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What makes a unit interesting?
An interesting unit is interesting because it has a unique means of attacking plus a weakness. A weakness is a property of the unit that can be used against it. For example, mutalisks have a propensity to stack up, making them vulnerable to fungal, splash damage, etc.
Mutalisk The mutalisk is, in my view, a less interesting unit than it was in broodwar due to the change in acceleration mechanics and the micro that enabled, but the mutalisk still has a very interesting and unique means of attacking that makes it an entertaining unit.
Siege Tank Siege tanks are an interesting unit because they have a powerful long range splash attack, but also because they have weaknesses like fire causing friendly fire, and having to go in and out of siege mode to attack.
Dark Templar Dark Templar are interesting because they hit hard and are invisible, but they’re also incredibly soft and can’t really handle direct combat. They would not be an interesting unit if they were visible and durable -- they would be a stronger zealot. The formula for what makes a cool unit is pretty well established.
Reaver The broodwar reaver was an interesting unit because while it had an incredibly powerful attack, the AI on it was terrible, the scarab could be dodged or simply become a dud. The reaver was also a ridiculously slow unit, almost always needing a shuttle escort.
Lurker Would lurkers be nearly as interesting if you couldn’t dodge their attacks?
Turning to WoL units, it's easy to see why some feel that it's not as interesting to watch as Broodwar is.
Take for instance the colossus. The comic book equivilent of this unit is superman – an alien with unlimited power capable of overcoming death itself. His sole threat, kryptonite, was about as useless and anti-climactic of a weakness as possible for a comic book hero. And that’s why superman is such a boring hero – because he lacks weaknesses.
The colossus is the same. The colossus is a siege tank with twice the health that doesn’t have to be in siege mode. It can also walk over cliffs and break force fields. With such a repertoire of abilities, it needs a serious weakness in order to be an interesting unit. And I do not feel that the fact it can be targeted by anti-air is a weakness as much as it is the only effective means of attacking a colossus in most situations.
Summary This is not a “nerf colossus” post. This is not about the colossus being too strong. The colossus wouldn’t be a more interesting unit if it did less damage or if its upgrade took longer to finish. The colossus is just one of the many WoL units that I feel are not nearly as interesting as the broodwar counterparts they’ve replaced. We could write the same for other boring units (especially the roach), and it would be just as effective of a critique.
Should the Heart of the Swarm expansion continue to improve StarCraft 2 for e-sports and spectators, the units to put on the chopping block first should first and foremost be the boring ones. (props for removing overseers to this end.)
   
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I was ready to switch to sc2 when it came out but I found my race (zerg) pretty boring.. two ranged ground units, no lurkers, no muta micro, and decisionless larva vomit and creep expand all game. Anyway I really really hope they put the lurker back in hots, but I think they've already announced all the units?
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ppl are looking forward that blizzard put bw into sc2 ui.
graphic and command issues are why bw is out
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On February 18 2012 15:51 winthrop wrote: ppl are looking forward that blizzard put bw into sc2 ui.
graphic and command issues are why bw is out
a unit selection limit would essentially eliminate deathball syndrome
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Well said.
Collossi (SC2) vs Reavers (BW) Hellions (SC2) vs Vultures (BW) Thors (SC2) vs Goliaths (BW) <-- Also the new HotS goliath (maddog or whatever the fuck) looks terrible. Hydralisks (SC2) vs Hydralisks (BW) <--- enough said, really. Fuck roaches. Swarm Host (HotS) vs Lurkers (BW) <-- I'm really not at all convinced by SH, but I'll give it a shot I guess. Mothership (SC2) vs Arbiters (BW) High Templar (SC2) vs High Templar (BW) <-- Thank smartcast for this nonsense.
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On February 18 2012 16:01 Hinanawi wrote: Well said.
Collossi (SC2) vs Reavers (BW) Hellions (SC2) vs Vultures (BW) Thors (SC2) vs Goliaths (BW) <-- Also the new HotS goliath (maddog or whatever the fuck) looks terrible. Hydralisks (SC2) vs Hydralisks (BW) <--- enough said, really. Fuck roaches. Swarm Host (HotS) vs Lurkers (BW) <-- I'm really not at all convinced by SH, but I'll give it a shot I guess. Mothership (SC2) vs Arbiters (BW) High Templar (SC2) vs High Templar (BW) <-- Thank smartcast for this nonsense.
"maddog" LOL. arent they called "hellhound"?
I as a zerg player dont need dark swarm and lurkers back though. they just promote turtling.
But more micro-intense units(especially with zerg) would be great
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On February 18 2012 16:01 Hinanawi wrote: Well said.
Collossi (SC2) vs Reavers (BW) Hellions (SC2) vs Vultures (BW) Thors (SC2) vs Goliaths (BW) <-- Also the new HotS goliath (maddog or whatever the fuck) looks terrible. Hydralisks (SC2) vs Hydralisks (BW) <--- enough said, really. Fuck roaches. Swarm Host (HotS) vs Lurkers (BW) <-- I'm really not at all convinced by SH, but I'll give it a shot I guess. Mothership (SC2) vs Arbiters (BW) High Templar (SC2) vs High Templar (BW) <-- Thank smartcast for this nonsense. Actually, the hydralisk is one of the few boring units in broodwar (along with the zealot and MM... I guess every race needs a boring unit). Admittedly they are weak against storm, seige tanks, and MM. But just having a counter shouldn't count as a weakness in the sense of making a unit interesting.
For SC2 I think banelings meet the criteria (and, I guess, so do scourge in BW).
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On February 18 2012 16:21 munchmunch wrote:Show nested quote +On February 18 2012 16:01 Hinanawi wrote: Well said.
Collossi (SC2) vs Reavers (BW) Hellions (SC2) vs Vultures (BW) Thors (SC2) vs Goliaths (BW) <-- Also the new HotS goliath (maddog or whatever the fuck) looks terrible. Hydralisks (SC2) vs Hydralisks (BW) <--- enough said, really. Fuck roaches. Swarm Host (HotS) vs Lurkers (BW) <-- I'm really not at all convinced by SH, but I'll give it a shot I guess. Mothership (SC2) vs Arbiters (BW) High Templar (SC2) vs High Templar (BW) <-- Thank smartcast for this nonsense. Actually, the hydralisk is one of the few boring units in broodwar (along with the zealot and MM... I guess every race needs a boring unit). Admittedly they are weak against storm, seige tanks, and MM. But just having a counter shouldn't count as a weakness in the sense of making a unit interesting. For SC2 I think banelings meet the criteria (and, I guess, so do scourge in BW). The BW Hydralisks did look and sound so much cooler.
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ummm, if they remove the colossus, what exactly would you do to counter the terran bio ball? and dont say high templars b/c ghosts are rather effective....
the worst unit in sc2 is the hydralisk. it was so baller in sc:bw, and now it just sucks. =(
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The HoTS replacement for the Thor is called the Warhound, and looks like an SCV on stilts. I guess they're trying really hard to avoid making them look like goliaths but aren't too creative either .
On February 18 2012 16:29 dAPhREAk wrote: ummm, if they remove the colossus, what exactly would you do to counter the terran bio ball? and dont say high templars b/c ghosts are rather effective....
the worst unit in sc2 is the hydralisk. it was so baller in sc:bw, and now it just sucks. =(
Carriers are pretty bad too.
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On February 18 2012 16:29 dAPhREAk wrote: ummm, if they remove the colossus, what exactly would you do to counter the terran bio ball? and dont say high templars b/c ghosts are rather effective....
the worst unit in sc2 is the hydralisk. it was so baller in sc:bw, and now it just sucks. =(
Reavers? Imagine the rape some well-microed reavers could inflict on bioballs.
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On February 18 2012 16:51 Hinanawi wrote:Show nested quote +On February 18 2012 16:29 dAPhREAk wrote: ummm, if they remove the colossus, what exactly would you do to counter the terran bio ball? and dont say high templars b/c ghosts are rather effective....
the worst unit in sc2 is the hydralisk. it was so baller in sc:bw, and now it just sucks. =( Reavers? Imagine the rape some well-microed reavers could inflict on bioballs.
Too much. You don't need to imagine, reavers ARE in the game. Just not available in the standard gamemode. SC2 Reavers are almost identical to BW Reavers, except that they aren't dumb and fire a pair of scarabs that hit the same target for 62.5 damage each.
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On February 18 2012 16:53 Demonhunter04 wrote:Show nested quote +On February 18 2012 16:51 Hinanawi wrote:On February 18 2012 16:29 dAPhREAk wrote: ummm, if they remove the colossus, what exactly would you do to counter the terran bio ball? and dont say high templars b/c ghosts are rather effective....
the worst unit in sc2 is the hydralisk. it was so baller in sc:bw, and now it just sucks. =( Reavers? Imagine the rape some well-microed reavers could inflict on bioballs. Too much. You don't need to imagine, reavers ARE in the game. Just not available in the standard gamemode. SC2 Reavers are almost identical to BW Reavers, except that they aren't dumb and fire a pair of scarabs that hit the same target for 62.5 damage each.
Tweak them, and buff Terran mech. Bioballs against P just feels wrong anyway.
Whoops, there's me wanting to turn SC2 into the 'exact same game as BW' again.
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On February 18 2012 17:04 Hinanawi wrote:Show nested quote +On February 18 2012 16:53 Demonhunter04 wrote:On February 18 2012 16:51 Hinanawi wrote:On February 18 2012 16:29 dAPhREAk wrote: ummm, if they remove the colossus, what exactly would you do to counter the terran bio ball? and dont say high templars b/c ghosts are rather effective....
the worst unit in sc2 is the hydralisk. it was so baller in sc:bw, and now it just sucks. =( Reavers? Imagine the rape some well-microed reavers could inflict on bioballs. Too much. You don't need to imagine, reavers ARE in the game. Just not available in the standard gamemode. SC2 Reavers are almost identical to BW Reavers, except that they aren't dumb and fire a pair of scarabs that hit the same target for 62.5 damage each. Tweak them, and buff Terran mech. Bioballs against P just feels wrong anyway. Whoops, there's me wanting to turn SC2 into the 'exact same game as BW' again.
I think Blizzard really wants to avoid randomness now, as they have nothing in SC2 that's really random. It'd be nice to see a nerf that makes the reaver exciting to watch but hard to use without randomizing the scarabs, but until then, I don't see the reaver coming into SC2.
EDIT: Siege tanks, Hellions, and Thors have all been nerfed several times because they were too strong, by the way.
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don't forget the arbitor -> mothership change :\
man i really wanted to like SC2, but blizzard fucked up
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On February 18 2012 17:15 Demonhunter04 wrote:Show nested quote +On February 18 2012 17:04 Hinanawi wrote:On February 18 2012 16:53 Demonhunter04 wrote:On February 18 2012 16:51 Hinanawi wrote:On February 18 2012 16:29 dAPhREAk wrote: ummm, if they remove the colossus, what exactly would you do to counter the terran bio ball? and dont say high templars b/c ghosts are rather effective....
the worst unit in sc2 is the hydralisk. it was so baller in sc:bw, and now it just sucks. =( Reavers? Imagine the rape some well-microed reavers could inflict on bioballs. Too much. You don't need to imagine, reavers ARE in the game. Just not available in the standard gamemode. SC2 Reavers are almost identical to BW Reavers, except that they aren't dumb and fire a pair of scarabs that hit the same target for 62.5 damage each. Tweak them, and buff Terran mech. Bioballs against P just feels wrong anyway. Whoops, there's me wanting to turn SC2 into the 'exact same game as BW' again. I think Blizzard really wants to avoid randomness now, as they have nothing in SC2 that's really random.
I never really understood that since I always though that was one of the most interesting unit weaknesses.
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Warpgate and Sentry are 2 large parts of why i find protoss really are alot less fun to play than in BW.
I would like to try and see how the game would do without macro mechanics, but i dont have much against them.
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Replacing the Colossus with a tweaked Reaver would solve pretty much all of Terran's problems late game in TvP, because the current issue is that you have to overmake Vikings to kill the Colossi, then have nothing left to actually fight the rest of the army.
Reavers wouldn't scale nearly as well with the rest of the army, because you couldn't just a-move them, microing a bit to let Stalkers kill Vikings. You would have to babysit them near the front of your army, maybe with Warp Prisms, and it would make them easier to pick off with Marauders (stimmed) etc. Then Vikings could be used for what they were intended to be used for - anti-air, rather than anti-Colossus.
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I completely fucking agree with OP.
The Colossus is the number one most boring fucking unit in SC2, and I absolutely hate it. I was praying they'd take it out for HotS, but they're not... ugh.
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as a toss player i find mutalisks less fun then collosus so quick, can fly, and the dps is so insane, especially once you get 20+
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On February 18 2012 16:15 isleyofthenorth wrote:Show nested quote +On February 18 2012 16:01 Hinanawi wrote: Well said.
Collossi (SC2) vs Reavers (BW) Hellions (SC2) vs Vultures (BW) Thors (SC2) vs Goliaths (BW) <-- Also the new HotS goliath (maddog or whatever the fuck) looks terrible. Hydralisks (SC2) vs Hydralisks (BW) <--- enough said, really. Fuck roaches. Swarm Host (HotS) vs Lurkers (BW) <-- I'm really not at all convinced by SH, but I'll give it a shot I guess. Mothership (SC2) vs Arbiters (BW) High Templar (SC2) vs High Templar (BW) <-- Thank smartcast for this nonsense. "maddog" LOL. arent they called "hellhound"? I as a zerg player dont need dark swarm and lurkers back though. they just promote turtling. But more micro-intense units(especially with zerg) would be great
Dark swarm and lurkers were used just as much, if not more as micro intensive units. Also I find it ironic that two of the most micro intensive units you dislike but you want more micro intensive units for zerg.
On February 18 2012 23:34 ThatGuy89 wrote: as a toss player i find mutalisks less fun then collosus so quick, can fly, and the dps is so insane, especially once you get 20+
20+ mutas is 2k+ min/gas. They're really much less cost effective than a lot of other units out there.
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United Kingdom16710 Posts
The lack of interesting units is one of the big reasons I'm quickly losing interest in SC2. You might commend Blizzard for removing randomness & high risk, high reward units from the game, but that's what made BW so amazing to watch, and unbelievably satisfying (or pull your hair out-frustrating) to play. Now everything feels smooth and polished in SC2, and lacks any punch that BW packed. I'm not really sure things are going to change in HOTS. The new units certainly look a little more interesting than shit like the colossus and the marauder, but not by much. Plus, they're not willing to admit they've made some poorly designed units and remove them from the game. It's probably because Blizzard's philosophy now seems to be all about creating a game with every unit/spell having an appropriate counter unit/spell, and touching it would disturb their whole system. It's so straightforward and boring.
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Noobville17921 Posts
On February 18 2012 16:08 rOse_PedaL wrote: i miss my dark swarm not sure how sc2 players would be able to handle microing vs dark swarm
that was some rough shit
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On February 18 2012 19:09 ragnorr wrote: Warpgate and Sentry are 2 large parts of why i find protoss really are alot less fun to play than in BW.
I would like to try and see how the game would do without macro mechanics, but i dont have much against them.
I agree that warpgate in its current iteration is retarded. There's no decision making once you finish the upgrade, since you don't really lose production and you can reinforce faster. I think it would be interesting if warpgates produced significantly slower than normal gateways. If you wanted to play defensively you would produce normally out of your gateways, but if you wanted to have a timing where you have more units, you can morph to warpgates and get two rounds of units basically instantly(round of units finishes from gateways, warp to warpgates and warp in). The downside is you would have a longer cooldown on the warpgates before you could revert back to gateways.
Blizzard instead has chosen the retarded way of balancing warp gates and warp gate timings, and chosen to just make gateway units weaker.
Every balance change blizzard makes just removes more and more player choice and creativity. The ghost nerf is removing the utility of ghosts against basically any non-psionic unit, so you would only build them to deal with enemy casters or dts lol. The neural parasite nerf basically removed the ability from the infestor's repertoire. Reaper nerfs basically removed the unit from the game. All of these units need to be addressed in terms of balance, but the way they were addressed is awful.
On top of this, their reveal of HotS units is really depressing. Removing the carrier? wat. Viper basically hard countering colossus? Introducing a new terran mech unit which has a lot of overlap with the marauder, and really gives no reason to go mech? Removing the mothership and adding the thor as a hero unit? Sometimes I really wonder if blizzard game designers actually think about whether these things even make sense on paper. It really seems like the game is designed by an artist saying, "You know what would really look cool? Tripods from war of the worlds, and we'll call them colossus. Trust me bro, they'll love it". Who actually thought it would be a good idea to give protoss the ability to warp in templars anywhere with pylon power and instantly have enough energy to storm?
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Am I the only one who misses science vessels? I miss "Explorer reporting!" and irradiate and defensive matrix over a stupid robot with missiles that rarely do anything. Nobody ever mentions them in these threads, though.
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United States1654 Posts
I think a major reason Starcraft 2 has become so boring for me is the way the spells work. In Brood War, seeing someone cast a good plague, dark swarm, or psi storm was so epic, yet watching the opposing player manage to maneuver and win despite that was even more amazing.
In Starcraft 2, these spells have been replaced by spells that are designed to limit the opponent's ability to do anything outright. Fungals that stop an entire group of units from moving, force fields that deny movement and reinforcements down a ramp, and concussive shells that early game pretty much means guaranteed death for any unit hit by it are just so boring to watch because there is literally no different outcome to the situation. You can't micro a group of units stuck in a fungal and escape. You can't move units trapped between force fields or even break them without a massive unit. You can't escape from a group of Marines and Marauders after being hit by a slow grenade without blink.
The spells eliminate potential intense micro situations that would make the game more fun and possibly even more exciting for viewers.
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I agree with the OP. I was just talking about this with my friend a few minutes ago. (Actually it was a full blown hour-long rant between the two of us). It seems like the SC2 devs have decided that their mission is to make the game as balanced as possible, and in doing that they've managed to make the game completely boring. I'm sure many people will disagree with me here, but the game has absolutely no appeal to me anymore. And don't get me wrong, I don't want to be a hater - but SCBW was a defining characteristic of my life when I was young (as lame as that may sound), and I've spent hours and hours of my life being excited about SC2. I spent $1200 dragging my ass from Quebec to Anaheim just for SC2. Most of what I'm about to write may sound like a broken record - we've heard it all, but the concerns are so real, they really are.
The novelty was fun and I'll admit that for a few months I was thrilled with it. But as I played, comparisons could be made between SCBW and SC2. "Oh that shit again" - admittedly I was one of those people who wanted SC2 to be very similar to BW, a game which I still profoundly love. I'm over that, but the comparisons can still be made.
At the "micro" level, the units themselves are boring. Highlights are ghost emps, nearly automated storms, fungal growths and "flanks". Nothing fun to watch. The carriers are impossible to micro, hydras are slow and dreadful to watch, and (as we hear all the time), it's a hard-counter festival. This shows the direction that the devs are taking, and we can see that because they were thinking about the "tempest" for instance. Protoss has issues with mass mutas - so we'll give them a hard counter to mutas. No depth - another a-move easy fix.
At the "macro" level, well very little has or will be done about the big balls clashing. Whatever happened to armies spread over 10 screens, dynamic games!!! When watching SCBW's OSL and MSL from the Ro32, I would say a majority of games are at least entertaining, and maybe 15-25% are actually f'ing epic. Entertaining games in SC2 are few and far between IMO, and many are made bearable by good commentators. Epic games in SC2 exist, I won't lie, but they're rare - very rare. I love BW. A game which to this day is the only thing that can make me literally jump on my chair in excitement - me, a boring 22 year old who's strangely fascinated by politics.
People will say things like "go back to BW then" and "don't watch/play SC2 if you don't like it", but they're missing the point. I like the community, and the game is OK. I like to think it'll get better, although frankly I'm losing hope. I've been watching IdrA play for a few hours today - and it's a good way to burn off some time, but it's more like I'm a fat, sad slob watching the TV because there's nothing to do - whereas SCBW was exciting and fun.
____ To me, it's very clear that SC2 is inherently less exciting and less dynamic than SCBW. It's in part due to the fact that Blizzard insists on making it very, very "user friendly", and IMO it's also in part due to the fact that all their effort is focused at making the game balanced. And that's why we can't have nice things. In the name of fairness, we're suckers in a politically-correct school and the chicks have boring uniforms that cover everything. In the name of fairness, "fun" things were removed like the khaydarin amulet - others were never put in the game like the lurkers. The devs would rather make small boring changes to balance than big relevant changes that could "break" the game's balance. The HotS preview was a bunch of units that for the most part were not huge game changers like the lurker, the medic and the corsair were. They were units conservatively designed as to alter the current meta game ever so slightly - enough to be somewhat worthy of an expansion, yet not enough to completely modify the game's dynamic. If what we saw at Blizzcon 2011 made it into the expansion, the difference between WoL and HotS would have been *NOTHING* compared to the difference between SC Vanilla and SCBW. Nothing.
Devs are afraid or not competent enough to take risks, so we're left with a game that'll get stale really quickly, as long as they refuse to get their hands dirty.
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On February 19 2012 04:15 Gheed wrote: Am I the only one who misses science vessels? I miss "Explorer reporting!" and irradiate and defensive matrix over a stupid robot with missiles that rarely do anything. Nobody ever mentions them in these threads, though. Vessles, Defilers, Arbiters and Carriers. Lategame in BW is really fun to watch. i have reached a point in SC2 where watching lategame TvP is worse than watching a random 2 base all in from either side. Most of Lategame in SC2 is huge stalemates which can be dragged on forever
I really wish blizzard would get over "Well if you like BW watch that" and try to import parts of BW which worked really well. I dont get their idea behind trying to develop the wheel once again, just take parts of BW which made the game so epic to watch and port it over to a degree in SC2
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On top of this, their reveal of HotS units is really depressing. Removing the carrier? wat. Viper basically hard countering colossus?
If this trend continues, maybe the third game should be called StarCraft II: War of Rock, Paper, and Scissors.
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On February 19 2012 04:50 Sigrun wrote: I think a major reason Starcraft 2 has become so boring for me is the way the spells work. In Brood War, seeing someone cast a good plague, dark swarm, or psi storm was so epic, yet watching the opposing player manage to maneuver and win despite that was even more amazing.
In Starcraft 2, these spells have been replaced by spells that are designed to limit the opponent's ability to do anything outright. Fungals that stop an entire group of units from moving, force fields that deny movement and reinforcements down a ramp, and concussive shells that early game pretty much means guaranteed death for any unit hit by it are just so boring to watch because there is literally no different outcome to the situation. You can't micro a group of units stuck in a fungal and escape. You can't move units trapped between force fields or even break them without a massive unit. You can't escape from a group of Marines and Marauders after being hit by a slow grenade without blink.
The spells eliminate potential intense micro situations that would make the game more fun and possibly even more exciting for viewers.
Agree. There were spells in BW like Stasis Field etc that removed mobility, but they were few and required a lot of tech to reach.
In SC2, spells like Forcefield are readily available at Cybernetics Core, and are used throughout the game, and the game would be broken in its current state without it. Ditto for Fungal, Vortex (rare/high tech), Conc. Shells (although this is less of an issue, because that becomes pretty insignificant in mid-lategame).
There should be more spells that encourage mobility and allow your opponent to do something about it or escape it (eg Psi-storm, Baneling landmines, Seeker Missile, Stim).
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On February 19 2012 04:50 Sigrun wrote: I think a major reason Starcraft 2 has become so boring for me is the way the spells work. In Brood War, seeing someone cast a good plague, dark swarm, or psi storm was so epic, yet watching the opposing player manage to maneuver and win despite that was even more amazing.
In Starcraft 2, these spells have been replaced by spells that are designed to limit the opponent's ability to do anything outright. Fungals that stop an entire group of units from moving, force fields that deny movement and reinforcements down a ramp, and concussive shells that early game pretty much means guaranteed death for any unit hit by it are just so boring to watch because there is literally no different outcome to the situation. You can't micro a group of units stuck in a fungal and escape. You can't move units trapped between force fields or even break them without a massive unit. You can't escape from a group of Marines and Marauders after being hit by a slow grenade without blink.
The spells eliminate potential intense micro situations that would make the game more fun and possibly even more exciting for viewers.
I couldn't agree more, but you forgot to mention that there's basically no such thing as 'good storms' or 'good EMPs' in Starcraft 2, thanks to the horrible smartcast feature. 'Jangbi storms'? More like 'every single pro player can do this easily' storms.
I'm okay with unlimited unit selection and MBS...but why smartcast, and why automine? Forget the stupid 'macro mechanics', remembering to tell your workers to work even mid-combat is an important macro mechanic that separates the pros from the rest.
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Yes SC2 units are actually painfully boring for the most part. I find it very hard to remain interested in the game over large periods of time.
Too bad really, the potential was there, but they have a very distinct vision of what they think SC2 should be.
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