EPT[A] Starbow - Page 70
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scen
Wales61 Posts
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Roblin
Sweden948 Posts
On September 06 2012 02:27 scen wrote: whats your reasoning for making marines and stalkers require a range upgrade? as far as I know: because marines and dragoons have a range upgrade in broodwar. | ||
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Natespank
Canada449 Posts
as far as I know: because marines and dragoons have a range upgrade in broodwar. That's not a good enough reason. It's just a good upgrade: one that changes gameplay once it occurs, making the overall game more complex by adding phases of upgrades. | ||
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Natespank
Canada449 Posts
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scen
Wales61 Posts
On September 06 2012 04:01 Natespank wrote: That's not a good enough reason. It's just a good upgrade: one that changes gameplay once it occurs, making the overall game more complex by adding phases of upgrades. it really doesn't though, 1 range barely makes any difference (Cant outrange bunkers or any other unit really). +2 range would probably make a bigger difference. | ||
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Deleted User 97295
1137 Posts
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MNdakota
United States512 Posts
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Natespank
Canada449 Posts
Here's my take, as I've been thinking this over. What if the problem is not that the units are poorly designed and that the macro system is horrible? What if Blizzard just got REALLY REALLY lucky with BW. I'll explain in short. Blizzard has never made such a successfully competitive RTS as BW, because remember, WC3 was renowned for customs. I'm starting to think the reason SC2 sucks so much is because SC2 is too well programmed. At first, this notion sounds insane, but in human history, the biggest achievements have all been mistakes. Mutas attacking while moving, the moving shot not working as initially intended, the buggy workers never reaching their intended mineral cap! Don't you see? BW had its owned share of poorly designed units: scouts, valkyries, but their poor design and situationalness is what makes them beautiful, in SC2 we don't realize this because Blizzard dehe bugs that caused BW to be so infinitely skill-based. Now this only means one thing: if we want to make minerals, for example, have an infinite curve,we have to just set a regular curve, but have really shitty ai. There's no actual way to progracided to patch out all the mistakes. Honestly, from what I've gathered over the past few weeks from posts of BW, it was tm infinity, i've been into computers all my life, and if you cannot program infinity, the closest thing you get it loops, but if you wanna make a mod, and honestly it would be very interesting, if we used data to make the mineral curve less "planned out". Here's an idea, let's set base saturation at 1000 workers, but have some other incentive to expand. I don't know what this incentive would be, but I'm interested in playing around with "theory caps", as in, the idea that we don't need to make the cap so small, we can balance it out through the use of other fields. Just so you know, im kind of brainstorming on the spot, but the idea of a "theory cap" interests me, the idea that certain key values can be infinite or always beyond the reach of the player, play around with these, I think that's the way to go. That block was hard to read, easier to break it up a bit I partially agree with you. I've done a lot of table top RPG game design, so I have some perspective. IMO, one of the problems is how the designers planned the gameplay too much rather than focusing on having interesting dynamics and cool units and gameplay. When a designer plans out the gameplay of a game, the players suffer immensely because it's not really up to them to experiment, figure it out, and improvise; neither can they take things too far from the plan because the designers will patch it back to correspond with their vision. In that sense, they did too well in that regard. They planned the mineral saturation rather than just having worker ai/mineral patches; they planned the unit counters rather than having varied units who interact in various ways; they planned the rough flow of the game, which is okay, but annoying for guys like boxer and TLO. It's not just the superior programming and software team they put together but more the design decisions to over-plan the gameplay itself, rather than creating interesting pieces and letting the players play with them, balancing as needed over time. edit- to poster above this: You say hots is really fun; it looks disappointing to me. What's good about it compared to sc2? I almost uninstalled sc2 recently because I know I'll have to buy HOTS in the future to keep playing sc2, since everyone will switch, but I don't want to spend my money on it... | ||
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Roblin
Sweden948 Posts
On September 07 2012 01:36 Natespank wrote: That block was hard to read, easier to break it up a bit I partially agree with you. I've done a lot of table top RPG game design, so I have some perspective. IMO, one of the problems is how the designers planned the gameplay too much rather than focusing on having interesting dynamics and cool units and gameplay. When a designer plans out the gameplay of a game, the players suffer immensely because it's not really up to them to experiment, figure it out, and improvise; neither can they take things too far from the plan because the designers will patch it back to correspond with their vision. In that sense, they did too well in that regard. They planned the mineral saturation rather than just having worker ai/mineral patches; they planned the unit counters rather than having varied units who interact in various ways; they planned the rough flow of the game, which is okay, but annoying for guys like boxer and TLO. It's not just the superior programming and software team they put together but more the design decisions to over-plan the gameplay itself, rather than creating interesting pieces and letting the players play with them, balancing as needed over time. edit- to poster above this: You say hots is really fun; it looks disappointing to me. What's good about it compared to sc2? I almost uninstalled sc2 recently because I know I'll have to buy HOTS in the future to keep playing sc2, since everyone will switch, but I don't want to spend my money on it... actually, I disagree. as for the "planned for X instead of Y" part is something I won't comment on, how gamedevelopers plan their games varies greatly from developer to developer, so I will not comment either with or against you since I have insufficient facts. but gameflow: as far as I have seen blizz have let the playerbase experiment as they wish, but patched out/changed things that the community complained about. which means that the community have at all times been in control of the games flow. the exception to this rule that I can think of is that blizz once nerfed thors because they became used as a main army which blizz didn't like. that is the only change that I have seen blizz do "because they didn't like the way it was used" some examples of the playerbase controlling the flow: reapers: used heavily in the beta, thought of as overpowered by community, nerfed by blizzard. was still though of as overpowered by community, nerfed by blizzard again, then thought of as worthless. 4gate: used heavily shortly after release, thought of as hard to hold by community, nerfed by blizz, repeat 3 times, still thought of as hard to hold in pvp by community, blizz made units unable to warp-in on ramps, nerfed pylon power range, buffed immortals to make 4gate easier to hold in pvp. roaches: extremely much used in beta, thought of as overpowered by community, nerfed by blizz, repeat twice, community thinks roaches are now useless, roaches still end up being used after a few months even after no change by blizz. infestor: balance unchanged for months of playing, eventually found to be overpowered (according to community), blizz nerfs duration (but also doubled dps, intentionally or not? who knows. but fact: they changed the role of the spell to something different from what they first imagined due to player feedback), thought of as overpowered in a new way, blizz changes damage to deal less damage vs light and more damage vs armored, effective dps largely unchanged, today the infestor is thought of as strong but not necessarily overpowered. (they also nerfed neural parasite duration at some point) | ||
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NukeD
Croatia1612 Posts
On September 07 2012 03:20 Roblin wrote: actually, I disagree. as for the "planned for X instead of Y" part is something I won't comment on, how gamedevelopers plan their games varies greatly from developer to developer, so I will not comment either with or against you since I have insufficient facts. but gameflow: as far as I have seen blizz have let the playerbase experiment as they wish, but patched out/changed things that the community complained about. which means that the community have at all times been in control of the games flow. the exception to this rule that I can think of is that blizz once nerfed thors because they became used as a main army which blizz didn't like. that is the only change that I have seen blizz do "because they didn't like the way it was used" some examples of the playerbase controlling the flow: reapers: used heavily in the beta, thought of as overpowered by community, nerfed by blizzard. was still though of as overpowered by community, nerfed by blizzard again, then thought of as worthless. 4gate: used heavily shortly after release, thought of as hard to hold by community, nerfed by blizz, repeat 3 times, still thought of as hard to hold in pvp by community, blizz made units unable to warp-in on ramps, nerfed pylon power range, buffed immortals to make 4gate easier to hold in pvp. roaches: extremely much used in beta, thought of as overpowered by community, nerfed by blizz, repeat twice, community thinks roaches are now useless, roaches still end up being used after a few months even after no change by blizz. infestor: balance unchanged for months of playing, eventually found to be overpowered (according to community), blizz nerfs duration (but also doubled dps, intentionally or not? who knows. but fact: they changed the role of the spell to something different from what they first imagined due to player feedback), thought of as overpowered in a new way, blizz changes damage to deal less damage vs light and more damage vs armored, effective dps largely unchanged, today the infestor is thought of as strong but not necessarily overpowered. (they also nerfed neural parasite duration at some point) Maybe before trying to look smart you try reading and understanding what the person you quotted was trying to say? You COMPLETELY missed the point he was making. Im sorry for insulting you, because i consider you a quality poster, but your post kinda pissed me off. | ||
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Roblin
Sweden948 Posts
On September 07 2012 04:09 NukeD wrote: Maybe before trying to look smart you try reading and understanding what the person you quotted was trying to say? You COMPLETELY missed the point he was making. Im sorry for insulting you, because i consider you a quality poster, but your post kinda pissed me off. I did read it before I posted, twice even. once before I started typing and once while editing my post to make sure what I wanted to say really was what I wanted to say. then after reading your post I read it again to make sure I had not made a mistake. I found none. so I read it an additional time, this time actively trying to find a new point in his post. I found none. so this means that either: A) I have failed to see this point 4 times. or B) you misunderstood my post. or C) I have seen the point but ignored it. or D) I did not explain well what I meant in my post. (more than one of these can be true) I doubt it is A, simply because I am sufficiently literate, non-dyslexic and rarely make such mistakes. to do it 4 times in a row would be very strange, but not impossible, so I keep an open mind for now. I would guess C or D is the big bad guy, because I don't think you have problems understanding what I said (it was in my opinion quite straightforward), but for the sake of clarity I will break down his post in parts and discuss what I intended to say, and how I said it: That block was hard to read, easier to break it up a bit I partially agree with you. I've done a lot of table top RPG game design, so I have some perspective. I ignored this since it is small-talk. while there is nothing wrong with small-talk and adding it gives more socially appealing text, small-talk does not in itself merit discussion in my opinion, so I ignored it. IMO, one of the problems is how the designers planned the gameplay too much rather than focusing on having interesting dynamics and cool units and gameplay. this is the big thing I talked about, and according to the only source I have ever found everything in that sentence is completely false. unless of course he is not referring to the designers which designed SC2, in which case I would question why he wrote it in this forum. it took me quite a while to hunt down the source I was talking about but I eventually did: http://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2010/04/08/an-extensive-interview-with-starcraft-ii-design-director.aspx the specific quote I was looking for was: Our creative process on StarCraft II was very different than the creative process I've used on other RTS games I've worked on or even on WarCraft III. We didn't set out with any goals in mind, and I'm sure that this will upset the fans terribly. What we did instead was that we said, "We want to make a bunch of cool units, and we're going to make each unit as cool as we can possibly make it, and then we'll see how it all works together, and we'll tune as necessary from there. So it was never our intention specifically to do anything exactly with the races. Our goal was to make the units as interesting as possible and as different from one another as we possibly could. From there we could see how the races changed and evolved." - Dustin Browder which in itself completely and utterly disproves Mr Natespanks statement. but I also found this which I found interesting, unfortunately its an hour long but it is loosely related to the rest of this post it is an interesting watch but nothing necessary. http://www.gdcvault.com/play/1014488/The-Game-Design-of-STARCRAFT to indicate that he was in fact wrong I simply gave some obvious examples: "but gameflow: as far as I have seen blizz have let the playerbase experiment as they wish, but patched out/changed things that the community complained about. which means that the community have at all times been in control of the games flow. the exception to this rule that I can think of is that blizz once nerfed thors because they became used as a main army which blizz didn't like. that is the only change that I have seen blizz do "because they didn't like the way it was used" some examples of the playerbase controlling the flow: reapers: used heavily in the beta, thought of as overpowered by community, nerfed by blizzard. was still though of as overpowered by community, nerfed by blizzard again, then thought of as worthless. 4gate: used heavily shortly after release, thought of as hard to hold by community, nerfed by blizz, repeat 3 times, still thought of as hard to hold in pvp by community, blizz made units unable to warp-in on ramps, nerfed pylon power range, buffed immortals to make 4gate easier to hold in pvp. roaches: extremely much used in beta, thought of as overpowered by community, nerfed by blizz, repeat twice, community thinks roaches are now useless, roaches still end up being used after a few months even after no change by blizz. infestor: balance unchanged for months of playing, eventually found to be overpowered (according to community), blizz nerfs duration (but also doubled dps, intentionally or not? who knows. but fact: they changed the role of the spell to something different from what they first imagined due to player feedback), thought of as overpowered in a new way, blizz changes damage to deal less damage vs light and more damage vs armored, effective dps largely unchanged, today the infestor is thought of as strong but not necessarily overpowered. (they also nerfed neural parasite duration at some point)" When a designer plans out the gameplay of a game, the players suffer immensely because it's not really up to them to experiment, figure it out, and improvise; neither can they take things too far from the plan because the designers will patch it back to correspond with their vision. this is true but irrelevant, since the statement before it is false. thus I ignored it. (note that this talks about "a designer" while the previous talks about "the designers", thus one talks about design in general and is correct while the other mentions specific designers and accuses them of doing something they didn't) In that sense, they did too well in that regard. They planned the mineral saturation rather than just having worker ai/mineral patches; they planned the unit counters rather than having varied units who interact in various ways; first of all, I want sources before I put complete trust in these words, but before that I am willing to believe that he has trust in them. I guarded myself from having to take a stand on this point by saying: 'as for the "planned for X instead of Y" part is something I won't comment on, how gamedevelopers plan their games varies greatly from developer to developer, so I will not comment either with or against you since I have insufficient facts.' if there was something I should have written differently it would be to say: "planned for X instead of not planning for X" in my ears these statements are largely equivalent though, since "nonexistant plan" is included in the general statement "Y", so "Y" is simply a more general and slightly harder to read term. they planned the rough flow of the game, which is okay, but annoying for guys like boxer and TLO. It's not just the superior programming and software team they put together but more the design decisions to over-plan the gameplay itself as explained above, this is false and thus I ignored it. rather than creating interesting pieces and letting the players play with them, balancing as needed over time. that's exactly what they did, so since this statement (that they didn't) is again false, I again ignored it. edit- to poster above this: You say hots is really fun; it looks disappointing to me. What's good about it compared to sc2? I almost uninstalled sc2 recently because I know I'll have to buy HOTS in the future to keep playing sc2, since everyone will switch, but I don't want to spend my money on it... is an opinion and has nothing to do with the previous text, thus I ignored it. if there is something I missed and you still think I misunderstood him and/or missed a point, please explain this point. I would very much like to know. //Roblin | ||
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decemberscalm
United States1353 Posts
I agree with your assumption that Blizzard really designed the units on the rule of cool. Unfortunately they also made the game too smart, and they just had the misfortune of not getting extremely lucky with how the unit mechanics interplay with each other. The game feels so smooth, because the engine is so smart. Saturation isn't literally set in stone just because Bliz put in a counter. Read a little back and learn how it still has a curve (currently better than Starbows, but thats a work in progress Kabel knows about). Unit counters existed firmly in SCBW. Even using the editor you could not change the engine to make ghosts and vultures not do double (or quad, not sure) to light units forever. Even in custom maps like custom hero, I'd pick vulture to counter a light enemy because of the inherent damage scaling. They have a strong hands on approach to Starcraft 2 right now for balance, and frankly it needs it. Luck is for things that actually got lucky like BW. I remember when everyone was super angry about banelings saying they would be an awful unit but they turned out to be really fun. I remember people saying colossus would be amazing to see in play (TLO's colossus drops come to mind) but they ended up being boring death ball enhancers. They just didn't get lucky with their units. What I'm mainly worried about now is that they are going towards deathball play with actual unit design yet saying during the HOTS unit previews they would focus more on area control and detract from death ball play (hence warhound whine everywhere). | ||
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decemberscalm
United States1353 Posts
Thanks Scen and Kabel for playing and letting us watch fun matches. | ||
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Deleted User 97295
1137 Posts
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decemberscalm
United States1353 Posts
On September 07 2012 10:42 Laertes wrote: The BW music was a nice touch Play me on NA! | ||
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decemberscalm
United States1353 Posts
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Roblin
Sweden948 Posts
On September 07 2012 12:09 decemberscalm wrote: I just had a couple matches and the zerg player since 01 feels like larva production is a lot slower. Is this the case, or is it the exact same stats? that is the case. hatcheries produce 1 larvae per 20 seconds in contrast to SC2s 1 larvae per 15 seconds. inject larvae has also been adjusted to give 2 larvae in 60 seconds instead of SC2s 4 larvae in 40 seconds. about your previous post which replied to my previous post: I agree with everything except that HOTS units make the game more deathball oriented. I think we will have to wait and see what happens before anything conclusive can be said. from what I have seen on streams so far it looks pretty good in my opinion, though the warhound seems pretty OP considering the fact that it only costs 2 supply (which makes it very powerful in maxed situations). this is something I see as obviously going to be changed fairly soon. but for example, the swarm host is an excellent example of a unit which adds many desired elements to the game: A) zerg now has an effective siege unit before broodlord, thus allowing for earlier aggression. B) battles are now longer (note that a swarm host which only ever spawns 2 locusts is not very cost efficient, so zerg players will want to drag battles out as long as possible to maximize swarm host efficiency) C) they have unique mechanics, I like to call them "directionally powerful", they are strong in the direction they send their locusts, but powerless everywhere else. D) they are most efficient when spread out. (similar to lurkers and siege tanks, placing staggered lines of burrowed swarm hosts is more resistent to attack than placing all of them in a tight group) none of these are theory crafting, all of them are behaviour I have witnessed on streams by pro players in multiple games. so in total: some things seem questionable in HOTS, other things look great in my opinon, overall I would say it will end up being an improvement over WOL. I do not expect anyone to agree with me and I do not expect to convince anyone of anything, but now I have made my standpoint clear. have a nice day. p.s. I <3 swarm host. p.p.s: nice cast december, really enjoyed it :D | ||
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decemberscalm
United States1353 Posts
On September 07 2012 16:37 Roblin wrote: that is the case. hatcheries produce 1 larvae per 20 seconds in contrast to SC2s 1 larvae per 15 seconds. inject larvae has also been adjusted to give 2 larvae in 60 seconds instead of SC2s 4 larvae in 40 seconds. about your previous post which replied to my previous post: I agree with everything except that HOTS units make the game more deathball oriented. I think we will have to wait and see what happens before anything conclusive can be said. from what I have seen on streams so far it looks pretty good in my opinion, though the warhound seems pretty OP considering the fact that it only costs 2 supply (which makes it very powerful in maxed situations). this is something I see as obviously going to be changed fairly soon. but for example, the swarm host is an excellent example of a unit which adds many desired elements to the game: A) zerg now has an effective siege unit before broodlord, thus allowing for earlier aggression. B) battles are now longer (note that a swarm host which only ever spawns 2 locusts is not very cost efficient, so zerg players will want to drag battles out as long as possible to maximize swarm host efficiency) C) they have unique mechanics, I like to call them "directionally powerful", they are strong in the direction they send their locusts, but powerless everywhere else. D) they are most efficient when spread out. (similar to lurkers and siege tanks, placing staggered lines of burrowed swarm hosts is more resistent to attack than placing all of them in a tight group) none of these are theory crafting, all of them are behaviour I have witnessed on streams by pro players in multiple games. so in total: some things seem questionable in HOTS, other things look great in my opinon, overall I would say it will end up being an improvement over WOL. I do not expect anyone to agree with me and I do not expect to convince anyone of anything, but now I have made my standpoint clear. have a nice day. p.s. I <3 swarm host. p.p.s: nice cast december, really enjoyed it :D Thanks very much! Oh, I absolutely love swarm host. They are an amazing unit that turn the game into more positional play. If Bliz did anything right its that and the viper. My main argument is that Bliz is making tank play irrelevant because mech can simply go war hound ball just like bio was so easy to do with marine and marauder (and ghosts to emp/snipe spell casters late game). I was a huge fan of TvT, and if my siege chess matches are gone I will be bereft. I've actually been watching just Zerg streamers because they seem to have the most fun game play to see in every match up now. That is my main gripe. What makes us horrified is by all appearance they designed the warhound to be a 1a unit, but that discussion is alllllll over the HOTS. I hope they make mines useful, haven't gotten to see anyone bother using them in a stream, that and in a few HOTS custom maps I played they are an absolute waste of time. All the hope to Bliz making a better esports game, but for now, Starrrrrbow!!! | ||
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Danko__
Poland429 Posts
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Deleted User 97295
1137 Posts
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