EPTHowever, I made this blog because I've been thinking about blizzard's overall game design, which no one ever seems to talk about when actually talking about the game. It's always:
"FF SUCKS REMOVE IT FROM GAME"
"BROODLORD INFESTOR OP NERF ZERG"
"TERRAN IS TOO HARD"
"UNIT DESIGN SUCKS NO MICRO ANTI FUN"
"FUCK BLIZZ MY COFFEE IS GETTING COLD" etc.etc.
Game design? Unit design?
I was mostly spurred on by this thread, where Morrow posts his thoughts on why FF is bullshit and how PvZ is fucking broken and boring and bland and bleeh etc.
And that thread, and this one, and this one, all talk about unit design and how they all suck.
And many more talk about game design, and how this design of the game blows, how that is unintuitive, why didn't blizz do this or that, etc.
Hell, just make a search and you'll see SO MANY THREADS all talking about basically the same thing.
However, I find that both are influenced by a much, much deeper part of the game, and in fact is central to SC2, from the good to the bad to the 'WHY IS THIS UNFIXED BLIZZ': AI and UI design.
SC2 has basically the best AI and UI design I've ever seen in an RTS game. The movements of almost every single unit in the game is fluid. It's instant (in offline anyway). Turn rate is instant. Just look at all the videos on youtube or whatever that are all about SSSSSIIICCKK MICRO.
All of this is possible through SC2's incredibly fluid AI/UI design. Lings fully surround. Units clump or spread (mostly) depending on how you want them. Smartcast. Smartfire. You can even cancel certain spells mid-animation (250mm cannon, zealot charge), though this concept isn't new to RTS. It is new to SC, however. All this fluidity and flexibility is one thing that I really have to commend blizz on being able to pull off. It is, quite simply, awesome. And more importantly, it leads to what I call in SC2 as 'freedom of movement'.
Freedom of movement
What do I mean by freedom of movement? I mean the instant turn rates, the sick marine micro, ling auto surround, instantaneous pickups from drops, fluid attack animations, worker mineral floating, lack of bumps or blocking by friendly units. It's what makes the fights tick. As a lot of tosses can attest to, having the ability to cancel zealot charge can be and often is a lifesaver, because you're not always in a good position and being unable to cancel charge will probably leave you in either a) a disadvantage, or b) no zealots to tank damage in a later fight. A stimmed marine follows every single mouse click with insane precision. Casting animations on most spells are near instant. Compare ling movemment in BW to SC2. A move lings in BW will go in a conga line, asking to be shredded by marine or goon fire. Lings in sc2 actually move in packs, and their turn rate is insane. This is to be expected in game like SC2 from a developer of blizz's caliber.
This, I think, is a key part of SC2's appeal: fluidity, flexibility, freedom. Essentially, in BW the better player was the one who had better positioning (and occasionally godlike micro). In SC2 the better player is the one who has the better engagements and micro. And that's why things that go against this freedom of movement is when problems start to arise.
Problems, like, say, FF, Fungal, and dare I say, vortex and Marauder slow.
All these things have one thing in common: they restrict movement and flexibility. In a game where a key element is this freedom of movement, elements like FF are, well, a problem. It's like making a martial art based on body movement, but then you put the practitioners in full knight armor. Many people say that FF or fungal is bad because you can't fight against it. Well, we have PDD, Graviton beam, and some other spells, what's the big deal? PDD and graviton don't restrict nearly enough as FF/fungal. Spells like ensnare weren't a problem in BW because they didn't restrict, but decreased fluidity.
Spells like say, Corruption, PDD, Guardian Shield, Psi Storm, IT are examples of good spells in my book. Why? Because they don't restrict movement, they influence battles in other ways. Getting Stormed? Move out of the way. Guardian Shield? Focus the sentry. Mass IT? Just kill them all (hopefully before they spawn). In all cases, the player makes a move that the other player can react to, which is paramount to a strategy game (or any game for that matter, or it wouldn't be a good game, would it?)
I think by now you get the point: In SC2 everything is about movement, and to challenge that is to challenge A LOT of the game.
AI/UI design too good?
With all this freedom, one must consider the possibility that there is too much, and too much of anything is a bad thing. Just ask binge eaters/drinkers.
Consider the siege tank. In BW they had a whopping 70 damage in siege mode. In SC2 it's 35. Considerably pathetic. Except this isn't so because of smart fire. Imagine 70 damage spread out over an entire enemy marine army. The army would just plain get obliterated. Now, the argument of smartfire vs overkill I'll leave for another day, but suffice to say that the siege tank is one of many units radically affected by the AI.
But the real main point I want to get at is BL/infestor. Infestors fungal armies, BLs shoot at them, everything dies. I think one of the main problems with fighting (we're not talking about air here) BL/infestor is that your ground army can't make it to the BLs, even after fungal. Why? Broodlings. Broodling surround is as good as ling surround, and for a unit that deals damage AND is free, that's admittedly a bit too much. ITs smartfire/focus fire whatever the hell they want and either way it's loads of damage.
Now, I am aware that the few tried and true ways to fight bl/infestor is in the air, vikings/ravens and mship. However, I think that if the ground army were less restricted by the broodlings, players would stand a better fighting chance against broodlords.
The "fix"?
I don't claim to be a pro or an awesome game designer. I just play games. But, if I may, I think a lesson from blizz's other games can be of service here. Namely, to nerf a unit by changing the way it works AI wise, rather than numbers or the entire unit design. I think the Broodlord as a design is awesome. The broodLING, however, I think needs some tweaking. How to tweak it?
Remember the Reaver? For those who don't know, when SC first came out, the reaver was ridiculously strong due to having a huge attack damage and being smart(ish. For 1998). So, to balance it, blizz dumbed the unit down and made it so some shots could be duds. Blizz could rework broodling AI to be a little dumber to 'balance' it out.
Or from WC3, and dota by extension. Animations are an integral part of dota, so much so that turn rates, cast times, autoattack times, etc are used by icefrog to balance the game. Why not do that with broodlings? Give it a slower animation, whether it be turn rate, surround rate, movement animation, whatever.
In the end, I don't actually know if any of this will actually make SC2 a better game. But I do hope that this is a refresher to all the unit design discussions all over TL.
Thanks for reading.
(so tired right now, headache pouding, somethings may sound stupid, misspells. please excuse)
