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On November 02 2015 23:31 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:Show nested quote +On November 02 2015 12:14 NewSunshine wrote:On November 02 2015 10:14 GiveMeCake wrote:
I don't understand why you went through so much time/effort when LotV is done and there won't be any drastic changes... Is this like a fantasy you have or something? This post is important because it's the perfect answer to those ignorant people who say "Don't like it? Don't play it." When we criticize Blizzard's design decisions, it's not because we're just there to talk shit about the game and about Blizzard. I have better things to do with my time. We say these things because we know what potential the game has, and seeing that potential get wasted in light of poor design decisions is heart-wrenching. We're not complaining because we hate the game, we're complaining because we love it, and we're watching it get worse over time, not better. That hurts. Imagine one of your loved ones, your father, your son, your brother, somebody you care about is in the hands of a professional doctor, surgery falls easily to hand for this analogy. It could even be a female loved one. You expect a surgeon to know what he's doing, and for that person to get better, given the proper treatment and time to recover. You don't expect their condition to get worse, and if it does happen, you're sure going to raise hell with the doctors - they should know better. They are a group of professionals responsible for the care of your loved one. Only in the case of Blizzard and SC2 you don't have unexpected complications like you might get in surgery. Only Blizzard's decision-making. My analogy is generous but still apt. No. Chrono boost is not going to literally kill your son. Holy hyperbole, Batman. It's perfectly fine to criticize design, although this is the millionth time we've seen the same arguments that clearly aren't accepted or agreed by the design team in charge of SC2. It's a nice compilation of complaints, but I can't imagine it's going to get anywhere if it didn't get anywhere during WoL or HotS or LotV beta.
Of course I'm not speaking literally. In fact I'm sure I used the word analogy at least twice. If you're going to debunk a statement of mine, make sure you do so with a statement I actually made.
And people always say that Blizzard won't listen, therefore there's no point to voicing this opinion. It happens every time I speak out with similar opinions. And I don't care. You're right, Blizzard won't suddenly change tack and start listening to what we're saying, but if we say nothing then for all anybody knows we're perfectly content with the game as it is. Looking through everything the OP lists off, this is clearly not the case. You may not agree with what we say, but that does not impact our right to express it.
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Good post, identifies a lot of issues in the game, particularly regarding Protoss. I'll give it another read later, there's a lot.
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On November 02 2015 23:23 Ingvar wrote:Show nested quote +
On November 02 2015 19:41 summerloud wrote:
i think the majority of the community knows that a community-made mod could be ten times better than this mess
You are delusional. At it's best Starbow (which was so BW-esque and obviously better than SC2 in view of TL people) had a population less than that of failed RTS like Grey Goo. No significant part of community wants to play mods.
even if mods were 10x better than lotv (and im 100% sure thats easily doable), they will always lack community / big brand support and player base
the best thing that could happen would be a new RTS made from scratch by intelligent people
just compare diablo 3 to path of exile and you know where blizzards once so high game design skill stands in comparison with dedicated amateurs
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On November 03 2015 01:37 summerloud wrote:Show nested quote +On November 02 2015 23:23 Ingvar wrote:
On November 02 2015 19:41 summerloud wrote:
i think the majority of the community knows that a community-made mod could be ten times better than this mess
You are delusional. At it's best Starbow (which was so BW-esque and obviously better than SC2 in view of TL people) had a population less than that of failed RTS like Grey Goo. No significant part of community wants to play mods. even if mods were 10x better than lotv (and im 100% sure thats easily doable), they will always lack community / big brand support and player base the best thing that could happen would be a new RTS made from scratch by intelligent people just compare diablo 3 to path of exile and you know where blizzards once so high game design skill stands in comparison with dedicated amateurs
100% agree
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Well just skimming over the topics it looks like at least you identified the problematic zones pretty well.
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It could have been so much more since WoL, but it's not how Blizzard do their job. They focus at win/loss ratios when balancing the game, not at the gameplay itself.
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I agree with everything you have written. In fact those are pretty much 99% exactly my thoughts and I've been thinking of writing a good, long post like that and sum it all up, but I've never found the time and more importantly patience.
I even started writing in word on my computer and was hoping that over few weeks I'll be adding more and more stuff and create a post that explains it all nice and well, but I just always failed and my writing seemed too all over the place and not cohesive enough.
But your post pretty much sums up my thoughts, how I feel about SC2 and about the missed opportunities and bad design decisions that were taken on the game.
Unfortunately Dustin Browder was the designer on Red Alert 2, cool game and fun, but absolutely garbage when it came to balance and skill and just overall intelligence into the design. It was super fun, but super silly game and not to be taken seriously or competitively.
David Kim is even worse since he has no prior experience in designing games, he might be good overall player and decent in the sort of minute balance stuff, but he is garbage at actual design, at actual intelligent design and the guy who was key to design to Blizzard was Rob Pardo, this guy was ultimately the mastermind behind SC:BW, WC3, etc... Since he wasn't involved in the same way for SC2, he was involved in the single player design and the story missions and campaign turned up amazing, but he wasn't involved in the multiplayer and the multiplayer turned average and towards bad!
SC2 multiplayer is only good because there are no other serious competitive RTS games out there, that is the only reason SC2 multiplayer is good, there is no competition, but SC2 compared to BW is garbage, the multiplayer is laughable, its like Red Alert 2 fused into SC.
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Some serious effort there OP. I can only imagine this is something you felt you needed to get off your chest for a while lol.
I have to say LotV has disappointed me, but without going into teen angst mode and calling everything garbage, I do find the game quite bad. I do not like the economic changes or any of the new units, coming to think of it apart from the hellbat I don't really like any other new units added in both expansions.
I actually liked the game a lot during WoL. One new well thought out unit to each race, a re-design of Protoss and a balance change here and there and yeah that would have been cool. The only saving grace is that maybe once the LotV honeymoon is over there may be a chance for a brand spanking new new RTS to shine.
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The OP is easily a 10k word essay. Holy shit.
I didn't read it all. Sorry. What I did read felt a lot like an amalgamation of what the OP thinks SC2 should be. While not super useful to the beta--since it's over, and since such comprehensive reforms like this are unlikely to happen--it encourages me that people think about the RTS genre at such length. Who knows, maybe you can contribute to the scene in more meaningful way than a TL post that will be buried : (
I applaud your effort!
The cynical part of me thinks that the OP is something I myself fall into from time to time. We see something we like. Participate in some way, and then perhaps think ... "Man, I could do this. And I would do it so much better!" I know it's silly, but the impulse is there. I'll be watching a Tool concert and think, "that's not that hard. We could do this!" Obviously that's laughable. It's fucking Tool! I guess what I'm saying is ... it's a lot harder to create and execute something than it is to think you could do better. Or, maybe it's not like that at all, and I'm just projecting. *shrugs*
I'm sad the beta is over.
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On November 03 2015 01:37 summerloud wrote:Show nested quote +On November 02 2015 23:23 Ingvar wrote:
On November 02 2015 19:41 summerloud wrote:
i think the majority of the community knows that a community-made mod could be ten times better than this mess
You are delusional. At it's best Starbow (which was so BW-esque and obviously better than SC2 in view of TL people) had a population less than that of failed RTS like Grey Goo. No significant part of community wants to play mods. even if mods were 10x better than lotv (and im 100% sure thats easily doable), they will always lack community / big brand support and player base the best thing that could happen would be a new RTS made from scratch by intelligent people just compare diablo 3 to path of exile and you know where blizzards once so high game design skill stands in comparison with dedicated amateurs
It is not enough to have good people, they need money. Lots of it. They need to be able to compete with Blizzard to acomplish something.
PoE compared to Diablo 3 is still super small.
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On November 03 2015 04:34 -Archangel- wrote:Show nested quote +On November 03 2015 01:37 summerloud wrote:On November 02 2015 23:23 Ingvar wrote:
On November 02 2015 19:41 summerloud wrote:
i think the majority of the community knows that a community-made mod could be ten times better than this mess
You are delusional. At it's best Starbow (which was so BW-esque and obviously better than SC2 in view of TL people) had a population less than that of failed RTS like Grey Goo. No significant part of community wants to play mods. even if mods were 10x better than lotv (and im 100% sure thats easily doable), they will always lack community / big brand support and player base the best thing that could happen would be a new RTS made from scratch by intelligent people just compare diablo 3 to path of exile and you know where blizzards once so high game design skill stands in comparison with dedicated amateurs It is not enough to have good people, they need money. Lots of it. They need to be able to compete with Blizzard to acomplish something. PoE compared to Diablo 3 is still super small.
maybe this just shows that the casual crowd is too big. d3 got more players, poe is clearly superior in every way :/
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There are a few good points in it but most of it is just complaining that sc2 isn't like BW.
why do you put so much effort in proposing changes to a game when a game that fits your view of good game design already exists?
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On November 03 2015 05:52 Charoisaur wrote:
There are a few good points in it but most of it is just complaining that sc2 isn't like BW.
it is argumenting how and why it could be so much more, not just like BW. Yes BW is better so being much more also means gaining back qualities that BW has but not being the same.
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On November 03 2015 05:52 Charoisaur wrote:
There are a few good points in it but most of it is just complaining that sc2 isn't like BW.
why do you put so much effort in proposing changes to a game when a game that fits your view of good game design already exists?
That's not what the post is about, you're massively generalizing the ideas presented in the OP, and I think you know that. I love SC2, and I suspect the OP does as well, but it was more enjoyable in HotS than it's looking to be in LotV, and it was even more fun still in WoL, before they made massive changes that hurt the game. And ironically, many of the worst changes came from Blizzard trying to reproduce ideas from BW without blatantly copying them. The result in nearly every case was inferior design.
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First of all, thank you all for feedback. I am sorry for the bad formatting, I just wanted to get this piece out as soon as possible. I already spent almost 2 or 3 months on this (I am a busy family man), and LotV is almost out - I just finished what I had.
On November 02 2015 12:14 NewSunshine wrote:
This post is important because it's the perfect answer to those ignorant people who say "Don't like it? Don't play it." When we criticize Blizzard's design decisions, it's not because we're just there to talk shit about the game and about Blizzard. I have better things to do with my time. We say these things because we know what potential the game has, and seeing that potential get wasted in light of poor design decisions is heart-wrenching. We're not complaining because we hate the game, we're complaining because we love it, and we're watching it get worse over time, not better. That hurts.
I couldn't write it any better.
I am not a native English speaker, and I know a lot of what I wrote could be less convoluted and probably shrunk in size by 25% if written in more efficient manner, but it is too late now - anyway, the content should be more important then the way it is presented.
I do not have enough time today to reply to every post I want to, but I will reply to two that grabbed my attention:
On November 02 2015 21:59 DanceSC wrote:
I couldn't get past the first part of this, everything to me said this was a whine about game balance thread. Nothing here is new, just complaints about what an alternative version of the game could have been. I'm getting sick of people complaining about FF, PO, and WG. We already call protoss attacks all-ins because if they lose it they die, and harasses we call cheeses because they feel gimmicky and we always fail to scout them..
If you actually spend some time and read what I wrote, you will understand that this is exactly what I'm talking about. Without Chronoboost, PO and with a little redesign of WG/Gateway, Protoss would be less gimmicky and no one would call Protoss attacks by the name of all-in - do you know why? Because those removals and redesigns could pave way for buffs to Protoss Core units, or decreases to unit production and tech research time. You should thank Chronoboost for Protoss being gimmicky.
And no, this is not a balance whine, otherwise I would whine about one race, not all 3 of them. I tried to stay as unbiased as I could, if I failed, I'm sorry, but I'm only human.
On November 02 2015 23:31 DarkPlasmaBall wrote:
It's perfectly fine to criticize design, although this is the millionth time we've seen the same arguments that clearly aren't accepted or agreed by the design team in charge of SC2. It's a nice compilation of complaints, but I can't imagine it's going to get anywhere if it didn't get anywhere during WoL or HotS or LotV beta.
If it is same argument about same issue, doesn't that mean that there is an issue after all? I haven't seen any good reason why the things in the game are the way they are.
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Well i agree with a lot here (i actually didn't read everything yet, but so far it seems similar enough to my own opinion), the sad fact is that blizzard seems to like their design choices though. They don't think these design choices are subpar.
David Kim likes to point out that he cares about something "being cool" , not about solid gameplay.
So yeah it is easier to accept sc2 for what it is and be content with it, we won't get huge changes.
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Make Ultralisk smaller, give it an upgrade to be almost as fast as Zergling with Speed. This way Ultralisk can actually be a part of the fight and do its supposed job of soaking up the damage. Remove splash to reduce supply and resource cost, making Ultralisk more accesible and actually worth to be produced. Revert the +4 armor upgrade back to +2. Make it synergise with Zergling, not compete with it.
Agree. The issue with melee units in Sc2 is that they are completely unmicroable when they are less than "really fast". So if you are to buff them, why not make them faster? The armor buff never made sense in my book.
@ Colossus
When you make a unit slower it doesn't automatically become a positional unit. No it just becomes even more deathballish. To actually make it a proper positional unit it would need to be balanced around less than 0.75 movement speed.
I also find your specific Colossus attack suggestion to be too complicated. I don't think people will enjoy having more "complicated" micro. Just let the Colossus be a simple unit that you can pull back if target fired.
Give Force Field 3 armor, 80 HP (for example) and change it to a neutral unit (destructible) when spawned. It has to be targeted manually (so your units will do nothing unless ordered to attack) so there is some basic micro involved,
Interesting micro is when you reward movement. Target firing a forcefield is not movement and almost noone is gonna find that enjoyable. Forcefield isn't fun and never will be regardless of how you attempt to add countermicro.
Smart Cast means spells need to be weaker, and weaker spells are not exciting to watch or play with. Smart Cast means a Master player can be as good as a pro when it comes to caster micro, which further adds to "meh, if I can do it like a pro, then pro are not that great".
Too an extent true, yet still a bit unnuanced. Smart cast means abilities needs to scale worse while being good in low numbers. That's actually easily doable.
Also abilites can be powerful aslong as they have counterplay (e.g. skillshots). Honestly instant projectile abilites are the most boring thing in the world.
- kill units but leaves them with 1 H
That's my suggestion too for Parasitic. Glad we can agree on that.
Adept, Stalker, Reaper - why super mobility prevents units from being good in a straight up fight
Slightly unnuanced again. The issue with super mobility only comes if it doesn't have a strong counter. Mass blink stalkers was a problem vs zerg because they had no hardcounter to the stalker. Terran on the other hand did in the Maurauder. So the point is that you can actually make the Adept quite strong vs certain units (light) as long as the enemy have obvious tier 1 counter tools.
@ Guardian Shield
You should only opt for ability redesign that makes them feel more powerful if you make them "harder" to use as well. In your suggestion this will just be another ability spam protoss have to perform.
Dark Swarm worked because it was poerful and had huge movement-related consequences. A weak target grouund ability will generally not have the desired effects for movement micro.
Khaydarin Amulet, after all, offensive warp-ins have been severely nerfed with the warp-in time.
Khaydarin Amulet upgrade would help Protoss immensily with drop defense. Because of long warp-in time, High Templars won't be used as much for harassment anyway. There is no reason for HT not to have an energy upgrade like other spellcasters
Oh please no. Being able to warp in a Psy Storm everywhere on the map at any time is insanely broken and not fun to play against. This isn't what a defenders advantage should be. A defenders advantage is something that should be able to be broken. KA isn't.
The issue with protoss anti-drop defense is that they don't have core units that are relatively mobile and can be moved around to defend drops. In order for Stalkers to work they need to outnumber a terran bio dropship + solid blink micro.
The proper fix here is to reduce Medivac healing rate while adding more mobility to the Immortal (so it can defend drops better) and make sure that protoss production matches that of terran/zerg slightly better. On top of that, medivac speed boost could also be reduced to 50% and suddenly an overpowered PO won't feel neccasary anymore.
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Excellent post! FF, Collosus, broodlord, SmartFire and SmartCast all need to be addressed. I remember in WoL when people complained about these issues also. I really don't understand why blizzard hasn't responded to these yet.
Now it's almost forgotten and considered "normal" but it's still hurting the game very much!
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Lol seriously I just read that I was the only one so far who have responded to his actual suggestion. I guess most people here are just on the blind circlejerk with the logic:
"OP wrote a lot and seems smart + LOTV sucks = OP is awesome".
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On November 03 2015 10:25 Hider wrote:
Lol seriously I just read that I was the only one so far who have responded to his actual suggestion. I guess most people here are just on the blind circlejerk with the logic:
"OP wrote a lot and seems smart + LOTV sucks = OP is awesome".
The main issue with OP's suggestion is that he consistently wants to promote more micro that everyone during the LOTV beta realized they don't like (clicks for the sake of clicks) whereas he ignores the importance of movement based micro. Just goes to show the lack of critical skills of the average commentator on this thread.
Or rather the actual suggestions he makes are secondary to the point. The main point is to examine the game to find its faults, and examine why that is the case. The OP doesn't even need to make any suggestions - though it can't hurt. When you delve deep enough into why certain elements are bad for the game, it becomes easier to target those elements with a focused design change. His suggestions would be a first draft if anything. But please, continue to smugly put down an entire population for no obvious reason.
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EPT
