EPT[A] Starbow - Page 348
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Kabel
Sweden1746 Posts
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Xiphias
Norway2223 Posts
www.twitch.tv/SC2_Starbow | ||
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Danko__
Poland429 Posts
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Xiphias
Norway2223 Posts
http://www.twitch.tv/SC2_Starbow | ||
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Danko__
Poland429 Posts
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Hider
Denmark9390 Posts
I see 2 overall problems with this matchup; Problem 1: Protoss early midgame aggression isn't viable. Problem 2: Terran has no way of dealing with a protoss that constantly army trades. Problem 1 The former arises partly due to the fact that getting out 1 viking early shuts down sentinel aggression and reaver harass very easily and in a noninteresting way. This can be fixed in two different ways; One approach; Remove viking and remove the armory/ebay requirement of goliaths/turrets. This way players will rely on goliaths to deal with warp prism and sentinels which adds a more interesting dynamic that depends on micro rather than just one unit forcing harass play to be inefficient. Another way; Redesign the viking, make it a lot worse vs non light units and give it an anti-air seeker missile. Change irradiate so it is much worse vs mutalisks. This will give the viking a new role as killer of heavy air play rather than air harass preventer. But the problem also arises due to the fact that Vultures force the protoss to play defensively with his units. This isn't that much different from BW, but I wouldn't mind seeing Vultures start with like 13 damage vs light and then receive a midgame upgrade that adds +7, so protoss can be active out on the map early midgame without fearing vulture counter harass killing all probels insanely fast. Further, we could also consider to buff the movement speed of "slowlings" and stalkers from 2.95 to 3.25 (while reducing the HP of stalkers) to make it sligthly easier for the protoss player to catch up to the vultures if they are caught out of position. Problem 2 I believe TvP in Sbow feels somewhat comparable to two matchups. Not surprisingly, TvP in BW, but also feels similarly to TvT bio vs mech in WOL.Both of these matchups worked pretty well, and this problem didn't really arise (to the same extent at least) as it does in Sbow. So let's see how they are different. In TvP in BW, you took a 4th base much later as terran. Often times in Sbow it is neccesary to take a 4th on a tank count of roughly 8-12, which IMO isn't sustainable. So when terran moves out to take a 4th on maps where securing a 4th is somewhat challenging, then the protoss player will be able to army trade. Maybe not cost efficient, but it is definitely effective as he benefits insanely much from army trading. Too some extent it is map dependant, but actually maps where taking bases are hard usually provides more entertaining games compared to "easy turtle maps". While BW had tons of very skilled mapmakers which could design maps to obtain the desired dynamic, we need to take a different approach in Sbow, as we can't always rely on designing the maps perfectly. Thus, we need to design a game which depends less on having a perfectly designed map. The problem arises of army-trading being way too beneficial for the protoss player arises for these reasons; - The protoss player has a better economy than the terran player. - His units scales worse - In BW a small group of tanks in a defensive location would do fantastic well against a larger group as big groups of units weren't very tightly packed. Starbows unit movement doesn't really accomplish anything (noticeable) in that regard. - In TvP Sc2, even if a bio player wins a fight it comes at a large cost as he usually have stimmed and no medis left due to vikings killing them. So there is no real snowball effect here. - He can reinforce instantly with warp tech, so if just barely doesn't kill the terran army, his reinforcements will. - Usually there is a downside to reducing your army size to active bases ratio, as you become more vulernable to counterharass. In TvT mech vs bio, it becomes increasinglty hard to defend hellion harass as planetaries can't completely shut down hellion harass (as you can set hellions behind mineral line). However, in Sbow, the combo of warp tech and 2-3 cannons completley shut down vulture harass in the later stages of the game. So basically we have designed a game where protoss (dependant on the map) can army trade against the terran player, and if he does that, it snowballs quite ridicilously. Terran is forced to react perfectly all game long as he doesn't have any tools to make counteroffensive efficient. Solutions for Problem 2 There are no easy solutions to completley fix the snowball problem here. But I have a couple of ideas, which I believe could make it a bit better. 1) Too some extent we can reduce the easiness of protoss countereting harass by increasing the warp in time from 5 seconds to like 10 seconds. 2) Tanks at +5 second BT and 3 supply was too big of a nerf. I prefer that we revert the BT change. If anything, mech needs a faster BT due to the fact that they need to take bases relatively fast, and anything below 12 tanks at 4 bases is unplayable. 3) We could also consider to buff the splash radius of tanks to make them better at being cost efficient vs larger group of units. This may have uninteded consequences for TvZ, but hopefully these problems can be fixed. With tanks at 3 supply, I believe that über turtle mech won't be OP as the maxed out army of mech won't be that strong. 4) At last, we could try to give terran additional tools of improvings its defenders advantage when it is needed. One way is to rework how Vulture's spider mines works. I suggest this change; - Vultures have two types of Mines. A spider Mine which it has 3 of and a "new mine" which it has one of. - Spider Mine removed splash damage removed. - Spider mine now only has a life duration of 20 seconds. - Each Spider Mine deals 150 damage to a single target. - The "new mine" activates instantly once enemy units within a radius of 5 walks into it. Once activated, none of the enemy units can move at a speed faster than 2.75. This ability also prevents the use of blink inside it. How the new mines will affect gameplay - Stronger defenders advantage vs charge/blink combos if you use the "new mine well". This makes army trading more costly for the protoss player, and rewards him for using a variety of unit compositions (warp prism for drop play and sentinels for Safeguard rather than just blinking on top of tanks). - Spider Mines has a new role. It is no longer spammy, and no longer forces the protoss to waste/spend time clearing up mines on the map. Instead, it will see a lot of usage during small micro battles as it can one shot stalkers. The current version of spider mines provide a decent defenders advantage, but has little utility during small micro battles as it doesn't deal a lot of single target damage. - To break tank lines, your now much more rewarded for dropping lings, zealots, immortals on top of of tanks rather than a-move against them. | ||
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Kabel
Sweden1746 Posts
I am relatively free for ca 2 more weeks. Then I am back to full time work + school. I aim to "complete" Starbow enough, so it can be "advertised" here on TL before those weeks are over. Just to see if more people will find this enjoyable. Maybe someone would. Maybe not. The problem is that I can never know when Starbow is good enough. The more we play, the more problems are found. Even tonight. Both bugs, gameplay problems, broken stuff, flaws and more. And every solution causes new problems. It never ends. It feels kinda funny in a sad way.. : / I started this project mostly because I was curious to see how SC2 could have been if it was made as a "sequel" to BW. Not a copy. Just an attempt to merge the good aspects from BW with SC2. (Stuff I personally thought was lost when Blizzard made SC2.) The result would be something that was neither BW or SC2. (But hopefully somewhat enjoyable.) Since this is suppose to be something new, it is hard to forsee how the metagame and gameplay will be. It is easy to draw parallells to BW or SC2, and use them as guidelines. The problem is that it causes an impossible puzzle - both of those games are composed by a complex pattern of variables and features who together make the games what they are. This means that we end up with gameplay situations in Starbow we do not know how to deal with... or if they shall be in the game at all... And this causes some kind of aimless direction, for me at least, since it is hard to determine when stuff is good enough.. Many of you also want me to different things - remove that unit, add that unit, add that ability, remove that ability and so on. I can not mimic the BW gameplay or do everythng exactly like it was there. Or as it is in SC2. It will only be a worse version because there is already a BW and a SC2. I have to be realistic. I will try to solve some of the remaining problems with as small adjustements as possible. If it is not good enough, it is not good enough. If time runs out, ok, thats how it goes. Everybody knows. I am also tempted to just remove all shit from the game. Not add new shit as solution to shit. (Which I have done too much lately.) Strip the game down to its basic core. Bla bla bla - | ||
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Sumadin
Denmark588 Posts
It is because of this gap in defense tools that terrans got turrets with 60% higher dps than the spore crawlers of zerg or about 140% more than photon cannons. Also why i think that terrans needs to have an easily accesable unit that can effectively keep the harass at bay. Even if the viking is unintresting, it is still supply bound in that anti-harass as opposed to pure turrets, also our viking is still much weaker than the viking of SC2, which leaves me to think we should look at the harassment tools before the viking. Are they too fragile? Until we start filling up the gap in defences there is no way i can support any nerf to terrans existing anti-harass tools. Say we added a ground-based turret to terran. That would justify reducing the rather ridiculous dps of missile turrets, since warp prisms and drops could be easier answered, which would in turn buff pure air based harass like the sentinel. This could also ease holding out the counterharass from Protoss, since the planetary is unreliable in this regard. It seems both problems have the same source in terrans lack of groundbased static defenses. Their Air defenses needs to be stupidly strong and in the late game they don't got the tools to match the harass of other races. I think we should explore this solution instead of trying to add more to the already loaded vulture. About Vultures btw, we have talked about a "Blue flame missiles" upgrade for a while now, instead of having full light bonus attack. It was meant for TvT but if it would help TvP too, then i don't see why not. | ||
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Azelja
Japan762 Posts
On August 07 2013 08:28 Kabel wrote: @A reality check I am relatively free for ca 2 more weeks. Then I am back to full time work + school. I aim to "complete" Starbow enough, so it can be "advertised" here on TL before those weeks are over. Just to see if more people will find this enjoyable. Maybe someone would. Maybe not. The problem is that I can never know when Starbow is good enough. The more we play, the more problems are found. Even tonight. Both bugs, gameplay problems, broken stuff, flaws and more. And every solution causes new problems. It never ends. It feels kinda funny in a sad way.. : / I started this project mostly because I was curious to see how SC2 could have been if it was made as a "sequel" to BW. Not a copy. Just an attempt to merge the good aspects from BW with SC2. (Stuff I personally thought was lost when Blizzard made SC2.) The result would be something that was neither BW or SC2. (But hopefully somewhat enjoyable.) Since this is suppose to be something new, it is hard to forsee how the metagame and gameplay will be. It is easy to draw parallells to BW or SC2, and use them as guidelines. The problem is that it causes an impossible puzzle - both of those games are composed by a complex pattern of variables and features who together make the games what they are. This means that we end up with gameplay situations in Starbow we do not know how to deal with... or if they shall be in the game at all... And this causes some kind of aimless direction, for me at least, since it is hard to determine when stuff is good enough.. Many of you also want me to different things - remove that unit, add that unit, add that ability, remove that ability and so on. I can not mimic the BW gameplay or do everythng exactly like it was there. Or as it is in SC2. It will only be a worse version because there is already a BW and a SC2. I have to be realistic. I will try to solve some of the remaining problems with as small adjustements as possible. If it is not good enough, it is not good enough. If time runs out, ok, thats how it goes. Everybody knows. I am also tempted to just remove all shit from the game. Not add new shit as solution to shit. (Which I have done too much lately.) Strip the game down to its basic core. Bla bla bla - Which is why I - and I know that I am not alone on this one - felt, feel and will probably always feel that there were way too many patches (bug fixes excluded, of course) in a way much short time period. There was never much time to develop counter-strategies, anything that deviated "too much" from the norm got changed quicker than my math-grades deteriorated back in school. I've read here that people moaned about Starbow taking too long to get "finished up", well whaddaya know? It takes time to do shit like this and it takes even more time - cause basically, we decided to again and again rewind the clock - when everything gets changed, buffed, nerfed and altered in any way shape or form, just because something seems op, broken or too abusive without there ever being enough time to really think about how to alter YOUR way of playing to accommodate certain strategies. Everybody, at a certain point, just randomly started to throw his ideas into this huge-ass pot and that tasty, tasty soup that's called Starbow started to become bitter, salty, sweet and thicker and thicker up until the point where it didn't quite taste that uniquely amazing anymore. "No man, if I just put a teeeeny-eeeeenzy little bit of sugar in here, it's gonna taste awesome, trust me brah, I thought about everything and know all my shit". - Nope, ya don't. And neither do I, especially not after such a small sample size of games. How could anyone know that? On a whim things've been changed... and on the basis of what? One, two or three people thinking "Hey, wouldn't it be a good fucking idea to just totally change that one thing, cause I totally didn't like how it played out in 5-20 games." - Nope, it wouldn't have been and it wasn't. I wish sooooo much that I could go back to about the end of 2012 and do my BEST, my VERY BEST to stay active here and try to veto as many of the rash changes as I could possible have done but I must admit that I fucked up about and became disheartened and sometimes just plainly pissed by what I saw in the game and read in this thread. And don't tell me changes aren't rash if you "thought it all the way through" cause that is just a load of bullocks. Theorycrafting is an amazing tool that's available to anyone but it is not and will never be the be-all end-all. If something... some new strategy, some new opening, some new usage of a unit comes up and after a week, hell even a month, it gets altered than that - in manymanymany oh so many cases - is STILL a rash decision. These things take time and you need to be soooo patient to make calls that have the potential of leading to a good/"right" outcome. And if this just seems like a huge, rolling squall of negativity, I hope that you, Gossen, don't take this personally because that assumption couldn't be further from the truth. I'm just rambling on here and I just really, really felt like I finally had to get this off my chest - so long. | ||
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Zaphod Beeblebrox
Denmark697 Posts
@Hider I was actually goint to tell you off for suggesting such a radical change when we agreed to get a stable version ready within a few weeks, but I guess others beat me to it. This is not the time for big reworks and balance shifts. From what I saw on the stream yesterday TvP is starting to be in a very good state. (Apart from 3 supply tanks... but that is a small change to make if it turns out to be problematic) We need to focus on the few issues that are left before we move on, and not try to bring in new issues. The things that are really up for discussion as far as I can see are: Marauder - Can they have a role in the game? Immortal/Stalker - How should we tweak to make them more unique? Vultures - Nerf early game? Harassment/Defence - What is a good balance? A suggestion that both me and Hider have been arguing for is to make stalkers lighter and faster. Some have been suggesting giving "blue shells" upgrade to Vulture. There are plenty of suggestions to Marauders, a lot of them involving removing them altogether. The issue of harassment being too effective or ineffective is a hard one as its difficult to know if ths is a flaw in the design or players not using their tools well enough. I'd say this is a numbers game, where small tweaks late down the line when we know more is the correct thing to do. | ||
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Kabel
Sweden1746 Posts
Which is why I - and I know that I am not alone on this one - felt, feel and will probably always feel that there were way too many patches (bug fixes excluded, of course) in a way much short time period. There was never much time to develop counter-strategies, anything that deviated "too much" from the norm got changed quicker than my math-grades deteriorated back in school. ... when everything gets changed, buffed, nerfed and altered in any way shape or form, just because something seems op, broken or too abusive without there ever being enough time to really think about how to alter YOUR way of playing to accommodate certain strategies. But here is the thing - everything has not been changed. A lot of the stuff today remains the same as the "first" finished version of Starbow back in January/February when we had the first tournament. I have both files on my computer, and there are loads of similarities. A huge part of all core units, all spells, tech tree, stats, a lot of the values are identical today as it was back then. (Then ofc the game might still feel different now, since there are some new units/spells in the game.) During that period, nothing large changed until HoTS came. The last two months of changes have mainly centered around the same topics - Blink, Stalker/Immortal, Warp in, Bio, harassment vs counter-harassment, Sentinel, making sure massing one type of unit is not enough to win the game. The problem with HoTS was that it "destroyed" the Starbow MOD file. I and XiA had to create everything from scratch again in a new file. HoTS also offered some new stuff in the editor, and at that time I tried some new ideas. (That were bad and got scrapped.) I then passed the game on to December and Xiphias in April, when almost everything was rebuilt. (I did not have time to work on this more.) Then I came back in June and created that large patch who aimed to fill all empty gaps in the game. And its from there we now work. (But still many similarities from the old file) The last two months of changes have not been only for balance reasons - rather because it has lead to lame gameplay. And it is here the collision between SC2 and BW becomes clear - For example, Warp tech is IMO a fun mechanic. So is Vulture with Spider mines. The problem is that Vulture harassment is very easily shut down due to Warp gates instantly warping in stuff there. And Spider mines in the SC2 game engine does not work as well as in BW. This requires a different approach/solution, if both things shall be kept in the game. And since that solution does not feel like BW or SC2, it is easy to assume it is bad, imbalanced or broken. I get almost daily a couple of PMs with suggestions, ideas, reports about problems and imbalances from many of you. And ingame players often chat to me after they played a game and report problems, flaws, imbalances and suggestions on how to fix it. (Even new players do that.) It is ofc important that I get reports and opinions from the more skilled players. Almost all of you who play this actively are master players. But it is also hard to sort out the information, and take the correct approach to problems. Same goes with the heated Immortal/Marauder. They arguably do not fit into a BW-world. But the reason I aim to keep them in the game is because they can help to create a broader gameplay with more variations and playstyles. (If balanced correctly.) A friend of mine, who is ranked A on BW Iccup and a huge BW fan, said it was great I introduced the Marauder, simply because it helps to enrichen the metagame. No point in recreating the exact BW metagame, since I can never breach that anyway. And here lies a conflict between all of us who play and care about Starbow - we all want the game to be in a different way, based on what we like or liked from BW, SC2 and RTS in general. IMO, I think TvZ, TvT, PvP, ZvP, ZvZ are fun match-ups that seems decent. The main problem is arguably TvP, for some reasons. (For example that I try to make Bio be a viable part of the match-up. If I had kept it at the BW meta-game, as it were earlier, we would see mech every game. It is ofc fun, but I just want to make it possible for other playstyles too.) | ||
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Hider
Denmark9390 Posts
I feel like we keep coming back to this point, but we can't really nerf terran's anti-harass tools right now. Terran's doesn't have any of the active anti-harass options like rift, Warp in, creep. Heck they don't even have ground based defenses like Spine crawlers or queens to some extent (Planetaries doesn't count, especially not in Starbow). I am only talking about early midgame here. In most BW vods I watched, it created pretty interesting micro situations to watch warp prism drops (reaver, zealots) early game vs a terran with some marines, 1-2 tanks, 1-2 goliaths/1 turret per mineral line. By removing armory requirement, terran can build goliaths faster which is a perfectly fine counter for sentinels and warp prism - At least if you have a bit of micro. Which is why I - and I know that I am not alone on this one - felt, feel and will probably always feel that there were way too many patches (bug fixes excluded, of course) in a way much short time period. There was never much time to develop counter-strategies, anything that deviated "too much" from the norm got changed quicker than my math-grades deteriorated back in school. There were counter-strategies, but it was ridicilously boring/lame strategies, and therefore huge changes were needed. The problem with Starbow was that it had not succesfully implemented Sc2 aiblities/units like blink stalkers and warp tech to the more BW'ish metagame. This was what we tried making work in the "big patch" (which really is the only huge change there was). While I believe it actually made the game better in some situations, it didn't really fully fix it as the problems were even larger than expected. Basically, as I outlined in my post, TvP mech atm. is not working with the neccesity of taking fast bases. This of course can be balanced with maps where taking bases is easy so you don't have to spread your self very thinly. But here is where the viking creates such a boring type of gameplay as it basically make any type of midgame protoss aggression impossible. So if we make bases easy to take, then nothing will happen for the first 20 minutes. I previsouly asked what the ambiitons were for Sbow TvP mech. Should we just be satifisied with 20 minute no action? If that's the case, then this is mostly a map issue admittely. But personally I find these type of games so boring, and rather just play normal Sc2 if that is the level of ambition. Hider I was actually goint to tell you off for suggesting such a radical change when we agreed to get a stable version ready within a few weeks, but I guess others beat me to it. This is not the time for big reworks and balance shifts. From what I saw on the stream yesterday TvP is starting to be in a very good state. (Apart from 3 supply tanks... but that is a small change to make if it turns out to be problematic) Honestly, this is a dumb comment. I clearly outlined the problems in my post based on actual playing experience, and you watch two games from a VOD and conclude eveyrything is fine and ignores my arguments. Actually, Kabel was the one who said he felt there was a problem with the MU and suggested I wrote on TL. You previously said tank was a well designed unit in every way. I disagree, tanks are an awfully designed unit as it requires that you design all other units/maps/abilities around it to make it interesting. Otherwise tansk just create bad gameplay. Very few ppl though actually realizes this, and criticizes Blizzard for making mech bad, but IMO they have made the correct decision, as getting Tanks correct while units being able to clump up (which they do unless you implement BW movement) requires so much work which probably is better spend in other ways. | ||
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Xiphias
Norway2223 Posts
This is the easy way, but it will lead to slightly more boring gameplay. On a completly differnet topic. I watched a lot of broodwar games lately and caught myself thinking "this should be nerfed" or " that is IMBA". Because we (at least I) tend to think quickly about these things in Starbow since it's "not finished". BW is perhaps one of the most balanced RTS there ever was and yet it screams of IMBA when you look at singular games. Just a general thought of being a bit carefull. | ||
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Zaphod Beeblebrox
Denmark697 Posts
Also bashing Siege tanks is a really bad excuse for the problems in PvT. Tanks are well designed, and will work (almost) regardless of what units they face. Maps, enemy units and allied units make no difference in how you deal with tanks. You abuse their immobility and less than cost effective tank mode. Its NOT the other units that give this interaction, nor is it the maps - Its the tank itself that provides interesting decisions. The reason Blizzard hammered the tanks into oblivion was that they refused to give them overkill. The only inherent problem with Tanks is that they empower turtle style gameplay, but there are ways to deal with this. | ||
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Xiphias
Norway2223 Posts
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SolidSMD
Belgium408 Posts
The big big problem is actually the core of the game, starbow promotes expanding, which means if both players want to get their full potential out of the economy system they have to expand quick. We had too many games where players didn't get more than 3-4 bases and this is because the defender's advantage has been nerfed and nerfed over again for early game harassment possibilities. This has as side-effect that a meching terran can't defend and expansion with a couple siegetanks, turrets and mines. Like hider already said, the mech terran is spread too thin, if the protoss roams the expansions and just pokes, watching for weakness and 'picks' his fights well (always only fighting a part of the terran army with whole the protoss army), he can always trade well and realistically there isn't much the terran can do about that (or he'd have to scan the protoss army 24/7 and move his army into position to defend all the time, this is not realistic). Funny stuff is that you don't need tech units for that, with the current stalker you cannot zone out places, a roadblock with some tanks behind that gets sniped easily with blink, a warpprismdrop could do this aswell, but this at least allows the terran to react, it doesn't happen instantly. People have whined about there not being much action for the first 15 minutes, this is completely normal for a game designed to bloom at the endgame, as you need to keep expanding if you play it right. --> siege tank doesn't need to cost 3 supply Compared to bw, gateway units are too mobile because of unlimited selection and because the stalker isn't fat enough, that together with blink makes chokes not as good as they should be. Gateway units/immortal are now balanced to do well in the midgame to 'make multitasking more viable early in the game', this has as side effect that it becomes viable even in the endgame, protoss hardly needs tech backup. In bw you needed big surrounds to trade well with gateway only or you needed storm and statis to trade well, in starbow storm radius doesn't feel big enough vs mech, so it's hardly worth it. Protoss needs to be designed to tech, you need a reason to tech, if you can hold midgame timing pushes of bio with pure gateway units then protoss just isn't designed as it should be, you need a reaver to deal with that and that also makes protoss fun to play, as those tech units are strong and can be micro'd well. The balance we need is where tech units are really strong when babysitted but weak when you're not watching them, this is where the multitasking comes for protoss, instead of moving one ball and poking until you see a hole, that's boring and doesn't need a lot skill. Turtling needs to be strong if players can ever expand on the rate starbow promotes, bases saturate too quickly in the current metagame, this is why the vulture is such a big problem right now, it forces me to make a couple cannons really quick. Many people think harassment needs to do damage in order to be viable, therefor warp tech is such 'a problem'. Harassment forces attention to deal with it (make it too hard to defend stuff --> people will make a lot of cannons instead), this allows you to outmultitask your opponent if you harass multiple bases, if the enemy can't keep up, then you start to do real damage. 1 drop shouldn't be too hard to clean up, but making the warpin time of units longer will help, i'd say 10 seconds is reasonable, then the enemy can do a bit more damage before getting out. Easy harass (such as a basic drop) should not be very strong, but complicated harass should be strong, the more attention it needs, the stronger it should be. This means techunits usually have more harasspotential. This way the protoss is also forced to tech if he wants to do anything. With knowing all that, i'd like to see is the stalker and immortal out and the dragoon back in the game, it needs to be fatter than the stalker and like people have said before, that small delay before attacking, making it harder to kite stuff, allowing dances to be possible. Making them more fat makes it harder to do pincer attacks, this also allows them to have more damage-output than the stalker, as it is not as mobile. Making them fat also makes it easier to block paths for roaming vultures. If they have more damage output, they will also be stronger as backup units, for example zealot/dragoon/carrier will be more viable (as atm stalker doesn't help enough and it's jsut better to mass carriers instead), this is interesting as it allows for dances, carriers go back and forth to pick of stuff while goliath's go back and forth to snipe a carrier, if they go too far, they will eat dragoonfire. Dragoon will also make zerg able to use zerglings again for defence (they were a bit weak vs zealot/stalker), fatter dragoon -> more surface area for the lings. This will make pvz also better as atm it's just a gatewaymass early, constantly pressuring the zerg (who can't do that much), while in the mid/lategame zerg trades really well (current design promotes mass gateway units, but lurker deals with that really well and in the midgame the zerg can techswitch easily, making mutaswitches all the more deadly as protoss hasn't been teching much and can't tech to both reavers and corsairs at once). Unlike hider i do think mapbalance is really important, speaks for itself, if the maps don't allow for expanding in the midgame, then it's not a good starbow map. Obviously it doesn't stop there. I also agree fully with azelja, protoss changed so much that there are too many random factors when trying to figure stuff out (should i tech harder, should i make more immortals, should i make sentinels, should i tech quickly to templar archives so i can get warp tech, when do i make air-units, ...). I could go on like this, but i wont, the main point is, starbow has been designed lately with many contradictions in its core design and too many changes so people are unable to figure out a stable metagame and making it too hard to balance unit stats because of this reason. Protoss tech feels too soft-counter atm and gateway armies feel too well rounded. Sorry for not making this post easier to follow but i don't have too much time. | ||
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Kabel
Sweden1746 Posts
I will not replace the Vulture with Hellion, remove Viking, add back the Wraith, bring back the Dragoon, remove Dark Swarm, not remove the Arbiter or anything like that. Maybe it is better. I don´t know. But I do not have time to do stuff like that I will aim to "complete" Starbow with what is in it at this point. There is not much more I can do. Some will like it. Others will not. After I "released" this, and if we might get more players and more games, and people still care, then future adjustements might be necessary. So if you all have suggestions on how to "fix" the game, please do it with the content already in the game. Is there anyway to make Stalker/Immortal more interesting for Protoss? I will sit down with pen and paper and look for solutions to mainly TvP. Brb later with a post. | ||
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Hider
Denmark9390 Posts
On August 07 2013 18:15 Zaphod Beeblebrox wrote: @Hider, sorry if that came of wrong, but you kinda gave a wall of proposed changes when you knew Kabel (and many others) are looking to make as few changes as possible at this point. I have been thinking of many changes myself, but I chose not to bring them up because of this. Also bashing Siege tanks is a really bad excuse for the problems in PvT. Tanks are well designed, and will work (almost) regardless of what units they face. Maps, enemy units and allied units make no difference in how you deal with tanks. You abuse their immobility and less than cost effective tank mode. Its NOT the other units that give this interaction, nor is it the maps - Its the tank itself that provides interesting decisions. The reason Blizzard hammered the tanks into oblivion was that they refused to give them overkill. The only inherent problem with Tanks is that they empower turtle style gameplay, but there are ways to deal with this. If you think turtling/no action for a large part of the game is fun, yes then siege tanks are fine. However, creating the dynamic where siege tanks are A) Strong enough to spread them out out across the map, B) Not strong enough to prevent action C) Balanced and fair game, requires that you have an absolutely perfect balance and unit design in every single way. We don't have that in Sbow, in BW it was a lot better due to quality of map makers along with unit movement. Siege tanks in PvT in Sbow creates bad gameplay with the current structure of Sbow. Thus changes need to be made. I don't think most of my changes are that big. The viking change is something I have said for a long time, and I believe getting it out of the prevent role, is the easiest way to make the matchup better (but it won't fix all the late game problem of course). Then, another "easy" solution (as I proposed) is an even higher warp in time. The spider mine change is obv a bit larger, but it is also one of the abilities that have had been a problem for such a long time, and isn't anything new on the table. Obviously this change isn't needed if we go back to heavy turtle oriented maps, since terran then will have 20+ tanks again when they take a 4th. | ||
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SolidSMD
Belgium408 Posts
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Zaphod Beeblebrox
Denmark697 Posts
On August 07 2013 18:30 Kabel wrote: At this point of time in the development, I will only aim to do as small changes as possible to the match-ups, especially with the content in the game. I will not replace the Vulture with Hellion, remove Viking, add back the Wraith, bring back the Dragoon, remove Dark Swarm, not remove the Arbiter or anything like that. Maybe it is better. I don´t know. But I do not have time to do stuff like that I will aim to "complete" Starbow with what is in it at this point. There is not much more I can do. Some will like it. Others will not. After I "released" this, and if we might get more players and more games, and people still care, then future adjustements might be necessary. So if you all have suggestions on how to "fix" the game, please do it with the content already in the game. Is there anyway to make Stalker/Immortal more interesting for Protoss? I will sit down with pen and paper and look for solutions to mainly TvP. Brb later with a post. Thanks for giving final confirmation what I have been suspecting for the last few posts. I would like to see the non-armored Stalker (light or medium type), with less HP and more speed tested as a solution. (better at harassing and fighting Vultures, less overlap with Immortals) If the Marauder stays, tip the HP/Range scales to the extreme in one direction or another. Its hardly needed to stop Stalkers anymore, and it can't really do anything else for the Terran lineup if it doesn't get more of an unique role. Immortals could probably be a tiny bit faster if they get a projectile or at least longer attack animation/delayed damage point. Be mindfull of what 3 supply tanks does. | ||
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