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I think Blizzard is trying too hard to fix economic/macro mechanic/race design concept problems with unit balance instead...
1. Worker paring means getting an early expansion has no economic advantage unless you make more than 16 workers. The 1 base player on 16 workers has the same economy but much stronger army than the expanding player, therefore the expanding player needs an insane defender's advantage to secure his expansion, which in turn destroys all possible one base builds because they cannot overcome said insane defender's advantage. MSC was designed to give Protoss their defender's advantage, with the game as is, Protoss simply cannot expand without MSC.
2. Larva inject and mules, giving Zerg the ability to make an absurdly large early game army, and Terran the ability to mine a huge mineral income on 1 base with 100% mining efficiency. Once again, Protoss needs MSC's defender's advantage to expand or be stuck on 1 base for a long time, remember the 3 gate sentry expand because Protoss cannot deal with the sheer number of Zerg units that can be made so early?
3. Protoss in bw had a strong gateway core army of zealot/dragoons, supported by templars and arbiters. Protoss army development in SC2 is about replacing weak zealot/stalker/sentry with stronger higher tech units. This is a design concept that encourages/forces Protoss to make a deathball every game, which means very low mobility by race design, which then by necessity requires MSC's recall to defend multiple locations. Without a strong and relatively mobile core gateway army, Protoss needs recalls to move their expansive deathball around.
Issues caused by economy, macro mechanics,and design concepts are simply not fixable with unit balance alone. It may seem easier to "fix" things with fancy units and spells, but in the end these shortcuts only hurts the game.
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On May 12 2015 05:39 Big J wrote:Show nested quote +On May 12 2015 05:33 showBanquo wrote:On May 12 2015 03:38 SetGuitarsToKill wrote:
>Mass Recall cost reduced from 100 energy to 50 energy
Because why should a protoss player ever have to worry about good army positioning and movement? Let's just make it so they can have all their units anywhere they want at any time with no consequence! With recall and photon overcharge, there's no need to ever have defensive units at all and you can always move out without worry of being punished ever.
They say they want to discourage deathball play, then they make units like the mothership core encourage it in every way. I'm at a loss for words at how dumb this is. That was the main thing that protoss needed for hots. Moving out early was terrible for prottos, arguably encouraging 4-gates, 2-base all ins, or just late game "death ball" style. Even on small maps you dont have time to move across the map before some 8 stimmed marauders have killed you natural, and key tech. Sure scouting and map awareness comes in here, so a more important example is that without MSC protoss could not move out early without flipping a coin, because if you got into an engagement where you were at a slight deficit/a slightly disadvantageous fight on the other side of the map you had 2 choises: 1) stay and fight and sack your army/trade bad 2) run away, saving your stalkers and let your zealots + sentries die And how is that different for the other races? How often do you see a zerg attacking you before 10mins in HotS? How often do you see a Terran moving out before medivacs? It's part of the game, or rather most of the RTS genre, that if you commit to army before economy, you are allin because you can't replace your stuff and move forward in tech/upgrade/base progression if it dies, because you never built up the economy for it.
All the time.
The problem Protoss has is that it can't retreat. Protoss units are too slow. Stim bio/speedlings/even roaches can run away and be fine.
So it's not that Protoss should never be punished for bad positioning... it's that good positioning is not as easy to guarantee before the fight because you can't reposition your units as well.
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So it's not that Protoss should never be punished for bad positioning... it's that good positioning is not as easy to guarantee before the fight because you can't reposition your units as well.
Which indeed is the problem and Recall is the band-aid fix (unfortunately).
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adding a max time limit to melee games is just one of the worst ideas I've heard. There is a draw timer for "illegitimate" games if that's even a thing...
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I'm all for a broodlord buff but this is the worst possible buff that could be done. increasing the range will make it completely impossible for ground units to attack the broodlords which will lead to very frustrating games where a player just wins when he has broodlords + air superiority. It will be wol all over again.
What broodlords need is a speed buff.
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On May 12 2015 06:14 w3jjjj wrote:
I think Blizzard is trying too hard to fix economic/macro mechanic/race design concept problems with unit balance...
That line pretty much sums up the Beta. I really hope we see real structural changes to SC2. And this new economy isn't what we need.
I really hate the idea of Zealots being a late game unit only. It is the first combat unit Protoss gets access to in their tech tree, the only minerals only combat unit, it just makes no sense.
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On May 12 2015 06:27 DinoMight wrote:Show nested quote +On May 12 2015 05:39 Big J wrote:On May 12 2015 05:33 showBanquo wrote:On May 12 2015 03:38 SetGuitarsToKill wrote:
>Mass Recall cost reduced from 100 energy to 50 energy
Because why should a protoss player ever have to worry about good army positioning and movement? Let's just make it so they can have all their units anywhere they want at any time with no consequence! With recall and photon overcharge, there's no need to ever have defensive units at all and you can always move out without worry of being punished ever.
They say they want to discourage deathball play, then they make units like the mothership core encourage it in every way. I'm at a loss for words at how dumb this is. That was the main thing that protoss needed for hots. Moving out early was terrible for prottos, arguably encouraging 4-gates, 2-base all ins, or just late game "death ball" style. Even on small maps you dont have time to move across the map before some 8 stimmed marauders have killed you natural, and key tech. Sure scouting and map awareness comes in here, so a more important example is that without MSC protoss could not move out early without flipping a coin, because if you got into an engagement where you were at a slight deficit/a slightly disadvantageous fight on the other side of the map you had 2 choises: 1) stay and fight and sack your army/trade bad 2) run away, saving your stalkers and let your zealots + sentries die And how is that different for the other races? How often do you see a zerg attacking you before 10mins in HotS? How often do you see a Terran moving out before medivacs? It's part of the game, or rather most of the RTS genre, that if you commit to army before economy, you are allin because you can't replace your stuff and move forward in tech/upgrade/base progression if it dies, because you never built up the economy for it. All the time.
Please, you're talking about the 10% of game in which some 3rax bio attack against Protoss occurs.
The problem Protoss has is that it can't retreat. Protoss units are too slow. Stim bio/speedlings/even roaches can run away and be fine.
Might want to check out 2base 3-4gate blink openings against Terran or 2base 3-4gate recall attacks against zerg that work with 100energy recall, no need to make it 50. They are just as bad if perfectly deflected as bio before medivac pressure, but seen just as often. And can retreat marvelously.
So it's not that Protoss should never be punished for bad positioning... it's that good positioning is not as easy to guarantee before the fight because you can't reposition your units as well.
But blizzard isn't adressing that problem. They are exactly doing what you are saying should not happen, which is that Protoss is harder to get punished. Their positioning, which I agree can be tough with those slower armies, doesn't change at all.
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This is looking really bad, I am glad they are making balance changes but still no ladder? And these balance changes are so extreme / ridiculous, even more so than the current state of the beta...This is not looking good, Blizz will need to do a complete full on fix just like they did right before they released HOTS I think...
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I have to recant. I went back and read Snute's suggestion and I actually really like it. I read somewhere a suggestion that oracles should have an upgrade at the fleet beacon to become a "beacon" themselves, recalling small numbers of units to them a la arbiters. I'd love to see something like that.
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On May 12 2015 06:36 Charoisaur wrote:
I'm all for a broodlord buff but this is the worst possible buff that could be done. increasing the range will make it completely impossible for ground units to attack the broodlords which will lead to very frustrating games where a player just wins when he has broodlords + air superiority. It will be wol over again.
What broodlords need is a speed buff.
Their low speed is such an important part of their design and their tech path though. If you want a mobile ground army, at the cost of oafish engagements, you go Ultras. If you want a sluggish air army, at the cost of being vulnerable to being outmaneuvered by the opponent, you go BLs. What I'd rather see is that their initial attack is slightly lowered in damage, and in return, they can spawn up to 3 Broodlings. This would lower their strength when left alone to auto attack with 1 Broodling at a time, but it would increase their ability to create a strong initial engagement. It would also more greatly reward good kiting with BLs, since their Broodling spawning timer is just barely over their attack cooldown. As it stands, you can already stop their attack for a tiny bit in order to attack twice as powerfully just a little bit later. With a maximum of 3 Broodlings, there is more encouragement to kite back out of harms way and respawn a full complement of Broodlings over the course of ~7.5 seconds, and then return to the engagement.
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I agree with all the current poll results. Mass recall at 50 energy is probably too strong. I feel like they should maybe be more ambitious about rebalancing the stats of gateway units given that this is such a long beta, instead of trying to find a cute trick to compensate for everything else being weak.
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On May 12 2015 06:37 Big J wrote:Show nested quote +On May 12 2015 06:27 DinoMight wrote:On May 12 2015 05:39 Big J wrote:On May 12 2015 05:33 showBanquo wrote:On May 12 2015 03:38 SetGuitarsToKill wrote:
>Mass Recall cost reduced from 100 energy to 50 energy
Because why should a protoss player ever have to worry about good army positioning and movement? Let's just make it so they can have all their units anywhere they want at any time with no consequence! With recall and photon overcharge, there's no need to ever have defensive units at all and you can always move out without worry of being punished ever.
They say they want to discourage deathball play, then they make units like the mothership core encourage it in every way. I'm at a loss for words at how dumb this is. That was the main thing that protoss needed for hots. Moving out early was terrible for prottos, arguably encouraging 4-gates, 2-base all ins, or just late game "death ball" style. Even on small maps you dont have time to move across the map before some 8 stimmed marauders have killed you natural, and key tech. Sure scouting and map awareness comes in here, so a more important example is that without MSC protoss could not move out early without flipping a coin, because if you got into an engagement where you were at a slight deficit/a slightly disadvantageous fight on the other side of the map you had 2 choises: 1) stay and fight and sack your army/trade bad 2) run away, saving your stalkers and let your zealots + sentries die And how is that different for the other races? How often do you see a zerg attacking you before 10mins in HotS? How often do you see a Terran moving out before medivacs? It's part of the game, or rather most of the RTS genre, that if you commit to army before economy, you are allin because you can't replace your stuff and move forward in tech/upgrade/base progression if it dies, because you never built up the economy for it. All the time. Please, you're talking about the 10% of game in which some 3rax bio attack against Protoss occurs. Show nested quote +The problem Protoss has is that it can't retreat. Protoss units are too slow. Stim bio/speedlings/even roaches can run away and be fine. Might want to check out 2base 3-4gate blink openings against Terran or 2base 3-4gate recall attacks against zerg that work with 100energy recall, no need to make it 50. They are just as bad if perfectly deflected as bio before medivac pressure, but seen just as often. And can retreat marvelously. Show nested quote +So it's not that Protoss should never be punished for bad positioning... it's that good positioning is not as easy to guarantee before the fight because you can't reposition your units as well. But blizzard isn't adressing that problem. They are exactly doing what you are saying should not happen, which is that Protoss is harder to get punished. Their positioning, which I agree can be tough with those slower armies, doesn't change at all.
Terran frequently moves out against Protoss and Zerg in the early game pre medivacs. Hellions are fast and can retreat if they need to (they roast the only unit that can keep up with them, excluding a total ambush with overwhelming numbers) and bio with concussive shells can get away from any early game Protoss comp.
I don't mean move out to attack. I just mean "are able to be outside their base" without negative repurcussions. Protoss doesn't have that luxury. So if you're out on the map and get found or forced into a fight, there's no running.
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This is madness, I understand protoss is underpowered sure, I understand buffing core units(which is done here with zealots though) is rarely a good idea and therefore you need to buff other areas. But this msc and ms buffs are just bloody insane, its not like the protoss race needs more gimmicks or being able to use their gimicks more often. A Mothership at msc speed just sounds insane OP. Making one in the midgame would always be worth it, zerg having to make many overseers and protoss being able to snipe them, terran would have to scan for every fight. It will always cost the opponent more than protoss investment in the ms.
The new terran unit sounds ridiculous too, a flying "sc1" corsair that can turn itself into a static immortal and switch between.
Many ideas are good but these unit changes and designs just feel totally out of wack.
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On May 12 2015 06:51 Doc Daneeka wrote:
I agree with all the current poll results. Mass recall at 50 energy is probably too strong. I feel like they should maybe be more ambitious about rebalancing the stats of gateway units given that this is such a long beta, instead of trying to find a cute trick to compensate for everything else being weak.
That's the ideal situation. Imo the zealot speed is going to be a bigger step in that direction than it looks like on paper. I still think there are some weird holes in it though. Like I'd rather the adept had a range upgrade than a health upgrade, or that stalkers had a flat health boost. Gateway armies feel strong in very specific situations now, but in others are just as shitty as before (like anything involving primarily ranged armored units).
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On May 12 2015 06:52 Shuffleblade wrote:
This is madness, I understand protoss is underpowered sure, I understand buffing core units(which is done here with zealots though) is rarely a good idea and therefore you need to buff other areas. But this msc and ms buffs are just bloody insane, its not like the protoss race needs more gimmicks or being able to use their gimicks more often. A Mothership at msc speed just sounds insane OP. Making one in the midgame would always be worth it, zerg having to make many overseers and protoss being able to snipe them, terran would have to scan for every fight. It will always cost the opponent more than protoss investment in the ms.
The new terran unit sounds ridiculous too, a flying "sc1" corsair that can turn itself into a static immortal and switch between.
Many ideas are good but these unit changes and designs just feel totally out of wack.
You realize a full Mothership costs 400/400 + the tech to get there.
It's only fair that it require SOME response from the other race.
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On May 12 2015 06:49 Pontius Pirate wrote:Show nested quote +On May 12 2015 06:36 Charoisaur wrote:
I'm all for a broodlord buff but this is the worst possible buff that could be done. increasing the range will make it completely impossible for ground units to attack the broodlords which will lead to very frustrating games where a player just wins when he has broodlords + air superiority. It will be wol over again.
What broodlords need is a speed buff. Their low speed is such an important part of their design and their tech path though. If you want a mobile ground army, at the cost of oafish engagements, you go Ultras. If you want a sluggish air army, at the cost of being vulnerable to being outmaneuvered by the opponent, you go BLs. What I'd rather see is that their initial attack is slightly lowered in damage, and in return, they can spawn up to 3 Broodlings. This would lower their strength when left alone to auto attack with 1 Broodling at a time, but it would increase their ability to create a strong initial engagement. It would also more greatly reward good kiting with BLs, since their Broodling spawning timer is just barely over their attack cooldown. As it stands, you can already stop their attack for a tiny bit in order to attack twice as powerfully just a little bit later. With a maximum of 3 Broodlings, there is more encouragement to kite back out of harms way and respawn a full complement of Broodlings over the course of ~7.5 seconds, and then return to the engagement.
Their design right now is that they are extremely slow but strong in direct fights. But who says the design shouldn't be changed if it improves the game?
What is more interesting? a nearly invincible army where the opponent can only try to run around and pull the zerg apart while the broodlords slowly crawl across the map and destroy everything in their path (hello wol)
or a slightly more mobile army which is still strong but can be dealt with with the right composition and good micro.
The thing is that the broodlord now completely zones out any ground units so the toss/terran can only attack them with pure air units. with fungal and the new viper spell I don't see how skyzerg can be beaten.
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On May 12 2015 07:01 DinoMight wrote:Show nested quote +On May 12 2015 06:52 Shuffleblade wrote:
This is madness, I understand protoss is underpowered sure, I understand buffing core units(which is done here with zealots though) is rarely a good idea and therefore you need to buff other areas. But this msc and ms buffs are just bloody insane, its not like the protoss race needs more gimmicks or being able to use their gimicks more often. A Mothership at msc speed just sounds insane OP. Making one in the midgame would always be worth it, zerg having to make many overseers and protoss being able to snipe them, terran would have to scan for every fight. It will always cost the opponent more than protoss investment in the ms.
The new terran unit sounds ridiculous too, a flying "sc1" corsair that can turn itself into a static immortal and switch between.
Many ideas are good but these unit changes and designs just feel totally out of wack. You realize a full Mothership costs 400/400 + the tech to get there. It's only fair that it require SOME response from the other race.
You realize that all of Starcraft units need money/gas and tech? Unless we are playing different games here...
Even though i do not like the change, i still want to see what protoss will be able to do with their new buffs.
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when will it no longer be considered 'early' beta?
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On May 12 2015 06:14 w3jjjj wrote:
I think Blizzard is trying too hard to fix economic/macro mechanic/race design concept problems with unit balance instead...
Isn't that what they ALWAYS did in SC2?
If units/concepts A and B are bad/broken, let's change C and D to compensate.
For how long people complained about SH and how many changes to other units were made because of that.
That pretty much sums up all patch changes for HotS.
Now they reworked SH completly (as they should've done a few years ago) and the trend goes on.
Eco problem? let's change the recall cost...
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On May 12 2015 06:52 DinoMight wrote:Show nested quote +On May 12 2015 06:37 Big J wrote:On May 12 2015 06:27 DinoMight wrote:On May 12 2015 05:39 Big J wrote:On May 12 2015 05:33 showBanquo wrote:On May 12 2015 03:38 SetGuitarsToKill wrote:
>Mass Recall cost reduced from 100 energy to 50 energy
Because why should a protoss player ever have to worry about good army positioning and movement? Let's just make it so they can have all their units anywhere they want at any time with no consequence! With recall and photon overcharge, there's no need to ever have defensive units at all and you can always move out without worry of being punished ever.
They say they want to discourage deathball play, then they make units like the mothership core encourage it in every way. I'm at a loss for words at how dumb this is. That was the main thing that protoss needed for hots. Moving out early was terrible for prottos, arguably encouraging 4-gates, 2-base all ins, or just late game "death ball" style. Even on small maps you dont have time to move across the map before some 8 stimmed marauders have killed you natural, and key tech. Sure scouting and map awareness comes in here, so a more important example is that without MSC protoss could not move out early without flipping a coin, because if you got into an engagement where you were at a slight deficit/a slightly disadvantageous fight on the other side of the map you had 2 choises: 1) stay and fight and sack your army/trade bad 2) run away, saving your stalkers and let your zealots + sentries die And how is that different for the other races? How often do you see a zerg attacking you before 10mins in HotS? How often do you see a Terran moving out before medivacs? It's part of the game, or rather most of the RTS genre, that if you commit to army before economy, you are allin because you can't replace your stuff and move forward in tech/upgrade/base progression if it dies, because you never built up the economy for it. All the time. Please, you're talking about the 10% of game in which some 3rax bio attack against Protoss occurs. The problem Protoss has is that it can't retreat. Protoss units are too slow. Stim bio/speedlings/even roaches can run away and be fine. Might want to check out 2base 3-4gate blink openings against Terran or 2base 3-4gate recall attacks against zerg that work with 100energy recall, no need to make it 50. They are just as bad if perfectly deflected as bio before medivac pressure, but seen just as often. And can retreat marvelously. So it's not that Protoss should never be punished for bad positioning... it's that good positioning is not as easy to guarantee before the fight because you can't reposition your units as well. But blizzard isn't adressing that problem. They are exactly doing what you are saying should not happen, which is that Protoss is harder to get punished. Their positioning, which I agree can be tough with those slower armies, doesn't change at all. Terran frequently moves out against Protoss and Zerg in the early game pre medivacs. Hellions are fast and can retreat if they need to (they roast the only unit that can keep up with them, excluding a total ambush with overwhelming numbers) and bio with concussive shells can get away from any early game Protoss comp. I don't mean move out to attack. I just mean "are able to be outside their base" without negative repurcussions. Protoss doesn't have that luxury. So if you're out on the map and get found or forced into a fight, there's no running.
Protoss has those options in the form of early game stalker pokes before stim is done, or oracle phoenix play.
But sure, I fully agree that Protoss is lacking some solid mapcontrol unit, in particular against zerglings. But instead of that, blizzard has given Protoss in those two expansions:
- the MsC with recall and PO to make up for mobility issues
- the oracle, a flying spellcaster that can kill zerglings but not consistently
- the adept, a unit that can combat zerglings somewhat but cannot run because they are again designed around a gimmick, instead of just having ~4movement speed. (HotS value; not so familiar with the LotV ones)
On top of the already gimmicky forcefield+cater all maps towards protoss walling solution.
What bothers me with your argumentation is that blizzard is running circles around the Zergling vs Protoss issue, then introduces and buffs gimmicks to make up for that and then you come in and pretend it's "what Protoss needed". No, what Protoss needed is a well-designed adept. No superroach, but some form of a Protoss hellion.
I mean you gotta realize that MsC 50energy recall is not just going to be used to be out on the map with 3stalkers early. People are going to teleport their deathball around all game long if it only takes 64seconds to regain recall energy and you can store up to four of them. How that is a solution to "early game" mobility issues is beyond me. It's a solution to Protoss ever losing a combat when on the offense, which I'm afraid, is just stupid.
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EPT
