Ranked play has been added. The chat system has been significantly overhauled. The minimap now shows destructible debris as an icon. Possible starting locations are pinged at the beginning of each game.
Ranked play adds a level of measurable competition that will draw additional people to play the beta that were previously put off by the lack of visible progress. Ranked archon mode is still missing, but presumably that will come in time. The chat system has improved tremendously over the place-holder system we had before this patch. It doesn’t feel quite done yet, but with some additional tweaks it will be a vast improvement over what we once had. The minimap changes are nice quality-of-life changes to help players adjust to new maps more easily. These improvements are the sort of small things that show the developers are really thinking about and analyzing the game, its social features, and what needs to be fixed. Overall, the non-balance changes are all good improvements and bode well for future changes.
Balance Changes:
General
Siege tanks and Immortals will now track the nearest enemy while moving. Added minimap icons for destructible rocks and destructible towers. Made improvements when controlling a large number of air units. Nice quality of life changes for making units a bit easier to control and reliable. Unsieged tanks now can be controlled like in Broodwar where kiting is much easier since the turret doesn’t reset after every shot. The air unit change has more to do with mutalisks than any other unit. I’ve played a bit of zerg since the patch but haven’t noticed a huge change.
Protoss
Disruptor
Cost reduced to 100/200. Supply reduced to 3. Purification Nova Range reduced to 1.5. After Purification Nova ends, the Disruptor is invulnerable for 3 seconds. Speed when invulnerable increased to 4.25. Can be picked up by Warp Prism during Purification Nova, canceling its effect.
The new disruptor has a much greater emphasis on survivability. It’s much harder to kill now that it has invulnerability before and after the explosion. In addition, with reduced cost and supply it is much easier to get a larger number of disruptors, and less punishing to lose one. That said, the disruptor’s reduced detonation radius means that it’s much harder to catch as many units as before. The current disruptor is very hard to kill, but also very difficult to utilize perfectly. The disruptor will likely be tweaked to be a bit easier to use, without retaining the absolutely lethal radius of its first incarnation..
Terran
Vehicle and ship armor upgrades have been combined.
This is probably the right balance of making more meaningful choices between air and ground units while not overloading upgrades. +Attack is the more important of the two while +armor is usually only used if you’re committing to an actual mech build or going for a longer/slower style. This change, in addition to the liberator, means that there are actual meaningful decisions regarding getting +air or +mech attack.
Ghost New Ability: Steady Targeting. Deals 170 damage after channeling for 3 seconds. Can be interrupted if Ghost is attacked. Costs 50 energy.
The new snipe appears to be mostly useless. While it feels cool thematically (and more in line with what you expect a ghost to do), the high mana cost and relative ease of interruption makes it feel not worthwhile. If the mana cost was refunded if canceled, or at least partially refunded I could see this being more valuable. As it stands, there aren’t enough meaningful targets to justify this ability in general. There’s virtually no use for it against Terran. Against protoss you would only really use this against zealots or adepts but due to the fact you have to stand still to channel it doesn’t feel incredibly effective. The most potential is against ultralisks as Terran bio has a lot of trouble digging through their increased armor in LoTV. The new ghosts seem to favor a more passive style to allow them to accumulate sufficient energy. Perhaps in the mid/late game a squad of ghosts can provide a sort of suppressing fire, but the ghost isn’t an easy unit to mass as its mineral heavy cost cuts into your standing army.
Liberator Anti-Ground Mode no longer has to be researched; now only requires an Armory. Switching back to Anti-Air mode duration reduced to 2 seconds. Increased Anti-Ground range by 1. Fixed issue allowing Liberators to fire into multiple AG zones.
This iteration of the liberator is probably slightly too strong or available slightly too early, but the previous version which required a 200/200 upgrade that was only available with an armory and starport tech lab made liberators come out so late that they rarely even saw use. Developers need a lot of games in order to get an accurate picture of the utility of a unit, so when that unit requires so much tech and investment that progamers aren’t getting it (even if it is worthwhile in the end), it’s hard to assess how strong it is. In addition, whenever you make a unit available much earlier than before, there are bound to be some timing and balance related issues. Imagine, for example, if you could build siege tanks out of a barracks. The tank’s stats are ‘fine’, but the point in the game at which it’s available is not. In HoTS, we saw these sorts of changes occur a lot with hellbats as Blizzard tried to figure out exactly what the correct tech was to allow hellbats to be made. Liberators fill important roles in all 3 matchups as their long range air to ground siege capabilities have no equal in the Terran arsenal. They are excellent at zoning ground units out and can be used to leap frog forward the way you would with siege tanks without having to worry as much about being overwhelmed by ground units.
Raven Auto turret damage increased to 16., duration decreased to 10 seconds. Seeker missile cost increased to 125. Durable Materials upgrade removed. New Upgrade: Explosive Shrapnel Shells. Increases damage of Seeker Missile and Auto Turret by 30%.
The new auto turret has changed from a long term zone control and harass spell to an incredibly strong timing and burst damage ability. The reduced duration means that you can’t mass them or create a long term threat but the greatly increased damage allows you to execute strong timing attacks. Overall, this is probably the right direction for the auto turret to take, as the minutes that it used to last seemed too much. A slight duration increase to 15 or 20 seconds is probably sufficient to solidify this change. I like the idea of increasing the mana cost of eeker missile, but it doesn’t really seem strong enough at 125 mana. Perhaps the idea is that the new upgrade will make it about as strong as the old in very raven heavy strategies without making it so overwhelming as it was before in that you could cast a huge number of missiles. Overall, these changes seem really spot on to reduce the Raven turtle style of HoTS, but currently feel largely irrelevant as LoTV’s economy has all but killed that sort of play already. I’d really like to see a little more love for the raven in this vein. The raven would be really great if it was a viable mid game unit rather than something you buy exactly 1 of, or as many as you possibly can and turtle forever.
Zerg
Ravager Range increased to 6.
The ravager went from being one of the most overpowered LoTV units to one of the least powerful when its DPS was cut drastically in one of the recent patches. Before this patch, the ravager’s role overlapped a bit too much with the roach. Both were relatively low range, decently high damage outputs, although the ravager suffered from being very fragile compared to the roach's durability. By increasing its range to 6, the ravager may differentiate itself enough from the roach to fill a more distinct role, therefore promoting more play. Interestingly, the ravager’s greatest strength against terran right now is its ability to snipe sieged Liberators. Its splash damage projectile, which should probably be the defining characteristic of the ravager, has been sidelined in terms of balance for now as Blizzard tries to stabilize the ravager’s core combat statistics. This change definitely looks to be in the right direction, as the fragile ravager needs to stay farther from combat to stay alive but needs to deal some damage with its auto attacks to justify its steep cost.
Impressions of Balance
Balance still feels pretty off, which is to be expected considering the scale and volume of recent changes. I don’t expect balance to be super precise until at least some months after they’ve stopped adding or totally overhauling units. Most of the new units are still too strong in some form. Part of the difficulty in balancing the new units is that their strength must be balanced against their accessibility. The liberator is a great example of this concept. The liberator is incredibly powerful when attacking ground, but saw little use due to the high cost of researching its air to ground attack. This patch makes liberators more accessible, which will probably lead to some minor re-balancing of its combat numbers. In the past, Blizzard has stated that they try to err on the side of slightly too strong for new units to ensure that they see play. Once players are comfortable with the unit and using it consistently, they get a good idea of how and which numbers to tweak.
Overall impressions
The biggest takeaway from this patch is that Blizzard has heard the community. They understand that people want more communication. David Kim and others have been providing regular insight into Blizzard’s direction for LoTV as well as responses to various community topics. One of the most talked about topics of LoTV is the economy, which has not changed significantly for a long time. At this point, it seems likely that Blizzard will not be implementing any additional economy changes. LoTV’s current economy does what it needs to do well enough and I’m glad that Blizzard is spending their resources elsewhere rather than endlessly trying to test and tweak new economies. A new economy unhinges everything regarding balance, timings and the general flow of the game. Ensuring that a new economy is good for the game would require a tremendous amount of time and energy that I’d rather Blizzard put toward other issues. The current economy alreadyfixes many of the gameplay frustrations from HoTS regarding turtling and stagnant play. Due to the incredible complexity of this issue and varied stances, no matter what economy LoTV ends up using, a group of people will be unhappy with it. As the current LoTV economy addresses the major issues from HoTS already, the time that could be spent experimenting and testing new economies is time that can be better spent on quality of life improvements, additional balance and so forth.
it seems likely that Blizzard will not be implementing any additional economy changes. LoTV’s current economy does what it needs to do well enough and I’m glad that Blizzard is spending their resources elsewhere rather than endlessly trying to test and tweak new economies. A new economy unhinges everything regarding balance, timings and the general flow of the game. Ensuring that a new economy is good for the game would require a tremendous amount of time and energy that I’d rather Blizzard put toward other issues. The current economy alreadyfixes many of the gameplay frustrations from HoTS regarding turtling and stagnant play. Due to the incredible complexity of this issue and varied stances, no matter what economy LoTV ends up using, a group of people will be unhappy with it
QXC has some insightful comments but I think Bizzard needs to look at the problem even more fundamentally. Why do people watch starcraft? Or even more fundamentally, why do people watch sports/games? There are various reasons and Blizzard needs to push the game towards those changes.
For example, one reason people watch is because they play the game. And, many people play the game because it's brainless fun. Starcraft 2 isn't brainless fun because it's simply too hard. That's why games such as League of Legends and Candy Crush is so popular. It's simply fun. LoL can become harder though if you want it to. Similarly, starcraft 1 was like that. People loved just making 20 dragoons on an unlimited map and a-attacking. You can't do that with starcraft 2 with all these complex builds even at the silver level. Starcraft 2 needs to be dumbed down.
On July 30 2015 08:20 CloudyVision wrote: QXC has some insightful comments but I think Bizzard needs to look at the problem even more fundamentally. Why do people watch starcraft? Or even more fundamentally, why do people watch sports/games? There are various reasons and Blizzard needs to push the game towards those changes.
For example, one reason people watch is because they play the game. And, many people play the game because it's brainless fun. Starcraft 2 isn't brainless fun because it's simply too hard. That's why games such as League of Legends and Candy Crush is so popular. It's simply fun. LoL can become harder though if you want it to. Similarly, starcraft 1 was like that. People loved just making 20 dragoons on an unlimited map and a-attacking. You can't do that with starcraft 2 with all these complex builds even at the silver level. Starcraft 2 needs to be dumbed down.
BW had no ladder, so people didn't feel bad about playing moneymaps.
In SC2, if you go on arcade you're seen as chobo with no skillz.
This did not happen in the BW community because there was no quickmatch button.
On July 30 2015 08:20 CloudyVision wrote: QXC has some insightful comments but I think Bizzard needs to look at the problem even more fundamentally. Why do people watch starcraft? Or even more fundamentally, why do people watch sports/games? There are various reasons and Blizzard needs to push the game towards those changes.
For example, one reason people watch is because they play the game. And, many people play the game because it's brainless fun. Starcraft 2 isn't brainless fun because it's simply too hard. That's why games such as League of Legends and Candy Crush is so popular. It's simply fun. LoL can become harder though if you want it to. Similarly, starcraft 1 was like that. People loved just making 20 dragoons on an unlimited map and a-attacking. You can't do that with starcraft 2 with all these complex builds even at the silver level. Starcraft 2 needs to be dumbed down.
BW had no ladder, so people didn't feel bad about playing moneymaps.
In SC2, if you go on arcade you're seen as chobo with no skillz.
This did not happen in the BW community because there was no quickmatch button.
BW had a ladder .... there wasn't a matchmaking system but there was a ladder system. This predates WGT or anything like that.
A new economy unhinges everything regarding balance, timings and the general flow of the game. Ensuring that a new economy is good for the game would require a tremendous amount of time and energy that I’d rather Blizzard put toward other issues. The current economy already fixes many of the gameplay frustrations from HoTS regarding turtling and stagnant play. Due to the incredible complexity of this issue and varied stances, no matter what economy LoTV ends up using, a group of people will be unhappy with it. As the current LoTV economy addresses the major issues from HoTS already, the time that could be spent experimenting and testing new economies is time that can be better spent on quality of life improvements, additional balance and so forth.
But equally, there is no other time to make changes to the underlying economy and there is the rest of the games lifespan to make these quality of life changes or major unit changes (see swarm host change in hots). So whatever we end up with needs to be in a place to offer the game the richest possible lifespan. I feel like our previous work on this issue (in terms of a DH economy) shows that DH offers more potential for a diverse gameplay in the long term than a mixed mineral model (in addition to other benefits like simplicity for newcomers). Additionally, the mixed mineral model places some pretty serious constraints on how maps are created -- we've been down this road before with blizzard insisting on 8m/2g bases when there were clear strategic gains to be made by considering 6m/1g bases. Why we want to lock ourselves into such stringent base requirements is truly perplexing.
Agree with what you're saying. I think that Blizzard needs to make the default play button a game which is multiplayer (2v2, 3v3) that has unlimited resources and other easy game features.
You can keep the ladder but make it a small section for hardcore players.
On July 30 2015 09:09 TMagpie wrote:
BW had no ladder, so people didn't feel bad about playing moneymaps.
In SC2, if you go on arcade you're seen as chobo with no skillz.
This did not happen in the BW community because there was no quickmatch button.
The new Snipe for the Ghost works really well against Hellbats... it is incredible good to simply kill them, but well... at least it is useful in TvT on those situations. Vs Protoss I tried vs Zealtos and Adepts and doesn't worth it... it is way better to EMP anything on TvP and that's all, maybe High Templars being sniped but 2 shots can kill them after EMP anyway Vs Zerg obviously is a way to counter BroodLords, Vipers and Ultras when going Bio...
You've pretty much summed my exact thoughts on the economy. This economy and DH both addressed HoTS issues with economy and they both work. Ultimately messing with it now would mess with the economy all current balance and versions of the game have been in. I would much rather they continue working with unit changes Some people will be unhappy no matter what economy is implemented, and as they both work might as well go with the one that helps them push the game forward instead of resetting balance testing with different timings and base dynamics. They community really does need LoTV as soon and as well made as possible
On July 30 2015 08:20 CloudyVision wrote: QXC has some insightful comments but I think Bizzard needs to look at the problem even more fundamentally. Why do people watch starcraft? Or even more fundamentally, why do people watch sports/games? There are various reasons and Blizzard needs to push the game towards those changes.
For example, one reason people watch is because they play the game. And, many people play the game because it's brainless fun. Starcraft 2 isn't brainless fun because it's simply too hard. That's why games such as League of Legends and Candy Crush is so popular. It's simply fun. LoL can become harder though if you want it to. Similarly, starcraft 1 was like that. People loved just making 20 dragoons on an unlimited map and a-attacking. You can't do that with starcraft 2 with all these complex builds even at the silver level. Starcraft 2 needs to be dumbed down.
BW had no ladder, so people didn't feel bad about playing moneymaps.
In SC2, if you go on arcade you're seen as chobo with no skillz.
This did not happen in the BW community because there was no quickmatch button.
But equally, there is no other time to make changes to the underlying economy and there is the rest of the games lifespan to make these quality of life changes or major unit changes (see swarm host change in hots). So whatever we end up with needs to be in a place to offer the game the richest possible lifespan. I feel like our previous work on this issue (in terms of a DH economy) shows that DH offers more potential for a diverse gameplay in the long term than a mixed mineral model (in addition to other benefits like simplicity for newcomers). Additionally, the mixed mineral model places some pretty serious constraints on how maps are created -- we've been down this road before with blizzard insisting on 8m/2g bases when there were clear strategic gains to be made by considering 6m/1g bases. Why we want to lock ourselves into such stringent base requirements is truly perplexing.
This is such a good point to make, and I completely agree. I have been an advocate for DH for a long time in forums.
QXC also makes a good point. Some change to the economy has been made and I actually like it better than HOTS economy (so far), because it makes the games quicker and encourages expansion. So some improvements have been made there and I enjoy them, but now what for the rest of the game?
Since there has been improvement in the economy I would rather see some DRASTIC changes in other departments of the game. Not little things such as the snipe change, but something that equals the economy change in effect.
For example, remove the inject mechanic, remove forcefields, drastic change to warp or remove it etc... maybe these are not the best examples of what to change, but I want them to change more of what people believe are the "core" issues of the game (of which economy probably still is one :/). Idk, I feel for blizzard, there appears to be no easy solution here. Greatful they are trying to find one.
I completely disagree with the economy change being good enough. In the end it changes very, very little tbh. Efficiency is still the most important part which is a huge problem in balancing and designing unit interactions. Sure, you have to expand a little bit faster and you start at a different point, but in the end the economy still works the same.
I also think that "testing" economies is rather useless, you cannot test an economy with units and macro mechanics which are balanced for another one and think it will just work. You have to look at the math behind an economy system, look at what it can potentially do for the game and work from there. At least that's my opinion on the matter atm.
I am not too hopefull atm for LOTV, the best thing i heard was yesterday from incontrol when he said blizzard apparently thinks about redesigning toss, so there maybe is still a chance in that department. Still, without a more flexible economy i don't think sc2 can ever reach its full potential.
Very sensible thoughts overall. Agree that the liberator comes too early and in too high numbers. I'd probably even tweak its stats a bit, but making it less accessible would be a good start.
On July 30 2015 23:26 ShambhalaWar wrote: For example, remove the inject mechanic, remove forcefields, drastic change to warp or remove it etc... maybe these are not the best examples of what to change, but I want them to change more of what people believe are the "core" issues of the game (of which economy probably still is one :/).
I like the inject mechanic, I like forcefields, I like warp gate.....there's nothing in HOTS that is totally broken, like we saw at the end of WOL with BL/Infestor.
Seriously, look at the amazing games it continues to produce:
HOTS is good enough that it doesn't need a complete overhaul, it needs tweaks.
On July 30 2015 08:20 CloudyVision wrote: QXC has some insightful comments but I think Bizzard needs to look at the problem even more fundamentally. Why do people watch starcraft? Or even more fundamentally, why do people watch sports/games? There are various reasons and Blizzard needs to push the game towards those changes.
For example, one reason people watch is because they play the game. And, many people play the game because it's brainless fun. Starcraft 2 isn't brainless fun because it's simply too hard. That's why games such as League of Legends and Candy Crush is so popular. It's simply fun. LoL can become harder though if you want it to. Similarly, starcraft 1 was like that. People loved just making 20 dragoons on an unlimited map and a-attacking. You can't do that with starcraft 2 with all these complex builds even at the silver level. Starcraft 2 needs to be dumbed down.
There's a lot of truth to this post. Games in general are always fun at their most basic level, and starcraft has nearly lost it's most basic level..!
On July 30 2015 09:25 Plexa wrote: But equally, there is no other time to make changes to the underlying economy and there is the rest of the games lifespan to make these quality of life changes or major unit changes (see swarm host change in hots). So whatever we end up with needs to be in a place to offer the game the richest possible lifespan. I feel like our previous work on this issue (in terms of a DH economy) shows that DH offers more potential for a diverse gameplay in the long term than a mixed mineral model (in addition to other benefits like simplicity for newcomers). Additionally, the mixed mineral model places some pretty serious constraints on how maps are created -- we've been down this road before with blizzard insisting on 8m/2g bases when there were clear strategic gains to be made by considering 6m/1g bases. Why we want to lock ourselves into such stringent base requirements is truly perplexing.
100% Agree. While we could see changes like how they changed the swarm host in the middle of Legacy's lifespan, doing something like that to the economy is far more difficult. Now is their only real option.
Thanks for getting your thoughts out qxc. I agree with a lot of the sentiments expressed in the OP, but this time I found the review to be a pretty middling effort. Here's some constructive criticism.
The Disruptor section discusses how the unit is tougher to catch, and when you do manage to catch one, losing it isn't as big a deal as it used to be. Is this good or bad? In their post-progamer summit announcement, Blizzard announced their intent to make it easier to punish bad Disruptor plays. Is this good or bad? With all of the talk of A+move Protoss, with Blizzard outright admitting that Protoss is the easier race to play at the professional level, it seems disingenuous to shy away from discussing how close Blizzard is to fixing this problem.
The Ghost section discusses bio's struggles vs the Ultralisk, but despite this review being a week late, and despite the point of the ability being almost explicitly to help bio vs Ultralisks, the review doesn't offer any playtesting results on Ghost/bio vs Ultra. The review instead focuses on how one-dimensional the ability is, but disappointingly pussy foots around the issue and never actually calls it one-dimensional. Strong language isn't bad, as long as it's backed up by solid reasoning and argument.
The Liberator section was my favorite as it discussed the unit from many angles, conceptual as well as practical, but it shies away from tackling bigger issues like the overlap of roles between the Liberator and the Tank, and is it good that the Liberator is taking over that role, or should the Tank simply be buffed instead?
The Raven section is pretty straight-forward, it was always clear this change killed mass Raven strategies, the most interesting part for me is the addendum at the end that Ravens should be useful in numbers higher than 1. Do you have any suggestions for roles Blizzard should be exploring with the unit?
Overall, most of the review seems to focus to focus too particularly on the literal changes of the latest patch, and very little on the bigger picture of what sort of game these changes are creating, which I think is the more pressing topic. It's very easy to get bogged down with the minutia of getting Ravager stats "just right," and before you know it the beta's over and we never even figured out if it was different enough from the Roach to deserve keeping. (Just as an example.)
Like others have said, I disagree with the notion that experimenting with the economy is a bad idea. This is the ONLY time Blizzard could conceivably experiment with the economy. What are the chances that they hit upon the best possible SC2 economy with their first public iteration? Pretty slim. So why not try some adjustments before it's too late?
Again, thanks for sharing. Hearing from pros is always great.
it seems likely that Blizzard will not be implementing any additional economy changes. LoTV’s current economy does what it needs to do well enough and I’m glad that Blizzard is spending their resources elsewhere rather than endlessly trying to test and tweak new economies. A new economy unhinges everything regarding balance, timings and the general flow of the game. Ensuring that a new economy is good for the game would require a tremendous amount of time and energy that I’d rather Blizzard put toward other issues. The current economy alreadyfixes many of the gameplay frustrations from HoTS regarding turtling and stagnant play. Due to the incredible complexity of this issue and varied stances, no matter what economy LoTV ends up using, a group of people will be unhappy with it
On July 31 2015 10:29 pure.Wasted wrote: The Liberator section was my favorite as it discussed the unit from many angles, conceptual as well as practical, but it shies away from tackling bigger issues like the overlap of roles between the Liberator and the Tank, and is it good that the Liberator is taking over that role, or should the Tank simply be buffed instead?
This I completely disagree. Though both siege units, the liberator and the tank are very different, no roles overlapping.
First of all, one is an air unit, the other is on the ground. That's a world's difference. That difference is reflected in the diversity of T's mid game strategies. Obviously, the change of medivac pickup in siege mode suggests that tanks should be paired with medivacs, therefore it can be perfectly blended in bio ball gameplay in both frontal push and doom drop. That is nothing new, as in WoL era tank/marine/medivac combo was the status quo to combat muta/lings, now that combo is just revived, and the addition of tank a MUST because there's no way to deal with lurker, ravager or ultra with bioball and mines. The Liberator, on the other hand, is a part of the mech style which may involve hellbats and cyclones - or vikings and banshees if going sky terran, but either way you're very unlikely to have both liberators and tanks.
Second, in terms of space control, that is the job that's really taken over by the liberator, while tank, with the increase of its mobility brought by the medivac, is more of a colossus for terran's bio ball. As an expensive lab unit, tank has a huge range and deals with high SPLASH damage, therefore a few of them is enough; liberator, though, covers a small area in AG mode and its splash damage in AA mode is also low, therefore it must be scaled up in order to build a strong force, which is why it can be reactor'd.
If the new eco makes the game too hard for new players and specially casuals, which are the biggest part of the player base, then it is a bad one.
I don't really care about the game being hard because I won't play it, just watch the pros do it. But if we wanna have the game live as long as possible, then the game should be easy to pick up, and not stressing/frustrating to play.
On July 31 2015 15:03 TedCruz2016 wrote: Second, in terms of space control, that is the job that's really taken over by the liberator
Yes. My question is whether that is a good thing. Just because a thing is a certain way does not mean it should be that way.
SC2 can still be an infinity of different things. Medivacs don't have to be able to pick up Tanks. If they do, there are an infinity of different ways of balancing this mechanic, from dropping them unsieged, to dropping them sieged but forcing a full attack cooldown before the Tank fires its first shot, to preventing a Medivac from boosting with a sieged Tank in its cargo, and I could go on. How the mechanic is ultimately balanced will change the unit's micro floor and ceiling, and its relationships with other units.
A buffed Siege Tank capable of controlling space may ultimately create more dynamic gameplay than a Liberator capable of controlling space. Or it may not. I don't know. I'm just asking questions.
I think while the economy is debatable, Blizzard really should give the new models a shot. It's just a shame to see some guys put so much effort into something they love and then not see any of that taken taken into consideration.
On July 31 2015 15:03 TedCruz2016 wrote: Second, in terms of space control, that is the job that's really taken over by the liberator
Yes. My question is whether that is a good thing. Just because a thing is a certain way does not mean it should be that way.
SC2 can still be an infinity of different things. Medivacs don't have to be able to pick up Tanks. If they do, there are an infinity of different ways of balancing this mechanic, from dropping them unsieged, to dropping them sieged but forcing a full attack cooldown before the Tank fires its first shot, to preventing a Medivac from boosting with a sieged Tank in its cargo, and I could go on. How the mechanic is ultimately balanced will change the unit's micro floor and ceiling, and its relationships with other units.
A buffed Siege Tank capable of controlling space may ultimately create more dynamic gameplay than a Liberator capable of controlling space. Or it may not. I don't know. I'm just asking questions.
I don't understand why everybody is holding a negative attitude towards the siege tank pickup. Tank is already underused in both TvP and TvZ, as almost everything counters it - speedlings, mutas, vipers, and in P's side, pheonix, blink, chargelots, immortals, you name it. Now the situation has gone even worse with the addition of ravager and disruptor. At this point, tank, as a ground unit, has basically zero value of space control. They ain't able to force the enemy to draw back. One the contrary, disruptors and ravagers can force you to draw back, and when you do retreat to dodge those attacks, the chances are, your tanks are gonna be left behind and die. That's why this new feature is extremely important. It enables tank to be rescued from jeopardy, and it balances off the effect of P's distant prism pickup anyhow. Also, it doesn't have to be unsieged when dropped, because, a unit that costs 150/125/3, takes a long build time and moves slow itself is NOT meant for harassment anyway. You simply can't afford it if it's lost. The whole purpose of this change is to increase its mobility, thus its survivability. Liberators, on the other hand, don't have such problems. As an air unit that's also anti-air, it can take care of itself.
Thanks for getting your thoughts out qxc. I agree with a lot of the sentiments expressed in the OP, but this time I found the review to be a pretty middling effort. Here's some constructive criticism.
Have to say you wrote a very good post with some of the same issues I thought of when writing the article.
At some point... about the Eco, I think it will be OK. If the game stabilizes then there will be safe builds, and we will see a lot more of dynamic gameplay, people trying to expand and harass, or going All In but with the whole words, ALL IN, because if it fails, it will be a mess for the player, not like now that they can go again and turtle a little while massing deathball.
I know a lot of people disagree and they think turtle should be viable but I still see it as a posibility, only not as strong as before, or not as passive as before... I myself tested it on many matches, a lot of games where you lost a big engagement and think "Oh this is done" because I am so used to HotS when the reinforcements are overwhelming... but no, because suddenly my enemy doesn't have enough resources to counter-push so strongly than before, and the game can continue (with a crappy eco maybe, but it can, and it is not an auto-lose)
By no means I "love" this new eco, but I think like QXC said, it deals with the turtle problem we got in HotS. And honestly we are running out of time, LotV is going to be released in what? 4-6 months for sure. And there are A LOT of things to do to balance the game SERIOUSLY (specially design on many Protoss things), or we are going to get band aids everywhere and suffer it until they try to patch it later after release (and we know big changes are like a miracle on those stages of the game)
On July 30 2015 23:26 ShambhalaWar wrote: For example, remove the inject mechanic, remove forcefields, drastic change to warp or remove it etc... maybe these are not the best examples of what to change, but I want them to change more of what people believe are the "core" issues of the game (of which economy probably still is one :/).
I like the inject mechanic, I like forcefields, I like warp gate.....there's nothing in HOTS that is totally broken, like we saw at the end of WOL with BL/Infestor.
The problem with 2.5.3 and the economy change made is that the game is very poorly balanced around it.
Zerg had their macro mechanics automated and nerfed, whereas Terran and Protoss had theirs (MULEs and Chrono Boosts respectively) outright removed from the game. Hell, Protoss was the only race to have some research times reduced to compensate for the Chrono Boost nerf whereas Terran had nothing.
Does it therefore, not surprise me that the game is heavily Zerg-favoured in its current state?
On July 30 2015 23:26 ShambhalaWar wrote: For example, remove the inject mechanic, remove forcefields, drastic change to warp or remove it etc... maybe these are not the best examples of what to change, but I want them to change more of what people believe are the "core" issues of the game (of which economy probably still is one :/).
I like the inject mechanic, I like forcefields, I like warp gate.....there's nothing in HOTS that is totally broken, like we saw at the end of WOL with BL/Infestor.
EPT
