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Diamond Zerg baddy chiming in, played probably around 150 games on Beta, I really appreciate the faster paced early game, honestly whenever I watch professional games I always just skip past the first 4 minutes anyways because once builds become standardized it is super boring to watch workers mining.
That said, the 12 worker thing makes Zerg very strong going into the mid game because the larvae mechanic coupled with the aggressive expanding just heavily favors Zerg in a pure economy/production sense, it also makes scouting early aggression very difficult as Terran and Protoss can have units on the field within 2-3 minutes if they want to commit to something gimmicky or more frustratingly things like heavy Adept rushes.
Feels like it kind of takes the "strategy" out of the equation to replace it with "everybody starts killing things quicker". I like the faster pace but it's too fast paced, I love the 100/60 mineral percent change but....as have many already said....
10 workers needs to be tried out, it will help Zerg scouting and it won't let the other races get so heavily out produced going into the mid game, at this point Protoss just get's rolled over by sheer numbers if they don't play retardedly greedy.
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On May 20 2015 07:56 Hider wrote:Show nested quote +On May 13 2015 08:30 Big J wrote:On May 13 2015 08:03 BronzeKnee wrote:On May 13 2015 06:10 TheDwf wrote:
Yeah, let's ignore all the negative feedback on the 12 workers change from many testers themselves (triggering threads like this), let's ignore the impact of the novelty effect after months of boredom, let's ignore that history falters with the initial enthusiasm of the HotS beta, let's bin 17 years of Fast maps on SC1 as for the precise effects on gameplay. Sleeping is such a bliss. We are talking about Blizzard Entertainment, Dustin Browder and David Kim. This isn't a group of people that likes to take anyone's advice or values community feedback beyond telling us they "value feedback," because they do whatever they want. They created BFH madness in WOL, realized it was broken and nerfed it, only to then do exactly the same thing with Hellbats in the HOTS. And despite the community response during the Beta they released Hellbat drops broken. That in turn required several patches to fix too. They had a big combat walker that had a spell that countered it's counter (Strike Cannons versus Immortals back during TSL3) and after fixing that, released the Warhound, another big combat walker that had yet another spell to counter the very same counter (Haywire Missiles versus Immortals). And we know how that worked out. Some people are incapable of learning from history. And they shouldn't be charged with designing expansions. Funnily I'm right now rewatching the "The Gamedesign of Starcraft 2:Designing an esport" speech and Dustin Browder and blizzard really seemed to have a clue and a good direction with SC2. The problem is that blizzard broke their design-codes. Blizzard 2005-2011: we want 12-15units per race at maximum. Otherwise what happens is that there are too many choices, some units become redundant and sometimes it is not possible to read what the opponent is doing.2013-14 The bullshit era of Protoss vs Terran. Why? Because blizzard introduced the oracle and mothership core and buffed DT rushes to all come at the same time as already existant Protoss attacks. Amount of units on Protoss: 18. In LotV: 20 (and other races similarily get more more MORE stuff) Blizzard 2005-2011: We want to have mover-shooters and really differentiate units by stats. We worked for weeks to get the hellion in a place where it could shoot and then have enough time to reposition to try and get another perfect shot. We designed the baneling and the marine to counter each other. HotS & LotV: more buttons, more spells, more hardcounters. No more unit tweaking as done between 2005 and 2011. From here on out it is all buffs to everything. You get a buff, you get a buff, everyone gets a buff. Buffing is the new trend. Buffing stuff so that you never have to tell the players that their toys are overpowered, just make the opponent happy by buffing "his counters". You know what the reason for the ravager nerf was: They aren't different enough from roaches. Well now they are, now they are redundant. You know what the reason for the zealot buff is? Adepts are better in every single situation and zealots are now redundant. They knew about these problems in 2005 and tried to avoid them. Now, they are opening the floodgates and the bullshit is allowed to tricker in. On top of being stubborn on questions like economy and damage point. The grass is always greener on the other side. But when you look abit deeper on the surface you realize its not always true. With regards to Marine vs Banelings, Dustin Browder has actually previously admitted that the Marine splitting wasn't intentional design. They definitely had originally designed the Baneling as a counter to Marines. Hellion is basically the only instance of a unit where its obvious they spend time working on the interaction (no idea how that took weeks ago. I would estimate just getting one interaction right vs Speedlings as 30-40 minutes of work of one man. The hard part is to get interactions right vs multiple units which is where Blizzard failed with this unit). But then you add on top alot of other lame stuff which was added into the game in this period: - Fungal instant stun 8 second. - Forcefields. - Colossus - Hardened Shield - Emp gigantic radius - PDD - Snipe - Roach 2 supply That's a pretty big list, and the biggest flaw they had prior to the development of LOTV was the ignorance of counterplay. Yes they are adding too many abilites right now, but at least they seems to be focussed on making sure you can micro against it, which is unlike what they did in both WOL and LOTV.
Whether or not the actual splitting was intended or not, what they did right was that they created numbers very close to each other which is the basis why it eventually turned up. Unlike what they do with the adept, unlike what they did when making medivacs and mutalisks untouchably fast, unlike what they are doing with the cyclone.
There are many ways to design an interaction. I don't want to go into theorycraft here what took them weeks to settle for this one, we both know that blizzard is very slow with those things, but the point is that it is a good one. And I disagree that they got the hellion wrong with many other units. Hellions are some of the most fun units across the board in the game. It is a perfect example of a hit-and-run unit with great micro potential and interesting strategical and tactical implications.
Not defending the stuff you are mentioning, but lots of stuff you are mentioning took one or two years to be figured out to the point that we could say, yes, this is not so fun to play against when your opponent is any good.
And yeah, the counterplay part is nice and all, but with that many units in the game, it's bound fail because some of the interactions will just be too good to skip upon and others not worthwhile to go for.
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And I disagree that they got the hellion wrong with many other units. Hellions are some of the most fun units across the board in the game.
Hellion falls off the board after early midgame so incredibly hard. I don't see what interactions you are thinking off here.
Whether or not the actual splitting was intended or not, what they did right was that they created numbers very close to each other which is the basis why it eventually turned up.
When you add in 40 units in a game, it's not unlikely that you get one interaction right in the game. I don't see that as being on the right track or anyhting like that given how many other significant flaws there were in WOL.
but lots of stuff you are mentioning took one or two years to be figured out to the point that we could say, yes, this is not so fun to play against when your opponent is any good.
Yeh sure, I don't think its fair to be overly critical of WOL given how little we knew back then. But my point was more that I don't agree that they were ever on any track. For LOTV I see it more as a sideway steps. They added in a lot of pointless/dumb abiliites, but also rewarded counterplay for a lot of other abilities which is good.
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I know that most games are boring in the first few minutes. It was like that in BW. But in BW, every once in a while someone would 4 pool, or proxy barracks, or proxy gateway, and it would make it interesting. It was a fantastic way to punish someone if they would consistently go for greedy openings. It wasn't truly a rock-paper-scissors scenario, but it did force people to have to react to insanely early pressure. And some of those micro fights are both fun to watch, and fun to play.
I really, really dislike the idea of increasing the number of starting workers. I don't see how it would allow those kinds of openings to exist anymore. Once everything gets figured out, I'm sure it'll be the exact same, 90+% of games sill still be incredibly boring for the first few minutes.....
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My problem with the 12 worker start is that it accelerates everything so fast I feel like I can get everything at the same time, which really shouldn't be allowed to happen. For instance, in TvZ, I can go tank drop with double gas AND a third base AND early barracks 2+3 and reasonably timed double engineering bay. In HotS this would not be possible; I would be forced to sacrifice economy for my tank drop, but LotV is not forcing me to make such a choice.
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8748 Posts
12 worker start really reduces the complexity of Protoss builds. It's not just a few minor changes. But the really bad thing is that it's an anti-esports, pro-casual change, similar to Heroes of the Storm philosophy of trying to get into the action quicker and keep up constant action. This may be more fun to play, but it's not an improvement for the spectator or the competitor. Major sports and esports have lulls in the action. And especially with the way commentators handle the casts of StarCraft games -- not letting excitement come through naturally when something truly exciting is happening, but rather making EVERYTHING seem SO exciting ALL the time -- we could do with some inescapable lulls in the action that make for a proper sequence of emotions.
Can we please just please have LotV 1v1 be designed for esports. SC2 is not gonna become mainstream and super popular because Browder found a way to apply Blizzard's special formula to LotV. No. SC2 is a niche game now. LotV campaign will sell boxes. Multiplayer will live and die by SC2 as an esport living and dying, so design it to be good for watching and competing. 12 worker start is the wrong direction.
I thought we were gonna get rapid iterations. Get the 6 worker start back in there ASAP so everyone in the community can go "yeah, 12 worker start was definitely a bad idea" and we can move on. The longer it's in the beta, the more messed up all the testing is, because 6 vs 12 worker start affects balance so severely.
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I somewhat think this 12 worker start could be equivalent to a MOBA game e.g. DOTA for instance where your heroes start would start at level 6 so that their ultimate is accessible right from the start. The entire early game dynamics and interaction which imo an integral part of the game especially because it typically shapes up the mid game. This getting discarded in favor of the whole "getting into the flashier action faster with guns blazing" simply isn't the way to go.
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12 worker start is a bad idea because it makes any super early cheese impractical. This means no more 2 gates, 2 rack, 6 pool type rushes
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On May 20 2015 13:26 Loccstana wrote:
12 worker start is a bad idea because it makes any super early cheese impractical. This means no more 2 gates, 2 rack, 6 pool type rushes
Or even the first unit interaction involving worker scout.. it may sound laughable but all these can snowball into later parts of the game.
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On May 20 2015 13:26 Loccstana wrote:
12 worker start is a bad idea because it makes any super early cheese impractical. This means no more 2 gates, 2 rack, 6 pool type rushes
Call me optimistic--but 4-6 workers is not the reason players figure out unfair/unintended all-ins/timings.
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I haven't played more than a handful of games myself, so my opinion could change.
Thus far, I kind-of like the 12 worker start. It definitely makes the pace of the game much more intense and causes things to almost immediately shift to 2 base. Honestly I just feel a little lost starting with so much econ, it's hard to know what to jump on right away.
The argument stated in the OP; that this 12 worker start, which removes builds such as the 6pool, decreases potential builds, is asinine and simply a knee jerk reaction.
The game is basically totally new with this change. This is especially true for the early game and build orders. Right now this new early game is totally foreign and I dare say nobody fully understands it yet. Sure the old builds like 6 pools are gone, but new builds, new cheeses, new greedy builds and all sorts of crazy shit in-between are going to be created. So to me the notion that we have "lost" all the builds we currently know pales in comparison to the untold new possibilities that we have yet to explore.
TL;DR
This shit is barely out over a month now and people want to claim there is less variety of gameplay? Have you tried new cheeses rather than pine for the old ones? Or are you content to sit around posting "it's broken, plz fix" ?
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This may be more fun to play, but it's not an improvement for the spectator or the competitor.
This is completely the opposite of what I feel (and most other judging by what I read alot of people saying). A laning phase can be fun to play, but is really boring to watch. In League for instaance, it's a common complaint that while there is a lot of strategic depht in the rotational element of the laning phase, its incredibly lame to watch for the majority of the viewers. Viewers much prefer to see scenarios where player skill is differentiated and basic build orders aren't very exciting in that regard.
Teamfights however can be fun to play and watch. The fact that Heroes of the Storm isn't neccasarily that is more related to the design of heroes that makes it almost impossible to differentiate the individual since the skillcap is so low. Thus, I simply believe you are confusing correlation and causation here.
12 worker start really reduces the complexity of Protoss builds.
You make the same mistake as alot of other people in this thread by setting up the wrong premise. The premise shouldn't be how many types of standard build-orders are viable, but whether the ratio of tough decisions/per minute increases or not. The 12 worker change puts you faster into the state of the game where you need to make more decisions.
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I completely agree that the 12 Worker Start destroys the very early game, by making it far too predictable. All early cheese build timings are no longer useful, due to the amount of workers the defending player has. It also ruins many early timing builds (Reaper/Hellion vs Zerg, for instance). These builds are simply not being replaced, but eliminated altogether in favor of always going for a faster economy.
This is also partially due to the Mineral Patch change (60% yield in half the patches), which does nothing to shift the economic metagame that favors going for a fast 2-or-3-base and camping on them until a base mines out.. players still stay on 2-3 bases of income all game long. In LotV, just as in HotS, it's still a better idea to stop at around 66 harvesters, once you fully saturate 3 bases.. then wait for one to mine out and transfer your workers.
I ask you to seriously consider the gravity these changes will have in the long run. Realize they are fun because they're new, not because they create lasting positive change in this game. Instead, consider how 9 workers/200 minerals at the start would play out. The choices start right away. Early cheese would be viable again, but still not favored over a faster economy.
Also to create a need for income beyond 3 bases, we need less harvesters to fully saturate a mineral line. 6 mineral patches per base (all with 1500 minerals again) would create a need to expand faster while cutting down on a player's mineral income at certain points, but I see this as a good thing. Less income until more bases are taken means wiser spending, and more time to use what you have.
Mining out bases as fast as they do now does not spread out the battleground.. it allows players to stay on a base for a less amount of time before moving onto the next one.
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I don't really know if i'm a fan of the worker change or not. Initially i wasn't for sure but after playing the beta for a while i think i changed my mind.
In the beginning i thought it was sad that thnigs like 6 pool or proxy gates would no longer work, but as it shows that's not really the case. Instead of proxying 2 gates, you just fucking proxy 3 and a cybercore.
Early agression will be just as viable as ever, it will just look different.
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On May 20 2015 09:06 Hider wrote:Show nested quote +And I disagree that they got the hellion wrong with many other units. Hellions are some of the most fun units across the board in the game. Hellion falls off the board after early midgame so incredibly hard. I don't see what interactions you are thinking off here. Show nested quote +Whether or not the actual splitting was intended or not, what they did right was that they created numbers very close to each other which is the basis why it eventually turned up. When you add in 40 units in a game, it's not unlikely that you get one interaction right in the game. I don't see that as being on the right track or anyhting like that given how many other significant flaws there were in WOL. Show nested quote +
but lots of stuff you are mentioning took one or two years to be figured out to the point that we could say, yes, this is not so fun to play against when your opponent is any good.
Yeh sure, I don't think its fair to be overly critical of WOL given how little we knew back then. But my point was more that I don't agree that they were ever on any track. For LOTV I see it more as a sideway steps. They added in a lot of pointless/dumb abiliites, but also rewarded counterplay for a lot of other abilities which is good.
I basically disagree with what you say about the hellion. It's a good unit. Of course buffing everything else in the mid- and lategame has hurt it and the compensation to the hellion was to make it transformable into a hellbat, not so much anything to the hellion itself.
Still we often see hellions in the lategame wrecking mineral lines when the Terran chooses to go for that techpath.
In WoL at least they tried. Since they found out that just "solving" everything through buffs will guarantee them overwhelming positive replies from the third of the community that receives the buff they have stopped caring about any decent design-guidelines they once at least proclaimed they had.
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Of course buffing everything else in the mid- and lategame has hurt it and the compensation to the hellion was to make it transformable into a hellbat, not so much anything to the hellion itself.
Still we often see hellions in the lategame wrecking mineral lines when the Terran chooses to go for that techpath.
What do you mean buffing everything else? In WOL post early midgame, the Hellion never was useful for anything else than melee light units and workers. This hasn't changed at all. The Hellbat served to give terran mech a bit more opportunity to make timing attacks in the midgame, which changed the dynamic of TvT somewhat (mech was more turtlish in WOL than in HOTS).
The issue with the damage point in this case is that while it creates interactions in the early game, it removes potential interactions later in the game as the unit often will die before being able to attack. That's kinda why I never feel this Hellion solution should have taken more than 30-40 minutes to create as the design (while fundamentally sound) still has a lot left to be desired.
In WoL at least they tried. Since they found out that just "solving" everything through buffs will guarantee them overwhelming positive replies from the third of the community that receives the buff they have stopped caring about any decent design-guidelines they once at least proclaimed they had.
I guess that Blizzard today seem extremely unwilling to make large redesigns to current existing units. In that way, they seem to be a bit to focussed on buffing other units in order to balance out another unit that is flawed design wise, rather than fixing the fundamental design flaw of the unit (I am thinking of Sentries/Colossus here).
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On May 20 2015 18:17 Huxii wrote:
I don't really know if i'm a fan of the worker change or not. Initially i wasn't for sure but after playing the beta for a while i think i changed my mind.
In the beginning i thought it was sad that thnigs like 6 pool or proxy gates would no longer work, but as it shows that's not really the case. Instead of proxying 2 gates, you just fucking proxy 3 and a cybercore.
Early agression will be just as viable as ever, it will just look different.
I beg to differ. The defending player should still have more than enough workers to hold off the first few units, especially if they're able to scout the proxy. Cheesing with slow-lings.. good luck with that.
As for a Metabolic Boost timing with a round of lings after the first inject, remember even that (and other early rushes) now hit a defending player with a much more developed economy/tech path than they would've had previously.
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On May 20 2015 18:37 Hider wrote:Show nested quote +Of course buffing everything else in the mid- and lategame has hurt it and the compensation to the hellion was to make it transformable into a hellbat, not so much anything to the hellion itself.
Still we often see hellions in the lategame wrecking mineral lines when the Terran chooses to go for that techpath. What do you mean buffing everything else? In WOL post early midgame, the Hellion never was useful for anything else than melee light units and workers. This hasn't changed at all. The Hellbat served to give terran mech a bit more opportunity to make timing attacks in the midgame.
It was and is pretty fine against anything light and was/is a decent buffer for Mech against units such as marauders, not just melee. And even if it was only the melee units, it's a 100/0 unit that already grants mapcontrol through high basespeed, it is not supposed to be the end all of combat technologies.
What I mean with "buffing everything else" is that since bio can drop directly onto tanks in a split second through medivacboosters, since mutas are even better at hunting them down and can be opened with and massed with little restrictions, since Vipers can completely shut down tanks and the one or other buff to other units (e.g. ultras) they have become quite weaker in their roles, especially buffering/splashing for sieging tanks.
The issue with the damage point in this case is that while it creates interactions in the early game, it removes potential interactions later in the game as the unit often will die before being able to attack. That's kinda why I never feel this Hellion solution should have taken more than 30-40 minutes to create as the design (while fundamentally sound) still has a lot left to be desired.
The hellion has enough speed that you can take your combats as you choose. If there is something you cannot break with hellions then go somewhere else.
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On May 20 2015 18:52 frostalgia wrote:Show nested quote +On May 20 2015 18:17 Huxii wrote:
I don't really know if i'm a fan of the worker change or not. Initially i wasn't for sure but after playing the beta for a while i think i changed my mind.
In the beginning i thought it was sad that thnigs like 6 pool or proxy gates would no longer work, but as it shows that's not really the case. Instead of proxying 2 gates, you just fucking proxy 3 and a cybercore.
Early agression will be just as viable as ever, it will just look different. I beg to differ. The defending player should still have more than enough workers to hold off the first few units, especially if they're able to scout the proxy. Cheesing with slow-lings.. good luck with that. As for a Metabolic Boost timing with a round of lings after the first inject, remember even that (and other early rushes) now hit a defending player with a much more developed economy/tech path than they would've had previously.
You forget that the attacking player also benefits from the stronger economy with his cheese or pressure. For example a Terran won't do a 2 proxy rax rush in Legacy, but instead will opt for 3 barracks, or even 4. This means that the defending Zerg player, even when he scouted it, will need to rely on the few extra workers he has way more then he used too, as there will be more marines barreling down on his bases, while he still has the same amount of Larvae, and thus units, available to defend. This will be the case with all cheeses, they also got buffed just as much as defenders got buffed.
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It was and is pretty fine against anything light and was/is a decent buffer for Mech against units such as marauders, not just melee. And even if it was only the melee units, it's a 100/0 unit that already grants mapcontrol through high basespeed, it is not supposed to be the end all of combat technologies.
Terran only build them because they had excessive minerals. If you had gas on the other hand, you would always prefer tanks in TvT. Thus you did end up seeing 30 tanks vs 30 tanks in the later game with no Hellions.
Hellbats on the other hand actually function as a proper buffer unit.
that already grants mapcontrol
The map control it provided past the midgame was useless since its harass capabilites weren't very strong and you could get better information by investing into multiple orbitals and having enough scans.
The hellion was (and still is) a case of a unit that needs proper upgrades vs non-light units. IMO giving it blue flame never made sense. Instead it needed some type of upgrade to allow it to deal better vs non-light units in the later stages of the game.
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