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I agree with OP and I'm protoss. Having gateway unit costs 10% cheaper than warp ins or 10% faster would make for a more entertaining early game for toss. Right now zergs have different openers, terrans have different openers. But for toss the first 4 minutes is getting cybercore to start wg research. 9 pylon, 12 or 13 gate, 1st assimilator on 14 or 15, cyber on 17 or 18.
Other than avoiding cheese, an early zerg/terran worker scout is almost useless, cause we have to do pretty much the same thing every time until we spend our first 100 gas on wg research and a stalker.
This isn't about nerfing protoss. It's about having more than one attractive option. Right now warpgates have the advantage in build time, the same cost, and you can warp in anywhere. It forces every protoss to make the same choice, limiting creativity.
It's like if colossus had 3 times the dps and twice the health. They would have to balance the game around this by nerfing other protoss aspects, and we would be forced to go collo every time - it would make for a limited, boring race.
This design flaw isn't a huge deal. Protoss is still a fun race, and there are a lot of things we can play around with. The wg mechanic doesn't 'break' protoss. It's just something that could be improved on.
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I think Warpgate is too deeply ingrained in SC2 to ever be taken out or significantly changed. It's not necessarily a bad design choice - its just that the full set of consequences have not been accounted for. I wrote my article in the hopes of addressing the problems it creates so those can be balanced instead.
I don't have a firm opinion on whether or not warp is good for the game, since I haven't seen what happens with the alternative (a defensive option).
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The way I see the warpgate research being in an ideal world is this.
It should be researched purely when people need mobility and are willing to pay for it. It should not affect build times, it should not be a bargain upgrade that you can always take up, it should be an investment in the same way blink, robo tech or upgrades are. Currently there are no downside to getting warpgates, so there is no reason why anyone would decide not to get them, can you think of any other upgrade that is so guaranteed to be researched within a game, and always as soon as is technically possible?
My suggestion would be for the warpgate to have its cost changed to 200/200 and have no effect on build times, this way it would usually be researched around the mid-game after robo or twilight. Only if the player needs that extra mobility in the early game will they be willing to get the upgrade sooner due to its cost. It would no longer be the dumb-fire automatic upgrade to get after core, in that the player will have to choose whether they want to sacrifice a small part of their army & economy for a purely mobility-based upgrade.
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I always have a problem with the idea of "wait until an expansion to seriously rework it".
If they'd done their job right in the first place it wouldn't need reworking. Paying someone more money for making mistakes? That sounds like the banking bailout. They can make a patch that reworks it 'seriously' and give it to us. Why would you pay for something again when you should've gotten it before? Why would you pay for something when they have shown they have the proclivity to mess it up?
In short, why reward people for their mistakes? Why not withhold rewards UNTIL they fix their mistakes at no cost to the consumer? This is what allows shit to happen. Remember when games had to be as perfect as possible BEFORE they were released because patching didnt exist? What happened to consumers that they are willing to trade good money for a sketchy product, and sometimes even a downright crappy one, for their "fix" right now. Sounds like drug addiction to me.
I like the idea of pylons having energy on them though, and this energy is depleted by 50 per unit, has a 200 max, and as it is being built, starts with full energy.
thats a pretty simple and elegant solution. would require pylon spam, which would thus directly lower the amount of units the protoss can produce, or they can play with fewer to one proxy, and thus not have enough throughput.
And Warp Prisms still requiring no energy to spam units under with thus become a preference.
Fixes everything.
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On September 09 2011 11:01 xlava wrote:Show nested quote +On September 09 2011 10:56 Knee_of_Justice wrote:On September 09 2011 10:47 xlava wrote:
I don't know why these threads keep flaring up, but let me tell you something as a Master Protoss. Removing warpgate from the race would break us completely. You should say goodbye to any of our timings, because our ONLY and I repeat: ONLY offensive abilities early game come from forcefields, and our TIMELY reinforcements.
Making any more changes to the offensive capabilities of Protoss warpins would break not only PvP and the entire dynamic of the matchup, but also neuter us offensively versus all the races. There is a reason why Terrans don't really reinforce when doing something like a 2 medivac timing, because if they could reinforce instantly, their cost effectiveness would spiral COMPLETELY out of control. Theres a reason Zerg don't get warpins, because the race uses the larvae mechanic and creep spread for almost instantaneous reinforcement anyway.
If Protoss was to be nerfed in this fashion it would render 3 gate pressure and 4 gate rushes nonviable. As well as timings such as the 5 gate pressure off 2 bases versus Zerg as well as the 6gate. Any kind of early game pressure would be impossible. Essentially what I'm getting at is that ANY change to the offensive capabilities of Protoss would mean a completely disastrous metagame shift, we would be come the turtle race, because we were forced to, and we simply do not have the units and structures to do so.
The fact that the gateway is useless after warpgate is researched isn't a design flaw. Its the way our race works. You can't compare apples and oranges, every race is different, and I am absolutely STUNNED that posts like this are surfacing (and flourishing) in a time when Protoss is doing terribly.
All in all, nerfing warpgate and thereby Protoss is not the answer. There is nothing wrong with the mechanic, as it is a staple of the mechanics of our race. I would love to hear more specific criticism as to why it is actually overpowered (like what rush, for example). In my opinion, it is the only thing that makes Protoss even close to balanced.
Also a quick note: I say "remove" in the first part of this post. Let me clarify that. ANY change. I say again. ANY nerf to the warpgate mechanic will render the fragile Protoss early game units and timings impossible to use and execute, respectively. Warpgate doesn't have to be removed to destroy our race, it just has to be nerfed to destroy our race. Well I dont blame you, it is a huge article, but you missed my point. I am not suggesting that it is overpowered at all, or underpowered. This is the language of Balance, not Design. I want to move beyond that. I am suggesting that it is poorly designed, one of the effects of which is that, as you put it, our "ONLY offensive abilities early game come from forcefields, and our TIMELY reinforcements," among other things. I am trying to indicate where I think they went wrong, but also what can be done to fix the problem. I am not suggesting turning protoss into terran. I am not suggesting nerfing warpgate. I am assuming that any "nerf" as you call it (I would prefer to call it a design change), will be balanced by a "buff," such that if warpgates are moved up the tech tree, something would be done to compensate for that change in the early game. Sorry to not be clear. Please re-read and get back to me. :D I'm not re-reading it for a reason, sir. My point is in the bold. I am saying that any change, and honestly I don't care what it is, will remove a huge amount of utility from Protoss... Warpgate is a staple of the race. I and no other Protoss wants it removed. The design is genius and very well designed. I don't want to take a chance with any change that could potentially screw up warpgate. Please, if you don't think its overpowered, why do you think its badly designed? Because in most people's minds "badly designed" equivocates to either OP or UP. Show nested quote +On September 09 2011 10:58 monitor wrote:
I am also shocked that the Warpgate is faster at producing units than the Gateway and it can warp in, so there is no reason to have a gateway. That's just bad design- they might as well remove gateways and balance the game from that.
In my opinion, they need to make the Gateway have faster build times than warpgates (maybe by like 5-10 seconds) so that gateways are better but can't be used for harass or reinforcements, thus creating a much more interesting dynamic. They might need to do some adjustments to balance early game then, but I doubt it would be a whole lot. What??? Warpgates produce in the same amount of time, roughly, as every other races' main production structures. Are you kidding me??? A more interesting dynamic? You're saying that standard reinforcements is "more dynamic" than warping units into the fray? :O seriously? Can we please get some high level Protoss in here so that I'm not defending the entire race's sanctity by myself?
Warp gates produce units only slightly slower than Zerg units before adding larva production rate. Add larva production rate, and warp gates produce units FASTER than Zerg.
2 hatcheries of injected larva produces the same number of roach or hydra Or Higher tech unit as 4 warp gates. Add on chronoboost which halves the cooldown time, and in two production cycles, a Protoss creates units twice as fast. it takes 40 seconds to create 4 larvae, or 13 seconds for one to be created by the hatch. 40/4 = 10 per larva. so an ultralisk is actually 70+10. an infestor is actually 50+10. a roach is actually 27+10 (which turns out to thus take longer than non chronoboosted stalkers).
On September 09 2011 10:58 monitor wrote:
I am also shocked that the Warpgate is faster at producing units than the Gateway and it can warp in, so there is no reason to have a gateway. That's just bad design- they might as well remove gateways and balance the game from that.
In my opinion, they need to make the Gateway have faster build times than warpgates (maybe by like 5-10 seconds) so that gateways are better but can't be used for harass or reinforcements, thus creating a much more interesting dynamic. They might need to do some adjustments to balance early game then, but I doubt it would be a whole lot.
The warp gate was the intended end result, the lengthening of the research for it was a process to stop some very early overpowering all-ins, because the production speed of warp gates is better than the other two races. If it wasn't, the timing wouldn't have been nerfed. However, you also cant remove the higher rate Or warpgates without making protoss obsolete and weak. Its a gimmick the race relies on until deathball status.
if its lengthened again, protoss will start complaining that they cant perform any viable standard push in the early game, and then they'll know what its like to be zerg.
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Simple fix for warpgates: make them build units slightly slower than gateways. Warpgates will still be advantageous in many situations, or in general because of the "get units at the beginning of the production cycle instead of the end" system that a cooldown creates.
It would be nice to see players switch between gateways/warpgates depending on the situation, which is a nice tactical thing to see from a spectator's point of view.
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i think warp gates are messy design. it feels like a lot of units had to suffer because warp gate was so damn good. Tech times also had to be increased for warp gate units because warp gate allows you to get the thing immediately when the tech was done.
The reason the shrine takes 100 seconds is because the instant the shrine is done you can get DT's. Warp gate gets the feel like the inhibit the race from being more "full". Gateway based armies feel like they can't throw their weight around. It also removes the lovely aspect of catching reinforcements. Warp gates just feel like they allow toss to do so many things but have a really tough strong aggressive units. Warp gate allow you to reinforce instantly, but are often really bad in small engagements. They allow you to defend a far away location or a location without units instantly. It allows toss to skimp on things like defense. But even with all these advantages that warp gate allows it still feels "bleh"
without warp gate perhaps stalkers could have more range, or be stronger, perhaps zealots could be faster with more health. I don't know what is needed for warp gates to work. but i feel warp gate takes out a lot of the dynamic movement and positioning of armies.
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The value of the first page of posts combined doesn't even start to match up to the OP's post. Everyone replying with "you can't remove warp gate, it will BREAK THE GAME" obviously did not read the post; they just saw "warpgates" and "balance" and did a kneejerk reply. I'm a protoss player, and I think that warp gates have been a consistent excuse to make gateway units other than the sentry garbage for their cost.
The sentry and warp gates are the only two things that let protoss pressure in the early game, and guess what? They're getting figured out. They don't promote standard, stable play; they're just crutches designed to hold up the terrible stalker and mediocre zealot. Forcefield (all micro denying spells, for that matter: fungal stun removal and concussive shell nerf) needs to be removed, gateway build times should match warp gate build times (be made faster), warp gate requirements should move up the tech tree and protoss gateway should be BUFFED ACCORDINGLY.
Give us increased stalker damage/attack rate, with PROPER upgrade scaling, and maybe a slightly faster zealot, so that we'll finally be able to do timing attacks based on something other than warp gates and sentries (because really, find me an early pressure build that doesn't rely on one, or both, of these mechanics, ignoring cheese like DTs and cannon rushes). Then maybe we can come up with other cool stuff, like making manner pylons mid-battle in place of forcefield.
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On September 09 2011 10:39 Knee_of_Justice wrote:2) Warpgates vs Gateways
This is such an obvious mechanic I was shocked when they didn’t include it. There ought to be some kind of interaction between these two structures. Whether that be delaying warpgate tech to make gateways more valuable early game, or allowing for some strategies/reasons for shifting between them, the gateway is a totally useless building after warpgate research, which is terrible design.
Some examples of changes:
a) Make the warpgate cooldown longer and keep the warp-in time the same (5 sec), while keeping the gateway build-times the same
This allows gateways to be the most efficient way of producing units, (less clicks, but also faster in terms of build time) although they still have to walk to their locations. It means that an all-gateway player will always out-macro an all-warpgate player. But the a player with warpgates may be able to out-maneuver his opponent, or administer surgical strikes with a few warpgates while still macroing. It may also lead to delicate calculations about where the proxy pylon has to be in order for the bonus from warpgate to be beneficial and may provide an advantage on specific maps (large, lots of cliffs, etc).
This is the elegant solution, surrounded by the (bolded) supporting reasons. One of suzy's main points was that the warpgate leads to a surrendering of the defender's advantage (rally distance). By encouraging players to keep their gates standard, you can regain that strategic edge.
The PTR showed everyone that this was entirely true, and that it was actually too true. Such a change in mechanics must be re-balanced with the appropriate adjustments to unit strength or training time, or whatever. Blizzard had found the solution, but didn't seem to understand just how big a change it was.
On September 09 2011 15:40 Falling wrote:
Furthermore, I've always liked the concept of fast production gateways vs strategic warp-in reinforcements. It certainly could lead to a whole new aspect of play. (Commentators: "and Huk's changing all his gateways to warpgates! (as 15-20 gateways switch to warpgate.) He's going for the attack! Huk Waaarpiiing!)
This is a staggeringly awesome scenario. Adds so much strategic decisiveness to the offensive warp-in.
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Sorry, you forgot the most popular and best suggestion:
Switch and/or adjust warpgate and gateway cooldown times to increase strategic variety and make warping in an actual tradeoff choice (you sacrifice a little cooldown for its benefit).
Would you address that suggestion?
I am a professional designer and I do not think the warp gate mechanic is fundamentally flawed. The above suggestion would fix the issue.
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As I mentioned in the other thread, I think pylons should have energy that is consumed when a unit is warped in its power grid. I think 25 energy per unit would be good (pylon would start with 25 or 50). This will preserve the defender's advantage of faster reinforcement while not completely destroying the proxy warp-in.
On top of this, why not give an upgrade (maybe researchable at cyber?) that will give pylon the ability to cast the shield battery regen skill using its new found energy.
I think this idea makes the most sense really. You keep the warp-in attack advantage while allowing the defender to have an advantage without needing to do some clumsy build order incorporating early forge.
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On September 10 2011 03:06 Truedot wrote:
Add on chronoboost which halves the cooldown time
Chronoboost does not halve the cooldown time.
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Okay, went back, re-read it a few more times. I don't get it. Are you saying that the very mechanic of warpgate is flawed from a design standpoint? If that's true, is it UP or OP? Or neither? If it's neither, then I don't understand the problem.
"We have infestors puking up Infested Terrans in ZvP, I don't like that because it doesn't make sense." Is essentially what I'm getting out of this. You don't like the way it works because...it doesn't make sense?
O_o?
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I still cannot believe blizzard designed protoss as it is. Why the fuck does the gateway even exist? It's such a useless building and it makes me angry that they didn't think the warpgate/gateway relationship through.
REALLY poor design.
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On September 10 2011 05:46 mapthesoul wrote:
I still cannot believe blizzard designed protoss as it is. Why the fuck does the gateway even exist? It's such a useless building and it makes me angry that they didn't think the warpgate/gateway relationship through.
REALLY poor design.
Flipping cooldowns would fix this. Plain and simple.
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On September 10 2011 05:40 Kimaker wrote:
Okay, went back, re-read it a few more times. I don't get it. Are you saying that the very mechanic of warpgate is flawed from a design standpoint? If that's true, is it UP or OP? Or neither? If it's neither, then I don't understand the problem.
This thread's argument is predicated on the truth that you can have flawed design and be balanced. The OP is not making any statement about balance, and calling warpgate bad design.
If applied to, say, buildings, you can certainly see how something can be ugly as sin and still function just fine. Bad design, acceptable function.
The thread linked at the start of the OP goes further to say that warpgates are a balance problem as well (if i remember correctly).
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The basis for this and the original thread is the idea that warp ins mess with the concept of defenders advantage. I have to question that though, because proxy buildings for Terran do the same. If Protoss were able to automatically warp in anywhere (without a pylon) then of course there would be a problem. But there is some sacrifice required - Protoss needs to safely build and maintain a pylon somewhere far outside of their base. Of course, this is not equal to the sacrific involved in making proxy buildings, but I feel it's an important point.
Having said that, I agree that in practice the warp-in mechanic largely erodes the defenders advantage. Whether this is actually a problem or just a situation that is unusual for an RTS is open to debate.
I do however like the suggestion of gateways remaining valuable after warp gate research. I remember running some tests just after the game came out and coming to the surprising conclusion that there was no scenario where it was worth delaying warpgate in preference of pumping out of gateways. It shocked me - why not just put gateways on a timer whereby they switch over to warpgates automatically two and a half minutes after cybercore? That is essentially the scenario that the game design has created.
I also think increasing the warpgate cost is sensible. It would indirectly delay research time, while providing the player with the additional choice of whether to make the sacrifice of teching to warpgate early. Presently it's a no brainer (investing 50 minerals and 50 gas is not really 'teching').
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mmm i want to play protoss, but i overlook the cute button telling me i can warp in again all the time. Damn i want to que up like terran, or atleast like zerg, lets make a thread and tell everyone that warpgate tech breaks the game and should be removed. Thats what those threads sound like to me.
Anyway there is no need for discussing this, if you think about it for a minute you will realize that blizzard will never remove this mechanic or make it more complicated.
And warp gate mechanics switched from the alpha (remembers the time where warpin had no cooldown, the limit where the ressources) so imo they played it out enough to know what works, and taking away the offensiv part will take out the whole sense of the warp mechanics.
PS: this dark pylon thingie didn't make it past the alpha, you know what you want atm pylon with energy  .
and to the ops bw comparsion, you seem to have forgotten marine range, medic energy, dragoon range, and zealot speed, hydra range and hydra speed. You can compare that to charge and blink and all the other nice things, since sc2 is easier to control, they could add more interesting micro abilities to the units, to shift the game away from pure mechanics to in battle tactics.
Which would have made bw to hard. (remember the units added with bw, having total awesome skills, but only the best of the best could use them to perfection without stacking up 5k ressources, and mostly they were unused, because macroing took to much time)
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On September 09 2011 10:58 monitor wrote:
I am also shocked that the Warpgate is faster at producing units than the Gateway and it can warp in, so there is no reason to have a gateway. That's just bad design- they might as well remove gateways and balance the game from that.
In my opinion, they need to make the Gateway have faster build times than warpgates (maybe by like 5-10 seconds) so that gateways are better but can't be used for harass or reinforcements, thus creating a much more interesting dynamic. They might need to do some adjustments to balance early game then, but I doubt it would be a whole lot.
not a bad idea tbh, would make early game gateway more able to hold stupid all in cheeses.
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As a protoss player, the fundamental problem I have with warp gate is the fact that it removes defender's advantage too early into the game. Defender's advantage has been a crucial component of RTS forever, and is instrumental in surviving early aggression and all-ins. Because warp gate allows protoss to create units right outside the opponents base and remove reinforcement distance, gateway units cannot be too strong otherwise early game would be broken. Hence the creation of the sentry and, more importantly, the forcefield to supplement the protoss army to not getting beat to shit by all other tier 1 units. This has resulted in the dependence on AoE in the form of colossus, psionic storm, and archons and the deathball becoming the "optimal" way to engage as protoss.
What I would change:
I would make warp gate a late game upgrade. Being able to traverse the map instantly should not be available at the 6 minute mark, that is just ridiculous.
Early gateway units, zealot, stalker, and sentry would obviously have to be buffed slightly, and I seriously mean slightly, to compensate for the decrease in production time.
As an opponent to anti-micro abilities, I think that forcefield should be replaced with another sentry spell, I personally would like shield recharge, much like the shield battery of brood war.
In order to not make warp gate too good when it arrives, I think the change from gateway to warp gate should cost minerals and/or gas, and the cooldown should remain the same as the build time, with the additional 5 second warp in being a cost for producing units on the other side of the map.
This would then also remove the dependence on the colossus, which could allow Blizzard to fix a large portion of the game considering the colossus has been the bane of all races since the beta.
Obviously, abilities such as blink and charge would have to be tweaked as well, but that's just a numbers game.
Not that any of this would ever happen, but I personally think it would improve the overall state of the game, though it would unsettle it while protoss is being refigured out.
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