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On July 07 2004 23:38 A3iL3r0n wrote: Tfeign, ignore 12 queens making 24 broodlings, that's not plausible in a full battle. It's the fact that queens are already cost effective vs. high temps, and will only be more so if you give them the ability to broodling twice in a row.
Okay, it looks like you missed one of my posts in this thread where I responded to a guy thinking that pvz would be impossible when queens's broodlings cost less energy, so I'll just copy and paste:
"Making queens stronger will NOT make pvz impossible because remember we're making dark archons stronger as well. Dark archon with can counter queens with feedback. Queens counter high templars with spawn broodling. High templars counters defiler (swarm) with storm, etc.
Think of how fun pvz will be when Dark Archons and queens are made stronger so they can become cost-effective. Battles will become even more micro-intensive than the way they are now...."
...Besides storming, toss players will now have to worry about queens, and zerg players have to worry about dark archons. Feedbacks, maelstrom, storm, broodling, ensnare, hallucinations, all coming into play in a battle to see who can utilize them most effectively. I don't know what about you, but I think that would be a ton of fun.
Sadly, the thought above is only a dream because the high templar is the only cost-effective unit out of the 3. You will only see toss players making high templars and no zerg will make queens 99.9% of the time. That mean every pvz, expect high templars and storms. You won't be seeing maelstrom, feedback, broodling any time soon unless some balances can be made.
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On July 07 2004 21:35 x[ReaPeR]x wrote: Decrease Maelstorm energy, it's all u need to do.
I think block units by maelstrom longer would be more effective than the cost energy.
Shaz wrote: 1.) Increase the starting mana a queen posseses when first spawned. No need to change the mana costs of her spells, because over the long run they are perfectly priced. The concern is that there is a period of time from when you first spawn your queens to when she finally gets 100(or 150) mana that you have a bit of useless tech. Perhaps an increase to 75 or so base mana when spawned would help timing issues, and present queens as a viable early tech solution to tanks, templars,muta, etc.
I like the way that queens spawn at 100 energy for being more usefull with broodling in ZvT and keep 150 energy for broodling cauz if not then 6 queens w/ upgraded energy and 125 energy broodling would kill 12 tanks and that's a lot.
A3il3ron wrote: Increasing the effectiveness of spellcasters will turn SC into a turbo version of War3- spellcraft.
That's a strong point also.
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This is the only game I've ever played that has such a well thought out and well balanced game, even though i HATE pvz with the passion, its not because its imbalanced, its lack of experience and lack of wanting to practice the game, its not about what race is better, its about which player is better, and every unit's cost, energy, ect.. is well thought out, stop trying to change a well done game.
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Let the goon be able to shoot please...
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On July 07 2004 23:50 tfeign wrote: Show nested quote +On July 07 2004 23:38 A3iL3r0n wrote: Tfeign, ignore 12 queens making 24 broodlings, that's not plausible in a full battle. It's the fact that queens are already cost effective vs. high temps, and will only be more so if you give them the ability to broodling twice in a row. Okay, it looks like you missed one of my posts in this thread where I responded to a guy thinking that pvz would be impossible when queens's broodlings cost less energy, so I'll just copy and paste: "Making queens stronger will NOT make pvz impossible because remember we're making dark archons stronger as well. Dark archon with can counter queens with feedback. Queens counter high templars with spawn broodling. High templars counters defiler (swarm) with storm, etc. Think of how fun pvz will be when Dark Archons and queens are made stronger so they can become cost-effective. Battles will become even more micro-intensive than the way they are now...." ...Besides storming, toss players will now have to worry about queens, and zerg players have to worry about dark archons. Feedbacks, maelstrom, storm, broodling, ensnare, hallucinations, all coming into play in a battle to see who can utilize them most effectively. I don't know what about you, but I think that would be a ton of fun. Sadly, the thought above is only a dream because the high templar is the only cost-effective unit out of the 3. You will only see toss players making high templars and no zerg will make queens 99.9% of the time. That mean every pvz, expect high templars and storms. You won't be seeing maelstrom, feedback, broodling any time soon unless some balances can be made. You seem to lack the creative mind to have fun with starcraft. don't FORCE players to play so hard, let them play relaxed, or let them try to play. don't be like warcraft and force them to get mixed units if they don't want to. however, you vastly don't seem to understand pvz. you don't NEED storm. Some toss's just go all ground without storm, and play a purely micro pvz. Some toss' use reavers, goons, sairs, dts, don't FORCE them to do what you want them to do just because if they don't, they are FUCKED due to the imbalance created by strengthening all these units. If you buff up the queen, toss's will be forced to get dark archons, and temps will be damn near worthless. Strengthening dark archon will end up ridiculously powerful. How can a zerg go muta if he can lose all of them in one maelstrom? A zerg can't go 3 hatch hydra by risk of losing every single micro battle to dark archon maelstroms. THEN, if the zerg tries to go to its savior, the now powerful queen, then supposedly, toss can counter that AGAIN with dark archon. Zerg will have zero counter for a dark archon.
To be honest, i don't see hallucinations ever having a use in pvz besides trying to drop with shuttles or something. Get off your ego trip and realize you're not accepting anyone else's points as much as they are ignoring yours. Stop saying "sigh..." and raelize there are reasons for both arguments. Quite frankly, the only changes that competent sc players would agree with would be the entirely minimal changes, like the costs for certain upgrades.
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Right. But some people DO think the game is balanced. However, there is a small itch that tells them "I want to make it MORE balanced!".
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Saying that protoss players do not need storm to beat zerg is complete ignorance. WTF does sair + reavers strat has anything to do with it? So what? There's a lot of different strategies, but the problem is that some strategies are inferior to others, like dark archons / queens. Buffing them to make them a viable strategy nothing out of reach.
And why the hell would muta rush be ineffective when maelstrom costs less? It'll be as effective, if not less effective, than 2 high templars with storm, which costs roughly the same. Even an archon which doesn't need any research costs will be as effective.
And what are you talking about that zerg cant go hydra when maelstrom costs as much as storm? That's like saying a zerg can't go 3 hatch hydra by risk of losing every single micro battle to high templar storms.
Seriously, how long have you played Starcraft RuGbUg?
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United Kingdom2674 Posts
Any change to Starcraft could upset its fine balance. I am opposed to such risks being taken in futile efforts to 'improve' the game.
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On July 07 2004 22:00 Day[9] wrote: alot of things you list are underused because they are difficult to use
for ex, i used to like going all mutalisks in ZvT, because mass lurker + ling is a pain in the ass to manage, especially w/ my hotkey setup (not enough left over for lings n' stuff)
eventually, i learned how to use lurkers much better and now prefer them over mutalisks. they are more difficult, but they work better.
i have found that queens are rediculously effective, but requires a different kind of thinking than the style most zergs play. it sounds a bit too much as tho your changes will make the units incorporate themselves into the standard style of play. i think it would be much more effective to make changes that would create more diversity of play (ie i could go queen + sugo micro vs terran OR mass expand and go hydra/lurk)
i think these suggestions might work, not because the units NEED to be something very effective, but because it will make them a tad more reasonable
1) Broodling drop to 125. Broodling can be very effective vs a terran w/o a gas natural for stopping pushes, but 150 makes it just a few seconds too long. 125 is nothing drastic, but makes the queen more reasonable to use
2) i like the idea of upping infested terrans health, but 80 HP would be fine
3) drop scout cost a bit more. 250/125 sounds good. up ground attack by +1 so its 9 damage per shot. (it can kill a drone in 5 shots instead of 6)
4) hallucination is fine, nukes are fine, ghosts are fine, queen ensare cost is fine (actually its fucking incredible if you can do it right, especially vs M&M)
all in #4 are more of things that are very uncomfortable to use at first but can be very effective if you see someone who 'knows what he's doing.'
ex: Many terrans get a fuckload of goliaths vs carriers, but strong protosses simply start making lots of ground units which can fuckown goliaths pretty hard. i've seen Beast_BG get ghosts against a protoss who is going carrier. since it takes so much gas w/ the ghosts, he ends up with a very well balanced army of vultures/goliaths/ghosts. but since he doesn't need as many gollies w/ the lockdown, he can still continue to produce tanks. it works beautifully if executed properly
ex: JJu has used queens before very very well on island maps (namely paradoxx vs nal_ra) i personally have found that it can fuck up terran M&M micro REALLY hard
so yea
Wow, pretty good analysis on playing style. Lots of underused units would be ok if used in a different style. Nonstandard styles are inferior to the standard style that's why the standard style is the standard. Still you can experiment and get away with a lot of different ideas and systems. So IMO the changes by the original poster would just propagate a different standard style and decrease the number of reasonable nonstandard styles.
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Underused units dosn't make them Useless!! If you want you can still use them and own... SCBW is all about using your imaginiation and creating good strategies!!
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Underused units dosn't make them Useless!! If you want you can still use them and own... SCBW is all about using your imaginiation and creating good strategies!! Like Garimtos last OGN game, Strait up Arbiter tech/mass zealots and BoxeR's ghost lockdown counter. Man I loved that game, the true essence of BW!
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actually, i like the idea of queens having more initial mana AND lowering the spell to 125. this would make queens be usefull alot earlier than around the seventh minute, at least that's when i have them with 150 mana. also browsing the blizzard page (and reading a thread at starcraftgamers) i realized that ensnare actually doesn't help as much as i tought before as it doesn't lower the cooldown rate?
i'm a z player so i might be subjective in the matter of queens (and yes, i tried to use them fairly often but with the high cost of the spells like broodling and the low upcoming it's very very hard. also it requires insane micro imho). the infested cc and the infested terran are only a goodie for the zerg, nothing really serious imho.
it would be nice tough to see queens used EFFECTIVELY, rep anyone? i've already seen reps, tough the queens were only used to show off 
valkyres are actually pretty nice already.
dark archons are probably underused because of their micro intensenes, together with hts. reducing the cost of maelstorm or improving the duration would make them too usefull imho. possibly lowering the cost of the update would be better.
in pvz i find scouts already usefull, at least, i tried them out. a tech build like: gate (2 zeals), core, stargate(2 sairs, 1 scout) -> overlord hunt to dts worked fine for me, the scout really helped too. i don't know about other match ups tough.
nukes are just as dark archons, underused because of beeing much too micro intense. i tough don't think there's a really good solution to that.
that are just my two bits to that.
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NOTE: high cost of broodling i didn't mean the update but the mana cost
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all i got to say is, TOSS NEEDS STORM. Otherwise we'd all play zerg and just worry about terran matchup.
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Decrease scv hp to 40 or at least 45. Right now they are overpowered for no apparent reason
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DA's cost to much. There underuse has nothing to do with mana costs. They are EXPENSIVE, require a lot of micro, and are only really effective vs spell casters (never gonna be widly used because of micro) and lot game ultra crack. You're not gonna get them vs ultra crack because that won't come untill late game and if you got the money for them you've probally ahead. If however you have a few DTs laying around you can get them, and they are useful.
Nukes aren't weak because of anything having to do with the nuke itself. Terran players need scanners more than nukes. Ghosts die easily because of low HPs making the nukes not nearly as useful. Blizzard has said they won't change ghosts because of single player.
Queens are a great unit. Problem is they SHOULDN'T be as powerful as defilars because they are lair tech and no hive tech. They are fun to use, but if you get them you're most likely taking a small be somewhat important unit hit making the queens nest early, researching the queens spells, and then getting them. This will either lower your units needed to defend expos, delay hive tech, or as day said force you to try to out micro a terran force. Also if I'm not mistaken irradiate kills queens with 1 hit...reason I stopped messing with them vs terran. Vs tos broodlings on HTs is a nice move, so is parasites. They do have a place there, it's just a choice if you want to use them or not.
Scouts are a very good anti terran push units on maps where the terran can't use turrets to push. Good example is blade storm where if you saw Grots RWA he talked about rekrul using it and how he was scared that he'd get hit by scouts while trying to push. They are also used to rush terran (been used in recent pro level games). THey are good vs carriers and BCs and devs. They are also used instead of sairs vs zerg a lot, and they seem to work pretty well. I recall them firing faster in the past so apperently they were too good with a lower cool down rate.
You are completely ignoring island maps. Valks are great on islands. Queens become much more important on islands. All of these air units that you complain about have differnt uses on islands but because most players don't practice or play much on islands they haven't learned the units uses.
Oh and valks vs carrires. That had to be a joke right? Do you understand anything about valks?
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United Kingdom2674 Posts
[QUOTE]On July 07 2004 23:25 dan1st wrote: [QUOTE]On July 07 2004 23:15 tfeign wrote: [QUOTE]On July 07 2004 22:49 Heaven`uO wrote: Nuke is a viable strategy only when you're not serious about winning, because the chances of it working nowhere justifies the cost, time, as well as risk in which it wont work. As I said before, BILLIONS of starcraft games have been played, there statistically HAS to be SOME games in which nuke will work. But why don't you see pros use nukes in serious games? Because again, The chances of it working effectively is not worth the cost, time, micro, and risk. That's why I suggest making nuke cost less.[/QUOTE]
Strange... Didn't we see Boxer use nuke against Silent_Control last month? Boxer didn't seem he was fooling around, and the nuke was pretty effective imo.[/QUOTE]
That may be so. However, the surprise factor is extremely important. The reason you do not see nukes more often at pro level generally is it is not a reliable strategy. The orthodox strategies in current play are orthodox simply because they deliver high winning chances in a wide variety of situations.
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i relly just think there have to be certain things in sc u could make slightly more powerul or slightly less expensive and it would neither break the game nor take away from current options in a negative way
some options just cost more minerals and vespene than others despite that they aren't the best option anyway. of course if u make too big of a change, that sucks. why are people suggesting "no changes at all" when they fear too big of a change? just demand a smaller change.
and yes, units have to vary in effectiveness and power etc. they should not all be the same. but you can reduce the size of the gap a little when it becomes clear some unit has become not worth caring about for 99.99% of all games.
if you really are interested check out some entry level discussion of minor imperfections in bw and some ideas people have had: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?currentpage=1&topic_id=12587 http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?currentpage=4&topic_id=11215
On April 11 2004 10:36 STIMEY d okgm fish wrote: it would matter for implications of future RTS design ... it's a theoretical discussion. comparing upgrades systems, resource gathering systems, tech systems, etc. between war2, sc, bw, and all the patches, with war3, etc. is not useless at all.
i dont know why everyone thinks bw is the result of 6 years of tough balancing anyways. if you look at the actual changes that have been made, you'll see most of it is just random and just as many people have argued that every version was the perfect balance as now argue the current one is perfect.
ppl always assume the current version is perfect. if you asked them if we should change the zealot, the sunken, the photon, the academy, the scan, the larva rate, the hydralisk build time, the spire build time, the speed of upgraded overlords, these same ppl would have most likely said the same thing "no, it's perfect, we can't change anything now, it will ruin the game", but all these changes, and many more, happened, and the game miraculously survived
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I can understand arguments for the other side, but I think it is good that some strategies/tactics are inferior. This is true in everything, this is how you make your choices, through the rational comparison of the relative merits of these strategies/tactics. Maybe the game would technically be more balanced if all strategies/tactics were equally viable, but that would take away a large part of the game people enjoy. I think the balance at the moment focuses on keeping the races equal rather than every game approach, and I prefer this. Another thing to consider is the wet-my-pants enthusiasm shown for the massive increase in micro-wars, did you think about whether people *want* to play that game or not? I am sure most people consider micro in moderation enjoyable, and in excess probably admirable; but, do you want to sit for 34 minutes controlling a group of spellcasters? I think the game *may* still be balanced with your suggestions (possible with some refinements), but I do not think it is the same game. Obviously, this is all just opinion, so feel free to flame me ^_^.
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build time changes you could probably make safely (i havent looked at ore, gas, or energy only build time so far)
reduce upgrades by 32bt -level 1 = 234 (from 266) -level 2 = 266 (from 298) -level 3 = 298 (from 330)
reduce "forgotten" upgrades to 120bt (from 166) -robotics upgrades -energy upgrades -ocular implants (ghost sight) -scout upgrades
reduce "underused" upgrades to 100bt (from 120) -optical flare -mind control -emp shockwave -yamato cannon -recall (abiter takes and costs long enough already?)
reduce more "underused" upgrades and nuke to 80bt (from 100) -maelstrom -cloaking field (wraith) -plague -stasis -lockdown -nuclear missile
reduce even more "underused" upgrades and units to 70bt (from 80) -burrow -restoration -scout -spawn broodling -ensnare -disruption web -nuclear silo -personnel cloaking -hallucination
faq: 1. those wont make any difference. wrong. every little bit helps. besides, knowing how much you can change things without making a difference gives you a good starting point for deciding where to make changes that are more likely to matter.
2. one of those changes is too overpowering actually. i would not be surprised. complain about it and make your point, that's what this list is for.
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