EPTDunno why Blizzard doesn't understand this, I mean the Colossus showed me how dumbfounded Blizzard really are when it comes to ''siege'' units. BW got it, SC2 doesn't, HOTS doesn't either.
In Defence of Mech - Page 7
| Blogs > Falling |
|
Zorgaz
Sweden2951 Posts
Dunno why Blizzard doesn't understand this, I mean the Colossus showed me how dumbfounded Blizzard really are when it comes to ''siege'' units. BW got it, SC2 doesn't, HOTS doesn't either. | ||
|
Plansix
United States60190 Posts
On August 15 2012 00:47 Zorgaz wrote: Man i really completely agree with you man, and the sad part is I'm sure almost everyone does. Dunno why Blizzard doesn't understand this, I mean the Colossus showed me how dumbfounded Blizzard really are when it comes to ''siege'' units. BW got it, SC2 doesn't, HOTS doesn't either. I don't know, a sky tower and shoots lasers at long range sounds like a totally reasonable unit to me. They may have proven to be a little to simple to use for people, but that is the way of game design. When most of these units were created, everyone, including blizzard, had a very limited understanding of how SC2 would work out. Blizzard has always had the design philosophy that they would make units, but it was up to the players to find ways to use them effectively. It is easy to look back two years later and complain about units that we feel are to easy to use, but that is the gift that hindsight provides. Even though the community has voice displeasure with the colossi, it can be said that we voice displeasure about everything. Personally, I think the colossi's days in the spotlight are limited in HotS. With the viper and Warhound, they will not be as untouchable as in WoL. With range 7, the a small group of warhounds has the ability to alpha strike the colossi into the ground. Siege tanks will get their day in the sun as well. The battle report we saw was limited to 20 minutes and the "mech player" was not taking the slow, plodding pace that we would expect from a true meching player. Limited raiding with the battle hellions, almost no use of drop ships with widow mines. And no ghosts or nukes either. We have not been given access to these units to explore how they can be used. The examples with can think of by watching this videa are nothing compaired to what we will come up with when we get our hands on these units. I have no doubt my zealots will suffer under a wave of seige tank fire, only to be finished off by a flame shooting robot. | ||
|
Chronos.
United States805 Posts
Maybe an upgrade available a bit later, like from the armory, that gives a big buff to Tanks could work well. Zerg will have Ultralisk charge which will be great against tanks so they should be made stronger in that matchup, tanks are barely used against toss in the first place, and like you said they should be stronger than bio in TvT anyway. | ||
|
dvorakftw
681 Posts
On August 14 2012 17:43 Falling wrote: @Kreb Hm, maybe the conclusion needed a bit more as it was rather implicit. I'd say that there is labelling issue. But it's more than that. When people say they want "more mech" Blizzard is definitely giving us more "mech units." But what they usually mean is more mech style play. I can guarantee you, when Artosis rants about how mech is the way of the future, he's not thinking about a re-skinned maruader. He's thinki mech style play as I've tried to describe. So yeah, what I'd like to see is Blizzard push more into mech style play. I don't care about the specific units persay (contrary to a couple people thinking this is a BW circle jerk.). But I think if they're looking to introduce mech style play, those are some of the roles they need to look to fill with new SC2 HotS units. So what exactly do you want? I'd agree that a mine-creating unit is better than mines that take supply straight from a factory but other than that I don't get your point. Watch avilo's stream and he does pretty much what you describe with mech. I'll grant with avilo in SC2 it's more bio-mech often into sky-mech but hey if more mech units don't equal mech play then I don't see why non-mech mmm can't fill the canon fodder role. I've read the OP three times now and I still don't know what exactly you want. | ||
|
shin ken
Germany612 Posts
| ||
|
0neder
United States3733 Posts
Kim and Browder are completely myopic when it comes to being able to look at their game design holistically. If this is the future of SC2's final version, I just won't buy it. I will vote with my wallet. I love SC, but there are plenty of other games where marginally competent developers can evolve a series well (take CS:GO for example). Beta starts today, I'll come back when HotS beta starts. If half the new units aren't gone, I just won't play it. Mech needs: a very fast raid unit. doesn't have one, hellion speed got nerved a stronger siege tank a 3rd unit that isn't a hero high supply unit that either replaces the marauder or has more depth to it than the war hound. | ||
|
BraveProbe
36 Posts
| ||
Falling
Canada11349 Posts
On August 14 2012 18:26 Verator wrote: There's a lot of things you got wrong in this :/ Multiple wspider mines at a time: you can do this in campaign, it just requires micro (you can't box vultures and lay like 8 mines at once from all of them) if you select one, lay mines, select a second, lay mines, they'll lay simultaneously. I'm not sure I follow. To lay 3 mines you need to individually select each one and then individually plant them? But because it takes a little time to plant them, the second one ends up laying down mine the same time as the first? Because that's not my point. It was a throw a way jab. But you could select 3-4 vultures at the same time, press 'i' once and they would lay 3-4 mines down after a single command, but it was spread out due to magic boxing. It's simply the point that so-called "smart casting" isn't smart persay, but just a different design. Or maybe I got the SC2 vulture mines wrong? It's been a year or so since I played the campaign, but I wasn't very impressed by them. Hellions don't need to sit there to do damage, they kite just like vultures do. We see this all the time with hellions, especially against zerg. The timings are very similar to those of vultures. They kite. I admit they kite. My point is they are very similar to the vulture in. But because the flame is just a little bit longer to deal out it's damage then the vulture, it has to sit there a little longer. Rather than the fast whip around. I had chalked up the differences between the hellion and vulture as just SC2 vs BW preference. Until I saw how they were trying to fix the hellion in HotS. The fact that it needs more health and not more manueverability highlighted a fairly subtle difference between the two. I don't mind the hellions, but I don't like the direction they're going which is slower, bulkier, and more clunky. Like everything else in the Terran arsenal. And like every other RTS unit. No overkill is more antideathball than with overkill. With overkill, every single tank shot will be spent on a single unit, meaning less units take damage. With smart fire, the damage is spread out over the army to do as much damage as possible. There is more wasted damage with overkill. I think I'm going to try to treat this separately, but I think I'll get more push back on this. But I still stand by my point. We do see mech play already, and increasingly more in tvt. Artosis called that pretty well. And a mech army obliterates bio armies. Its very one-sided. They only win when they out maneuver or the mech player makes a mistake. Viking clouds are less and less common now, as terran players are mixing in ravens and thors, which punish having a giant cloud of vikings. So air armies are ravens and vikings and BCs and then thors firing into those. Hardly just clouds of vikings. That could very well be, but mech isn't as refined an art as in the past and it's still missing some crucial roles. (Flank prevention from something that doesn't take up supply.) But my greater concern wasn't really current WoL. It is what it is. My concern was the sort of units getting added into the mix that are supposedly going to boost 'mech' in HotS. But all I was seeing was more bulky, infantry units. And one ear-marked to kill the tank.  Miss rate IS BAD. Its random, and it creates random outcomes. The same could be achieved by reducing damage up cliffs, and the only difference is games wouldn't be decided because someone got lucky and never missed a shot up a cliff. Why is it bad? People have decided this and then tout it around as fact. I agree that having a tornado touch down on the map at random to destroy stuff is bad. That's random and bad. Miss rate is just one way of giving high ground/ positional advantage. Sure use damage reduction. But currently, cliffs aren't near so important because there's not much advantage to them compared to the past. And that also hurts positional play. You say that mech needs meat shields, and then say that battle hellions are bad because they are meat shields. So which is it, meat shields are good, or meat shields are bad? Not really. I said mech needs meat shields. But they don't need a meat shield that is specifically designed to be a meat shield. Mono role where the "unique" feature of the unit is it has a lot of hit points. That's a boring unit design even if you give it a special ability. What I said was hellions actually rather fit the role of cannon fodder. However, I went on to highlight some of the limitations of the Hellion itself. (This shouldn't be too ground-breaking- Blizzard feels the need to turn it into a battle-hellion aka give it more hit points, so something must be wrong.) And in contrast, I was highlighting how multi-functional the vulture was in comparison. Yes Hellions can soak up damage and raid. But in comparison it's a song sung in unison compared to the harmony we had before. It's not a bad unit and it fulfills it's role. It just isn't a rock star. You say that mech is bad because its immobile and bio will always beat it with mobility, and then go on to say that mech is great in brood war, because it creates situations where people try to beat mech with mobility. That actually not a contradiction. It's asymmetretical warfare. That is one of the big draws to playing Starcraft even when you don't really understand the reprecussions of it. (I certainly couldn't have written a 3K word analysis on mech in 2007.) But it was one of the things that one me over from AoE2 was that every race felt completely different. Mech Play and Tanks specifically combined with mines is precisely what makes Terran feel completely different than any other race. Not just looked different. Like you have a big walker thing that shoots long lazers out and I have have a big transformer thing that shoots rockets out. Totally different. Actually it isn't. The unit may look different, but the play style they promote is remarkably the same. Walk them in the right direction and start shooting. The races play completely differently. Terran is very positional and others have to counter it by being tremendously mobile, attacking multiple fronts, flanking etc. If everyone one was as positional as BW Terran then every match up would be a giant chess match like BW TvT. Which again would be rather one note. Mobility isn't bad. In fact it's very good. But if Terran's positional mech play is de-emphasied, then it loses it's identity. (So who cares, this is SC2.) Again. The biggest surface difference that a newb will notice between Starcraft and any other RTS is how completely different the styles of play are. Mech play is a completely unique style of play to any RTS game I can think of. It makes Starcraft stand out. It's fun to play and fun to watch and it requires skill. Lots and lots of skill. (As a side note, zerg needs a 1 supply swarm unit.) | ||
|
Probe1
United States17920 Posts
| ||
|
Meerel
Germany713 Posts
| ||
|
Falling
Canada11349 Posts
On August 15 2012 02:35 Terranlover wrote: just make this game into a exact copy of broodwar and everyone is happy~~ There I disagree with you. Discover how the roles work. Figure out what made the cool unit synergy and different styles of games. Look at what gave the pro's opportunity to show skill. Learn from the 'wow' moments for spectators. Then use that to create new SC2 units. Aha here's the other one I wanted to reply to On August 14 2012 19:57 XenoX101 wrote: Meh, this is just another thinly veiled "SC2 is bad because it isn't Brood War" post. Both Widow Mines and Warhounds fulfil your criteria of what mech is. And the mobility of goliaths contradict your points against the Battle Hellion/Thor/etc.. Moreover you are incorrect about how hellions attack, they attack in a single burst the same way that vultures do. It seems like you start with a criteria of what you think Mech is, but then change the rules as soon as you realise that HOTS units fulfil your criteria . As a clear example, why does widow mines taking up supply make any difference? this wasn't in your original criteria yet it's your sole reason for claiming widow mines aren't "mech-like". In my opinion this would've been a good post if it was more objective, and had less of a blatant BW bias. I re-explained the hellion part so, I won't touch that. Widow Mines Perhaps you didn't catch it, but I am most hopeful about Widow Mines. They are the most mech-ish new unit that Terran is getting in HotS. I was simply looking at some of limitations I see about it. Namely if it's separated from the main army, you're tying up valuable money and supply. So no, taking up supply wasn't necessarily part of my explicit criteria. But it's party what makes Terran mech army works. The core of mech army is difficult to move quickly from one place to another. This is over-come by fast raiders, strong defensive units that can hold of much larger forces, and having a large zone of influence on the map that goes beyond their supply. All three of these means Terran can control large pieces of territory even if there main army takes some time to reposition. Mines can control space without risking money or depleting the army size. It controls space even when the army isn't there. Taking up supply is a clear draw back if you are hoping to protect a flank. And because it takes up supply and so much money, it can't do what the spider mine does. Terran makes vultures throughout the entire game. There's constant action all around the map as vultures are busy laying mines to slow down the Protoss, Terran, (or late game Zerg). And the other side is busy, mine clearing. Think about how people get all in a tizzy about amazing creep spread. And then Terran and Protoss have to keep sweeping the ground for creep tumours. Now imagine if those creep tumours can pop up, run into the Protoss army and explode for splash damage. Or imagine the Protoss can turn those same creep back on the Zerg by dragging them into the Zerg force to explode in the Zerg's face. Now imagine the Zerg actually has to be careful where they plant those creep tumours and destroy the ones too close to their army. Now you're starting to understand the amazing back and forth tension of mine laying and mine sweeping. But it's not possible to have widow mines in anywhere near the number as spider mines. A good 50-100 supply of your army would have to be devoted to widow mines to protect against flanks like the spider mines do. If widow mines can't match the spider mine in numbers and cost and it's not appreciably more powerful, then it's going to be much harder to fulfill it's role in protecting the flanks to prevent backstabs and base trades. But even if widow mines aren't supposed to function like spider mines and you make 10 of them. If it doesn't do damage, that weakens your main army and goes to waste. Unlike spider mines. Spider mines can be laid, destroyed and never kill a single unit and still do it's job which was to slow down the opposing army to allow the Tanks to reposition. Every widow mine lost could have been in the Terran army and was wasted xmineral ygas. (Cost doesn't matter too much) Is it premature to critique the widow mine? Maybe. But I think it's relatively easy to see the draw back between the two. And avilo's testing pretty much confirms my thoughts. But it is the one unit I am most hopeful about. (Although I think the timer thing is very Zilean-esque. Straight up explosions are better for spectator sports rather than having time clocks on units heads. Too cluttered and all that.) Warhound Which criteria does the warhound fulfill? It doesn't shoot up, so I guess it would be the cannon fodder? But we already have that in spades. Marines, Marauders, Hellions, Battle-hellions. Heck, even scv's can be used. The main problem I have with the Warhound is Blizzard's explicit goal. Warhound is supposed to be anti-mech. And then I look at it. It moves just the same as any other infantry unit and its bonus damage is against the tank. The heart and soul of Mech Play. That explicit goal is contrary to true mech play. It's just the factory version of m&m. But marine micro is actually cool. | ||
|
Rah
United States973 Posts
| ||
|
L_Master
United States8017 Posts
| ||
|
Qikz
United Kingdom12022 Posts
| ||
|
GinDo
3327 Posts
On August 14 2012 13:18 zefreak wrote: Sometimes I wish SC2 was just a reskin of BW If HOTS ends up falling short, I hope they take feedback into serious consideration. The fact that DB didn't know that mothership vortex was standard lategame PvZ makes me wonder how someone so ignorant of the metagame could be responsible for design/balance. When I saw the interview I was shocked about how ignorant the Starcraft 2 team was -_-. All they need is to watch is GSL. Catering to the casuals this much is a huge mistake by Blizzard. Just look at C&C4, AOE Online, and Halo Wars. Fail, Fail, and big surprise FAIL! | ||
|
GinDo
3327 Posts
On August 15 2012 02:55 Falling wrote: There I disagree with you. Discover how the roles work. Figure out what made the cool unit synergy and different styles of games. Look at what gave the pro's opportunity to show skill. Learn from the 'wow' moments for spectators. Then use that to create new SC2 units. Aha here's the other one I wanted to reply to I re-explained the hellion part so, I won't touch that. Widow Mines Perhaps you didn't catch it, but I am most hopeful about Widow Mines. They are the most mech-ish new unit that Terran is getting in HotS. I was simply looking at some of limitations I see about it. Namely if it's separated from the main army, you're tying up valuable money and supply. So no, taking up supply wasn't necessarily part of my criteria. However, taking up supply is a clear draw back if you are hoping to protect a flank. And because it takes up supply and so much money, it can't do what the spider mine does. Terran makes vultures throughout the entire game. There's constant action all around the map as vultures are busy laying mines to slow down the Protoss, Terran, (or late game Zerg). And the other side is busy, mine clearing. Think about how people get all in a tizzy about amazing creep spread. And then Terran and Protoss have to keep sweeping the ground for creep tumours. Now imagine if those creep tumours can pop up, run into the Protoss army and explode for splash damage. Or imagine the Protoss can turn those same creep back on the Zerg by dragging them into the Zerg force to explode in the Zerg's face. Now imagine the Zerg actually has to be careful where they plant those creep tumours and destroy the ones too close to their army. Now you're starting to understand the amazing back and forth tension of mine laying and mine sweeping. But it's not possible to have widow mines in anywhere near the number as spider mines. A good 50-100 supply of your army would have to be devoted to widow mines to protect against flanks like the spider mines do. But even if widow mines aren't supposed to function like spider mines and you make 10 of them. If it doesn't do damage, that weakens your main army and goes to waste. Unlike spider mines. Spider mines can be laid, destroyed and never kill a single unit and still do it's job which was to slow down the opposing army to allow the Tanks to reposition. Every widow mine lost could have been in the Terran army and was wasted xmineral ygas. (Cost doesn't matter too much) Is it premature to critique the widow mine? Maybe. But I think it's relatively easy to see the draw back between the two. And avilo's testing pretty much confirms my thoughts. But it is the one unit I am most hopeful about. (Although I think the timer thing is very Zilean-esque. Straight up explosions are better for spectator sports rather than having time clocks on units heads. Too cluttered and all that.) Warhound Which criteria does the warhound fulfill? It doesn't shoot up, so I guess it would be the cannon fodder? But we already have that in spades. Marines, Marauders, Hellions, Battle-hellions. Heck, even scv's can be used. The main problem I have with the Warhound is Blizzard's explicit goal. Warhound is supposed to be anti-mech. And then I look at it. It moves just the same as any other infantry unit and its bonus damage is against the tank. The heart and soul of Mech Play. That explicit goal is contrary to true mech play. It's just the factory version of m&m. But marine micro is actually cool. They should just scrap the factory and add a new add-on to the barracks that cost 100 gas called, "EZ Mode Techlab". This techlab allow you to build giant armored Infantry. | ||
|
Creager
Germany1893 Posts
I'm still a bit sad Blizz dropped the idea of the shredder which also would've been monotone in it's role as stationary defence against run by's/counterattacks, but otherwise most certainly could've filled that missing role in a mech army. On the other hand, the widow mine seems rather cool, but has severe flaws in design IMO, such as the 10 sec (or whatever timing it may receive) timer and the usage of supply, just like you already said... Don't wanna repeat everything  Really appreciate the effort! | ||
|
Creager
Germany1893 Posts
On August 15 2012 03:40 GinDo wrote: When I saw the interview I was shocked about how ignorant the Starcraft 2 team was -_-. All they need is to watch is GSL. Catering to the casuals this much is a huge mistake by Blizzard. Just look at C&C4, AOE Online, and Halo Wars. Fail, Fail, and big surprise FAIL! Which interview? Can anyone provide a link, please? Would be really nice, thx! | ||
|
Tsuki.eu
Portugal1049 Posts
Either they (blizzard) already have an overall plan and structure for the complete sc2 game or they just want to play safe. I know this is unrelated, but last time a game (expansion or original) surprised me by its originality was HL2, that was a long time ago, maybe titan q.q | ||
|
Masayume
Netherlands208 Posts
-What if the Haywire missiles arent't autocast, and not anti mechanical ground unit. -What if they have to be manually cast, and serve as an anti air attack, this could be a Valkyrie like aoe, or a single target missile. -What if you have to produce a missile like an interceptor gets produced on a carrier, costing a small amount of minerals. -Then lastly a missile limit could be set depending on the nature and overall power of the new AA spell. Now you have a unit that has limited AA during battles and has to be used at the correct moment vs air units, but has a certain amount of firepower to it so that the enemy has to carefully time out air strikes and movement? Seems like a way better design that also takes away the A-move syndrome of the new unit and replaces it with strategical depth and micro (focused launch etc). This would probably be easier than to ask Blizzard to start from scratch after working on this unit since Blizzcon 2011, and makes Mech more interesting at the same time. That coupled with some slight changes being made to the widow mine would recreate the core mechanics that made BW mech so awesome, without actually copying BW. | ||
| ||
