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On July 19 2013 00:30 SolidSMD wrote:
invisible? how does that help, a smart zerg will just blow up his own banelings near the wall and run through with his lings. I fail to see how this would be useful.
It forces really zerg to be more careful and make him more nervous. If thats not enough, it can be combined with pylon health buff + 50/50. It forces more of control on lower and mid levels while high level Protoss players will be probably able to scout bane bust comming and prepare for it (still shifting more AMP towards bane control, as it is no longer possible to just "right click, select zerglings and wait).
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Better solution:
Bring Sentry back into the game, same cost, lower build time, move it to the Nexus instead of Gateway (think of it as a weaponized Probe to augment base defenses).
Make Forcefields only able to be placed on Pylon Powerfields.
Give it Guardian Shield and some third ability, maybe a "Shield Transfuse" sort of burst recharge or single-target Stasis or something. We have some room to work with there.
Simple, elegant, flavorful, uses readily available unit models, spells and effects.
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The game crashes every time I join or host a Starbow game. It has never been like this before. It happend after the recent patch.. What have I done... : /
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I have experience that some time ago. Try joining multible Starbows or restart SC2. It may fix itself.
I do have a few more ideas for the marauder if you need some.
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On July 19 2013 10:29 Laertes wrote:
Gossen, I hope you don't mind if I take the liberty of uploading Starbow on NA for the purpose of attracting new blood to the scene from our side of the pond. I will be using one map until more people become interested so that I don't have to upload as much for now, and I will volunteer to do this for the duration of the summer.
sweet
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On July 19 2013 06:23 SmileZerg wrote:
Better solution:
Bring Sentry back into the game, same cost, lower build time, move it to the Nexus instead of Gateway (think of it as a weaponized Probe to augment base defenses).
Make Forcefields only able to be placed on Pylon Powerfields.
Give it Guardian Shield and some third ability, maybe a "Shield Transfuse" sort of burst recharge or single-target Stasis or something. We have some room to work with there.
Simple, elegant, flavorful, uses readily available unit models, spells and effects.
i really like this idea. But id' prefer it be more expensive. The sentry can be the new Nullifier. Builds from Nexus, requires forge, has 2 spells - a bigger, more expensive, nonspammable Forcefield useable only on power fields and 2. Shield Battery type ability. its standard attack can be a channeled disarm (not stun/stasis, simply makes the unit unable to attack until it leaves the sentry/nullifier's attack range).
it might not be used in every game, but it can be put into a niche defensive role that could be very interesting.
#Nullifier<3
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On July 19 2013 11:36 Laertes wrote:Okay so guys, I'm gonna bring up an interesting point that I feel will help starbow, and I've been speaking with a friend of mine who is into game marketing and a huge fan of Starbow. He claims that we should start focusing on community building and I'm inclined to agree. So now I'm going to do something I never do and make a monster post. Let us begin. + Show Spoiler +Why?
Here's the question he posed, do we want to see starbow at a high level? Or do we want to have the perfect mod? It's not always either/or, but I think we have been going about this the wrong way. Here's how I THINK we should go about this:
1)We are trying to build our mod and make it good before we promote community building. Here's how my friend put it: While we lack so much in terms of completion thus far, we are way better than hots, we also have some good people that can help make a point to an audience. I think we should go ahead and start promoting, and who gives a fuck if we're not finished, we'll get feedback and a broader audience will help us complete our mod.
2) We have been silent so far about promotion, building a community doesn't magically happen, we need to be able to put ourselves on the line because after a while it won't matter anymore.
3) There are lessons to be learned from starbow's design, we should get out there and teach everyone designing starcraft a thing or two.
I think we should try and do what we were gonna do "when the mod was closer to completion". Sure it's important to procure a finished product but honestly you don't need to do that. I think that it won't scare quite so many people away from the mod as you might think because right now starbow is more solid than ever. I think the fear of an imbalanced zerg chasing away newcomers is dissipating let's focus on making this a presence on TL. Let's have december do some casts of our higher level players. (Perhaps some Hider v Xiphias showmatches that we send out to major sc2 casts and streamshows?) I recommend we do everything we can to be proactive about starbow's community building as this is a big part of what we have lacked thus far. So here is what I propose, let's set a date, say, a month from now on august 19th, because it is very close to starcraft's 3rd anniversary. I think once we have this date set, we can work the polish of the mod toward that date, and finalize things so that we aren't so jumbled. We may not enter a state of complete development zen anytime soon, but people's feedback will be extremely important to the idea of a completed starbow with a completed fanbase. Let us plan for a date rather than endlessly dreaming about a perfect mod. Perfection is overrated, the time is now.
Great Post with some very valid points.
I have been saying for a while now that we need to focus more on promotion and support from casters and pro players to get this thing to be anymore than an interesting experiment.
We should really just think of this mod as getting ready for Beta testing. Think about what HoTS or WoL had when they first went into beta...
1 supply roaches
70 damage no overkill siege tanks
Warhounds
Colossus that attacked in a really wierd way
and countless other things.
People are not afraid to play an unfinsihed product and will even start being very involved in giving suggestions and feedback (and calling everything OP).
The best poit rased is the fact that with a bigger following, and more e-fame, its likely that Blizzard will take notes on what we have done when designing LoTW...
It will be our way of saying to Blizzard - Hey, great job on SC2, but we really think you should push the game more in this direction.
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@Ulose
I am in a hurry so I reply quickly:
+ Show Spoiler +Gossen, I hope you don't mind if I take the liberty of uploading Starbow on NA for the purpose of attracting new blood to the scene from our side of the pond. I will be using one map until more people become interested so that I don't have to upload as much for now, and I will volunteer to do this for the duration of the summer.
I know your intentions are good Ulose, but please do not do that. I update the MOD so frequently now with bug fixes, and NA will fall behind, because I have to send the patch to you, and there will be a delay before you get the patch up.
If NA players really wanna play Starbow, I can fix the upload. It is easier for me to keep track of all the content and have them uploaded on the same account. If people want, I can manage one or two maps uploaded to NA, and everytime I update, I make sure to update those too.
+ Show Spoiler +Okay so guys, I'm gonna bring up an interesting point that I feel will help starbow, and I've been speaking with a friend of mine who is into game marketing and a huge fan of Starbow. He claims that we should start focusing on community building and I'm inclined to agree. So now I'm going to do something I never do and make a monster post. Let us begin.
+ Show Spoiler +
So what's our first step gonna be?
I think we should try and do what we were gonna do "when the mod was closer to completion". Sure it's important to procure a finished product but honestly you don't need to do that. I think that it won't scare quite so many people away from the mod as you might think because right now starbow is more solid than ever. I think the fear of an imbalanced zerg chasing away newcomers is dissipating let's focus on making this a presence on TL. Let's have december do some casts of our higher level players. (Perhaps some Hider v Xiphias showmatches that we send out to major sc2 casts and streamshows?) I recommend we do everything we can to be proactive about starbow's community building as this is a big part of what we have lacked thus far.
So here is what I propose, let's set a date, say, a month from now on august 19th, because it is very close to starcraft's 3rd anniversary. I think once we have this date set, we can work the polish of the mod toward that date, and finalize things so that we aren't so jumbled. We may not enter a state of complete development zen anytime soon, but people's feedback will be extremely important to the idea of a completed starbow with a completed fanbase. Let us plan for a date rather than endlessly dreaming about a perfect mod. Perfection is overrated, the time is now.
It would indeed be cool to promote this to see if more players are interested to play/watch this. The reason I have been so reluctant abour promotion is because this game must be more finished. NOT necessarily perfectly balanced. But free from bugs, all spells/units must be complete, the gameplay/flow of the game must be decent etc.
My time is running out. Soon I am back to full time job + university, which will limit me a bit. (I will update this more seldom.)
This is what I think is left to do:
- Fix a long list of bugs I have on my desktop
- Make sure all spells/abilities on all units are complete and works as intendend. (Only a few left)
- Make sure all units in the game are complete in terms of role, stats, functionality etc (Only a few left)
- Make sure the game play feels somewhat diverse, interesting, exciting and most importantly: FUN!
I aim to give this another two weeks of polishing and play testing. Then I am willing to start to advertise/promote.
Luckily the Sentinel seems to be well recieved from the players now.
The big concern, for me at least, is Marauder/Immortal/Warp Gates, and see how this works and how we can improve it.
Balance is ofc important too, but that is a process we can also do even if we have a larger player pool.
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On July 19 2013 18:00 Kabel wrote:
Balance is ofc important too, but that is a process we can only do if we have a larger player pool.
Fixed that for you.
As I have stated a lot of times before, getting a popular caster (or TL Attack) to do some StarBow games would really do wonders.
There are plenty of mods that have gained a huge popularity because Husky did a showcase, or even started casting them. Day[9] really bumped the popularity of SC2BW when he set that mod as a funday monday challenge.
The other option is to get one of the StarBow streamers to appear in the featured section, and make our own popular streamer.
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On July 19 2013 18:54 Zaphod Beeblebrox wrote:Show nested quote +On July 19 2013 18:00 Kabel wrote:
Balance is ofc important too, but that is a process we can only do if we have a larger player pool.
Fixed that for you. As I have stated a lot of times before, getting a popular caster (or TL Attack) to do some StarBow games would really do wonders. There are plenty of mods that have gained a huge popularity because Husky did a showcase, or even started casting them. Day[9] really bumped the popularity of SC2BW when he set that mod as a funday monday challenge. The other option is to get one of the StarBow streamers to appear in the featured section, and make our own popular streamer.
Casters doesn't have an incentive to do that unfortunately. Onegoal and Sc2bw are different from Sbow in that regard.
People are not afraid to play an unfinsihed product and will even start being very involved in giving suggestions and feedback (and calling everything OP).
Depends. It is very important to note again that Sbow is really different from Sc2. There is a reward for getting good at Sc2 (recogniiztion/price pool money/going pro), however in Sbow the motivation is different;
- Some get motivated by giving feedback/hoping to improve the game
- Others get motivated by learning a new game
- Lastly of course - If the mod is more fun.
Nevertheless, I think chances are that if Sbow gets targetted to a broader segment, then we will get more of those players who are by motivated by "fun-ness". Those, I agree with Kabel, that we need to finish up the mod as much as we can in terms of tweaking atm., to optimize funness.
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I think it's important to be certain you want marauder/immortal in the game or not before promoting sbow.
I'm still not sold on marauder/immortal.
The marauder overlaps way too hard with a matrixed marine (and its dps is about the same aswell), for anti-armored damage, siegetanks still outclass them really hard. I've fooled around a bit with early biopushes vs P yesterday and i must say, a push with bio/siegetank outclasses pure bio really hard.
Regarding drops, they still don't do much, even with the marauder, i don't see any difference with pure marinedrops.
In TvZ i don't see the point really, they don't add anything apart from being a bit better vs ultra's, but that just makes T lazy in terms of production, they add no value.
TvT: marauders are armored, so siegetanks deal even more damage to them, they take roughly the same amount of shots to die as the marine, i see no added value.
For the immortal:
PvT: for the earlygame i don't really see the point since your micro is much more important in early engagements than your exact composition, so far it seems zealot/stalker feels very similar to zealot/stalker/immortal, with the only difference that you can't do much with the immortals apart from shift-clicking marauders/tanks (whooo, exciting micro!). The P could opt for zealot/stalker and use his excess gas more wisely on sentinels or reavers (or any other tech, depending what T does). For the lategame they actually don't feel very usefull, they are slow, so they run behind your zealots/stalkers all the time (this means that your core army doesn't roughly have the same movement speed, this is really annoying). If you attack into sieged up positions, the immortal feels so slow he gets to the fight late or just never gets there, an argument could be to use safeguard, i agree, but why would i bother to get immortals then? as zealots seem superior to immortals if they have hardened shields (faster, makes enemy splash himself, cheaper and also good dps), leaving me with a lot more gas to spend on techunits).
PvZ: They are only useful vs lurkerfields and ultra's, against ultra's i could use other units as well, they aren't scary for P from my experience. Now for lurkerfields, they aren't really costeffective vs lurkerfields, so they're hardly a softcounter + they're about the only unit they counter. Again, safeguard or reavers are the answer (or air of course).
PvP is the one matchup where they actually seem to have some use and make room for diversity, although i do think that there was room for diversity without the immortal, since archons got buffed decently, making a core army of zealot/archon much better and a possible rival for stalker/reaver. So immortal feels useful for pvp, but not really necessary.
edit: i might wanna add, the whole gateway/warpgate dynamic at the moment is so fucking annoying, when i want to warp in units i get queue instead and i can't warp in templar to make archons, it's so frustrating.
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Besides immortal/warpgate stuff, the next issue which IMO needs to be discussed/improved upon is the current map pool. IMO the current map pool doesn't do a particularly good job of rewarding aggression and multitasking.
Let me discuss the map 1on1 by briefly;
Breakout: Pretty good late game map, but static defense in nat and 3rd also prevents any kind of dropplay into main. I think there needs to be a bit more space behind natural so you can drop into main without getting hit by static defenses in natural.
Aldaris Betrayal: Rewards 4 base turtling - 1 "practical" attack that you can walk through to attack a player that turtles on 4 bases. Should IMO be removed asap, and I like to see Match Point as the replacement.
DF Atlas: We can't have high ground to both the 3rd and the natural at the same time. A strong defenders advantage is neccesary late game so that a small army can beat a larger army, however, in the midgame, this high ground just rewards turtling. Remove the high ground and instead consider to make entrances slightly more narrow.
Roadrunner: Decent map.
Starbow Ridge: This should be cross only. Reaper into vulture opening is OP against zerg if distances are too close.
Starbow Haven: I like this map as it does a great job of rewarding aggression. Taking 3rd and 4th is very difficult, but not impossible. Though 5th might be slightly too difficult to secure for the immobile race. Not the biggest concern though.
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I think the game should absolutely be fun, well designed, and finished when advertised.
La Lush makes a big post about SC2BW? Wow! 50 guys are literally in sc2bw chat which is great for a custom mod.
Within a week its back down to basically nothing.
To advertise right now you'd most likely be getting short lived gains, but turning off a lot of people who don't like the lack of polish and finished feel you'd need.
Our current player base can handle the constant change.
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@Solid I agree wholeheartedly on the Marauder being redundant in its current form. It does nothing a siege tank or a matrixed marine could not do better.
A changed Marauder might help make biocentric play more viable, but it needs a massive do-over before it can fill its intended role good enough.
Immortals are there to free up the stalker. with the immortal being the main ranged unit in the protoss arsenal (speed needs to increase, you are absolutely right on that), stalkers can be shifted more towards the tactical harasment and map control unit. Sort of a Protoss vulture.
In my ideal setup the immortal gets a 0.25-0.5 speed buff and a buff to the attack speed (maybe a bit more damage too). The stalker is changed to light type, and gets a nerf of additionally 20 hp, but gets a bit more speed (and maybe even longer blink) to compensate.
This will mean that the Stalkers are simply bad in larger engagements, but brilliant in small skirmishes, and with the extra speed they can really get some harassment done.
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EPT
