EPTGive Scouts their upgrade speed for free.
What would YOU like to see in a patch? - Page 7
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noname_
470 Posts
Give Scouts their upgrade speed for free. | ||
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riotjune
United States3394 Posts
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shin ken
Germany614 Posts
On March 14 2016 18:21 [[Starlight]] wrote: So, what if you actually want to use scouts in a competitive game, and have them actually do something? What if you like to have more strategic options in your gameplay? What if you just plain think scouts are frikin' cool? Broodwar already has very strategically deep gameplay. What's the point in adding one more option with the potential of breaking the precious game balance now 18 years after its release? After all this time isn't that something you would do in a sequel? If you really think scouts are so cool, you can still build them. It's not like you loose the game instantly as soon as you build a scout. Why not, if you can improve upon it a bit? The meta has changed a lot since 1.08 got released, and in ways that the designers couldn't possibly foresee back then. Yes the meta has changed entirely and Starcraft is being played in ways never intended by the developers BUT THE BALANCE STILL HOLDS (which is incredible and somewhat a miracle). Why in gods name would you starting messing with it NOW in 2016 and "fix" something that is not broken? Yup, but Bliz has left the door open for further improvements to Diablo 2: ...Blizzard says it's working on improvements to the game's "cheat-detection and hack-prevention capabilities" and hints at more improvements to come. "There is still a large Diablo II community around the world, and we thank you for continuing to play and slay with us," Blizzard writes. "This journey starts by making Diablo II run on modern platforms, but it does not end there. See you in Sanctuary, adventurers." http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2016/03/16-years-later-blizzard-is-still-patching-diablo-ii/ I can ensure that nothing like HD and widescreen support other than maybe upscaling will EVER happen. I would bet my house and lifetime savings on it. Blizzard now has a small legacy support team doing patches for Diablo 2, Warcraft 3 and hopefully Broodwar. If you think you can just sit down for a few hours and hack in HD support in a game like Broodwar you are very wrong and probably have no clue what it's like to change legacy code as messy as Broodwars. Broodwar is based on the WC2 engine which is originally from a DOS game from 1995. It is said that Starcraft (and Broodwar) have horrible spaghetti code from hell (as indicated by ex-programmers). Nobody who came up with that code is working at Blizzard anymore (for decades). Broodwar is not a 3D game where changing resolutions can be relativly straight forward. Broodwar is also not programmed in a way that allows to easily change the resolution unlike C&C Tiberium Sun or Red Alert 2. If you want to do something extensive as adding HD resolutions which would probably break the game logic in more ways than you can possibly imagine, you need to rewrite of half of the game which is completely out of scope for the current team and possibly game-changing as many beloved engine quirks would change or fall away while new glitches would be added. Plus it's very questionable in terms of return value especially if you would expand the team. Also, if you look at BW balance patches over time, the overwhelming majority of the changes were GOOD ones. There were close to 100 balance changes total over the four balance patches, and I can think of only a couple or three that were probably mistakes. The BW balance change track record is really good, actually. Almost nobody who did these changes is working at blizzard anymore and even then they would be very rusty. And to be honest, I think they hit that perfect balance to some degree by accident. There's no way you could plan for such a good balance especially over time and with all the crazy stuff that came from the korean pro scene. You just have to look at every other RTS game including the ones Blizzard did after Broodwar for proof. | ||
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[[Starlight]]
United States1578 Posts
On March 14 2016 19:11 shin ken wrote: Broodwar already has very strategically deep gameplay. What's the point in adding one more option with the potential of breaking the precious game balance now 18 years after its release? After all this time isn't that something you would do in a sequel? If you really think scouts are so cool, you can still build them. It's not like you loose the game instantly as soon as you build a scout. BW has very strategically deep gameplay BECAUSE they did balance patches... if it had stayed at BW 1.00, everyone would just play Zerg and make a lot of mutas. Boring.  Why not make the gameplay even deeper, by doing minor changes such as small buffs to units that see very little use? Why do you think this would auto-magically immediately destroy the game like a heatseeking missile locked onto a 747? And y'know, the ppl who've been playing BW for years and years over hundreds or thousands of games might actually welcome and ENJOY some new wrinkles, as they've already seen most of the common strats, at least for whatever level they play at. Far as scouts go, you can only really build 'em if you've already won... they're just too expensive for what they do otherwise, if the game is still in doubt. Yes the meta has changed entirely and Starcraft is being played in ways never intended by the developers BUT THE BALANCE STILL HOLDS (which is incredible and somewhat a miracle). Why in gods name would you starting messing with it NOW in 2016 and "fix" something that is not broken? Again, the BALANCE STILL HOLDS *because* they bothered to do balance patches that changed the original horrible balance to something quite good. Why do you hate balance patches so very much, considering that BW owes so much to them? Including its continued relevance in 2016, 18 years after release. Why do you think it's absolutely impossible to do a small, incremental balance patch that doesn't mess things up, even though Blizzard has done some quite massive balance patches to BW (1.04, 1.08) that actually improved the game quite a lot? I can ensure that nothing like HD and widescreen support other than maybe upscaling will EVER happen. I'm aware that there are difficulties. But y'know, it's 2016. It's really hard to imagine that there isn't a lot of pressure to change from a standard-def, 4:3 aspect ratio presentation to something reasonably modern. Perhaps it'll only be something cutesy like upscaling and/or 'dressed up with graphics' window bars, but we'll take whatever we can get. 640x480 and 4:3 nowadays is just plain ghetto. Almost nobody who did these changes is working at blizzard anymore and even then they would be very rusty. And to be honest, I think they hit that perfect balance to some degree by accident. There's no way you could plan for such a good balance especially over time and with all the crazy stuff that came from the korean pro scene. You just have to look at every other RTS game including the ones Blizzard did after Broodwar for proof. With respect, we don't know their personnel situation. A lot of game companies promote from within, QA testers become test leads become assistant producers become producers or game designers. So, some of the old team could still be around in higher positions. And of course, you can always hire back ex-employees as contractors/consultants, just for the term of a project. Game industry employment is hardly stable, as I can tell you from personal experience... plenty of veterans of it are sometimes looking for their next gig, due to companies folding or changes of regime in upper management/execs. And I don't think BW's balance was hit upon by accident. They released it, saw the initial balance was poor, and then MADE THE DECISION that they were going to keep working on it until it was a lot better. And they did. Which is why we're even bothering to talk about this game now, 18 years after it's initial release.  | ||
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[[Starlight]]
United States1578 Posts
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B-royal
Belgium1330 Posts
You have to only change a few units and do so marginally, just to try to make them slightly more useful in certain situations. This latter aspect is the most important in my opinion, you want to look at the original role of the unit and try to make it only more useful in this aspect. For example, when I see scouts, I see a unit that can be quite strong to deal with capital ships. Now try to come up with a way to make them more effective at their purpose, it could be something as simple as making them cost 2 supply or changing their mineral costs to 225. (I don't know honestly, I'm new to this game, but there must be people here that know the faults and purpose of the scout much better). | ||
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[[Starlight]]
United States1578 Posts
On March 14 2016 21:23 B-royal wrote: I don't think you can break the game by for example upping the maximum mana of queens by 50 or changing spawn broodlings to 125 mana. Similarly, maybe removing ocular implants and having it included by default for ghosts wouldn't break the game either. You have to only change a few units and do so marginally, just to try to make them slightly more useful in certain situations. This latter aspect is the most important in my opinion, you want to look at the original role of the unit and try to make it only more useful in this aspect. For example, when I see scouts, I see a unit that can be quite strong to deal with capital ships. Now try to come up with a way to make them more effective at their purpose, it could be something as simple as making them cost 2 supply or changing their mineral costs to 225. (I don't know honestly, I'm new to this game, but there must be people here that know the faults and purpose of the scout much better). Thank you... that's all I've been saying, more or less. | ||
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ProMeTheus112
France2027 Posts
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Liquid`Drone
Norway28914 Posts
Obviously stuff like ghost sight range or medics starting with restoration wouldn't make too big of an impact, but those changes don't matter because there's pretty much no point to them. The earlier balance patches fixed glaring imbalances, stuff that broke the game. No such thing exists anymore, because the game has become so strategically deep and figured out over the course of ~a billion games of player evolution that all the stuff that seemed like glaring imbalances just.. aren't, anymore. | ||
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Escaton
Poland29 Posts
Literally every late game tvz i see on streams is terran rolling zerg with tank/vulture, while zerg struggles for survival. if zerg somehow manages to win, it's drops, sudden muta switch or something like that. its SO rare for zerg to win front vs front, 200/200 tanks sieged around the map just melt everything | ||
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ProMeTheus112
France2027 Posts
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B-royal
Belgium1330 Posts
On March 14 2016 22:12 Liquid`Drone wrote: I think broodling 125 mana actually would break the game. Being able to broodling ~35 seconds earlier than what is currently possible would fuck up terran hard - actually it'd probably be so good that queen/hydra became a staple zvp build. That's how fine tuned high-level brood war is. Decreasing scout cost or increasing scout speed could also have big consequences. Obviously stuff like ghost sight range or medics starting with restoration wouldn't make too big of an impact, but those changes don't matter because there's pretty much no point to them. The earlier balance patches fixed glaring imbalances, stuff that broke the game. No such thing exists anymore, because the game has become so strategically deep and figured out over the course of ~a billion games of player evolution that all the stuff that seemed like glaring imbalances just.. aren't, anymore. I think you might be underestimating the robustness and adaptability of other players a little bit. Queens still need to sit idle for 2.5 minutes (3min 45sec from thereon) before they can cast their first broodling. Maybe terrans will start being aware more of when the queens are produced and then try to get some wraiths out and actively hunt the queens. But you are right that reducing the energy cost of spawn broodling is a much more drastic change since it changes not only the timing of the first usage, but it shaves off 37.5 seconds of every consecutive spawn broodling as well. As for protoss, keeping overlords alive isn't an easy thing vs corsairs. I doubt keeping queens alive will be easy either. They could also experiment with dark archons since feedback (which will instantly kill a queen that plans on using spawn broodling) only costs 50 energy and has 10 range compared to spawn broodling that only has 9 range. @Tank changes: I agree on a certain level. I feel like the attack upgrades for mech give too much extra damage (+4 for goliath GtA and +5 for siege tank in siege mode per level). In the end you're looking at a goliath with 20+12 GtA attack and a siege tank with 70+15 GtG attack. When goliaths are 0-0 and mutas are 0-0 it is somewhat of an even fight. However, at 3-3 goliaths just absolutely wreck 3-3 mutalisks. Since goliaths go from doing 10 damage per shot to 13 damage per shot while mutas stay doing 8 damage and their bounce damage becomes effectively void because of goliath's armor upgrades. | ||
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Liquid`Drone
Norway28914 Posts
Aside from changes that are so small that they are insignificant, any change would threaten the equilibrium. For example say you make goliaths go from getting +4 to +2 vs air from upgrades - this looks good for tvz where mutas become obsolete- but how about the effect it has against carriers? (where a +3 attack goliath would suddenly only deal 12 instead of 18 damage against a +3 armor carrier?) Reducing tank upgrades, sure once again, that's okay in tvz, but how about the influence it can have on pvt? (Where protoss already has a slight advantage?) | ||
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JWD[9]
364 Posts
On March 14 2016 19:11 shin ken wrote: Broodwar is based on the WC2 engine which is originally from a DOS game from 1995. The Alpha that was shown at E3 (1996?) was based on the WC2 engine. After negative feedback and being accused of lazyness a new engine was written. The beta version of StarCraft was a total overhaul of the StarCraft alpha, replacing the Warcraft II engine the alpha used with a different engine. http://starcraft.wikia.com/wiki/StarCraft_beta | ||
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B-royal
Belgium1330 Posts
On March 14 2016 23:29 Liquid`Drone wrote: the point is that balance is extremely fragile. There are many examples from each race that looks overpowered in a vacuum. The way mech upgrades scale is one such thing, the lurker+dark swarm combination is another, psionic storm vs zerg is a third. But with how the game has evolved (a meching terran will always be cost efficient, but he will also always be at a similar income disadvantage. lurker+swarm is mad overpowered vs m&m, but once tanks, vessels and mines are in play, it's control-dependent. protoss is at a numerical disadvantage and thus requires storm vs zerg), all of these in-vacuum-imbalances actually work out. Aside from changes that are so small that they are insignificant, any change would threaten the equilibrium. For example say you make goliaths go from getting +4 to +2 vs air from upgrades - this looks good for tvz where mutas become obsolete- but how about the effect it has against carriers? (where a +3 attack goliath would suddenly only deal 12 instead of 18 damage against a +3 armor carrier?) Reducing tank upgrades, sure once again, that's okay in tvz, but how about the influence it can have on pvt? (Where protoss already has a slight advantage?) You are right of course, I wasn't considering any other match ups than ZvT. | ||
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[[Starlight]]
United States1578 Posts
On March 14 2016 23:29 Liquid`Drone wrote: Aside from changes that are so small that they are insignificant, any change would threaten the equilibrium. I'm sure there must be some middle ground between 'insignificant' and 'threatening the equilibrium'. Besides, when Bliz did 65 balance changes in the 1.04 patch, and 26 balance changes in the 1.08 patch, did they not 'threaten the equilibrium' then? Yet, the world did not come to an end. Just the opposite, the game improved (a LOT, in the case of 1.04, but still considerably with 1.08). I agree with your earlier comment that the earlier patches fixed glaring imbalances (like pre-1.04 larvae spawn rate ), and that what's left to be fixed or improved is definitely smaller in scope. | ||
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DarkPlasmaBall
United States46561 Posts
I'd like the same for BW... The guarantee that it'll work just fine on new OSes. | ||
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Liquid`Drone
Norway28914 Posts
On March 15 2016 01:18 [[Starlight]] wrote: I'm sure there must be some middle ground between 'insignificant' and 'threatening the equilibrium'. Besides, when Bliz did 65 balance changes in the 1.04 patch, and 26 balance changes in the 1.08 patch, did they not 'threaten the equilibrium' then? Yet, the world did not come to an end. Just the opposite, the game improved (a LOT, in the case of 1.04). Okay.. Firstly: The game was somewhat broken before either of those two patches, and virtually everyone at the top level agreed with this. Essentially, before 1.08, terran vs zerg was considered quite balanced (although there was a slight problem with early m&m attacks being too powerful), but zerg had a big advantage vs protoss and protoss had a big advantage vs terran. The sunken change reflects this; going from 400 hp with 0 armor to 300 hp with 2 armor meant that they were now better against marines than before, but worse against zealots. The other changes also reflect this, zerg is changed in a way that made them slightly worse vs protoss, protoss changed in a way that makes them slightly worse vs terran but not worse vs zerg. Secondly: 1.04 came together with Brood War. Obviously you had to make big changes to the rest of the game when you introduce 7 new units. Basically, the equilibrium that would now be threatened by any small change did not exist back then. And frankly, it didn't exist right after those patches either. The game was still considered imbalanced for a couple years after 1.08 - it became balanced through the evolution of strategies and maps. Hell, pvz continued being imbalanced until Bisu came around. Back then, there was a need to improve balance, so they did. Now, there is no need to improve balance, there's only a desire to make previously unused units more frequently used. I'm saying that this is going to be virtually impossible to accomplish without there being some sort of blowback - I simply can't picture making design choices that make ghosts rather than vessels viable arbiter defense or that make scouts rather than corsairs viable air units or that make DAs or queens better (both of these are already amazing in the correct scenarios) without it adversely influencing something. | ||
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B-royal
Belgium1330 Posts
You need coverts ops (50/50) + cloaking (100/100) + ocular implants (100/100) + nuclear silo (100/100) + nuclear missile (200/200) + a ghost (25/75): 575 minerals and 625 gas and it's perfectly possible that your nuke gets spotted and canceled! Lol Blizzard could always create a test-map for the pro's to test out changes before releasing them as an official patch. | ||
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heronn
34 Posts
My propossitions: - Mutalisk - medium size - Scout mineral cost 200-225 - Ghost speed-hp buff, lockdown cost 75 energy + has range 10 - Queen - spawn broodling cost 125 energy + maybe: - High Templar - Storm cost 100 energy also increase storm duration by 25% (1hit kill Lurker/Tank), KA increases energy by 100 // - HT gas cost increase to 175-200 | ||
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