EPTSwarmhost Game Balance - Page 2
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OtherWorld
France17333 Posts
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imre
France9263 Posts
On February 23 2015 21:21 OtherWorld wrote: ^Except that his point is terribly biased and is a "subtle" balance whine ("but i don't think it's really the economy that's creating these stalemates in SC2 - it's the unit design/balance."). And his last example is false, Dayshi proved that hellions can be very efficient versus Stalkers. my 1k mineral worth of unit can't beat his 1250/500 investment, game is unbalanced. And Maru isn't playing sc2 since you need vikings vs colo. | ||
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Big J
Austria16289 Posts
On February 23 2015 21:43 sAsImre wrote: my 1k mineral worth of unit can't beat his 1250/500 investment, game is unbalanced. And Maru isn't playing sc2 since you need vikings vs colo. Oh come on, that's not really the point is it? I get that he is racially biased and not the most liked person but he didn't go all out saying "herp derp, swarm hosts are broken and immortals/Protoss is imbalanced", he specified that they are bad design for the game. Let's skip over the exact numbers he gives, because that's really not the point here. The question is if the amount of units you could have is reasonable against the amount of units you do face and the strategies your opponent can deploy. Whether it is 10hellions or 15hellions against 10stalkers we are talking about, you won't be able to combat the stalkers and with proper blink play you also won't be able to achieve much if the Protoss isn't terribly out of position with the stalkers. You'd need like 20hellions, which might still be OK for the resource cost but not for the supply cost and in many occurances questionable timingwise (try to counter a dedicated blink play with mass hellions). The unit interaction does lead to a strategy that tells you to not build hellions if your opponent builds stalkers. Dayshi's strategy... + Show Spoiler + ... is the Mech equivalent of a roach-max or a Protoss 7gate. You max out on 100res/2supply units and then combat a 140-150supply Protoss. The reason it worked for Dayshi for some times is that a) he skipped tech (mass reactors on the factories, no hightech production available) while the Protoss didn't (Collossus tech), so he had a more expensive army b) hellions are one of the most time-efficient units to produce because their production time combined with reactors is only 15seconds/hellion, so you need very few production facilities to produce them. Hence, he gets even more hellions by only using 3-4factories compared to the 7-8protoss production facilities. c) his Protoss opponents walked in the open too early with their massively cheaper (see a) and b) ) composition and got surrounded. Really, all you have to do against this strategy is wait a little longer, same as with roach maxes, because Dayshi is maxed on hellions. His army won't get better but the Protoss has still 50supply open to work with. The strategy isn't garbage, but it relies on the opponents not knowing what to do against it. The point is, it doesn't proof that hellions are good vs stalkers, but that production-heavy "all-in" builds usually have a timing window against tech-heavy builds. It's like saying zealots are good against roaches because a 7gate can work despite a zerg having a few roaches out. It's still also a numbers game. And yes, you can build Vikings on time against Colossi. You also can go for quite some time against Colossi without making Vikings. It's not the best example in the book because of that, but you still eventually need 15-20vikings to combat a Protoss making 5 Colossi. Which is a massive counter-strategy. It would be much better if yes, you needed something like vikings to combat many Colossi. But you didn't need to match or exceed the Colossus costs in costs of your counter. The Viper in this regard is a much more interesting counter to the Colossus, because you don't need like 2 Vipers per Colossus and the Viper does much more for the Zerg in the shortrun (blinding cloud, abducting other targets like immortals) and longrun, up to the point that you want to build Vipers anyways, regardless of whether Colossi are in play or not. Well, enough derailing of the thread and since I haven't said it yet @Lalush: as always a very good insight and example why the economy and mapcontrol game is not as good as it could be. | ||
Chill
Calgary25995 Posts
On February 23 2015 23:49 Big J wrote: Oh come on, that's not really the point is it? I get that he is racially biased and not the most liked person but he didn't go all out saying "herp derp, swarm hosts are broken and immortals/Protoss is imbalanced", he specified that they are bad design for the game. Let's skip over the exact numbers he gives, because that's really not the point here. The question is if the amount of units you could have is reasonable against the amount of units you do face and the strategies your opponent can deploy. Whether it is 10hellions or 15hellions against 10stalkers we are talking about, you won't be able to combat the stalkers and with proper blink play you also won't be able to achieve much if the Protoss isn't terribly out of position with the stalkers. You'd need like 20hellions, which might still be OK for the resource cost but not for the supply cost and in many occurances questionable timingwise (try to counter a dedicated blink play with mass hellions). The unit interaction does lead to a strategy that tells you to not build hellions if your opponent builds stalkers. Yea, and if you build Zerglings against Vultures, you are going to lose. There is a problem with SC2, but it's not going to be found in this "hard counter" bullshit avilo is talking about. | ||
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Big J
Austria16289 Posts
On February 24 2015 00:03 Chill wrote: Yea, and if you build Zerglings against Vultures, you are going to lose. There is a problem with SC2, but it's not going to be found in this "hard counter" bullshit avilo is talking about. Oh come one, could we please refrain from reducing everything to the literal examples given. I get it, zerglings die to vultures. Hellions are no good response to stalkers. The point is, what else are you going to do? The answer in your example is, you make hydras. The answer in my example is you just skip on the Mech, or you play a very questionable "boring" style of turtlemech. In case of Swarm Hosts you go some turtlecrap yourself, or vis-verca, against Mech/Protoss turtlecrap you go some Swarm Host turtlecrap. Because those turtle-options, regardless from which side, just start to counter all your other options. His point is very valid, because often the counterrelations in the game are not in a way that you can just easily grab T1 hydras vs vultures (not to mention that when you go up the techtree nearly everything works vs vultures too). Very often you need to grab Tempests and Colossi and Ravens and stuff like that and you stop trading. People like Lalush used to point out how we are capped on 3 base economies. Now compare that with a Mech vs Swarm Host game or the game presented in the OP. We are talking about 1-2mining bases. And the resource banks go up!!! This tells me that there must be something seriously off with the unit interactions if 40mins in the game you cannot kill stuff faster than a single base can reproduce it. Hardcounters on their own aren't the problem, but their positioning in the techtree and their design has a lot to do with it. This goes back to the Mech vs Protoss example avilo gives. The game doesn't turn stale here because of a base limit. It turns stale because after opening Mech the Protoss has built Immortals and Archons and now you need another hightech unit in the ghost and after that he is going to have Tempests so you need another branched out hightech unit in form of the Raven. The problem is that you sit around all day spreading all across your techtrees to be able to go toe to toe with the Protoss in the longrun. It's not like bio TvZ where, when the Zerg makes ultras you already have all the tech ready to make marauders. Imagine that you'd need to get vikings when the Zerg goes mutalisks and how that would destroy the pace of the game; but the Terran doesn't! The units are good and useful enough without needing to heavily tech further, after a certain standard setup is reached. Or TvT when you need tanks to your bio - you have a factory already that you can use for that, no long "I need to get to X and then build up 5 of X before I can leave my defensive position again"-period required. Of course you can look at it like Lalush and point out that "well, if herO could use 10bases, he would not need to tech so much to begin with, because he'd be able to trade very inefficiently." But avilo's point of "why do we need so strong hardcounters in the game to begin with. If the unit interactions just were better, we would neither need to sit back and tech nor to sit back and heavily expand. Both sides could battle for their share of mapcontrol to begin with, if my only mobile unit and only mineraldump - the hellion - could move a little more freely on the map. And I could trade with Immortals/Swarm Hosts better to begin with, with what I have and can rebuild." (and vis-verca) is also valid. I agree with both points. I would like to use mapcontrol better, but I also don't like how the mapcontrol defaults into one race's favor very often to begin with. Battling with bio, drops, hellions, lings and roaches for mapcontrol and expansions is a much more fun gameplay to begin with - acquired in midgame ZvZ, PvP, TvT and TvZ - then having the Protoss sit on 2-3 bases unable to move out with anything but his whole army combined for 15mins. Regardless of whether my counterstrategy is to build 10bases or tech to swarm hosts, it would be better if Protoss just could move out and I didn't need to think of ways to get rid of the stuff I have to replace it with higher tier stuff. Or trying to kill him before he gets there (TvP). | ||
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avilo
United States4100 Posts
On February 23 2015 14:10 Chill wrote: One of the worst posts ever on this website. Yours or mine? I wrote a detailed description of a huge problem with SC2 out and you contributed nothing to the discussion. edit: and i honestly hope people are not nit picking the examples i gave. The point of the examples is to illustrate there are a ton of scenarios where you have battles that 100% cannot be even fought in SC2. Dragoons technically are a counter to vultures in SC1 with no micro, but with good surrounds/mines the fight can still be won by either player. But a lot of times in SC2 hard counters make it so one player just absolutely never would have a chance to win the fight and therefore they cannot even take the fight. | ||
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parkufarku
882 Posts
On February 24 2015 07:11 avilo wrote: Yours or mine? I wrote a detailed description of a huge problem with SC2 out and you contributed nothing to the discussion. edit: and i honestly hope people are not nit picking the examples i gave. The point of the examples is to illustrate there are a ton of scenarios where you have battles that 100% cannot be even fought in SC2. Dragoons technically are a counter to vultures in SC1 with no micro, but with good surrounds/mines the fight can still be won by either player. But a lot of times in SC2 hard counters make it so one player just absolutely never would have a chance to win the fight and therefore they cannot even take the fight. Avilo, just stop, you're just making yourself look worse. There's also no need to be passive aggressive. It's also hard to take your balance whine seriously when you advocate for T during the times they are the strongest | ||
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The_Red_Viper
19533 Posts
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avilo
United States4100 Posts
On February 24 2015 08:20 parkufarku wrote: Avilo, just stop, you're just making yourself look worse. There's also no need to be passive aggressive. It's also hard to take your balance whine seriously when you advocate for T during the times they are the strongest I feel like you did not even read the posts written and just start spamming out memes "omg avilo whine." I did not balance whine anywhere in my last posts... .... ... ... Anyways, Lalush's post is about mostly the economy, i was just adding my two cents that the hard counter system is also a huge issue that has been forgotten in discussion since WoL beta. | ||
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MarlieChurphy
United States2065 Posts
Avilo is right about saying that Chill's one liner is arguably a worse post in this thread. To be honest, I don't really understand the point of this thread though. ALl of this is going to change in LotV, I played a lot of the custom lotv maps and the economy change is really a step in the right direction. However, I think that the hard countering units thing is still a bit of an issue. For example; I played some games where I had smaller army but more bases and lurkers vs a no mobile detection protoss who just had fenix map control. I still couldn't force an engagement or take map control back because the fenix have too many roles (including countering lurkers). The opponent was forced to trade his larger armies for my hatcheries while my lurkers destroyed him but the fenix remain and keep me from countering and allowing me to get AA units (corruptors are shit vs fenix range and speed and hydra cost too much). Time will tell I suppose. | ||
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