the AI/pathing is so much better. This is a skill the same as before. There is nothing stopping a player from having 7-8 unit hotkeys. I think I may try something like this actually, and just put all my unit production buildings on one hotkey and just tab through them (Blizz really needs to add a better highlighting mechanism...green on green is horrible).
If you don't want your units to die to AoE quickly, then don't clump them. The logic in this is very simple, and very intuitive. This will be a skill that will seperate the joes from the pros. There is no problem here, just people complaining because their SCI skills do not transfer over one for one. Now you have to learn to manually de-clump your units instead of the AI doing it for you. Inverse skill.
Units do not micro themselves. This is so absurd. So much about micro is about unit positioning. There is no lack of this in SC II and on the contrary it becomes more important because of the lethality of units (Think reaver type destruction).
Lastly, if you compare the amount of abilities in SC I to SC II you will find that they are roughly the same amount, just that the utility of each skill in SC II is much greater, which depending on your view can be better or worse. I think having useless abilities is worse than having useful ones, but likewise having too many abilities is not my cup of joe.
As for the stalker....Dragoons died fast in SC I also, as did most of the units. I think people are just complaining to complain.
EPT
