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I've thought for a long time that the solution would be to make protoss units cost more when warped in remotely.
Have the warpgate upgrade immediately affect both the standard gateway and its morphed form.
When in "gateway" mode, units spawn instantly at the building, which then goes on cd. Analogous to warping units into your base. When in "warpgate" mode, units cost 25% more, but can be warped in wherever you have power.
Easy. Different costs for each mode allows the designer/balance team to separate the inherent advantage of forward reinforcement from the actual power of the units themselves. You make protoss units cheaper at the gateway, improving P's defensive efficacy, but to go on the attack P has to take the cost-efficiency hit - a hit which Protoss is currently wearing regardless of whether they plan to abuse it or not.
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It's not just the defender's advantage. As other people have pointed out, Protoss warp-in times are very fast.
As an example, that means that while a Terran with three raxes with add-ons (say two techlabs and a reactor) making two maurauders and 2 marines has 300 minerals and 50 gas invested but not included in the army's actual present value. Meanwhile the Protoss knocking on the front door has all their spent money immediately in the army.
A 4-gate versus a 3-rax (or even two hatch roach/ling) both spend all the income off one base, but Protoss has an army that is ~350 resources larger at all times.
That's the main reason Protoss units can't be allowed to trade very evenly in the early game or they will be horribly overpowered. That's why roach/ling has to be better than gateway armies, and why Terrans get mules and the excellent marine/maurauder composition.
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This is a nice and pretty well thought-out article. I agree with your basic point that toss by design lacks the strong defender's advantage enjoyed by the other two races, and I'd love to see your suggestion implemented in HotS of the shield battery returning as a post-GW (or cybercore) option. It would need to have a fairly long build time, though, because a 4-gate backed up by an in-base shield battery or two would be ridiculous.
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On September 08 2011 22:01 NuclearStar wrote:
I dont know why protoss are seen as weak right now, I know the results of tournies seem to suggest they are weak and terran is imba or whatever, but I still get rolled by protoss on ladder half the time. If they make changes to help high level protoss then they have to be certain that those changes are not going to make lower level protoss way more imba, as this will put terran and zerg players off the game if they are losing all the time at lower levels to P
1. You get rolled by Protosses not because they are Protoss but because they are better players than you. When you get rolled, it's not imba, it's skill difference.
2. Game is balanced for the level of play that you see in GSL and other highly regarded tournaments, not for the platinum players.
3. As the meta game is right now similar skilled level PvZ/T matches tend to favor the Z & T. If P is rolling every other race in bronze league and is getting rolled by other races in GM league it points to that perhaps that P mechanics are easier to use, not that P has more powerful units or strats.
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On September 08 2011 22:18 Belisarius wrote:
I've thought for a long time that the solution would be to make protoss units cost more when warped in remotely.
Have the warpgate upgrade immediately affect both the standard gateway and its morphed form.
When in "gateway" mode, units spawn instantly at the building, which then goes on CD. Analogous to warping units into your base. When in "warpgate" mode, units cost 25% more, but can be warped in wherever you have power.
Easy. You can make protoss units cheaper at the gateway, improving your defensive efficacy, but to go on the attack you have to take the cost-efficiency hit.
The problem with this is that that will kill protoss. Right now protoss rely on that extra wave of units that we get from the warpgate to kill Terran timing pushes (either MM or Hellion marine) or zerg rushes (7RR) where I know I have lost games because of a delayed warp gate research (I was trying a zealot heavy 2 gate before cyber core against zerg for a while) being able to get those 3 units extra is vital and if the warped units cost 25% more it will be impossible to defend those pushes.
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On September 08 2011 21:55 Milkis wrote:
in my opinion if they make warp gate have a significantly longer cool time you'd get defender's advantage back and would let you get away with buffing protoss units a bit to deal with other kinds of attacks protoss has :p
How is that suppose to work out exactly? whetever you have 4 stalkers, or one stalker as strong as 4 that takes 4 times as long to build, it doesn't matter. The fact is that you can still warpin everywhere, and if protoss had defenders advantage, timing attacks would be too strong =|
I rather like the idea of units either costing more, or take longer to warp in, depending on the distance you warp in from the warpgate.
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On September 08 2011 22:23 NoobieOne wrote:Show nested quote +On September 08 2011 22:18 Belisarius wrote:
I've thought for a long time that the solution would be to make protoss units cost more when warped in remotely.
Have the warpgate upgrade immediately affect both the standard gateway and its morphed form.
When in "gateway" mode, units spawn instantly at the building, which then goes on CD. Analogous to warping units into your base. When in "warpgate" mode, units cost 25% more, but can be warped in wherever you have power.
Easy. You can make protoss units cheaper at the gateway, improving your defensive efficacy, but to go on the attack you have to take the cost-efficiency hit. The problem with this is that that will kill protoss. Right now protoss rely on that extra wave of units that we get from the warpgate to kill Terran timing pushes (either MM or Hellion marine) or zerg rushes (7RR) where I know I have lost games because of a delayed warp gate research (I was trying a zealot heavy 2 gate before cyber core against zerg for a while) being able to get those 3 units extra is vital and if the warped units cost 25% more it will be impossible to defend those pushes.
No that's my point. I'm toss by the way, I know how important that wave is. That's why I said warpgate should upgrade both gateway mode and its warp in mode.
I'd have the standard gateway train time mode disappear (because it's useless once you have wg), replaced with a mode where the units spawn instantly as with warpgate but do so at the gateway, as if they'd been trained. So you still get the extra round of units when WG comes online.
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On September 08 2011 22:25 Excludos wrote:Show nested quote +On September 08 2011 21:55 Milkis wrote:
in my opinion if they make warp gate have a significantly longer cool time you'd get defender's advantage back and would let you get away with buffing protoss units a bit to deal with other kinds of attacks protoss has :p How is that suppose to work out exactly? whetever you have 4 stalkers, or one stalker as strong as 4 that takes 4 times as long to build, it doesn't matter. The fact is that you can still warpin everywhere, and if protoss had defenders advantage, timing attacks would be too strong =| I rather like the idea of units either costing more, or take longer to warp in, depending on the distance you warp in from the warpgate.
The defender wouldn't use warpgates, so they can reinforce faster (in PvP), so early aggression plays are discouraged a bit. You can then buff gateway units on top of that to make them more workable against pushes like 1/1/1
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I think a shield battery would be great.
But, the great idea of making gateways have slightly less cooldown than warpgates would be a good fix too. Defenders advantage, and more strategic variety in all matchups.
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I honestly wish they would remove warp gates all together and give Toss something else in return. I believe Protoss is balanced right now, but in a really terrible way.
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They should move it into other tier and they should NOT balance the game around it, there should be advantages of using both warp in and rally point. Basically I think it shouldn't be so important mechanic in the whole game.
For example
I play zerg and I do drop. I can do this drop, but I don't have to. I might be completely fine without the drop, but I can do it. Can you imagine not doing warp gate upgrade as a toss?
Warp in upgrade is more important, but you get my point.
Do you remember last patch? They already tried to do something about it, but it ended up with sentry build time being reduced by 5 seconds.
I'm offracing with protoss as I started with it, but protoss gateway units always melt when rines marauder fire at them and I always felt that you can do something with zerg when metagames unfavored zerg, now it's protoss having hard time, but there are not many options visible for me, maybe that's why I play zerg (cus I see more options, not cus it's stronger t.T)
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On September 08 2011 22:14 BottleSafti wrote:
I find it kinda funny, that all of you are saying "warpgate is imba", but if you look at the current winrates of all races Terran is the most "overpowered" race in and outside of Korea... Protoss has the least wins of all 3 races!
No one is saying it is imba. You obviously haven't read the OP or any of the other part of this thread.
Anyways, this has bothered me since I first became aware of starcraft. I always though it was weird to completely remove defender's advantage. I think the best solution would to make WG higher in the tech tree with faster gateway build times. I also lover the idea of the shield battery in the nexus.
What sucks is that I doubt Blizzard would never even think of changing something that is so integrated into the game. I wish they had the guts and time to actually rethink some things entirely and just see what happens in the hands of the pros.
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I've talked about warpgates as a broken mechanic months ago. Protoss is the gimmick race that relies on their wg's. Thus, I agree with this article
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Nice insightful write up, looks like protoss may be innately flawed due to this mechanic, I don't really see an easy solution to this, no way are they going to reduce the range of warpins, they are just synonymous w SC2 protoss
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Yeah I agree that it's a decent read. I really struggle late game vs Protoss players that go templar tech and 20 warp gates. M&M simply don't kill chargelots I don't care what anyone says. It's so frustrating when we fight in the middle, go even, however he warps in 20 chargelots and I have to wait 15 seconds for my units to walk. Plus another thing is that when you warp it you can pick the positioning.
It's 250 food vs 200 food armies. Zerg with instant tech switch and possible 50+larva just sitting around on 3 hatch...
Terran can't reproduce at the levels of these other races. They just die if the bulk of the army is dead. I can't wait for HotS to see how Terran is "complete". It better involve a tech-reactor upgrade. 
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I've always thought that Pylons should have a cooldown on warp ins so you restrict the number of units that can be warped in on a single pylon. Make it 1 or 2 gates worth per pylon or something. This would at least force Protoss to build more pylons, and protect them, and killing the probe / pylons would be even more important.
Also give the Nexus a reasonable warp in radius to compensate. And have a Warp Prism able to warp in 4 gates worth of units.
If Protoss is too weak then because of this, which it would be, then buff the gateway units to compensate.
I strongly dislike the idea of having the rally points in the first place. I don't even like that Warp Gate is researchable at all. I reckon a complete overhaul is required, including making warp gates warp by default. Pylon management could become a much greater aspect of the race with respect to warp ins, bringing the Nexus and Warp Prism into greater prominence. You could even chrono the pylons to make the warp in cooldown quicker.
Combined this would completely change early offensive protoss gateway 'all ins' by forcing some more investment by the Protoss player. It would restore defender's advantage, which i really think this game lacks. It would promote the Warp Prism. It would make Gateway units feel less foddery, less gimmicky, and basically more legit units like i feel the other races early units are.
I reckons Blizzard have to be ballsy on this warp in issue, because i can't convince myself that it isn't having a major affect on the game. Gateway units just feel wrong to me and i blame it on the current Warp Gate mechanics.
Haven't really thought the shield battery thing through, except perhaps to put it on the Warp Prism when its in warp mode or something. Portable shield charge etc.
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Warp gate has always seemed like one of Dustin's many "totally cool ideas" that suggest a lack of understanding of basic RTS design mechanics but by the time beta rolled around the game was more or less feature complete. It doesn't ruin the game for me but it's something I'll probably never like in its current form.
I'd love a complete redesign where it stops just being something Protoss get 3 minutes into the game. Maybe get rid of chronoboost and make warp gate use nexus energy and otherwise focus on gate production, so it's more of an oh shit or army supplementation tool rather than the derp thing it is right now. Retune gateways and research times as necessary. I honestly think that would make the game better. Not that it will ever happen
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I thought we were all over the ¨I want to design the game¨ phase.
It seems not. Warpgate didn´t break protoss, just a few months ago Protoss were doign well, it may have been the WG nerf or the Metagame changing but can we stop blaming game design just because a race is having a hard time atm?
Every single time that a race is having a hard time, everybody claims that it was badly designed, broken, that it needs to be redesigned(and all the redesigns are just hey lets copy paste BW!).
Even with no warpgates Zealots and Dragoons would be ¨bad¨ in SC2, due to the new units the other races have, the improved controls. Warpgate is a really interesting and Novel concept, yeah its different but I have always been on the side of developers trying new things instead of being hindered by tradition.
Its not like its unreasonable that the game would feel imbalanced, the best testing is the playtesting. I am sure that for the expansions new units and abilities will be added to fill the holes in each races arsenal(like what happened from SC1 to BW).
Hey, but I guess its easier to say the game is broken and scream bad design everytime a race is in trouble. Although, with the new engine and units I can see how the Shield battery would be better in SC2 than it ever was in BW.
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A poll would be nice, one to see whether or not it's a good idea, and a second to see the races voting in the poll and see if there's a correlation (non protoss players voting against a chance for example)
I for one think a change in the way photon cannons are teched too would be nice, I like the idea of them not requiring a forge but being much more expensive, preventing a surge in cannon related cheese.
On September 08 2011 22:23 BeyondCtrL wrote:
2. Game is balanced for the level of play that you see in GSL and other highly regarded tournaments, not for the platinum players.
I think the reaper nerf proves that that's a load of nonsense.
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Edit: nevermind. Kind of not pertinent to the discussion.
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