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As most of you might know, a signature of Protoss race is the ability to go 'cloaked' or invisible in mass number. Back in BW, Arbiter is a crucial part of protoss army. Without arbiter, it is almost impossible to break through the wall of death in PvT. The ability to recall as well as casting stasis on tanks help the fragile gate way units army tremendously vs sieg tank fire. Forcing scan is also a great way to deny Terran scouting as well as force the Terran player to have a strong sense in timing, treating scan energy as a late game resources.
In starcraft 2, mothership was initially introduced as a better/stronger replacement for the arbiter with the only down side that you can only have 1 of it (Hero unit). This idea, however, had failed terribly after beta balance testing which then lead to some unique/powerful abilities got removed after the initial launch. But still, 1 issue was remain unsolved: Cloaking field cause lag.
It took blizzard almost a year to finally tweak the ability in 1.4.0 .
The Mothership's Cloaking Field no longer cloaks all units instantaneously, but rather adds units to the cloak field over time (maximum of 25 per second). This should alleviate "Mothership Lag" issue when a Mothership comes online.
This patch, however made the game change in the direction that go against blizzard's moto: 'Do not make complicated things that we cant explain in Tooltips' (see Kennigit's interview with Dustin Browder). As a result, the mothership is gone in HoTS, following with the cloaking field ability.
Personally to me, the reason i choose protoss since BW was because i feel like its the coolest race among the 3 with high technology that could make stuff invisible and the powerful carriers fleet flying across planets. Removing these 2 elements just make Protoss an entire different race from the beginning of the story line. All we see now is tons and tons of laser beam of death....
As that to be said, did you think blizzard failed in coding cloaking field into sc2 engine which then lead to the decision of removing mothership? Do you think Protoss has lost its originality going into HoTS? Which one do you prefer more? Invisible army moving from the shadow across the galaxy or a ball shooting out laser beam of death?
Feel free to leave a comment below!
P/s: anyone find the Oracle + replicant looks a lot like BW science vessle? ~_~ almost direct copy?? Tempest is clearly just a fat+clow corsair... no more no less...
 
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What exactly do you mean "failed in coding cloaking field" ? Like how invisible units are very clearly visible without detection (still unhittable of course  ) ?
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BW as a game > SC2 as a game
BW as a community and e-sport < SC2 as a community and e-sport. Sad truth.
User was warned for this post
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That's not why they removed the mothership... it was just a weird unit that never really fit in, was too weak in most situations and too strong where it actually could be used, that was just basically a bug patch that's not very noticable in game. IMO they should remove "hero" units altogether, the single thor is just gonna be weird.
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On December 23 2011 13:48 UmiNotsuki wrote:
BW as a game > SC2 as a game
BW as a community and e-sport < SC2 as a community and e-sport. Sad truth.
User was warned for this post
lol, and that's why SC2 MLG finals only have 100k live stream watchers.
Also, MLG cancelling shows doesn't sound very community friendly
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On December 23 2011 13:53 Navillus wrote:
That's not why they removed the mothership... it was just a weird unit that never really fit in, was too weak in most situations and too strong where it actually could be used, that was just basically a bug patch that's not very noticable in game. IMO they should remove "hero" units altogether, the single thor is just gonna be weird.
Yep, completely agree. Hero units are good in games of small armies vs small armies. Best example is Warcraft 3. A single unit can become extremely important in such situations. In a game of large armies, a single "hero" unit has no place.
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On December 23 2011 13:48 UmiNotsuki wrote:
BW as a game > SC2 as a game
BW as a community and e-sport < SC2 as a community and e-sport. Sad truth.
User was warned for this post
in korea its still better in both categories :D
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I think the problem is that you want protoss in SC2 to be protoss in SC1. The mothership just didn't really work, I dont think they removed it because of the cloaking, I think they removed it because it was difficult to balance. Your whole blog is kind of biased... but it is a blog so thats fine I guess. I dont think protoss loses any originality going into HotS, if anything the addition of the replicant will finally give protoss a good harassment option (perhaps now they can reduce the hp on the warp prism).
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Yeah the mothership basically became a big arbiter. I think their vision for the unit and then what it became were totally different. Originally it was a lot more powerful with some crazy abilities like that slow time one etc. But after the beta they should have just removed it and brought back the arbiter. I think it is good they are removing the mothership though its just not very interesting. The arbiter was cool though.
BW as a community and e-sport < SC2 as a community and e-sport.
BW as a community and e-sport ⊆ SC2 as a community and e-sport
Fixed it for you  Although that only applies to the foreign scene.
lol, and that's why SC2 MLG finals only have 100k live stream watchers.
How many did the most recent foreign BW tournament have. While it is still alive in Korea for good or bad the foreign BW scene has moved on.
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On December 23 2011 14:05 mordk wrote:Show nested quote +On December 23 2011 13:53 Navillus wrote:
That's not why they removed the mothership... it was just a weird unit that never really fit in, was too weak in most situations and too strong where it actually could be used, that was just basically a bug patch that's not very noticable in game. IMO they should remove "hero" units altogether, the single thor is just gonna be weird. Yep, completely agree. Hero units are good in games of small armies vs small armies. Best example is Warcraft 3. A single unit can become extremely important in such situations. In a game of large armies, a single "hero" unit has no place.
Are you sure blizzard thinks hero units have no place in SC2? Because you see there's this new guy called the double-down-thor who isn't afraid of anything and he even comes with blast-processing.
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That patch is basically the same as when they coded the Siege Tank to attack a split second after each other to 1) help with processor/lag and 2) to more or less eliminate overkill (which may be good or bad  ), it's not something that you put into a tooltip, and it's not horribly complicated from a player's perspective. You are being overly cynical with this assessment of Blizzard's intentions and actions.
But Mothership mostly sucked. Made for fun Archon toilets but not much else...
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You haven't really provided any evidence of failure in game design other than that it hasn't met your expectations in terms of art direction, which itself is mainly driven by BW nostalgia.
The cloaking mechanic isn't something that really needs to be explained in tooltips, similar to other mechanics like how marines attacks are hitscan and roach/stalker attacks aren't.
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I agree that Protoss should have the most advanced tech and mass cloaking should be part of that. Sadly the strongest cloaker in the game is probably the Banshee and to me that destroys race identity to an extent. I always felt as if terran should be the one fearing cloaked threats. I feel like one of the new Protoss flyers should have a mass cloaking ability of sorts possible as an ability that costs energy.
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On December 23 2011 13:48 UmiNotsuki wrote:
BW as a game > SC2 as a game
BW as a community and e-sport < SC2 as a community and e-sport. Sad truth.
User was warned for this post
I don't even understand how this was relevant.
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I would imagine that retexturing 30+ units on the fly is bound to be slower than reducing surface alpha on far less sprites (Arbiter's range is smaller and the BW units don't clump nearly as much).
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a change that has 0 effect on gameplay and is only added to prevent the game from lagging shouldn't be in a tooltip.
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On December 23 2011 13:32 NB wrote:
This patch, however made the game change in the direction that go against blizzard's moto: 'Do not make complicated things that we cant explain in Tooltips' (see Kennigit's interview with Dustin Browder). As a result, the mothership is gone in HoTS, following with the cloaking field ability.
The bit about tooltips is a general principle. It doesn't mean for one specific case you can't make the unit a little more complicated; rather, it's to prevent the entire game becoming mired in nuances. And as above, it doesn't really make the unit's control or role change or have much effect on the tooltip. It's just some new code to stop lag.
I haven't been impressed with the HOTS changes to Protoss in general, though.
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On December 23 2011 14:04 jidolboy wrote:Show nested quote +On December 23 2011 13:48 UmiNotsuki wrote:
BW as a game > SC2 as a game
BW as a community and e-sport < SC2 as a community and e-sport. Sad truth.
User was warned for this post lol, and that's why SC2 MLG finals only have 100k live stream watchers. Also, MLG cancelling shows doesn't sound very community friendly
wait what? That is why sundance has rumored some things on twitter about an exponentially bigger prize pool.....
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EPT
