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preface
+ Show Spoiler +This is a repost of something I just posted in Blizzard Forums. Basically it's my thoughts and suggestions on the game design and what I think can be done to balance the game. I've been playing HotS a lot, and it's just breaking my heart that it's either play 40 minutes vs Zerg on WoL or play a broken client on HotS. I hope I can get some responses in the blog section on some of my ideas, and if not - perhaps due to it's length - o well! :D
Okay, so I've played a lot of HotS - If you know my other account you'll give me /some/ credit as an /okay/ player. If you have no clue who I am, you can just take my arguments for what they are. I am going to give my thoughts on the balance patches and why I think, at the present moment, the patches are beyond silly, in a bad way of course! This is going to be very long, so it's up to you whether or not you'd like to read. I have no access to the pro player forum and I'm too lazy to even look into it mainly because I don't think they'd bother giving the access to me, even if I feel my suggestions are quite good.
I'll preface this by saying, good job in the latest UI patch. While there are many pressing issues still to cover it's a good start. Hopefully that doesn't encourage any leeway to slow down though.
First, I'm going to briefly explain what I want to accomplish with this text. I want to convey why there is a complete failure of design in this game, and why it is forced into being less skillful than it CAN be by simple changes. I may not give exact "alternatives", though I will be alluding to what can be done to fix the problems I bring up - and at the end I'll be going over some balance suggestions. I give you my opinions but it's entirely up to a different person to go through with the changes. Sadly, during that time these problems will still exist and this disheartens other players. So, it's my goal to be as to-the-point as I can be to help you understand why these ARE problems and why they DO need to fixed as soon as possible.
So to get into it, as many have noted in the past SC2 has many different spells and situations where another player dictates how a different player's units move. This is not done by skill, strategy, or smarts in any way. It has to be stressed that there are "win buttons" or "win modes" - and this goes for all races. EMP, Fungal, Forcefield, the current meta game with Zerg, the old Protoss death ball...you name it. If you disagree with this I either am led to believe you've never played any good players, or are oblivious to the truth. It's glaring in high level play and as I just noted, the victim often has no control over that environment, they simply lose. Sad day for you!
The main root of this problem is with very basic unit production which people continue to overlook for whatever reason.
Ghosts, Infestors, Sentries. Where are they all produced? The basic T1 structure you start with. More or less, once you get the tech WG for a push, mass Tech Labs late game for ghosts, or an Infestation Pit you pop out 5-10 of the unit at once and can abuse it in whatever way you see fit. It may have immediate benefits, it might take 30 minutes of sitting behind spines. Now, while I won't say that this game should be balanced exactly like brood war if we draw a simple game design comparison at this point we'll already begin to see the differentiation, and why the game was dictated not so much by a "goal" in tech, but skill.
In brood war you had to produce your spell casters that made the late game what it was, or for whatever timing push you were going for, one by one.
There was no massing instantly. There was no "If I can just get here and draw the game out I can still win" it was always "I have a chance if I can use this to my advantage in a strategic way". You don't see someone making 12 sci vesicles at once in BW do you? There are incredible ramifications to doing so. Same with Arbs or Defilers. The units themselves play a specific role, but are not so multipurpose that they take up the majority of your army supply. Doing so spells a clear loss for yourself. So while some people may say that things like Infestors, or Sentries are broken - I argue FIRST, and MORE IMPORTANTLY that the game itself is broken. I will suggest some balance changes to these units later.
So, with that said, you might be wondering what does this have to do with HotS balance at all? Well here is the answer:
New spell casters are being added to this game as we speak. Yet, same problem continues to exist with them.
Oracles, which I'll get into in a bit, are the only unit you have to produce one by one.
Going mech? Get 10 factories mid game and make mass mines for barely any cost and spam them.
Just got the tech for vipers? Make 5 and your army is incredibly strong all of a sudden, or match the other players "power unit" in vipers and just move them into their death.
Not to mention that the other spell casters still exist, so this to me, is a glaring problem. I see no skill involved with this chain of production. If a person reaches a certain goal in a game they are rewarded in an unparallelled manner compared to the other player, or at least until that player reaches something similar. Often times one situation leads to a "strategy"(lol?) that cannot be defeated, or at least until the other player does something similar. You tip the scales slightly and it snowballs into despair.
So my suggestion on this issue is a very IN DEPTH look at what you're actually adding Blizzard. You simply CANNOT give zerg the ability to make 10 infestors as soon as they get a tech and defend something they shouldn't because the opponents army is dictated by the defender. You cannot give them the ability to create 5 vipers, walk to your base, blind your army so it becomes nothing, then roll you over simply because they got to that point in the game. You cannot make a game balanced around avoiding letting terran make 6 ghosts at a time that blanket EMP your army and then trade so cost effectively nothing else matters. Similarly, you cannot make a game where you spam mines and it doesn't matter what happens because if they get even a single kill they have essentially traded cost effectively. You cannot make a game where protoss makes 12 sentries gets energy, 2 immortals, walks across the map, and demolishes you 80% of the time. You cannot make a game where there are super units. Ever. This is beyond horrendous design, let alone design for an E-Sport? Hah!
Specifically, I suggest that these new spell casters be metamorphosed into actual late game spell casters like Ravens.
Do you want to fix these issues? Move EMP, Move Fungal, Move Forcefields to a SMALL pack of ur army that can HELP you in a fight rather than existing solely as the key, vital, and dictatorial part of your army. Vipers? T3. Tempest? T3. Mines? Make them cost something, or change them. You cannot just conveniently add these units and then not expect them to get abused, or soon enough, when people "figure it out" you end up with the infestor just like it is now. What is needed is what I will suggest now for balance.
So to start us off here, I'm going to apply the above changes for the Oracle. (of course, remove the terrible mothership)
Prefacing this by saying, one of the abilities on this unit is so useless that I never build it, or even think to until end game. It needs to have
1. Something that has utility. This means if you invest into it the unit will be good now, but it will also be good later.
2. Make something like the Oracle T3.
3. And make the abilities hold importance - Make them game changing, but not game ending. This is the basis for something like Stasis Field
If you want something that fulfills the "omg protoss needs a fast, mobile unit" then add a gateway unit. In fact, you already had one like this but removed it, just tinker with the Purifier and I'm sure you'd be able to fill this role.
Viper
1. Remove spells that zone, or dictate engagement locations -- aka remove blinding cloud. This is just as silly as fungal, or EMP if you've ever seen it used. It's quite broken.
2. Make it T3
3. Make it the same as above, the spells should be important, have meaning; yet, it shouldn't dictate your army composition and it shouldn't be a "timing goal"
Ghost
1. Give EMP to a starport unit so it can't be spammed
2. Give it the ability to either lay mines, or something similar(?), or it just goes as an unused unit at that point
Mine
1. Make it less cost effective - -either increase the cost, or reduce the current abilities it has
2. For instance, make it unable to hit air, or cloaked air, or both.
I honestly think the BW mine was perfect, but the cost efficiency of these ones are hilarious. I can't understand how these manged to pass, what 3 patches now? Who balances this O.O
Sentry
1. Remove them. Protoss, the "strong" race should not be centralized around a T1 spell caster unit. Add a beefy unit or micro-y unit to take it's place and then add "similar" but not dictatorial abilities to the Orcale. That fixes that problem quite nicely I think.
Raven
1. Get rid of Auto Turret
2. Add EMP
3. Make PDD slightly less energy and EMP more.
Infestor
1. Fungal cannot freeze ANY massive unit. (why only ultras? lol..)
2. Fungal now SLOWS normal units for HALF of it's duration. This is to prevent spamming of it, and if your army is slowed it not only has the ability to retreat, but if it chooses to it still dedicates to taking the other amount of DoT damage.
3. IT cost significantly more energy.
Carriers
1. Make them able to be microed
2. Restore their original BW stats.
3. Reduce Build time and no interceptor cost. As well as interceptors can no longer be fungaled.
Tempests
I think these are good.. but need to be moved to T3... I think their needs to be an additional building for Oracles and Tempests where upgrades for Oracles would be. Or something that makes such a silly T2 switch less viable for toss. You shouldn't get 3 tempests and then counter a whole mech oriented build because you completely dictate where they can or can't be.
From what I've submitted here a lot of this fixes the "massing problem" I mentioned or just glaring unit issues I think exist in the game at the moment. Again, the main basis is to reduce units that are "goals" in and of themselves. +Some balance
Hopefully you take the arguments for what they are, and if you have any differing opinion on something explain why, and with reason rather than simply just disagreeing.
  
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Although most of your points looks like you gave them some thought - they are far from being transparant. You recommend things in a couple of sentences where over a bookwork of subtlety changes can and are being made to make the game experience of HotS enjoyable. This comparison to BW is starting to get tiresome at best, as there has been stated time and time again that SC and SCII are two completely different games that should be enjoyed at different levels. The core of things that are fun in BW are based on the engine alone - bugs that are considered high level play - and SCII simply doesn't have that kind of engine and doesn't need to have it either.
You made some valid points about casters utility, while at the same time you can't stop yourself from drawing the comparion line with BW.
You are comparing a beautiful three-master sailing ship with a modern battlecruiser. Both are beautiful in their own way, both perform the same task, but they are worlds apart in how they are built and how they are controlled (steered).
Also I believe this should be in the HotS forum 
2 starts for effort though, it was a decent read.
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On November 09 2012 20:38 Callynn wrote:Although most of your points looks like you gave them some thought - they are far from being transparant. You recommend things in a couple of sentences where over a bookwork of subtlety changes can and are being made to make the game experience of HotS enjoyable. This comparison to BW is starting to get tiresome at best, as there has been stated time and time again that SC and SCII are two completely different games that should be enjoyed at different levels. The core of things that are fun in BW are based on the engine alone - bugs that are considered high level play - and SCII simply doesn't have that kind of engine and doesn't need to have it either. You made some valid points about casters utility, while at the same time you can't stop yourself from drawing the comparion line with BW. You are comparing a beautiful three-master sailing ship with a modern battlecruiser. Both are beautiful in their own way, both perform the same task, but they are worlds apart in how they are built and how they are controlled (steered). Also I believe this should be in the HotS forum 2 starts for effort though, it was a decent read.
I'm confused with this response. I feel like you didn't internalize any of my points in their intended manner with regards to BW. But first, by transparent did you mean conclusive? They weren't supposed to be as I posted this in a blog "for thought", reflection of the past, where we are now, and perhaps some response on what I provided to the official forums -If you'd like to go discuss the actual balance or whatever else changes you can do it on blizzard forums here: http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/7006246150 Thus didn't find it worthy of a HotS discussion topic in general on TL
Onto what you mentioned about what I said though... I never said anything about game engines... I was talking about game design.. how the game itself is played. To say that one game cannot be compared to another is far from logically sound. Starcraft itself was a "good" game in certain aspects(or however you want to choose to describe it yourself). There are similar characteristics as I supplied, such as with how casting units operate. This is not for the sake of "bring back BW it was the best." SC2 is its own game, and therefore, should have its own units changed in its own way. It just so happens the best way, seemingly to me at least, is to follow the old design of casters. Unless you can suggest something else? I mean, it seems more progressive to me to build off of what has already been created that start from scrap on design. Doing so gives us problems that create such a shift in the paradigm that any future changes virtually require a complete re-do of the game.
What I'm getting at is, unless you can suggest something better than a model that has already proven its worth.. I don't understand. You're saying to me that we shouldn't use previously successful models of design as a simple basis for how to go about balancing this game because "they are different" What? xD
TWO LAYERS DEEP!
I just feel like there is no progression in this game at this point with its design. The "we will wait and see" approach hasn't worked. I feel like submitting actual plans on how to go about fixing the game through direct action is the best. However, is proving quite ineffective in HotS due to the failure to create lines of communication that have worth. This is where I see problems and fear for the future.
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The main root of this problem is with very basic unit production which people continue to overlook for whatever reason.
Ghosts, Infestors, Sentries. Where are they all produced? The basic T1 structure you start with. More or less, once you get the tech WG for a push, mass Tech Labs late game for ghosts, or an Infestation Pit you pop out 5-10 of the unit at once and can abuse it in whatever way you see fit. It may have immediate benefits, it might take 30 minutes of sitting behind spines. Now, while I won't say that this game should be balanced exactly like brood war if we draw a simple game design comparison at this point we'll already begin to see the differentiation, and why the game was dictated not so much by a "goal" in tech, but skill.
In brood war you had to produce your spell casters that made the late game what it was, or for whatever timing push you were going for, one by one.
So you pretty much built your wall of text around this as you give no other explanation..
let's analyze bw casters, one by one
High templar: What about him? You build a templar archives, then you start massing them from all your gateways as gas and goons allow. Make no mistake, without the BW high templar no protoss would ever win past mid game against zerg, and storm is also a pretty powerful spell against T, although trickier to use. Besides, Storm is still an area denial, as it forces you to run away from it instead of stopping you from entering it, and the BW storm was double the size of sc2 one.
Video+ Show Spoiler + you can't clearly see them, but there are definitely more than 12 protoss high templars around,besides, jangbi only really manages to trade even with those awesome storms... it is enough to win due to the mech army slow replenishment tho obviously.
Ghost: Make a science lab, then attach the spec ops attachment. Voilà, you can make ghosts from every barracks! you probably wont have many barracks in PvT and ghosts are a terribad unit in Bw, but really, the only thing stopping you from massing them is the metagame
Video+ Show Spoiler + .... besides, lockdown is the worst anti-micro skill ever as you put it
Science Vessel: This one is somewhat tied up by the starport requirement, however it doesn't stop it from appearing in sizeable numbers
Video+ Show Spoiler + count the science vessels in the whole 20 seconds of the clip, there are at least 11 in a single screen a vessel deathball? :D
Arbiter:This one is pretty expensive due to researches and requirements etc, still it is often built in pairs or more when stargates are avaible (usually due to a carrier transition). The argument for the HT also stands, a protoss army stands no chance against a mech army in late game without a good help from either protoss spellcaster.
Queen, Defiler: really, they build exactly like the infestor, the only thing limiting their number is that the queen is borderline useless, and all the defiler skills don't stack, and are totally useless casted twice on the same units/spot (and they last a pretty long amount of time), besides, consume means that a single defiler can cast like 30 other spellcasters.
DarkArchon:you could argue that this one is limited by needing 2 gateways, but really the limiting factor is its limited use, like the Queen...
Video+ Show Spoiler + however it does possess the best anti-micro skill in the game :D notice how it's pimpest play, and not WTF the zerg can't escape that!
So, i'm sorry, BW not only wasn't like that, but it gets a good 80% of its awesome moments from massive spellcasting actions (and the remaining 20% is due to mines, marines and reavers pretty much)
this pretty much kills the whole argument, besides, sentries don't really appear in numbers greater than 8 outside of some rare immortal all in with too much gas, and go down to the 3-4 you get in the lategame against broodlords, nor do you often see those 12 hts in sc2, and ravens are much rarer than science vessels.
so this leaves the Ghost, which doubles as a decent combat unit (it has the same dps as an unstimmed marauder against armored, only against light instead) and costs the less gas out of all T2 casters
and the Infestor, which is what it is due to zerg buffs during the life of this game and some pretty strong sinergy with the broodlord, and which are scheduled for "indirect nerfs".
I also don't understand the mothership hate, i think it stems a lot from the lategame PvZ where it is both a necessary asset and a liability, and it gives a little too much help to the deathball, but really, with the mothership core -> mothership progression and the vortex rework, i hope things will change.
Besides, are you really being critical on the only spell caster which cannot be massed? :D.
btw before you tell me i ignored this part
This is not done by skill, strategy, or smarts in any way. It has to be stressed that there are "win buttons" or "win modes" - and this goes for all races. EMP, Fungal, Forcefield, the current meta game with Zerg, the old Protoss death ball...you name it.
This is a balance problem, not a design problem, if any. Besides, apart from said immortal all in and the clutch forcefield on a ramp, forcefield isn't a win button at all, otherwise Protoss should win close to 100% their games, as they do possess sizable FF power in pretty much all of them. EMP ending the game by itself is also a pretty rare sights, while fungal is really overboard only in conjunction with the broodlord or with a slew of infesteds....
Really, if you ever liked bw, you should ask for stronger casters, not weaker ones notice as most of the Bw legendary videos are crippling or game ending for the player suffering defeat. Besides, the game is already too top heavy in tech for Zerg, and borderline so for protoss, and you propose moving more stuff later in the tech :D
I purposefully ignored the "I'm GM, complexity academy" argument, otherwise *insert random pro balance whining* should've redesigned this game at this point.
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-sigh- again, you miss the point of the thread. The point isn't if you do or do not see the casters in high quantity, the main argument is about the ease of access to getting to the point where you have "enough" versus "too many". In BW too many is a bad thing rather than a good thing - unlike with the units I've noted in SC2.
Tell me a time where you see someone make 5 stargates when just starting arb production, or when they add 5 starports to get the first sci vessels. It doesn't happen. And when they DO start making the units they gather them up over time, use them and they gain utility if they're kept alive. So your first 70% of text that "kills my argument" doesn't even acknowledge it in reality >.>
Are you getting the idea? The ease of access to a unit en masse should not accompany the tech simply being finished. Furthermore, I've seen, played, won, and lost countless games on a few fungals, or EMPs and similarly many with Forcefields alone. Again, I said that the scale tips a game into despair if something gets out of control before another player can react the same. What I mean is, say you get 2 good fungals on a full army of bunched marines in the first push. You may not win the game instantly, but 15 minutes down the road when that army value multiplies the game becomes completely different. Same with EMP, you lose those archons/30 zealots that melt -> rest of your army? Your army composition changes drastically versus if you did have them in the next fight. You're simply looking too one-dimensionally at the problems that exist with spell casters in this game and the implications of their skills that completely limit how another person plays without it being a "fair" system. The basis of asymmetrical game design is that: even if players go about how to play the game differently(race, or the builds used themselves) the results should still be rational, fair, and justifiable. In no way do I see any of the above circumstances fair to the victim. The counter example simply is: Play so much better than the other player that it doesn't matter I.E: Kill them before they can do "that" or somehow survive so I can do "this".
The mothership hate is very justified. Like really, it's just bad. You even mentioned the means to which it is justifiably bad yet somehow came to a wrong conclusion. PvZ is awful. For the players, both zerg and protoss, and the spectators.
and uh, I never said anything about being GM, or complexity academy in the thread so that's a bit of a strawman! I said I'd like access to the pro forums on blizzard, but I wouldn't ask for it because I know I don't deserve it. On the other hand, I did say that these changes are something I think almost(?) every skilled(I'm talking pro players) player would agree with - many of which are based off of their repeated, open speech on the subjects I laid out.
Thanks for the responses though! :D At least it's good to see some people are replying even if they're coming to different conclusions~
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I'll be honest, I hate all of your balance ideas.
Get rid of the sentry? That's gross.
EMP is too spammable? Ghosts are worse than both templars and and infestors in your army.
Mines are OP? They get hard countered by stalkers,immortal, collosus, hydra, infestors, swarm hosts, single lings, marauders, tanks, and thors.
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On November 09 2012 20:38 Callynn wrote:Although most of your points looks like you gave them some thought - they are far from being transparant. You recommend things in a couple of sentences where over a bookwork of subtlety changes can and are being made to make the game experience of HotS enjoyable. This comparison to BW is starting to get tiresome at best, as there has been stated time and time again that SC and SCII are two completely different games that should be enjoyed at different levels. The core of things that are fun in BW are based on the engine alone - bugs that are considered high level play - and SCII simply doesn't have that kind of engine and doesn't need to have it either. You made some valid points about casters utility, while at the same time you can't stop yourself from drawing the comparion line with BW. You are comparing a beautiful three-master sailing ship with a modern battlecruiser. Both are beautiful in their own way, both perform the same task, but they are worlds apart in how they are built and how they are controlled (steered). Also I believe this should be in the HotS forum 2 starts for effort though, it was a decent read.
The comparisons to BW are perfectly valid. The bugs in BW ACCENTED gameplay...there is still a base level of gameplay that exists and is entertaining despite this...
The issue with SCII is that there is nothing MORE. Units just 1a. There is an extreme lack of micro and twitch control...and that makes it this game of boring shitfests.
I didn't even come from a BW background and I'm disgusted that Blizzard has such a hard time designing units that do not HAVE roles, and are easy and ENTERTAINING to use, while also rewarding skill. None of the units in HOTS except the mine accomplish any of these things. Few units in WoL (most of them Terran) accomplish any of these things.
The root of all these problems is one of design...not of balance. The units are BORING, when they could be fucking awesome.
That's my main problem with the SH. It's just fucking boring. There's no tension. No stress or drama with the unit. It's not even aggressive. It is the THIRD unit that Zerg has which spawns free fucking units (not counting buildings) and it is a slower, weaker BL.
You can see this in how it is used ZvP. SH contains are pretty much immobile BLs that happen faster behind a spine wall WHILE the Z gets regular BLs.
That is not new OR ENTERTAINING.
As for the blog there is a problem in writing your thoughts in that there's just too much to think about, and so it's pretty damn difficult to address everything.
FFS that's fucking boring can't anyone see that...
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and uh, I never said anything about being GM, or complexity academy in the thread so that's a bit of a strawman!
I wanted to preemptively neutralize this paragraph:
If you know my other account you'll give me /some/ credit as an /okay/ player. If you have no clue who I am, you can just take my arguments for what they are.
and avoid an appeal to authority logical fallacy :D it is in no way a strawman as it's absolutely not related to your argument.
In BW too many is a bad thing rather than a good thing - unlike with the units I've noted in SC2.
why do you keep writing this? specify dammit, how many is "too many"? i've brought a ton of examples in BW that aren't too many, and why some other casters are used in small numbers, and it has nothing to do with how they're made, and everything to do with the caster in question.
As i said, the way to make for instance, high templars has not changed from BW to SC2 (the fact that warpgates are frontloaded is offset by a nice 45 sec cooldown and a longer tech time relatively to bw, and the removal of khaydarin ->+50 seconds of energy charge) and yet you usually see less high templars in a game of sc2 than in a game of bw.
Tell me a time where you see someone make 5 stargates when just starting arb production, or when they add 5 starports to get the first sci vessels. It doesn't happen. And when they DO start making the units they gather them up over time, use them and they gain utility if they're kept alive. So your first 70% of text that "kills my argument" doesn't even acknowledge it in reality >.>
why, in sc2 you see people adding starports to make mass medivacs? and yet medivacs do mass up from a single reactored starport, because until vikings are needed, that starport has nothing better to do.So, paradoxically, a protoss on 1 base an 3 gate can make less high templars than a terran with a single starport can make medivacs, for the simple reason that he needs those warpgates for his zealots, and every ht he makes is 1 and half less zea, all despite medivacs using an higher structure.
really, when do you see someone adding mass stargate/robo when unlocking a tech? the only time that is done is with capital ships, really, and that is due to their production time. (that happened in bw too, find someone making carriers with less than 3 stargates)
you don't make 2 stargates when making arbiters for the simple reason that Stargates are expensive, and arbiters are even more so (a single arbiter is 350 gas! would you make 2 motherships often, even if you could?).
Specialized production facilities are only made in small numbers because they're costly, and because the units they make have usually a large production investment, and making too many would be hazaourdous at best in the short term.
(do you build colossi from 4 robos?)
Are you getting the idea? The ease of access to a unit en masse should not accompany the tech simply being finished.
Nope, because there's not a single unit working this way in the StarCraft franchise.
you can build arbiter tech AFTER unlocking the stargates, which means that if the arbiter was an overpowered and free unit you could mass them from 10 stargates that you built before building the arbiter tribunal.
Furthermore, I've seen, played, won, and lost countless games on a few fungals, or EMPs and similarly many with Forcefields alone. Again, I said that the scale tips a game into despair if something gets out of control before another player can react the same. What I mean is, say you get 2 good fungals on a full army of bunched marines in the first push. You may not win the game instantly, but 15 minutes down the road when that army value multiplies the game becomes completely different. Same with EMP, you lose those archons/30 zealots that melt -> rest of your army? Your army composition changes drastically versus if you did have them in the next fight.
So every spell should be marginal in a battle? Every spell should be like guardian shield, being a silent help to your army?
I disagree. In BroodWar tons of games have been won by clutch spell usage,especially in those legendary examples which i linked you. In BroodWar EMP was even more powerful and tons of games have been won by a clutch EMP nullifying protoss archons (which were rarely used for this reason) arbiters or hts and forcing a costly retreat for an halfed HP protoss army. Tons of games have been won by a single plague, or 2 hts massacring 30 hydras on their own.
I know perfectly well that feeling when you miss a Forcefield and tens of zerglings stream in losing you the game, or when you feedback 5 ghosts only to be carpet emped by those 10 coming behind them...
but honestly, most of it is frustration aimed at the asymmetrical game,some of it is aimed at the metagame, and maybe a 1% of that is due to balance. there's no game design problem there.
The basis of asymmetrical game design is that: even if players go about how to play the game differently(race, or the builds used themselves) the results should still be rational, fair, and justifiable. In no way do I see any of the above circumstances fair to the victim. The counter example simply is: Play so much better than the other player that it doesn't matter I.E: Kill them before they can do "that" or somehow survive so I can do "this".
Aye, i agree. So does this mean that hydras shouldn't die when hit by a storm? that dragoons shouldn't go to 1 hp when hit by a plague and protoss needs a restore skill like that of the medics? (which is incredibly underused btw) You're happily walking over a minefield here, but the truth is that some of these situations must exist in order to preserve asymmetrical balance.If i could play a race exactly like i wanted it, the asymmetrical stuff would be gone... as a protoss, i cannot ever have an army half as mobile as that of the zerg, is that fair? Also races will have a period in time where they are stronger than the other race, that is another necessity of asymmetrical balance. Want to be aggressive in the early minutes with Terran TvP in bw? Sucks to be you, Protoss is so much stronger in the early game, you either turtle or switch races.
To further reinforce that, what you wish applied to asymmetrical balance doesn't even apply to builds, nor should it, or the whole mindgame part of the game goes down the drain.I can try and fakeout my opponent that i'm doing some sort of rush while i actually have a ninja expand, and if he falls for it i am massively ahead! Does the play so much better apply here? or is it just a "if you doublechecked with an hidden worker,or scouted the other expo locations you would've won?", therefore capitalizing on an opponent mistake?
So, in the end all the "problems" you called out reduce to this:
Is unit A power not balanced by other inhenerent disadvantages given by its race allegiance, or weaker support units? then it must be nerfed.
If you wanna argue about the fun aspect, i'd say the only unfun aspect right now is given by infestor broodlord combo, which i dislike, however HotS units are supposed to deal with it without needing the money vortex.....
About the mothership,i think what you wrote means you agree with me, it's the fact that it's necessary in Late PvZ and its loss it's crippling that its bad, not the unit per se.
TLDR:
What I mean is, say you get 2 good fungals on a full army of bunched marines in the first push.
This is unarguably a mistake and should be punished somewhat. Now what can be argued is that 2 fungals are too little, and that there should be a bigger committal by the zerg to punish it, or that ghosts are too up in the tech, but these are balance numbers easily tweaked,not a design problem.
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I feel like the biggest underlying problem here is that the production value exponentially grows for one race (zerg), doubles for one (protoss), and stays linear THROUGHOUT (terran) over the course of the game. That's the most important point needing to be addressed of all design flaws.
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EPT
