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niteReloaded
Croatia5281 Posts
Some of your logic isn't too crisp either. You say no overkill doesn't make Tanks AI smarter. Name a situation where it applies! Like I said, this is a typical BW vs SC2 thread in sheep's clothing, and I thought those are frowned upon so I'm surprised why this got spotlighted. (even tho I'm the first guy who's holding himself back from making threads about how SC2 should be more like BW) | ||
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Alakaslam
United States17324 Posts
On August 16 2012 06:22 Gben592 wrote: Its kinda because half the stuff in sc2 has such a low skillcap (like immortals). If players aren't able to be able to 'play better' with units to get out of situations then the game becomes very rigid and inflexible, and then Blizz has to keep on balancing it, rather than just relying on players finding ways to beat stuff and becoming better at the game and micro. Or something... Tbh since I never played BW i wish someone would completely recreate all the mechanics (100%) just with better graphics :/ Sounds pretty sick after reading the OP I have always wondered about this kind of sentiment, what is so bad about broodwar's graphics? They're flatter but cleaner looking, a lot sharper than sc2 on low IMO. Ultra/extreme is obviously a different story but only casual players like me played on ultra I thought? So what is it about broodwar graphics that are so bad? I have nothing against the sentiment as I know I'm biased (I like LoZaLttP a lot better than wind waker even though that game has my favorite graphics of the series- so I am obviously a gameplay type). OT after drifting off-forum: once again you're the best Falling, awesome article even with the typo  made me want to roll through campaign 5 since I don't stand a chance on iccup. In fact I think I'll do that now! :D | ||
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snively
United States1159 Posts
6/5 ofc | ||
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Yoshi Kirishima
United States10292 Posts
In HotS, they are making different style/compositions be able to be played in 2 main ways: Aggressive/mobile, and defensive/strong. For Zerg, in the lategame they no longer need to use a slow deathball. They can use that newer hydra/viper mobile mix. For Terran, you can play turtly bio (marine/tank) on 3 base and then push out (like Bomber has done, it was covered in a day9 daily). However you can also drop a lot, like MMA, and play very aggressively. For Mech, you can play turtly (lots of OCs and jump into the lategame, get lots of seeker missiles, like Gumiho vs Min in GSTL finals). However, you can also play more aggressively, like opening hellion/banshee to harass with them all game and take map control, and split off a few tank/thors to attack a corner base while giving your main army a better position to siege the zerg. For Protoss, they already can play both defensively and offensively, whether or not blizzard plans on allowing you to play both defensively and offensively with all of their 3 tech trees or not, I'm not sure. But of course we already know of protoss' timing attacks and deathballs. The warhound fills in some interesting roles, even in TvZ. In TvP, I can still see the thor being used. I can see the more mobile Hellion warhound comp being its own style. Its weakness would be air units though of course -- but those air units (voids, tempests) are slow and immobile. With hellion/warhound I could see you trying to play the more mobile position against protoss. There are other options protoss could use, like sentry chargelot colossi, which I guess is less immobile, so it would be about the "same" on both sides (about equal mobility, about equal strength). If they go templar tech, HT Archon Chargelot Sentry, they can be slightly more mobile, with DT harass all over, and storm drops and such. The hellion warhound composition would want to snipe all the zealots and just run away, since even if they use storm, you can dodge them and/or force him to use it when he doesn't want to, but the protoss would try to force that to never happen by harassing him all over the place. In TvZ, I can see warhound/hellion also playing a more mobile role, though still much weaker of course than with tanks and thors. But the warhound does have its uses. It is extremely food efficient for its HP. 3 Warhounds is way stronger than 1 thor, though more costly. But there's one example of its use despite there being no mechanical units. In TvT, this is where I worry about it a lot. It's to break stale tank lines? What??? What does warhound counter again? Mechanical units. So... won't it just be mass warhounds vs mass warhounds? wtf? Hopefully that's not what they're going for. The last concern I have is that the warhound is actually too strong. This is where the beta comes in! Even in the battle report, I felt the army was not tank heavy enough. I think 1 problem will be that the warhound is slightly too strong in direct engagements. The speed and cost and supply is fine, but I think the damage/attack speed/hotwire missiles will need to be adjusted so that the tanks are still the core of the army, instead of being the support. Now of course, the longer the game goes on, the more tanks you can have since you can replace the other army units with mass turret/PF all over, but I'm also afraid that massing warhounds will be too strong, since they're only 2 supply each and even do well against non-mech units. (Uh, 23 damage against normal? Compare that to a stalker or zealot... yea, it's really strong! Though blizzard is pretty good at numbers -- a warhound will 4 shot a zealot, not 3 shot, while a thor only needs to 3 shot a zealot). I think right now, I would like to see the warhound nerfed slightly, and the tank buffed slightly. With the mothership core, 1/1/1s should be no problem, and it's not like mech is even popular in TvZ! Many pros complain it is too hard to do because of mass roaches, before the terran has secured his third. Maybe if the tank were buffed, it would help out! Even 5 more damage or such would make a big difference. It's not popular in TvT neither. Also, it wouldn't effect marine tank vs marine tank because both of them have tanks. The damage could simply change from 35 +15 armored to 35 +20 armored, therefore not affecting its damage on lings/hydras/marines, but only on marauders/tanks/roaches/stalkers/immortals, which are quite strong against the mech army when the mech army isn't maxed out or in other specific situations. Turns out not to be so brief i guess, heheh. Hellions also have burst damage, but it is much, much longer. Therefore, the emphasis/ most efficient use is to let the hellion complete it's attack for full damage. Otherwise your wasting damage. The problem is they are quite weak and staying in one position for longer times makes them more vulnerable. So how does Blizzard intend to fix this? Battle-hellions. Slower. Tankier. So they can last longer while they do their full damage. Another infantry unit. The same as all the other infantry units, only they do splash. So while we're hoping for more cool micro units, the battle-hellion is going in the opposite direction. But perhaps now you're starting to see the appeal both of vultures and of mech play in general. You have these massive tanks sieging down everything. You have these weak, fast raiders that are sometimes protecting the tanks out front, sometimes whipping around and killing workers. And you have more drop play because the skies are fairly clear. Vultures and Tanks don't shoot up. I don't quite understand this problem with the hellions. You mean you would rather them be able to complete their attack faster like vultures? But they already can do quite a lot of damage as is. If they could be micro'd like vultures, then it would be so hard to deal with hellion harass. I don't agree with blizzard using battle hellions for that reason. In TvP, Hellions are good at kiting zealots a bit before the battle, but even so, with the storms and colossi and chargelots, the hellions die very fast, and the tanks don't get many shots off. It is more of just a buff to hellions than fixing the design of the hellions' slow rate of fire. This would make mech play slightly more interesting, as you would need to be careful when you switch your hellions into mobile mode (like to try to snipe some units), and make sure it turns into battle mode fast enough (the transformation time will probably need to be changed though, i think it's only like 1-2 seconds now?). Increasing the HP does indeed let the hellion complete its attack and get even more attacks in, but it will always be cut off of an attack, even though it won't hurt as much since the battle hellions attack slightly faster. However, if they wanted to fix the hellion dying right before it gets the next shot in, they would have simply changed the hellion damage/attack speed instead of giving it buff in the form of a higher HP unit. The mech army in TvP simply isn't that strong until you get to the very lategame, so these battle hellions will help alleviate this weakness. You won't be keeping hellions in battle mode all the time, you will still have opportunities to snipe HTs/zealots and such, aside from just harassing his econ. Regarding defending flanking: 1 Thing that BW didn't have was the larger CCs, which can be upgraded into OCs for scans (without a stupid add on that makes walling off harder), or upgraded into PFs. Another huge thing they didn't have was sensor towers. I don't find myself not being able to defend against him trying to move around my army or such, only when I stopped paying attention for a bit or derped and didn't realize his army was moving where it was. However, these can all be alleviated with OCs/PFs backed up by a couple tanks behind them. Spider mines were awesome, yes, but SC2 has its own cool things too. If they had an observer, the spider mines only slowed down the army. Good, it serves its purpose. But in SC2, he will actually have to try to break those OCs/PFs, not just get an observer and be slowed down. The difference is that, depending on many tanks you keep behind that wall, he will actually lose not just time, but also some of his units. Now, we will have widow mines, which will hopefully give some more depth in regards to defending against the protoss army's attacks, different from the PF/tank walls and sensor towers, which can only really be built near your bases/army. However, spider mines also had one advantage; it gave more map vision, so you have a better idea of where his army is. Though SC2 does have sensor towers, which serves a similar purpose. I feel that the later the game goes, the better the mech player will be, since he will be putting more and more PFs/towers/turrets around the map, while in BW, his mines will keep being cleared eventually. Whether or not I like this late-game scaling though, is undecided... it goes against the "both players are equal throughout the game, and doesn't need to try to end the game at a specific timespan". While Blizzard seems aware of this and wants to get close to it, they do seem to be somewhat accepting of it according to their comments regarding the TvP deathball situation a few months back. Also, regarding the tempest and its effect on mech: It will be a huge positional battle (or at least, i think this is what they're aiming for). The tempest will be able to siege the mech army like BLs do (though they do less damage, thankfully), but, just like BLs, they are immobile and if you leap forward and get a good engage on the tempests or manage to harass him somewhere else, he will be committing his army, so he needs to be careful if he wants to be aggressive or play more safely with his tempests. Since the tempests have 22 range, that means that vikings trying to snipe tempests will either need to sacrifice losing some numbers to stalkers unless they get PDD, which can then be dealt with by feedback/storm. As with the warhound/hellion dynamics in relation to each of the protoss' 3 tech trees, I think the more traditional tank army will be about the same against stargate tech, but stronger/immobile vs robo and templar. I'm hoping and predicting that these kinds of different dynamics will occur depending on your composition, as blizzard has mentioned they are trying to make these present in other matchups too. | ||
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Cedstick
Canada3336 Posts
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binski
United States225 Posts
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KawaiiRice
United States2914 Posts
On August 16 2012 07:49 Yoshi Kirishima wrote: It's getting tiring restating my opinions over and over, with all these different topics of mech... (not trying to be offensive here, but I will be briefer than usual ^^) In HotS, they are making different style/compositions be able to be played in 2 main ways: Aggressive/mobile, and defensive/strong. For Zerg, in the lategame they no longer need to use a slow deathball. They can use that newer hydra/viper mobile mix. For Terran, you can play turtly bio (marine/tank) on 3 base and then push out (like Bomber has done, it was covered in a day9 daily). However you can also drop a lot, like MMA, and play very aggressively. For Mech, you can play turtly (lots of OCs and jump into the lategame, get lots of seeker missiles, like Gumiho vs Min in GSTL finals). However, you can also play more aggressively, like opening hellion/banshee to harass with them all game and take map control, and split off a few tank/thors to attack a corner base while giving your main army a better position to siege the zerg. For Protoss, they already can play both defensively and offensively, whether or not blizzard plans on allowing you to play both defensively and offensively with all of their 3 tech trees or not, I'm not sure. But of course we already know of protoss' timing attacks and deathballs. The warhound fills in some interesting roles, even in TvZ. In TvP, I can still see the thor being used. I can see the more mobile Hellion warhound comp being its own style. Its weakness would be air units though of course -- but those air units (voids, tempests) are slow and immobile. With hellion/warhound I could see you trying to play the more mobile position against protoss. There are other options protoss could use, like sentry chargelot colossi, which I guess is less immobile, so it would be about the "same" on both sides (about equal mobility, about equal strength). If they go templar tech, HT Archon Chargelot Sentry, they can be slightly more mobile, with DT harass all over, and storm drops and such. The hellion warhound composition would want to snipe all the zealots and just run away, since even if they use storm, you can dodge them and/or force him to use it when he doesn't want to, but the protoss would try to force that to never happen by harassing him all over the place. In TvZ, I can see warhound/hellion also playing a more mobile role, though still much weaker of course than with tanks and thors. But the warhound does have its uses. It is extremely food efficient for its HP. 3 Warhounds is way stronger than 1 thor, though more costly. But there's one example of its use despite there being no mechanical units. In TvT, this is where I worry about it a lot. It's to break stale tank lines? What??? What does warhound counter again? Mechanical units. So... won't it just be mass warhounds vs mass warhounds? wtf? Hopefully that's not what they're going for. The last concern I have is that the warhound is actually too strong. This is where the beta comes in! Even in the battle report, I felt the army was not tank heavy enough. I think 1 problem will be that the warhound is slightly too strong in direct engagements. The speed and cost and supply is fine, but I think the damage/attack speed/hotwire missiles will need to be adjusted so that the tanks are still the core of the army, instead of being the support. Now of course, the longer the game goes on, the more tanks you can have since you can replace the other army units with mass turret/PF all over, but I'm also afraid that massing warhounds will be too strong, since they're only 2 supply each and even do well against non-mech units. (Uh, 43 damage against normal? Compare that to a stalker or zealot... yea, it's really strong! Though blizzard is pretty good at numbers -- a warhound will 4 shot a zealot, not 3 shot, while a thor only needs to 3 shot a zealot). I think right now, I would like to see the warhound nerfed slightly, and the tank buffed slightly. With the mothership core, 1/1/1s should be no problem, and it's not like mech is even popular in TvZ! Many pros complain it is too hard to do because of mass roaches, before the terran has secured his third. Maybe if the tank were buffed, it would help out! Even 5 more damage or such would make a big difference. It's not popular in TvT neither. Also, it wouldn't effect marine tank vs marine tank because both of them have tanks. The damage could simply change from 35 +15 armored to 35 +20 armored, therefore not affecting its damage on lings/hydras/marines, but only on marauders/tanks/roaches/stalkers/immortals, which are quite strong against the mech army when the mech army isn't maxed out or in other specific situations. Turns out not to be so brief i guess, heheh. I don't quite understand this problem with the hellions. You mean you would rather them be able to complete their attack faster like vultures? But they already can do quite a lot of damage as is. If they could be micro'd like vultures, then it would be so hard to deal with hellion harass. I don't agree with blizzard using battle hellions for that reason. In TvP, Hellions are good at kiting zealots a bit before the battle, but even so, with the storms and colossi and chargelots, the hellions die very fast, and the tanks don't get many shots off. It is more of just a buff to hellions than fixing the design of the hellions' slow rate of fire. This would make mech play slightly more interesting, as you would need to be careful when you switch your hellions into mobile mode (like to try to snipe some units), and make sure it turns into battle mode fast enough (the transformation time will probably need to be changed though, i think it's only like 1-2 seconds now?). Increasing the HP does indeed let the hellion complete its attack and get even more attacks in, but it will always be cut off of an attack, even though it won't hurt as much since the battle hellions attack slightly faster. However, if they wanted to fix the hellion dying right before it gets the next shot in, they would have simply changed the hellion damage/attack speed instead of giving it buff in the form of a higher HP unit. The mech army in TvP simply isn't that strong until you get to the very lategame, so these battle hellions will help alleviate this weakness. You won't be keeping hellions in battle mode all the time, you will still have opportunities to snipe HTs/zealots and such, aside from just harassing his econ. Regarding defending flanking: 1 Thing that BW didn't have was the larger CCs, which can be upgraded into OCs for scans (without a stupid add on that makes walling off harder), or upgraded into PFs. Another huge thing they didn't have was sensor towers. I don't find myself not being able to defend against him trying to move around my army or such, only when I stopped paying attention for a bit or derped and didn't realize his army was moving where it was. However, these can all be alleviated with OCs/PFs backed up by a couple tanks behind them. Spider mines were awesome, yes, but SC2 has its own cool things too. If they had an observer, the spider mines only slowed down the army. Good, it serves its purpose. But in SC2, he will actually have to try to break those OCs/PFs, not just get an observer and be slowed down. The difference is that, depending on many tanks you keep behind that wall, he will actually lose not just time, but also some of his units. Now, we will have widow mines, which will hopefully give some more depth in regards to defending against the protoss army's attacks, different from the PF/tank walls and sensor towers, which can only really be built near your bases/army. However, spider mines also had one advantage; it gave more map vision, so you have a better idea of where his army is. Though SC2 does have sensor towers, which serves a similar purpose. I feel that the later the game goes, the better the mech player will be, since he will be putting more and more PFs/towers/turrets around the map, while in BW, his mines will keep being cleared eventually. Whether or not I like this late-game scaling though, is undecided... it goes against the "both players are equal throughout the game, and doesn't need to try to end the game at a specific timespan". While Blizzard seems aware of this and wants to get close to it, they do seem to be somewhat accepting of it according to their comments regarding the TvP deathball situation a few months back. Also, regarding the tempest and its effect on mech: It will be a huge positional battle (or at least, i think this is what they're aiming for). The tempest will be able to siege the mech army like BLs do (though they do less damage, thankfully), but, just like BLs, they are immobile and if you leap forward and get a good engage on the tempests or manage to harass him somewhere else, he will be committing his army, so he needs to be careful if he wants to be aggressive or play more safely with his tempests. Since the tempests have 22 range, that means that vikings trying to snipe tempests will either need to sacrifice losing some numbers to stalkers unless they get PDD, which can then be dealt with by feedback/storm. As with the warhound/hellion dynamics in relation to each of the protoss' 3 tech trees, I think the more traditional tank army will be about the same against stargate tech, but stronger/immobile vs robo and templar. I'm hoping and predicting that these kinds of different dynamics will occur depending on your composition, as blizzard has mentioned they are trying to make these present in other matchups too. i think you completely missed the point of the OP also good OP~ | ||
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Yoshi Kirishima
United States10292 Posts
On August 16 2012 10:20 KawaiiRice wrote: i think you completely missed the point of the OP also good OP~ From my understanding, the OP is saying that mech in HotS is not very mech-spirited. They are buffing the factory tech tree by giving it 2 new units, but it does not actually feel like BW mech. I'm countering by saying that I believe warhound/hellion is not the only way to play, nor is warhound/hellion with support tanks/vikings, and playing a tank-heavy style will also be viable. Then I go on to note differences in SC2 mech play currently that I feel are mech-spirited, but are not present in BW (like PFs and sensor towers). @Aeres Hi, not trying to ignore touhou thread, just want to make my comeback special. kekekek. you'll see ^^; | ||
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AssyrianKing
Australia2111 Posts
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Sapphire.lux
Romania2620 Posts
For TvP, i think you are just dreaming. They (blizzard) did not even bothered ONCE to make mech work (Tank based) in WOL. Now you think with HOTS they will work on giving Terran 3? 4? different versions of mech? With Worhounds designed to kill Tanks, you can kiss any Tank buff goodby, because you know...then WH would not kill them anymore. They are Hell bent on reducing the strenght on Tanks and the WH is part of that. The less Tanks, the less "mech like" the style becomes. Unless of course, you think an army of robots roaming around is Terran mech...because that is what Blizzard is creating, IMO. | ||
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ZjiublingZ
United Arab Emirates439 Posts
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TheRavensName
United States911 Posts
Random Comment: Is it sad my favorite part of this was that someone posted a picture of Star Wars: Galactic Battlegrounds? | ||
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Yoshi Kirishima
United States10292 Posts
On August 16 2012 11:26 Sapphire.lux wrote: Yoshi Kirishima, you seem to fail to understand that this unit, the Warhound, IS MADE TO KILL SIEGE TANKS. That is the first thing both DB and DK mention when they talk about this unit. This, in TvT, goes AGAINST mech. If today you can hold a position resonably easy with a few Tanks at a choke, be it against bio or other tanks, this abomination of a mechanical marauder will make this imposible. This will force the tank player to keep all his units in a ball or else it's just giving them away. For TvP, i think you are just dreaming. They (blizzard) did not even bothered ONCE to make mech work (Tank based) in WOL. Now you think with HOTS they will work on giving Terran 3? 4? different versions of mech? With Worhounds designed to kill Tanks, you can kiss any Tank buff goodby, because you know...then WH would not kill them anymore. They are Hell bent on reducing the strenght on Tanks and the WH is part of that. The less Tanks, the less "mech like" the style becomes. Unless of course, you think an army of robots roaming around is Terran mech...because that is what Blizzard is creating, IMO. I've already mentioned that I don't like the idea of warhounds killing tanks, since it will just be warhounds vs warhounds. The rest of my comment is only about TvZ and TvP. I don't understand what you mean by different versions of mech. Are there not different "versions" (compositions) of bio? There are tankless styles, MMM + BFH styles, turtly marine tank styles, marine tank styles with lots of drops, etc. etc. In TvP, You can go heavy on vikings and maraduers and ghosts like thorzain likes, or you can go heavier on the marines if you're confident with your micro. These are just a few examples. Sure, they may not have given mech any attention (and really not at all in TvP), but they are obviously helping out factory tech in HotS, so how is it dreaming to think they may be making mech more powerful? Even if mech is being buffed in ways that aren't true to the BW mech spirit, mech still will be more viable. Now you may say that it's just a mechanical version of MMM, but it doesn't have to be, as it depends on your composition. Simply changing your composition gives your army different strengths and weaknesses, which lead to different styles. With 5 different factory units, there will surely be many more styles than there are now, and some existing styles can be played mostly the same way they are now except they will be stronger due to the 2 new units, which can be used in some situations as a stronger replacement for any of the 3 mech units we have now. I'm not sure if you read my whole post, not that i expect you to since it's so long, but isn't it unfair to be angry in your post if you didn't finish reading? I thought I made it clear I was totally unsure and worried about TvT mech, and I sectioned off which parts were about TvZ and which were about TvP. Also this evidences you didn't understand my position: "Unless of course, you think an army of robots roaming around is Terran mech..." My entire post was mainly about there being different ways to play mech, just as there are any kind of composition in WoL, and all the variations in such compositions. And again, I believe that a tank heavy composition will still be viable. I also noted many other ways in which I feel SC2 has improved on the mech-spirit from BW by adding things such as PF and sensor towers which were not in BW. It's similar to bio in TvZ feeling quite like mech with the tanks, emphasizing you leapfrogging them and holding ground. But that's not the only way to play; people like MKP love playing with just MMM and constantly pressuring and dropping everywhere. Do people complain about this flexibility and variance? If you want to play pure bio you can go with MMM, and in HotS, you can play tank-centric mech still. You already can in WoL, even though it's quite weak, but with warhounds, which can serve as a stronger replacement for thors (but will still cause your army to be immobile since you need to wait for your tanks), and battle hellions, which serve as a stronger replacement for hellions once the protoss actually charges into engage your position, tank-centric mech will work stronger than it has. Now, obviously it's complicated a bit by the Tempest and such, but I'm pretty sure Blizzard is not working towards forcing terran mechers to respond with a low tank count army to counter Tempests, as there are quite a few tanks in the battle report. In the battle at 14:00, there are ~10 tanks, ~10 Vikings, ~5 Warhounds, ~15 Hellions, which is about 90 army supply (how is he maxed with that little...? Did he have 100 scvs? lol). My observation becomes even more true if we are to believe this battle report is scripted. Something else the warhound allows is less ghosts. While ghosts will obviously still help with EMP, I didn't like how you could get a high number of immortals to have a strong army against WoL mech, and if you get ghosts you might not have enough tanks. In the same tech tree, protoss could get colossi and force vikings. With the warhounds, the haywire missile will make ghosts more optional rather than needed, so that we only "need" to get ghosts vs HTs. Now you may ask, what does this do with mech? Well it'll lessen the aspect that as a mech player, you need to be very careful with your composition and have the right counters, but it will make your mech army much more flexible and strong in the earlier stages, allowing you to hold a position more strongly. You also won't have to worry about whiffing 1 of your ~3 only EMPs in an early engagement, something which I feel is more of a dynamic more fitting with bio. Another point I haven't seen anyone discuss is the warhound's supply. Because the warhound is such a powerful 2 supply unit, it allows the mech army to be larger. Instead of having 1 400 HP thor, you can have 2 warhounds for a total of 440 HP. What this means is that you will have more supply to use for your tanks, significantly increasing mech's lategame power, and allowing you to spread out in more places to hold more positions. | ||
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pyrostat
Korea (South)70 Posts
i disagree with buffing mech | ||
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pyrostat
Korea (South)70 Posts
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Yoshi Kirishima
United States10292 Posts
On August 16 2012 13:02 pyrostat wrote: and siege tanks counter warhounds as long as the warhounds are clumped just like every single ground unit the siege tank counters. I'm hoping this is true or will be true, as having warhounds being the counter to siege lines as suggested in interviews before sounds stupid. This is another reason why I feel warhounds dmg/attack speed should be nerfed (probably damage), while tanks can be buffed, which will help prevent someone from picking 50 warhounds instead of 33 siege tanks in the lategame. (Though then again, I haven't really tested whether 50 warhounds or 33 tanks is stronger in most situations in a direct engagement... but siege tanks will always win in the ideal situation, because you can build OCs/PFs/Barrack/Ebay as a HP shield for your tanks without taking more supply, while you cannot do such a thing with mass warhounds. On August 16 2012 09:55 Cedstick wrote: I'm not even going to bother responding to every point or paragraph in that monolith of a post. No, you're wrong. Mech as it is now doesn't hold a candle to it's BW predecessor. Mech in HotS is utter garbage. Btw did you even read this? it is actually criticizing the Mech being shown in HotS | ||
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dudecrush
Canada418 Posts
Vulture that cost 75 supply :D I agree though. I play zerg, but I think that tanks need a buff and the reinstatement of overkill. Also having the high ground miss chance back would be nice as well. | ||
Falling
Canada11259 Posts
On August 16 2012 04:02 happyGo wrote: Really great post, but I disagree with you on a few points. First, I think you're completely right about the tank being the cornerstone for mech, but I can't help but feel that the rest of your analysis of 'quintessential mech' was influenced by your understanding of how mech works in BW, and put yourself (and mech) in a smaller box than necessary. If you're simply describing BW mech then thats fine, but I was under the impression that you're going a step further by relating it to SC2. When it comes to game design, a lot of the beauty of age comes from unexpected uses for certain game mechanics (in this case units/abilities). I'm convinced that Mech works in BW NOT because the units are perfectly designed that way, but because people MADE them work together. Second, I think the basic principle of bio vs mech is simpler: mobility vs immobility. Mech emphasizes the macro side of unit control: where I place my army vs what I do with it. Thats why Intotally agree with you about the tank being central. Mech is a strategic choice, and you've defined it as a tactical one. Watching the TvP battle report and seeing mech in action...I get the sense that no one has even explored the potential of the war hound/battle hellion yet. Give it time. I definitely am describing how mech works in BW and while I may have created a smaller box then necessary, I think it also highlights the range, depth and dynamic interplay that makes mech. And why people like to play mech. And why people want to play mech in SC2. For instance, if tank is the cornerstone of mech, then theoretically we could eliminate a whole bunch of those roles. Make the tank fire faster, get rid of overkill so damage is evenly spread and splash damage turned against you isn't as bad. In addition, make the maps smaller and more tight and then you really don't need raiders, cannon fodder or flank protection. And what you have his tank-viking. Tanks to shell everything, vikings to protect the transition to air. It's the closest SC2 got to mech, but I think people, including Blizzard are right to see it as too boring. It's also very map specific. Smaller, tighter maps will work best because as soon as it get's bigger and more open, the tanks lose their cliffs which were their only flank protection. In addition, it's much easier to backstab with larger maps. With overkill and slower rates of fire, tanks are more vulnerable to units that get in close to them. Without overkill, 2 tanks will fire to kill the zergling and only a little bit of splash damage. With overkill, that tank/ clumped tanks get's obliterated. There are more advantages to overkill that I'd like to talk about. But for now, overkill is a higher reward, higher risk and makes it more necessary that melee doesn't get through the front lines. (The role of cannon fodder.) That's not a necessary dynamic to mech. But it's one that creates greater depth and an interesting tension. Having an easily available raider is necessary so that mech is more adaptable to larger maps. Mech is slow, so the reach of mech becomes more limited with larger maps. Raiders maybe aren't necessary to mech, but they make mech more versatile. In addition, it makes mech more interesting. Tank-viking was considered boring. Raider's solves part of that. The ability to protect flanks with a non-supply, cheap mine-analog aka the spider mine is also not perhaps necessary to mech and is "putting mech into a box." However, once again, it allows mech to transition into bigger maps and more open maps. They allow mech to push very far afield and still feel somewhat secure. (At the very least they give a form of map vision and a slight delay.) It protects against back-stabs, flanks, and mass drops. It also sends units temporarily away from the main army to drop the mine or mine equivalent, which creates potential mini-conflicts between mine-layers and mine-sweepers. The mine-sweepers can even catch them before the mine-equivalent is laid, creating a mini-battle outside of the central armies. Again, it's perhaps not 'necessary' to mech. But it's something that makes mech more versatile outside of small, tight maps. And it makes the match-up more interesting than just tank-viking. Friendly damage from mines is again another interesting tension similar to overkill friendly fire tanks splash. Place them far away and they'll protect your army. Too close and they are your own worst enemy. Awesome spectator moments and lots more decisions for the pro's. So yes, while I did describe how mech works in BW. But I am trying to describe what people mean when they say they want to see more mech in SC2. You could make mech simpler. But I tried to show the sorts of things required to make mech an interesting, dynamic, and versatile game style for SC2. @VGhost VGhost said that Blizzard never intended for the Tank to be the central unit and had rather hoped for bio mech. That's probably true. It's certainly true in SC2 and on that front they succeeded. And initially I was on board with that idea. I think everyone is in agreement that bio-mech is interesting. No problem there. Bio-mech is interesting in both BW and SC2. If bio-mech stays in TvZ, I would be well pleased. But the loss of pure mech I no longer agree with especially when what we're getting in its place is even more bio units that come out of the factory instead of just the barracks. Edit Also fixed that 75 supply vulture. Talk about a super unit- maybe a bomb that detonates the entire planet/map? @Yoshi Not sure about the first half of your post. You seem to be saying where the new units will fit? I think they're pretty redundant. Whatever the warhound can do, the marine (and marauder) can do, they just don't have the "rock-paper-scissors" stats of anti-armour bonus. But it seems to attack just the same. And in my mind pretty much trod on territory already covered by other units. But I also think the marauder is rather redundant as well and is already too good vs tanks. In essence, you have 3 units doing more or less the same thing and the marauder-warhound are pretty identical. Only the marine is the truly interesting unit as it's weak, but requires a lot of micro to be very effective. (Also, make tanks more powerful.) As for making changes to the burst damage of the hellion being imba. Well they can always balance the stats to reign it in. But if it had faster handling, it would give that extra power to the players with godly micro. And it's the sort of power that scales pretty well into the late game. Late game, you probably don't have time to micro them all properly. You can't get a critical mass of 150 of them and expect to micro them as well as a group of 4. Balance around handling rather than stats is far more interesting. Rather than buff their hit points and slow them down. Buff their turn around time. The switch from vulnerable unit to godly unit due to micro I think is always desirable over make a unit slow and clunky. I see your points with PF's and watch towers. My only point to that would be is mines are more versatile. PF's and watchtowers are limited to specific places dictated by map-makers. (Unless you have insane amounts of minerals to make PF walls.) Mines can be placed absolutely anywhere you want. Including under your own army. Everywhere from the sublime to the stupid. So yes, but I don't think PF's and watch towers are a proper replacement to mines. You certainly can't surround an army with them in a crazy move to blow up a good portion of the army or lose them all before you planted them because you were countered. And you can't use them to block one path and not the other. As for Tempest. It will only increase positional battles if the air battles are asymmetrical imo. I'm a little more shaky on this as I haven't properly thought all the different dynamics of air. But as a general rule of thumb, there is no terrain features in the sky. So if the battle is primarily in the sky (air to air), it'll probably be less about position persay and more about having the bigger cloud of units. And maybe spreading out or packing together your cloud of units appropriately. Air to ground might be positional. Especially if the AA is ground based. (I'm thinking Carrier vs Goliath and Marine vs BW Mutalisks here.) On August 15 2012 06:52 FidoDido wrote: great analysis and post but unfortunately, I'm pretty sure Blizzard doesn't think like this when they are making new games and adding new units or balancing the game because none of them are at pro-level of sc2 or bw. I don't think that's a good enough excuse for them. I'm no pro in sc2 or bw. I've never pretended to be- you can read my other blogs to get an understanding of my skill in BW (and probably infer my skill in SC2). All I've tried to do is break apart how BW mech works and hopefully reveal why it was interesting. And by extension suggest how much depth of play could be built up on the foundation of SC2. I'm sure an actual pro could bring even more insight to the table then I. They just can't be bothered to write a 3K article and then write ridicuously long responses. | ||
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FATJESUSONABIKE
184 Posts
I seriously wonder what Blizzard means when they say they value our community's opinion; it sounds like they quickly go through BNet forums more than they carefully read actually reliable threads like this one... I can't help but feel like a lot of people here know more about Starcraft (whether it's BW or 2) than some of the chief Blizzard designers. | ||
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risk.nuke
Sweden2825 Posts
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