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When HOTS was announced, Blizzard made a big deal about how strategically not having too many units created an interesting game state. They also said they wanted to remove some WOL units to keep the number of units similar.
In the end, fans decided they didn't want any of their units removed and none were. HOTS did just fine with this slightly increased number of units, now into a game a few years old.
Here in LOTV, I'm perplexed as to why nobody talks about removing units anymore. In my opinion, there are too many units now, adding more to the WOL + HOTS mix.
Now more than ever we are seeing tons of units overlap each other and not finding different enough roles.
Many units would find new purpose without their competing overlaps. Currently, many units are simply overshadowed by their newer counterparts.
Also sadly, basically every new LOTV design or redesign simply treads on something already existing.
Edit: While I do think removing units is a good idea for clean design, I currently don't have the arguments for it. I'm simply bringing again to light this idea and hopefully adding some discussion.
Also, the below units are intended for removal. I'm just saying they overlap. Especially for example, banelings and lurkers. I just say they overlap a bit. Both are great units with areas where they don't overlap and should not be removed.
I will name a few and hopefully you all can supply the rest:
P
Tempest - Carrier is much stronger now, and has moderately long range. Has moderately little micro potential/requirement.
Zealot - Adepts are in general better. They fill the same anti-light role and tanking role. Has very little micro potential beyond general micro mechanics. Honestly, would the game be that much worse if Zealots were replaced with Adepts? It feels flavorful too.
Colossus - extinct in face of the disruptor
Void Ray - even could be said to have lost its niche and could be removed. Okay for midgame defense, sometimes overshadowed by Oracle. Good for all ins, but not as flashy as the Tempest all in. Theoretically very useful in an emergency counter to Broodlords, but the Protoss player tends to lose if they are in that position.
Mothership - who even remembered this unit existed? It needs a buff. I don't suggest its removal, simply because its fun to cloak everything.
T
Viking - The Liberator completely trumps this unit for damage, splash, ground attack utility and speed. It should be removed at this point. Terran has huge numbers of options for dealing with Broodlords and no Colossus exist anymore.
Hellbat/Marauder - These overlap, but are still different enough. There are lots of options for soaking banelings now.
Banshee - Also basically completely overshadowed by the ease of Liberators: Libs shoot down overlords that spot them, reactor-able, cost similar gas, don't require upgrades, shoot down for tons of damage. They only lose cloaking and banshee speed, but these are all upgrades that take a lot of time. I honestly think the Liberator is too good at too many things and steps on wayyy too many existing units.
Thor - AA splash via widow mines, AND LIBERATORS AGAIN. Not good on ground. Cyclones also overlap the Thor.
Raven - tread on by the Liberator again. Zoning is simply easier with Liberators now. Harass, easier with Liberators than turret drops. A problematic unit overall in older versions. Remove?
Z
Banelings - slightly overlapped by Lurkers. Especially in the burrowed land mine style. Anyone remember scarlett vs Bomber on Habitation Station? That was incredible.
Corrupter - overlapped by Viper Parasitic Bomb, a moderately unloved unit and has little potential right now.
Swarm Host - Not used at all. Tell me again, what's this unit do?
So far, I'm happier with LOTV as a fun game, but design-wise, these are such obvious flaws that I don't know why nobody talks about them.
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I think your topic has been brought up a lot in discussions. I fully agree that there are too many units with peculiar identity currently. Though my list would look a bit different. I think some of the overlaps you describe are OK because they lead to distinctly different gameplay (e.g. lurker-baneling).
Personally I would love to see the zerg range path diversified. Currently too many units do similar things:
roach - more longevity (1supply now possible with larva inject reworked?)
hydralisk - more focus on antiair (stronger attack vs air, weaker vs ground); otherwise it will always overlap with the roach a lot
lurker - too mobile; can jump on enemy armies which is not its job but the job of roaches, should just be slower
ravager - not good enough for its cost in the lategame; too mobile for an early siegerange unit; would like to see the early game speed nerfed to roach speed but the extra speed unlocked through the roach speed upgrade (maybe even just keep it slow all game long). Mid-/Lategame upgrade for the corrosive bile shot which is pretty bad after the early game and midgame.
infestor - fungal growth removed; parasitic bomb moved to the infestor; fungal at the moment is just bad in comparison with lurkers for antiground and with PB for antiair. And it's unfun to get fungaled. The infestor needs a stronger, yet more situational spell.
viper - back to HotS status (PB removed fromt he viper)
Swarm Host - removed; it serves no real purpose. We don't want free units as combat mechanic and even as harassmechanic it shouldn't be better than real unit drops or real flying units. It overlaps on all ends with existing units such as mutalisks (for harass) or broodlords (for attacking) or lurkers when you want a lategame/longrange unit that profits from your acquired range upgrades.
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Having units in the game that aren't used that often is fine. As players figure the game out more things will change. In WoL it took over a year for Zergs to make Infestors. All it takes is some minor stat tweaking to totally change a unit's usage. Archons used to be considred a joke, and now they're super important.
Also a lot of the units you say overlap don't actually overlap at all... You really think the Lurker and Baneling are anywhere near similar enough to warrant one of them being removed? Hellbat and Marauder? Have you ever seen a PvT or TvT?
Pretty much your whole Terran list is just saying 'Liberator is too strong so there's no point in making this unit!' Obviously the Liberator's stats are going to change quite a bit before release, this isn't really a design issue.
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Im just going to go on a bit of a rant here feel free to disagree and/or let me know what you think!
Where did the Blizzard that made Brood War go?
and now they are going to release a game like Legacy of the Void and call it "Starcraft" hell no!
Wings of Liberty wasn't bad - i wish i played it more!
and Heart of the Swarm? may have been fun at times and good to watch but id rather play the campaign and watch games rather then play it -
Don't get me wrong ill still get LotV ill try the multiplayer for a while but as from what ive seen of the beta its not looking to good, i know its just in beta and you cant call much from it but there are still a lot of things wrong with it -
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I just want them to give us back badass WoL Voidrays. They were so much stronger. Oh and I said the Tempest was an easy to control weak carrier since HotS.
As for the Mothership, Blizzard said in HotS they only want it to be used for giggles and were in shock that it became mandatory for Protoss vs Swarmhosts. Not that it was completely obvious when they made Locusts work on their own against real units, and nerfed the Voidray into non existence.
Also I guess Liberators will get a rework and have some weaknesses added to them. Apart from being forced to targetfire in an awkward way with their ground attack. And not looking like a Terran unit at all.
But I don't mind that there are Scouts in the game. (unit not used by anyone in BW) Because even the Scout got some play on competitive level.
So while, since HotS the new units just replace others instead of bringing something new to the table, I don't mind that we still have the old ones in the game. They don't hurt unless you fatfinger. And units to get for the giggles are always fun and sometimes the only answer (see Mothership).
The most important reason is though. I am expecting that we will get a huge patch changing the game up past LotV release, when they observed the game for long enough to see holes that players and mapmakers couldn't fill in terms of balance.
So its nice that there are units people grew attached to still lingering around in the game.
Oh and they are currently focusing on speeding up the macro, not units. So this thread comes a bit to early Imo, as they are probably aware of it. And just patch things to prevent that one race roflstomps the other.
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I would remove tempests, liberators and/or cyclones and swarm hosts. Of course, never gonna happen, but one can dream.
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Setting aside the specifics of your analysis.
I'm struggling to see a cast iron reason to get rid of units because their roles overlap with other units. Am I missing something? The OP doesn't really provide one outside of "Blizzard said it was a good idea" and he manages to do that without a quote so we aren't told what their reasoning was.
Off the top of my head...
-Design elegance. Pretty much an aesthetic concern. It seems just generally ugly to have units sitting unused.
-Viewer understanding. I think you could argue that having units vary from game to game inside a single race is a problem for viewers understanding. I don't really buy it though as A. This exact state of affairs is generally considered desirable for Terran (see Bio vs. Mech). B. RTTs (MOBAs) manage to have dozens of characters that appear once a season, never to be seen again.
-Player understanding. When a player builds a building, being presented with a choice of 4 units to build might be a problem. Working out what unit compositions fit together could become a real difficulty but... Is there a huge difference between having to select 1 unit from 4 or 1 unit from 3? Aren't decision like "what units do I build?" supposed to be difficult and interesting questions to answer?
I'm not saying this doesn't deserve talking about. (Which seems to be the main points of this thread)
I'm not saying that there could never be such a thing as too many units. (There is a huge difference between having to select 1 unit from 4 and 1 unit from 20)
I'm saying that the start of the thread is poor. Questions about RTSs in general ("How many units is too many units?") or more a call to arms on a particular unit or two ("Remove tempests, vikings and corrupters.) might produce something worth reading. This is just going to be a bunch of people, with no point of reference, talking about what units might over lap, while another bunch of people say "Don't remove units" without giving any sort of coherent reason why/why not.
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I want to jump on the removing units and talk about widow mines. It would be nice if widow mines did not: 1) kill interceptors, 2) oneshot sentries and HT in their splash.
It takes so much away from tanks and hellbats because it's such a superior option.
Maybe it comes too early. Being a tier 3 factory utility unit would be much more interesting for base defending, which is what stuff like the shredder was supposed to be in the first place.
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This is the corollary of hardcounter units. sc2 prefers ten 50% units than five 100%.
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On August 11 2015 21:40 Dapper_Cad wrote:
Setting aside the specifics of your analysis.
I'm struggling to see a cast iron reason to get rid of units because their roles overlap with other units. Am I missing something? The OP doesn't really provide one outside of "Blizzard said it was a good idea" and he manages to do that without a quote so we aren't told what their reasoning was.
Off the top of my head...
-Design elegance. Pretty much an aesthetic concern. It seems just generally ugly to have units sitting unused.
-Viewer understanding. I think you could argue that having units vary from game to game inside a single race is a problem for viewers understanding. I don't really buy it though as A. This exact state of affairs is generally considered desirable for Terran (see Bio vs. Mech). B. RTTs (MOBAs) manage to have dozens of characters that appear once a season, never to be seen again.
-Player understanding. When a player builds a building, being presented with a choice of 4 units to build might be a problem. Working out what unit compositions fit together could become a real difficulty but... Is there a huge difference between having to select 1 unit from 4 or 1 unit from 3? Aren't decision like "what units do I build?" supposed to be difficult and interesting questions to answer?
I'm not saying this doesn't deserve talking about. (Which seems to be the main points of this thread)
I'm not saying that there could never be such a thing as too many units. (There is a huge difference between having to select 1 unit from 4 and 1 unit from 20)
I'm saying that the start of the thread is poor. Questions about RTSs in general ("How many units is too many units?") or more a call to arms on a particular unit or two ("Remove tempests, vikings and corrupters.) might produce something worth reading. This is just going to be a bunch of people, with no point of reference, talking about what units might over lap, while another bunch of people say "Don't remove units" without giving any sort of coherent reason why/why not.
It's obviously dependent on the unit. But the core idea behind any unit is that it is unique and does something no other unit can do - at least in some way. So you start off by designing some units with good interactions and then you try to create more units and eventually the units start to become so different from the original ones that the interactions with them go bad. Eventually you start creating units that are solely there to counteract a specific opponent or even worse a specific opponent in a specific scenario. The result being that this unit is so strong for that scenario but so weak in others that neither the scenario, nor the counterunit are actually being played. (immortal - tank, tempest vs capital ships, marines - protoss air)
It's not something that couldn't be repaired most of the time, but the question is why you even provoke the situation when there is no real gain from it besides being a time (and money) sink for the developers that could be spent differently. And that often just isn't being repaired or just very late.
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I frankly hated the hard counter system, the fact that unit interaction is becoming more flexible and you can survive with the slightly wrong build order makes the game infinitely less frustrating.
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On August 11 2015 22:35 nottapro wrote:
I frankly hated the hard counter system, the fact that unit interaction is becoming more flexible and you can survive with the slightly wrong build order makes the game infinitely less frustrating.
And infinitely more interesting. I can only watch it at the moment - no beta access, but when I saw Hellions + Cyclones vs. Roaches I got pretty happy to see that it wasn't cookie-cutter Blizzard-approved comps.
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I am not really against units overlapping, if multiple units are decent at a specific task it will increase diversity.
However currently the are some really big hard counters in the game so there is really no choice in what units to make.
As for your example
I for the most part agree with your protoss suggestions. The only thing I disagree with is that instead of removing the zealot remove the adept and buff zealot... (and exchange charge with a simple speed buff (and solve concussion shells some how)). People seriously unrated how much micro a "standard" unit takes+ it will be easier for newbies.
Terran
I would add tank to the list of units being overshadowed by the liberator. The liberator is what the siege tank should have been except that it is a air unit so it lacks a bunch of interesting strategic decision making.
Zerg
Don´t agree that banelings and lurkers overlap other than that I agree.
So if we are gonna keep all the hard countering going around then sure I wouldn´t mind removing some units.
The better choice is to tone down the hard countering imho.
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I had a dream:
- Collosus is horrible in so many ways - Disruptor/Reaver will be a much better
- Tempest doesn't have or need to have a place
- Mothership Core and Mothership are singular - Arbiters please
- Zealot = tanky + fast - Adept = slower + semi anti-light + dps
- Viking is boring and it's ground transformation is pointless - swap for goliath
- Thor redesign required! - slow, fat, stupid
- Cyclone moving shot T_T - *see Viking ^^
- Swarm Host is horrible in so many ways - let it go
- Corruptor is *Yawn* - flying banelings might be more interesting (Scourge...)
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So at the starport you just want to have a medivac and liberator? While we are at it lets give marines concussive shells and reaper speed and give the hellion siege mode and spider mines that attack both air and ground!!!!
Seriously though, if a unit can fill the role of 4 other units from the starport ( minus detection from raven ) maybe its that unit we should consider removing. That is basically the definition of an overpowered unit.
The mothership should have kept its offensive recall it had from the WoL days and maybe even change the other abilites on the mothership itself to really differentiate the two between offensive (Mothership) and defensive (Mothership Core) units.
It seems harsh to say the corruptor has little potential. I think removing the corruption ability just made the weakest AA unit even weaker. And we can't just say that zergs only option in dealing with air units is a spell casters ability.... It is slower than the other races AA and has worse range it has just needed some serious tweaks for a long time, but a unit not worth removing in my opinion.
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As a Zerg player i can say that i use every unit in zerg arsenal and i like it. The diversity gives me the possibility to calculate the situation and choose the best unit possible to deal with it.
About those in specific. Banelings are cheap and mobile, gl trading evenly and defending drops with lurkers. Corruptors are tanky and faster to make and use in an emergency (read "liberator" emergency here). SH are good for harrassing and ending games. Often tryhards will mass defense on 2 base and refuse to leave the game.
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P
Tempest - I kind of agree here
Zealot - Zealots and Adepts are not really that similar. Melee and ranged is a massive difference, as is charge and shadow-projection-thingy. This doesn't really make much sense.
Colossus - I think the colossus should be a much slower unit to differentiate it from the disruptor.
Void Ray - I don't really see any overlap with this unit honestly.
T
Viking - This is actually a really good point imo.
Hellbat/Marauder - I honestly don't see the overlap at all. Just because they both can be meatshields? Different techs, different attacks, different ranges...
Banshee - The main differentiator is that Banshees have cloak and more mobility, of course.
Thor - Thors are much much slower, and is very obviously differentiated in that way.
Raven - I don't see the overlap at all with the liberator. Liberators can't PDD or Heat-seeker? Just by their nature, I don't think spellcasters can overlap with non-caster units because of mana.
Z
Banelings - These are really not overlapped by lurkers at all imo. Hell, banelings are suicide units.
Corrupter - Once again, I don't think a unit can be overlapped by a spell.
Swarm Host - Clearly this unit was nerfed to the ground. It hasn't really found its place in the game, but it doesn't overlap with anything.
It seems to me like your main problem is specifically the Liberator. Would you say that's accurate?
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This could all be fixed by nerfing the Liberator.
Because what this whole list accurately points out is why build anything with Liberators in the game.
I know it's beta and things are OP because nobody really knows what to do but the unit is just blatant OP rofl it's literally good at anything and everything.
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On August 11 2015 20:37 Connor5620 wrote:
Where did the Blizzard that made Brood War go?
Blizzard Entertainment is no longer around. It is Blizzard/Activision dont you know?
Look at the timeline of Starcraft 2 and compare it to the business models for the company. 2008, Activision/Blizzard "birth" and then SC2 and continued forward with the other titles.
Look at the reorg'ing the company took. How many of the original developers from SC/BW were on SC2?
This is the problem. Companies need to invest in actual focus groups of the community itself and not just CEO's and their kids like most tend to do. Companies that actually gauge the client base succeed and have successful aspects. Was SC2 successful? Sure why wouldn't it be, it had a name and brand already defined. Could it have been better? Absolutely.
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What I'm getting from this thread is that the liberator is stupid.
And I agree
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EPT
