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Opening the HotS form was the greatest moment for the SC2 general forum this year. The mass exodus of users who live for balance arguments is a blessing. Presented with the fresh, blood soaked meat of units like the Warhound and Tempest, they moved in packs to feast and destroy any rational perception anyone could have of these units. Dormant Grandmasters level players, stuck in platinum for playing the wrong race and broodwar experts that joined Team Liquid last month have joined forced to make their opinion known.
Although I enjoy a good argument, even I could not stand against the relentless assault of these forum warriors. However, in my brief dives into the fray, I have seen a few patterns:
The Warhound:
• Deserves at least 7 threads with similar titles
• Apparently cannot be microed and is an A-move unit
• Has similar speed, agility and control to a stalker, but with longer range
• Stalkers can be microed, they may be a-move units
• All of the members of these threads are previous Broodwar players and have extensive knowledge about mech play in Broodwar
• Most of the threads think that the unit should be made better and should reward better play and control.
• It is not clear how you make a unit that rewards better play and control. It appears that it would be good with “good design” and by looking at broodwar.
Terran threads:
• There are no other changes to terran worth discussing.
• The widow mine was nerfed before the beta even started, with was previously not possible in a close beta for balance.
• The ghosts still do not factor into any part of terran play.
All Protoss Threads:
• All of the protoss units force the player to use the stargate. It cannot be confirmed if this is good or bad design, but the word design is used a lot.
• The oracle is made of glass and children’s dreams. It explodes when a missile turret looks at it. It is also crazy fast and turns on a dime.
• The oracle is a gimmicky unit and does not requires little micro and is easy to use. Entomb is too easy to use and should required several actions.
• The Tempest is horrible and has no use.
• The carrier would be a better unit, because while it is also horrible, it was from broodwar and by default, better.
• The mothership core dumbs down the game with mass recall, removing risk from the game.
• The mothership core also cost too much and is dangerous and risky to rush to.
• All threads about protoss units will discuss that warpgate is bad and should be removed from the game. The phrase “defender’s advantage” will be used at number of times when this topic comes up.
Zerg Threads:
• The viper is apparently not a unit in HotS and not worth talking about. Unless you are Seth. At that point you can build the viper and make a short thread video and thread about it.
• The viper can be used to pull ultralisks up cliffs. Although it is clearly not very good, it is funny as hell and should be encouraged.
• The swarmhost is to powerful and was toned down in the recent patch.
• The swarmhost is a horrible unit with no place in the game. It should be replaced with the lurker, because the lurker is a better unit, with better design because it is from broodwar.
• Ultralisk burrow is slower than before, but still amusing to watch.
It is clear that HotS is going to be a great or terrible addition to Starcraft 2. The only thing we know for sure is that there is no middle of the road. I look forward to the next two years when we find more closet broodwar experts and the word design is the most used word on Team Liquid.
  
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Also, more rocks 
I think you got pretty much everything that we'll all be fighting about for the next month or so  Nice job!
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You forgot how ugly warhound is; but I totally agree. Nothing can be done about the threads unless you wanna ban-hammer everyone.
Everybody's a critic.
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Fun read. I can't say that some of the comments you're poking fun at aren't warranted, but it is a bit silly that while people like White-Ra are trying to learn about the game, everyone on the forums seems to already have "better" opinions than White Ra on how the game does work and how it ought to work.
Personally, though, I think the design of HotS has some serious design flaws in its design. I don't understand why blizzard doesn't design their game with a better approach to game design. From a unit design standpoint, I think its obvious that just thinking about unit design should make this obvious, as units like the Tempest are just designed to have bad design. I like Blood Wars design decisions with regard to unit design to be better designed. I'm a big fan of Blood Wars (or BW, as some call it) and think it is the best strategy game ever designed.
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Canada13407 Posts
On September 11 2012 03:22 Treehead wrote:
Fun read. I can't say that some of the comments you're poking fun at aren't warranted, but it is a bit silly that while people like White-Ra are trying to learn about the game, everyone on the forums seems to already have "better" opinions than White Ra on how the game does work and how it ought to work.
Personally, though, I think the design of HotS has some serious design flaws in its design. I don't understand why blizzard doesn't design their game with a better approach to game design. From a unit design standpoint, I think its obvious that just thinking about unit design should make this obvious, as units like the Tempest are just designed to have bad design. I like Blood Wars design decisions with regard to unit design to be better designed. I'm a big fan of Blood Wars (or BW, as some call it) and think it is the best strategy game ever designed.
I greatly enjoyed the design of your response and the design of the op you two should help blizzard learn what good design means because you can design them an understanding to design then HotS will have good design.
Seriously though, i wish protoss had a new unit that was so overpowered we could all laugh at it a few times. And the stylistic design (aesthetically) of the warhound is shitty. Really stupid looking unit. I just dont like how it looks more than any other unit in Sc2.
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You're just the opposite end of the spectrum, yo. And that's pretty annoying. For every forum warrior who has 20 posts and thinks they know everything about how the game should be, there's one of you who says that all the complaints, no matter how grounded some of them may be, are invalid and that we should just leave Blizzard to their own devices.
The forum warriors definitely do detract from the posts of people who actually do care about the game and want it to be better than it is now or what it is projected to be.
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No amount of typical forum whine will detract blizzard from what they want to do. Only certain PR pressure can do that (which even TL rarely can deliver). Better ones* failed at the task than combined legion of forum trolls. So being occupied with these matters is waste of time, blizzard will do what they want to do, forum goers will speak their mind, intended use of forum mechanics.
*Barrin thread did nothing, Lalush threads did nothing, however supposedly Falling great thread about mech play was noted by Browder but still i wouldnt say it means anything
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As much as I hate BW elitists, they sometimes do have a point. Quite a few units in the current game are inferior versions of BW units (I'm looking at you, colossus). Sometimes makes me wonder if it's actually possible for SC2 to be it's own game and still have units and strategy on par with BW.
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On September 11 2012 03:26 ZeromuS wrote:Show nested quote +On September 11 2012 03:22 Treehead wrote:
Fun read. I can't say that some of the comments you're poking fun at aren't warranted, but it is a bit silly that while people like White-Ra are trying to learn about the game, everyone on the forums seems to already have "better" opinions than White Ra on how the game does work and how it ought to work.
Personally, though, I think the design of HotS has some serious design flaws in its design. I don't understand why blizzard doesn't design their game with a better approach to game design. From a unit design standpoint, I think its obvious that just thinking about unit design should make this obvious, as units like the Tempest are just designed to have bad design. I like Blood Wars design decisions with regard to unit design to be better designed. I'm a big fan of Blood Wars (or BW, as some call it) and think it is the best strategy game ever designed. I greatly enjoyed the design of your response and the design of the op you two should help blizzard learn what good design means because you can design them an understanding to design then HotS will have good design. Seriously though, i wish protoss had a new unit that was so overpowered we could all laugh at it a few times. And the stylistic design (aesthetically) of the warhound is shitty. Really stupid looking unit. I just dont like how it looks more than any other unit in Sc2.
There were always going to be problems with the beta and how the units interacted. I have always assumed that Blizzard could not create good units until they were released into the beta and used by players. If you look at the number of balance patches during the first beta, HotS have a long way to go before we get function units.
Also, it is a lot hard to make games than most people think and requires a lot more thought than just “make it like BW”. BW itself was a game from another time, much of it could never translate into a modern RTS. BW was played on CTR monitors, in a resolution that my iphone crushes, on a grid with sprites and with target, pathing and control AI that robot that sweeps floors would laugh at. It was a different game in an era before graphics cards, standard optical mice and 16 inch monitors. There was no wide screen, or HD. Attempting to recreate that game perfectly is just not possible and some units that were good in BW would be terrible with modern AI.
This is the problem Blizzard has, they have to design a game based on modern machines to modern standards. They cannot make a game for some utopia where modern players(not the population of TL) will accept control 12 units at one time and pathing that is garbage. People forget that when SC2 was released, every reviewer was in shock how much the game did not hold the players hand, how little was automated and how much like BW the game was. To this day, video game journalist say “you don’t try to compete with Blizzard in the competitive RTS games.” Blizzard did was every other studio would never dare to do and did it better that anyone else.
TL is an insular community and I have always felt it does not take into account the larger gaming world as much as it should. Although SC2 has made a great argument that competitive games and esports are viable, it is still an argument that is being made. HotS will be a good addition to the to SC2, but Blizzard is not going to listen to every whim of the community about every unit.
After all, the marauder is still in the game.
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I think the majority of the threads follow the same lines probably because people have such similar opinions. When there's this many people sharing a common point of view you have to start thinking maybe there's something to it.
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EPT
