I agree with alot of those ideas. However, I think the Sentry idea of blocking Emp would be pretty broken, unless sentries were made to be more expensive (or guardian shield used more energy). If you just had shield block emp, it would make the ghost useless in PvT, because near any army composition has some sentries in it. Although I could see it working if it cost the sentry more energy, thus eliminating any forcefield potential, so the player has to choose the trade off.

I totally agree with the baneling/storm changes most of all.

Stacks

Norway68 Posts

July 23 2010 13:47 GMT

#63

Great read, and some really good suggestions on mechanics and countering in general ! Your approach to "wow" potential is well worth a thought, i sure hope Blizzard follows up

EDIT: On the GS blocking EMP matter, if you made it so that the sentry having the shield up could not do anything else( not attack nor cast FF ), it would still make EMP`s viable by sniping that one Sentry, and demand more micro from the toss player to keep it up and running once that sentry is down.

LordofAscension

United States589 Posts

July 23 2010 13:54 GMT

#64

I'd just like to point this out:

Guest-347: As I hope your development team is aware, certain "tricks" have been found recently by the community. These include Void Ray "Fazing" wherin a player can manually attack different targets in rapid succession to artificially increase damage output, and a series of commands that enables (limited) infestor underground casting of Fungal Growth and Nueral Parasite. Is the dev team aware of these issues and how are they going to be addressed before launch?

DustinB: We are aware of the Void Ray fazing and we will be addressing that. I was not personally aware of underground casting of Infestor abilities. I'll go take a look.=)

Source

So hopefully Blizzard doesn't ruin the "wow" moment :/

~LoA

stet_tcl

Greece319 Posts

July 23 2010 13:56 GMT

#65

Plexa, I was actually wondering what you had planned for your 20k and this sir has delivered

I agree with pretty much everything mentioned in the article and sincerely hope blizz takes some of this stuff into account...
Sc2 is very fun game to play but it could definitely use some more of this "wow" factor in units and abilities.

hyst.eric.al

United States2332 Posts

July 23 2010 13:58 GMT

#66

great post. i pre-ordered sc2 and i wasn't that excited to get it (particularly because I had a beta but my computer was crap), so i never really followed it. the article really opened my eyes to the game's potential, and with my new laptop I'm actually pretty excited for the game.

so thank you, plexa. and congrats on 20k!

Arrian

United States889 Posts

July 23 2010 14:02 GMT

#67

very well done plexa. yay content!

nujgnoy

United States204 Posts

July 23 2010 14:05 GMT

#68

sacrificial lamb T.T
Very thorough article ^^

3FFA

United States3931 Posts

July 23 2010 14:07 GMT

#69

Good Read Plexa! Thanks and congrats on the 20k! Only one question,(sorry if I missed where you talked about this) How can you do the same harass with voidrays against terran against zerg and what can they do to counter it?

Hagan

Luxembourg34 Posts

July 23 2010 14:10 GMT

#70

WOW! This article had that *wow* moment

Great read and very interesting ideas that I think blizzard should take a look at and hopefully recognize the potential of it! Let's hope that such changes appear soon after the launch!

trevf

United States237 Posts

July 23 2010 14:16 GMT

#71

I'm just glad blizzard is making the game and not OP. A 50 energy spell casted by a 50 min and 100 gas T1 unit nullifying a 150 / 150 gas T2unit's 100 energy spell. HOORAY BALANCE!!! They'd have to make the force field cost 125 energy at that rate.

spinesheath

Germany8679 Posts

July 23 2010 14:17 GMT

#72

Fungal Growth which paralyses your units and deals a whopping 80 damage

Wait what? If it hits several units, sure it will easily do 80 damage. But afaik Fungal deals 32 damage per unit.

lovewithlea

168 Posts

July 23 2010 14:20 GMT

#73

great read.

the examples you used to show what a game needs to create wow effects were good chosen. even if some won't see through and just see you writing that sentries should counter EMP.

The point is not tell Blizz to make sentries counter EMPs. The point is to show which kind of design changes will improve wow effects

AncienTs

Japan227 Posts

July 23 2010 14:27 GMT

#74

gut feeling tells me that fazing is a bug and will/ought to be removed...

but then again fazing requires so much focus that you can lose time managing other important things, namely, macroing

pksens

United Kingdom156 Posts

July 23 2010 14:28 GMT

#75

Nice article, it's nice to try and improve on micro mechanics and "wow" moments. I know you said this isn't a balance discussion & just a design one, but you can't have 1 discussion without the other because it's unrealistic. Spells need to have the methods, or you need to change other parts of the game to balance the changes out.
Basically you say:
Zerg: increase Infestor cast times, reduce baneling damage if sniped (not many banelings ever make it to the full front of a terran ball for example)
Terran: increase EMP cast times
Toss: buff Sentry guardian shield & increase storm DPS (longer duration)

Doesn't seem right.

AskJoshy

United States1625 Posts

July 23 2010 14:28 GMT

#76

Is it sad that I know -exactly- which game one of the screenshots is from? =P

Red terran tanks being owned by banelings near the bottom = Sheth vs. MorroW ESL Ro16 Game 1 from July... 15th I think. =P

durd

United States12 Posts

July 23 2010 14:34 GMT

#77

I'd fill Plexa's void anytime.

Cleric

United States34 Posts

July 23 2010 14:39 GMT

#78

Excellent post. I especially liked the baneling idea and the concept of the "wow" moment. I think SC2 has a lot of hidden secrets and I'm interested to see how several concepts play out as the game becomes more mature (e.g. warp tech for toss).

Incognoto

France10239 Posts

July 23 2010 14:45 GMT

#79

Why not exploit the fact that Protoss units have shields instead of sacrificing units? Get two phoenix and charge on both of them without killing them or something. ^^

Interesting read.

Btw regarding micro, something I feel is ridiculous is "auto-micro" as I call it. I was playing around in scenarios once upon a time with Ghosts, target firing my marines.

You attack with the entire group and only the amount of ghosts it takes to kill the marine shoot. It takes 3 ghosts shot to kill a marine and when I tell 6 Ghosts to attack, only 3 actually do so.

You cannot overkill with ranged units, something I find crazy. Tanks too I believe? -_-

SayTT

Sweden2158 Posts

July 23 2010 14:48 GMT

#80

Great post, putting focus on a much needed topic to discuss. Just by looking at the different playstyle and how the gameplay has developed during beta you understand that this is a real question. The lack of wow factors must lie in the unit design and movement pattern, I dont think any game in its beta stages has gone under this immense pressure and testing by so many skilled players. Simply saying that players havnt figured out yet how to use the units wow factor just yet doesnt cover the whole story. Sure there are more likely many new stuff to come out of the current build but not enough to satisfy me and my nerdyness.