EPT[A] Starbow - Page 334
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Deleted User 97295
1137 Posts
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Hider
Denmark9390 Posts
On July 19 2013 20:44 decemberscalm wrote: 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. Yeh completely agree. Immortals are there to free up the stalker. Actually the immortal is there for two reasons; 1) To make it possible for us to make gateway units/protoss early midgame units more cost effective without breaking the game completely. 2) To reduce the mobility of the protoss army in the midgame in PvT. While the former is quite easy to understand, and I think most people at this point agree with the logic behind that argument, the latter is a lot more complicated and may seem counterintuitive. But the problem with the PvT matchup prepatch was that mass stalkers did a fantastic job of preventing the opponent of doing anything offensively, and at the same time didn't do a particularly good job of harassing the opponent. Instead, any kind of offensive blink stalker player either did little/inefficient damage or outright killed the mech'ing terran. In bio vs protoss, mass blink stalkers (prepatch) were cost effective enough to defend efficiently untill reaver tech came out and mobile enough to deal with drop plays. Thus, the optimal "metagame" in that matchup revolved around turtling for 20 minutes with no action. That obviously wasn't optimal, and we had to find a way to reward more action. To reward more protoss aggression - Vikings and turrets have been nerfed (still think vikings are too good though), and warp prism HP has been buffed. This will reward immortal drop play - an example of that can be seen in a TvP game of me playing toss vs Decisive. But mainly, we believed that terran needed to have much stronger harassbased options in the early midgame. If the terran is rewarded for investing into harass (rather than turtling, which the case prepatch), chances are that he also will be more exposed to counterharass, which will create a more multitaskbased game with more action in the first 20 minutes. But rather than overbuffing their harassbased units (which likely would result in uninteded consequences in TvZ), the simplest solution was simply to reduce the mobility of the protoss midgame army by rewarding them for getting less stalkers. This obviously wasn't a popular choice because protoss players liked stalkers. But it is important to note that with the current way Starbow works, we can't have; - A strong mobile massable stalker which works well against every thing. - Action and multitaskin in the first 20 minutes of the game (assuming players play optimally). - A balanced TvP At the same time Thus, we had to prioritize. Should we completely redesign every thing about Starbow, so that protoss could still run around massing stalkers? Or should we simply find a way to reward them for getting less stalkers and more immobile units (either zealots or immortals)? So therefore it is important to note that is actually intended that protoss feels immobile PvT in the midgame. So terran now becomes the main aggressor in the first 15-20 minutes of the game, and once he takes a 4th, the sides switches and the protoss is more likely to try and abuse the immobility of the terran mech army. Obviously the question then becomes - Is it desireable that immortals are relatively slow in the late game also (where protoss is "supposed" to be the aggressor)? IMO it is not, and therefore I have suggested to give them a movement speed upgrade late game, but when that is said, I don't think its a huge neccesity, and any kind of mech imbalance is most likely to lie with vultures + spider mines being OP. | ||
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JohnnyZerg
Italy378 Posts
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Hider
Denmark9390 Posts
It is important to note that Sbow TvP mech has different fundamentals than BW has; 1) Carriers are much worse vs goliaths in Sbow than in BW 2) Terran (and protoss) is (are) forced to take bases quicker which means he becomes more vulernable to counterattacks if he attacks, which makes it harder/not viable to make a 160 supply attack as often occured in TvP BW. Instead, terran is "forced"/rewarded for turtling throught the whole late game as he A) Can deal with carriers cost efficiently, and B) Can't realistically attack the protoss assuming the game is even. So it does make a lot of sense that he has a lot of aggressive tools in the early midgame to make the game more dynamic Since he has to play very very passively in the late game. Some players are fine with a "50-minute no aggression"-gameplan, but I think most players would prefer a more dynamic game where both races have viable/strong aggression tools. Make marauders good against key Zerg units, that's our goal, marauder and Zerg interacting. It serves its purpose versus Protoss, but I say with the slow the marauder will be pretty good. While this has never been a high priority - It indeed, would be nice to see maurauder have an (interesting) role in this matchup. I still like to see them used as tanks vs banelings, as this is one of the few situations where a maurauder has a different role than the marine (in terms of micro control). So I thought of how we could reward more of that usage while keeping it 1) Simple, 2) Intuitive and 3) Maintain/improve desired gameplay dynamic. And I looked at alot of the feedback we have gotton from the immortal compared to the maurauder. I think roughly 50% of the ppl I talked are fine/likes the immortal as it does offers a bit unique control (in some situations). But why does it do that, and the maurauder doesn't? My theory is that it all comes down to size - The immortal is more expensive than the maurauder and has a larger model size, those it is easier to manually control it/target fire it. Why can't the same concept be applied to the maurauder? Would it go against the concept of bio if the maurauder came a more expensive 3-supply unit? In my opinion I think bio units has 3 characteristica; 1) Mobile, 2) Micro-intensive, 3) Becomes gradually less cost efficient as the game drags on. A 3 supply maurauder could easily fit in there as long as we keep the mobility. In terms of gameplay micro I see the following advantages a larger maurauder would offer; - Easier to use as tank vs banelings as it blocks pathes better (due to larger model size) - Easier to manually target fire opponents immortals/lurkers/ultras/stalkers with just the maurauders, but not the marines. - Easier for the opponent to target fire the maurauder with their immortals (which is only practical in the early early game atm.) Thoughts? | ||
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Deleted User 97295
1137 Posts
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SmileZerg
United States543 Posts
You realize Terran already has a unit that is large, armored, moderately expensive, the same speed as Marines with slightly more range, has bonus vs armored units and can't shoot up, right? I've still yet to see anyone refute the point that Marauders are just crappy, less interesting Siege Tanks which come out of the Barracks and can be healed by Medics. It's a lazy awful design that doesn't fulfill any new role for Terran. Also what is the obsession with always trying to increase the supply on units? I don't see how that helps the game. The supply inflation from BW to SC2 is one of the things that's almost universally hated. | ||
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Azelja
Japan762 Posts
On July 20 2013 00:04 SmileZerg wrote: I've still yet to see anyone refute the point that Marauders are just crappy, less interesting Siege Tanks which come out of the Barracks and can be healed by Medics. It's a lazy awful design that doesn't fulfill any new role for Terran. That's because it's impossible to refute, as the Marauder is just stupid in any way shape and form imaginable. In this timeline, in any timeline and probably in every existing alternate universe as well. | ||
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Deleted User 97295
1137 Posts
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Deleted User 97295
1137 Posts
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SmileZerg
United States543 Posts
We don't need a beefier Marine because we have the Matrix spell. There isn't much design space the Marauder could possibly add because it's not a spellcaster or even a niche unit with unique abilities like the Reaper, and for fuck's sake the last thing we need is Concussive Shell which is by far the number one very worst ability in all of SC2. It's a passive upgrade that takes no input from the Terran player, has no gradient of success, reduces micro for the opposing player, and has zero counterplay. Fucking AWFUL design. @Gateway/Warp Gates Leave them as-is. There should be incentive for Protoss players to keep mainly Gateways and toggle them as needed for strategic purposes. The only complaints I've seen about this are on the basis of "but it's haaaaarrrrd" by Protoss players who aren't used to the additional factor of depth to their macro. Increased decision-making and thought going into macro is a good thing for a competitive strategy game, that's the same reason we changed Inject Larvae despite the fact that that ability is also more difficult to use now. If Zerg players have to relearn a core aspect of their macro for a better game, Protoss can too. | ||
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Deleted User 97295
1137 Posts
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SmileZerg
United States543 Posts
On July 20 2013 00:52 Laertes wrote: Like I said, complete stigma. First off have you been posting from under a rock? Our whole goal is to make bio a viable option as well as mech versus protoss. That was the idea, so far the marauder is doing its job, and if I am not mistaken it is you and solid who have the biggest problem because you don't understand why we added the marauder. Concussive is not a bad design if it has a cooldown and autocast. No, our whole goal is NOT to make bio a viable option versus Protoss, and if you think that you clearly have no idea what's going on. This is the very last time I am saying this, but Bio should NEVER EVER EVER EVER EVER be viable on its own - it is just Terran Tier 1 units! Should pure Hatchery tech be viable all game? Should Zerg be able to play a style that never requires them to make anything but lings and hydras and tech Lair only to research Overlord drops? What we want is the current bio units to become viable parts of Terran compositions, not for Bio itself to be a standalone composition. Adding a new Bio unit makes this more difficult, it doesn't help anything, especially a unit as horribly designed as the goddamn Marauder which is probably only surpassed by the Colossus in terms of stupidity. Because concussive is not a bad spell because its a passive. Passive can be very interesting, something some people don't seem to get. What is the purpose of a passive? Well, the passive spell can is most essentially just like any other spell, it helps unit interactions. Passives are problematic ONLY when they dumb down the game. But this isn't always. In sc2 the dynamic is that charge is the active with autocast and a cooldown and it circumvents even concussive grenade. But in sc2 zealots have to be weak because charge puts them in such a good position. In Starbow, since zealots are so strong otherwise, we can afford to make the the concussive grenade their one weakness. And what if the opponent is massing Marauders? Well, the high templar may in fact have room for another spell. It may have room for a "cleanse" spell similar to the medic in Sc1, and this cleanse may in fact sure everything up as it could be used against mass infestors or ghosts as well. I listed four reasons that make a perfect storm of bad in terms of why Concussive Shell is terrible design - you've addressed one, and not very convincingly at that. What "dynamic" does CS bring to the game? Forget about Charge, just in general, when have you ever seen CS make things more interesting in SC2? It just prevents units from retreating once they've been engaged by Terran bioballs, encouraging deathball play, removing the ability to pick away at units from the edges of the Terran force, turning engagements into the all-or-nothing shit that Starbow is trying to get away from. Just because we could potentially add another spell into the game so that there is counterplay to a terrible ability doesn't make it a good ability, it's just a band-aid fix and needless added complexity. Also, we don't even HAVE Infestors right now. It would also be interesting if ghosts were a possible soft counter to zealots, but I won't get into that now. So ya, the marauder does serve a purpose, and concussive grenade is not awful design, don't let stigma of sc2 affect your clarity of judgement. The reason people have a stigma of SC2 in the first place is because of shit like the Marauder and Concussive Shell - they aren't hated because they're part of the game, they're a contributing factor to why the game is hated. My clarity of judgement is perfectly fine, and trying to attack that instead of coming up with a decent argument for CS beyond "no it's not bad" is very counterproductive. EDIT: @ Warpgates There's a biiiiiig problem I have with the warpgate change. Tell me: What is the purpose of going warp gates? They should still be a solid option, I.E. not just used for cheese. I could turn that around and say I have not seen a solid argument as to why warpgates have been changed, just that it would be imbalanced or add more "depth". But why does it add more depth, it seems like it would be artificial depth, as you really have to commit to warpgates or gateways. At a high level every second counts, and then to not be able to produce key units doesn't make sense, let's revert warpgates please. The purpose of going Warp Gates is for quick reinforcement to distant locations or sudden response to harassment or counterattacks. There is no need to commit to one or the other. Where does that kind of narrow thinking come from? How difficult is it really to switch some Gateways into WGs and leave the others as is, and macro from both sets of structures? | ||
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Zaphod Beeblebrox
Denmark697 Posts
I suggested fixing this by making it single target with a weak but stacking slow. Making it have a cooldown is another option, but it will still be AOE. I also would like people to realise that the main problem with the Marauder is the oversaturation of defensive stats: mobility, range and HP. As long as it has great stats in all three, it is too good at staying alive against any kind of unit (exept specific counter units), and will produce boring gameplay. One of these three stats HAS to be nerfed if the Marauder can ever be a fun unit. The only one we can realisticly change while still keeping its intended role is the range. | ||
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Deleted User 97295
1137 Posts
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LaLuSh
Sweden2358 Posts
Maps were seldom up to date on all servers -- there was always confusion on EU. Thus the SC2BW channel had a hard time establishing itself in EU. Furthermore, I didn't have a realistic chance at hosting any tournaments with sufficient players before Global Play. I don't agree that SC2BW was shoddily made and that it thus was too "SC2-ish". The tournaments I hosted after Global Play was introduced produced very BW-like games. Every single progamer who participated was positive. In fact almost every korean would ask me "When is next?". They all seemed to thoroughly enjoy the mod once they got past the hurdle of actually trying it for themselves... I PM'd about 150 koreans personally on TL. Not many showed up, but the ones who did all enjoyed it. Admittedly, I personally didn't like the implementation of the 12 selection limit in SC2BW (the deselection to 12 units was subject to client-server ping). But the players didn't seem to mind much. And honestly: unlimited selection was not by any means a major factor in the skill bracket that we were generally playing (despite people liking to whine about it). The big problem always was this: Getting people to care about anything at all in the SC2 community is hard. The community is very jaded now. If you make a post/thread that's agitatory in nature and will feed on populistic tendencies within the community, then you're much more likely to get 100 pages of replies than you ever will be making/posting anything of substance. The more irrefutable, well-made and logical your posts are -- the less ammunition you give to the forum wariors who love posting speculative shit and keep feeding the flames (keeping the thread alive for longer). What I would have done differently: * Waited until Global Play. * Hosted Tournaments in conjunction with releasing the thread. * Hosted showmatches between high level koreans to demonstrate the validity of the concept (this might not be as good an idea for your community, since your mod is not a copy of any previous game). Other than that I don't really see what I could have done differently. People simply just don't care unless it's something pitchfork-worthy... | ||
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Hider
Denmark9390 Posts
On July 20 2013 00:22 Laertes wrote: I used to think so too, but then I realized the marauder is almost like an extra design space in the form of a unit that is a beefier marine. Marauder has more potential than the firebat at least, the firebat has no place in Starbow, too narrow a design(albeit a great one). The marauder can be anything, we know there is a niche for it because we want bio to work as well as mech. Let's not forget, that alone is the reason why we allowed it into starbow. It's an extra body for bio that the reaper doesn't quite fill up. Problem with maurauder isn't that it doesn't have a role or that it rewards bad gameplay (afterall this was why we implemented it) The problem is that it has no unique way of micro'ing it. You play it like its a marine and your opponent plays against it like you just have marines. I don't see how concussive would add more unique micro to it - On the other hand a slightly larger model/more expensive would make micro more practical in the midgame (as I outlined in my post). | ||
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Deleted User 97295
1137 Posts
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SolidSMD
Belgium408 Posts
Zerg dynamic: you inject with queens, in earlygame you get about 3 queens, after that you just get extra hatches. this means you can finish injecting in with 55-v-click-66-v-click-77-v-click which takes about 2-3 seconds max, apart from that you just make your units with 4-s-(spam button of the unit you want)...easy. Terran dynamic: harder than zerg, you need about 3 hotkeys for different production buildings to be somewhat efficient, one for barracks, one for factories and one for starports. You don't need to look away from your army when making units, unless you need to make an extra building, which goes relatively fast. Protoss dynamic: in it's current form, you need one hotkey for your gateways/warpgates, one for your robo, one for your stargates, that's 3. At the moment normal gateways have priority when selecting gates/warpgates, so your intuition says, select warpgates, go to a pylonlocation and spam your hotkey while clicking in the pylon's radius. What happens is a bunch of zealots and stalkers get queued by the normal gateways, PURE FRUSTRATION. You could argue that i could use an extra hotkey for warpgates, well that makes me have to use 5 6 7 and 8 for unit production, 8 is really annoying imo, which kinda keeps me away from that. But hypothetically if i wouldn't have problems with reaching 8 easily, you'd use your warpgates to warp in all over the map, using the mobility it gives you, but mind that i now need to queue and warp units in (taking more time than the other races to macro my basic units), that isn't a big problem yet, now comes the annoying part: oh, i want a round of archons, shall i warp in dt's and pay more for my archons or shall i convert a part of my warpgates back to gateways to get some cheap templars (toss always has excessive gas in starbow). Say i choose the second option, i now have to add my converted warpgates to my control group of gateways and unbind them from my control group of gateways, ... That shit takes way too long compared to the previous: select warpgates, spam templars, select them, spam C ---> round of archons. This is just one occasion of many where you'd want to change from warpgates to gateways and vice versa. So I guess we can agree that we don't want an extra hotkey for it, as it is really impractical to change the buildings all the time. This means we'd just put them all on the same hotkey, now i don't want to ramble on too much any more, so compare it to a terran that puts his barracks and his factories on the same hotkey.... yeah that's right, they don't do that cause it's impractical, in this case it's even worse as the 2 production facilities have a totally different macromechanic (queue/warp in). This all makes me just stay on pure gateways as it's not worth it to spend my apm on doing all that impractical stuff. This together with the recent buffs terran got in their harassment and the protoss nerf (yes i call it a nerf) it makes me be busy all game with cleaning up drops/mines and frustrating myself on the current warpgate/gateway dynamic gives me no apm left to do any harass myself (even if it was possible, turrets/vikings defend aerial parts of terran's base and the midgame mech composition is just way too cost-effective vs toss). This means PvT where T had stronger lategame army and toss tried to keep T down on bases using some scare tactics and surrounds midmap (where actually no T fucking tried to do something non-allin aggressive from 2 bases) got changed to P defending all game, not having mapcontrol due to mines (making it easy for T to expand) and not having the stronger endgame army. GG hider and followers. I'm about to quit P. | ||
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JohnnyZerg
Italy378 Posts
On July 20 2013 03:31 SolidSMD wrote: That shit takes way too long compared to the previous: select warpgates, spam templars, select them, spam C ---> round of archons. This is just one occasion of many where you'd want to change from warpgates to gateways and vice versa. So I guess we can agree that we don't want an extra hotkey for it, as it is really impractical to change the buildings all the time. This means we'd just put them all on the same hotkey, now i don't want to ramble on too much any more, so compare it to a terran that puts his barracks and his factories on the same hotkey.... yeah that's right, they don't do that cause it's impractical, in this case it's even worse as the 2 production facilities have a totally different macromechanic (queue/warp in). Add archon (100/300) to warpgate. | ||
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SmileZerg
United States543 Posts
On July 20 2013 02:02 Laertes wrote: @Smilezerg You're being very aggressive in your arguments, and though I am being perhaps a bit inflammatory, such emotion has no place in a friendly discussion on our forums. I'm aggressive towards ideas, not towards people. Please don't misconstrue my tone as anything personal. However overall your arguments don't hold water. Terran doesn't work like the other races, and not all races are the same. Where Zerg can afford to use a composition that is varied and Protoss can afford to mix high tier units with their core, Terran is different. Terran has to use primarily one composition primarily offensively. This goes back to BW, regarding how upgrades and tech worked. Terran's choice of Mech or Bio separates Terran from other races, the same way zerg's economy does. i like that mech and bio are separate entities, it makes Terran unique and it seems to be the balance we are going for. And on the matter of concussive grenade, it would not be a bad spell if you did what I am saying to do to it, this approach was tested by Onegoal with great results, you are only theorycrafting. Finally, the warp gates are rather awkward, maybe you're right maybe commiting is bad, but at least enable all the units so it is just as useful as a gateway. I still don't see why certain units should be warp gated and not others. The fact that Terran has more separation in upgrades than the other races can be easily solved by lowering the cost and/or research times of certain tiers of upgrades, if that's even necessary. Mixed compositions weren't that uncommon in BW - Marine/Goliath was a perfectly viable build against mass mutalisk play. Here, in Starbow, we have the opportunity to make biomech even more viable - we've already made some headway by giving Medics a powerful spell that works effectively on Mech. There is no reason we should be forcing Terran players to choose one tech path every game and stick with it, we want all units to have their defined roles, strengths and weaknesses. Adding bio units to cover the weaknesses of pure bio compositions just for the sake of having pure bio compositions when there are already mech units that fulfill those roles is redundant and will only clutter the game with unnecessary dominated strategies. It's needless complexity. @Concussive Shell in OneGoal Frankly I don't give a damn how they may have slightly improved an awful ability in a Mod that is completely different in almost all respects from ours. While I like their approach to design and appreciate their efforts, I think OneGoal is lacking in both elegance and execution, and is overall inferior to Starbow. | ||
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