On July 03 2015 09:05 WhaleOFaTALE1 wrote: Why do people say tanks need a buff? in high number they absolutely destroy bio or roach/hydra. I could see a buff against toss. The problem is that in very small numbers tanks are weak, but in large numbers is terrifying. So how do you buff a tank when you only have a couple, but keep them from being op in large numbers
You introduce a mechanism that counterbalances them being in large numbers. For example they could all target the same zergling and thereby waste shots, instead of perfectly avoiding to shoot targets that other tanks already destroy. I call this suggestion overdestroy.
That's not going to happen in 2015. We need to be providing less frustrating and unintuitive alternatives.
Best and easiest solution I can think of is +Shields damage. With their added maneuverability, they might be usable in TvZ already.
Damage vs shields is band aid and it is bad.
How in the world is it a band aid? Is Marauders having +Armored a band aid? Lol.
A way to fix that is to remove the smart firing that prevents them from overkill and introduce the malestorm rounds from WoL campaign to give tanks extra damage vs single target without affecting splash.
I repeat: there is a zero percent chance of Blizzard making dumb tanks in 2015. It's just not going to happen. It would make misused tanks less useful than misused casters without smartcast, and smartcast isn't going anywhere, so neither is smart targeting.
It's a bandaid because it affects one matchup disproportionately. It's sloppy design and they've straight-up said that's not their ideal solution. It's much easier to justify a change of "vs Mech" or "vs Bio" because there's added flexibility involved in player choice. By adding a modifier that targets only one race, that only serves to make good units overpowered or sucky units slightly less sucky.
Everything in the game affects MUs disproportionately. In BW, the Queen had a spell called Infest Command Center that straight up could not be used at all in any MU other than ZvT. Lockdown straight up could not be cast in TvZ. Irradiate had no competitive uses outside of TvZ. Would you say they are all examples of bandaid solutions in BW? Because that to me devalues the term and distracts from the real problems in SC2.
I agree that +Shields damage wouldn't be the most elegant design, but 1) the Widow Mine already has it so there's precedent in SC2, so if Blizzard did say what you say they said about the Tank, that's just bullshit, and 2) I'm not personally aware of a solution I would deem more elegant. It may well be the best in a sea of mediocre solutions.
Infest Command Center was a holdover from back when the Queen also had Infest Nexus. My memory's a little chicken-or-egg on whether the lore influenced the design or whether the addition of another ability edged out the Nexus ability on the command card and they changed the lore to fit. There were plans to have Queens infest both other races' town hall structures though.
The Lockdown example doesn't fit because Terrans have mechs as well as Protoss. That makes it useful for TvT and TvP. Irradiate affected all three races (the competitive usage is irrelevant, the possibilities are the focus of design and not the direct application). If a unit or ability affects more than one race then it's fine even if niche, but if it affects only one race differently then it's not a design they should seek to repeat, especially if the design affects all units of that race evenly, which the Widow Mine does.
Well, as far as the +Shields damage goes, we'll have to agree to disagree. I think that on the scale of design atrocities committed by SC2 to date (and being continued even in LotV), this would rank "not ideal, but extremely tolerable."
But in terms of actually finding a solution, Charoisaur has suggested that the LotV economy allows for a straight-up beefier Siege Tank. I haven't played LotV and have no way to gauge how true this is, but if it's worth investigating, then I hope Blizzard seriously looks into it.
I can dream to. Five patches from now, Protoss becomes a race everyone wants to play. Blizzard fixes this by redesigning stuff for terran/zerg, now people cant decide which race they wanna play.
I've been also playing Dota2, and I really like the features game client has: watch live games, watch other players games, watch turnaments (buy tickets) and ect. (all other feathers as well). These let improve, also entertain by themselves. SC2 also should have these features, like ability to watch live games - search someone famous playing and watch (for live maybe with 5-10 min delay). Like not only game itself, but also game client experience should be more entertaining.
On July 03 2015 09:05 WhaleOFaTALE1 wrote: Why do people say tanks need a buff? in high number they absolutely destroy bio or roach/hydra. I could see a buff against toss. The problem is that in very small numbers tanks are weak, but in large numbers is terrifying. So how do you buff a tank when you only have a couple, but keep them from being op in large numbers
You introduce a mechanism that counterbalances them being in large numbers. For example they could all target the same zergling and thereby waste shots, instead of perfectly avoiding to shoot targets that other tanks already destroy. I call this suggestion overdestroy.
That's not going to happen in 2015. We need to be providing less frustrating and unintuitive alternatives.
Best and easiest solution I can think of is +Shields damage. With their added maneuverability, they might be usable in TvZ already.
Damage vs shields is band aid and it is bad.
How in the world is it a band aid? Is Marauders having +Armored a band aid? Lol.
A way to fix that is to remove the smart firing that prevents them from overkill and introduce the malestorm rounds from WoL campaign to give tanks extra damage vs single target without affecting splash.
I repeat: there is a zero percent chance of Blizzard making dumb tanks in 2015. It's just not going to happen. It would make misused tanks less useful than misused casters without smartcast, and smartcast isn't going anywhere, so neither is smart targeting.
It's a bandaid because it affects one matchup disproportionately. It's sloppy design and they've straight-up said that's not their ideal solution. It's much easier to justify a change of "vs Mech" or "vs Bio" because there's added flexibility involved in player choice. By adding a modifier that targets only one race, that only serves to make good units overpowered or sucky units slightly less sucky.
Everything in the game affects MUs disproportionately. In BW, the Queen had a spell called Infest Command Center that straight up could not be used at all in any MU other than ZvT. Lockdown straight up could not be cast in TvZ. Irradiate had no competitive uses outside of TvZ. Would you say they are all examples of bandaid solutions in BW? Because that to me devalues the term and distracts from the real problems in SC2.
I agree that +Shields damage wouldn't be the most elegant design, but 1) the Widow Mine already has it so there's precedent in SC2, so if Blizzard did say what you say they said about the Tank, that's just bullshit, and 2) I'm not personally aware of a solution I would deem more elegant. It may well be the best in a sea of mediocre solutions.
Infest Command Center was a holdover from back when the Queen also had Infest Nexus. My memory's a little chicken-or-egg on whether the lore influenced the design or whether the addition of another ability edged out the Nexus ability on the command card and they changed the lore to fit. There were plans to have Queens infest both other races' town hall structures though.
The Lockdown example doesn't fit because Terrans have mechs as well as Protoss. That makes it useful for TvT and TvP. Irradiate affected all three races (the competitive usage is irrelevant, the possibilities are the focus of design and not the direct application). If a unit or ability affects more than one race then it's fine even if niche, but if it affects only one race differently then it's not a design they should seek to repeat, especially if the design affects all units of that race evenly, which the Widow Mine does.
Well, as far as the +Shields damage goes, we'll have to agree to disagree. I think that on the scale of design atrocities committed by SC2 to date (and being continued even in LotV), this would rank "not ideal, but extremely tolerable."
But in terms of actually finding a solution, Charoisaur has suggested that the LotV economy allows for a straight-up beefier Siege Tank. I haven't played LotV and have no way to gauge how true this is, but if it's worth investigating, then I hope Blizzard seriously looks into it.
So long as it doesn't survive an additional hit from opposing Siege Tanks, or from a unit bating your own Siege Tanks to fire within .4687 radius of it. In other words, it shouldn't survive more than 4 shots. In a perfect world, it also wouldn't survive more than 3 shots from a fully-upgraded tank. I'd gladly pay an extra 25 minerals per tank for them to have 200hp. More realistically, the same price and 180hp would make more sense. Although switching the HP of Cyclones with that of Siege Tanks seems pretty rad, especially if accompanied by a slight cost decrease to Cyclones.
On July 03 2015 11:47 SC2John wrote: 3) Pro players and ESPORTS are supported by the viewers, and thereby the players as well. The most important thing is the gameplay -- make the game fun to play, and people will play and watch it. I think it's a trap to get caught up in "map diversity" and things of that nature without addressing the real concern of making playing on the maps fun. Destructible rocks and watch towers were a good start, but maps in general are very lackluster and rigid in design mostly due to the restrictions placed on each race via their design (as well as a host of other issues like high ground advantage, space control, etc.). Blizzard should be working towards making maps more dynamic rather than making them more imbalanced. However, that said, I'm glad they're trying new things rather than sticking to the careful, tender, "SC2 is a small fragile baby who can't take any amount of change or it'll die" approach they've always had.
first of all, regarding the viewers game esports thing, if this is what Blizzard wants to push there is very little to be done about it, you either accept it or vote with the wallet and don't give them any support.
as for making maps more dynamic, this would likely require a huge overhaul of the game which won't be happening anytime soon given their behaviour over the last years.
Putting it onto the ghost relieves some of the redundancy, but does not change the fact that it is a spammable damage ability which contributes to deathball play and large "whoever wins this fight wins the game" engagements. I agree with them on skillshots, but they definitely need to ditch the idea of snipe altogether and just come up with something better -- even the weird armor drone was a better idea.
Not sure it's really spamable though. I expect that it will have much higher energy cost and it also has counterplay. But I think it will feel a bit tedious to execute the counter micro (click on the Ghost).
Skillshots are fun because you dodge them by moving your units. On the other hand, clicking on a unit in order to "micro" is unexciting.
Pro players and ESPORTS are supported by the viewers, and thereby the players as well. The most important thing is the gameplay -- make the game fun to play, and people will play and watch it. I think it's a trap to get caught up in "map diversity" and things of that nature without addressing the real concern of making playing on the maps fun
Definitely this. The main goal should not be to make "a good esport", but to make a game that is fun to play for the target group. Esports = Secondary objective.
However, in many situations there is also none-to-little discrepenacy between good esport-games and solid RTS-design. E.g. cheese and dumb all-ins are both unfun to play vs and watch. And most great microinteractions are also fun to play and watch too.
@ Cyclone
The Cyclone is problematic as its an all-round core unit and thus simply overlaps with the Siege Tank. Often times you won't be satifised by just building a few Cyclones, but instead benefit by massing them.
I suggest to give it an ability that you could cast on your own units to make them better in some way. This way it could have utility along with bio and mech-units without being strong when massed.
On top of that it could have lower base-damage (and range) but bonus damage to structures so it could kill static defense easier, and thus support the Hellion when harassing.
Charoisaur has suggested that the LotV economy allows for a straight-up beefier Siege Tank. I haven't played LotV and have no way to gauge how true this is, but if it's worth investigating, then I hope Blizzard seriously looks into it.
The (future) PDD-redesign, tank-drop nerf + LOTV economy should give room for a tank-buff. At least it is something that is worth testing in my opinion. We have bio that is very mobile, fast-paced and fun, and thus mech shouldn't just be Cyclones and Hellions moving around the map. Instead, having a strong positional unit is imo a must.
............ took me more than 10 sentences to realize that this was not a update on the teamliquid feedback. I am just going to sit outside for 15 minutes
Love the updates. It's nice to see their thought process, and the swing-and-miss ideas like smartcast skillshots. Thank you DK and anyone else for taking the time to do these updates every Friday.
On July 03 2015 19:35 [UoN]Sentinel wrote: Love the updates. It's nice to see their thought process, and the swing-and-miss ideas like smartcast skillshots. Thank you DK and anyone else for taking the time to do these updates every Friday.
Couldn't agree more, it's awesome to have these posts on a regular basis! It's actually a nice motivation to play beta and give even more and further detailed feedback, thanks for this new approach!
• Higher damage on Cyclones accompanied by rolling the range upgrade into the unit. • A change to lock-on functionality that causes the ability to break if the Cyclone loses vision.
My suggestion to the Cyclone would be: Remove the anti air upg for it. Give it's normal attack the turret thingy that was also suggested to the Siege Tank and the Immortal. Making it's standard attack better for kiting. Buff the attack damage of that attack aswell and make it so it can attack air units from the get go. The unit does not start off with Lock-On, but is an upgrade on the Factory Tech Lab. Lock-On should have a cooldown of like 10 or something and breaks when unit is outside of vision. Lock-On could then be made super strong if need to be, since microing against it, nullifies it. Going out of vision/Blink/Burrow/disrupting the Cyclone with Phoenix lift or something like that. With a 10 sec cooldown and such strong counterplay, it would then be more important for pro players to manually target high priority targets that don't have this anti Lock-On capability, such as Blink and the likes. The key here is making it's normal attack so strong that it isn't ONLY reliant on the Lock-On.
On July 03 2015 13:26 Whitewing wrote: Not a single comment on Protoss. I'm genuinely interested in why that is: is it that they think Protoss is fine as is and doesn't need work (seems unlikely), or because they're working so hard on the terran and zerg stuff that they don't have time for Protoss right now, or is it that they're working on a lot of Protoss stuff but have nothing concrete to share yet?
Based on what Dayvie said in the acer interview, I think it's the last alternative.
how about, remove cyclone, add spectre. give him (or her, multiple DT models is very cool, do ghosts too) lockdown, irradiate, and even maybe the armor drone.
i gotta wonder if there aren't more campaign units that would have actually fit better into the game than some of the newer units. they already have corsairs and goliaths in the game, why not give them a try? what about the viking splash upgrade? you wouldn't need the liberator at all...
the fact that the spectre is just now an idea in my head for this makes me more and more disappointed in the progress. what an easy design idea that differentiates the game from BW... and this whole "it's needs to be different from BW" thing is ridiculous. DotA 2 is basically a clone of warcraft dota, and it certainly doesn't seem like it's suffering for it.
for maps, i say add miss chance uphill. dota 2 is the only modern isometric game that feels engaging in that respect. LoL, Heroes, and SC2 are all FLAT. oh, can't see uphill? yes, actually i have colossus, or any air unit, so i'm fine because the game is actually flat, and the ramps are all actually bushes. miss chance would immediately buff defender's advantage during most early-mid all-ins, on almost every map, and in every match-up.. it seems like a no-brainer to me.
for maps, i say add miss chance uphill. dota 2 is the only modern isometric game that feels engaging in that respect. LoL, Heroes, and SC2 are all FLAT. oh, can't see uphill? yes, actually i have colossus, or any air unit, so i'm fine because the game is actually flat, and the ramps are all actually bushes. miss chance would immediately buff defender's advantage during most early-mid all-ins, on almost every map, and in every match-up.. it seems like a no-brainer to me.
at least they're talking now, though.
Maps in SC2 aren't flat at all. In fact, cliffs are used heavily to restrict harass strategies / enemy movement towards your base, and delimitate how easy is to secure bases.
However, I think that removing high ground miss chance simply makes terrain dumber. Many problems about all-ins and so could be easily solved by having the miss chance, since it would be easier to defend them. For example, Bunkers and Tanks could be set much more in front positions to prevent Blink all-ins, or Stalkers/Hydras up-ramp could defend more against early pushes.
In fact, when facing a defensive scenario, Bio/Stalkers can just focus fire really easily your units that are up-cliff, specially tanks.
Maps in SC2 aren't flat at all. In fact, cliffs are used heavily to restrict harass strategies / enemy movement towards your base, and delimitate how easy is to secure bases.
I think he meant that it's basically is the same as being flat, since there's not much high ground advantage atm.
I think high range units contribute to why balls of death are so strong and using high ground to counter this would be smart. So I'd like to see units have -1 range when they target units on high ground. Units would act more like Roach engagements where concaves are a lot more important, since range eliminates importance of surface area. Melee units already suck at encroaching at these positions, so having ranged units act a little more like melee units, will have huge impact. It's also not relying on external factors such as RNG, which isn't prevalent in SC2 at all already, so no need to introduce it now.
Maps in SC2 aren't flat at all. In fact, cliffs are used heavily to restrict harass strategies / enemy movement towards your base, and delimitate how easy is to secure bases.
I think he meant that it's basically is the same as being flat, since there's not much high ground advantage atm.
I think high range units contribute to why balls of death are so strong and using high ground to counter this would be smart. So I'd like to see units have -1 range when they target units on high ground. Units would act more like Roach engagements where concaves are a lot more important, since range eliminates importance of surface area. Melee units already suck at encroaching at these positions, so having ranged units act a little more like melee units, will have huge impact. It's also not relying on external factors such as RNG, which isn't prevalent in SC2 at all already, so no need to introduce it now.
Mmmm... I don't know, but applying -1 range attacking upwards might seem confusing from a DK perspective. They always want things quite evident and exact, that's why theoretically we don't have high ground chance in SC2. It might work, but it's all about trying.
I think we could also try -50% damage, this way armor upgrades will matter more, recreating the BW effect of slower fights because of the % damage reduction on damage type. Having half the DPS would have a great impact, with maps adapted to it. For example, it would make defender's advantage a real thing in PvP. Army positioning vs Blink all ins would also be interesting and much more relevant, for sure, and Tank positioning vs bio pushes could be a bit more agressive. Same goes for Spinecrawlers/cannons.
In my view, what made the pre-nerf version of the Cyclone so interesting for Mech was not the overly powerful attack or range. It was the fact that you could actually produce right out of your first/second factories and survive early game TvP.
With the first version of the Cyclone, if you correctly identified that any type of cheese was incoming you could devote your resources/attention to defending and actually feel ahead as a Mech player if you were successful in stopping whatever cheese came your way. Lets face it, in current HOTS, the only ways to survive once you identify that Protoss is committing to early aggression (aka cheese):
- Get lucky with scouting; - Make tanks and hope you guessed right and its not stargates or immortal all-in; - Pump out units from the barracks and get a Starport early to produce from those two buildings;
Unless you guessed right, producing out of 1/2 factories is a very big risk in the early game. Even if you survive, how could Mech based play punish protoss after surviving a cheese?
The vanilla Cyclone removed this problem with the survivability of Factory (Mech) openings and let you use 1/2 factories to survive in TvP. Then, the cyclone is mobile and stand-alone enough that you could perhaps even threaten some kind of pressure or contain. After all, we can survive by producing non-stop from at least one factory in the other match-ups, and then actually force a Zerg/Terran to feel like they now have to defend or make excess units to break a follow-up contain. There is a price to pay for failing a cheese.
If we could have a safe factory based opening in TvP for Mech when detect some kind of early aggression, and if we then do a good job in scouting/harassing and transitioning well in the remainder of the game, things already work fairly well in Mech TvP, especially with Battlecruisers having recently obtained an indirect buff against Tempest. Bio does have this option since investing into Stim/Starport gives that style an advantage (pressure or possibility to expand faster) after the aggression has been stopped because you have your tech in place and possibly even 2-3 barracks.
After adding back some early game AA capability to the Cyclone (even if the DPS/range were overall weaker), I would think that only tweaks would potentially be required (either during beta or post-release of LOTV) for Mech to become quite viable in all three match-ups.
I believe that an "all-purpose" early game Cyclone defense is what Mech needs. It should be the equivalent of Stim/Medivac cheese defense, but on factories. It would allow Mech to transition better into the mid-game perhaps with a more delayed Starport (since air units do not really help Mech pressure toss or hold a third), and the Mech player could instead expand to the 3rd earlier and/or add an extra factory.
This is even more needed now that you need the EB again to make turrets. That change was essentially a double nerf along with the Cyclone loss of AA. With what I propose above, it does not matter if the EB remains a requirement for turrets - the cyclone would replace turrets for factory play.
My 2 cents.
Elendur
Edit: Completely worth a mention that I love Blizzard's new approach of communicating and listening to the community - and even more the apparent will to consider implementation of some of the recommendations that have been made.
EPT
