EPTI would prefer if the upgrade hardened shields is researched at the cybernetics core, but requires a robo to become unlocked. It seems to blend it better with robo-tech. Immobile FF and collo and hardened shields army for a super strong death push.
OneGoal: A better SC2 [Project Hub] - Page 2
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cywinr
Canada173 Posts
I would prefer if the upgrade hardened shields is researched at the cybernetics core, but requires a robo to become unlocked. It seems to blend it better with robo-tech. Immobile FF and collo and hardened shields army for a super strong death push. | ||
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topsecret221
United States108 Posts
On December 15 2012 10:46 cywinr wrote: These changes are great! I only have one issue with the hardened shields upgrade. I always saw the twilight council as a tech path that gives protoss mobility, which is reinforced with the blink upgrade, stalker, and warpgate. However, hardened shields is a more defensive and turtle-like ability. Also, twilight council now has so many options thst it seems to be a dominant tech path as opposed to robo or stargate. It also makes it difficult for other races to know what strategy you are investing in. Hardened shield? Blink play? Warpgate timing push I propose the upgrade hardened shields to be researched at the cybernetics core, but requires a robo to become unlocked. It seems to blend it better with robo-tech. Immobile FF and collo and hardened shields army for a super strong death push. You present a very good point... however, your proposed solution is somewhat lacking. Thing is, we are not trying to promote unit synergy in a manner that encourages death ball play. One of the things that made Brood War so exciting to watch was that there was so much going on around the map at any given point in time... The death ball is the exact opposite, and promoting going in for the death push with Sentry/Immortal/Colossus is less of what we want to see. What I personally would enjoy is seeing stuff like colossus drops, stalker squads blinking into a base for raids, phoenix harassment, etc. | ||
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Moochlol
United States456 Posts
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lowercase
Canada1047 Posts
I have a suggestion to buff the ultralisk, though: why not give it a "unit walking" ability like the Colossus, allowing it to move above zerglings and thus not get stuck behind them and unable to fight? | ||
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Daumen
Germany1073 Posts
Thor "-Increased HP to 400 from 400." ... ok? Thanks for you hard work though! I rly want to play that Reaper, I made a big ass reaper Thread but didnt post it ... :o The only bad thing I still see for the Reaper is the fact that it takes too long to build, the Turret is nice but it doesnt make up for the Fact that you can build 4 Marines with 1 Barracks(+ Reactor) in the same time that you can build 1 Reaper... This makes the Reaper hard to balance and hard to use especially in the early game where you most of the time see only 1, sometimes 2... :< | ||
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Skitz
Australia49 Posts
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speknek
758 Posts
sounds better than the current game lol | ||
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GoodSirTets
Canada200 Posts
I'd probably rate this even above starbow, as it has unique sc2 feel about it, rather than being bw1.5 | ||
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topsecret221
United States108 Posts
On December 15 2012 11:21 GoodSirTets wrote: Really sick ideas in here. Is this all theory crafting or has a beta been made for this? I'd probably rate this even above starbow, as it has unique sc2 feel about it, rather than being bw1.5 Thank you :D The map is currently on the WoL NA server, as listed in the OP... -Mod uploaded to NA (EU coming soon) with names: “OneGoal with HotS on Daybreak LE” and “OneGoal with HotS on Cloud Kingdom LE” Jump in and try it out. We also have a OneGoal chat channel that you may be interested in. | ||
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ItWhoSpeaks
United States362 Posts
On December 15 2012 09:15 Sumadin wrote: I am not really into most of these changes and ill try to comment on some of them. "Blink and Anti-Micro": I am not really sure where this notion that everything "Anti-micro" is bad. Personally i am not against as long as it is done with moderation. It have really always been part of RTSs. WC3 had tons of disables and snares all which prevented your odds from getting away. Of course in WC3 there were also ways to counter these which may be part of the problem in SC2. Now don't get me wrong i was against the infestor. But that was more related to the fact that the infestor as a hole was way too much of an army knife of tools against everything Never the less about micro. People love to see micro. Ill be honest it is cool to see blink stalker micro. But another thing i like to bring up is commitment. It is something that alot of people neglect when they just talk about removing all anti-micro. When a game forces commitment it also tests another element of the players skill. Their decision-making. I feel that this too should be of RTSs even if as a skill it doesn't appear as glowing as say micro in a blink stalker battle. But the general rules of commitment are quite simple. Good decisions will pay off. Bad decisions will be punished. It is the latter one people seem to wanna remove. Let me give a simple example. A classic assault move: Protoss walks up and blinks into the main. This manuvaer can have tons of purposes: harras, win time or snipe upgrades. But lets say that this time something went wrong, it was sniffed out. By the time you blink in the marauders are already half up into the main to defend. Maybe they were already there. This commitment of blinking into the base will now be punished and depending on how long it takes to blink out again will determen how punishing this baad decision is. And reducing this cooldown reducing the price for the bad decision. Also doesn't really affect how Blink micro works. That is why i oppose it. "Medium Armor" Okay you have got to go in more details with this one. One of my biggest gripes about the SC2 armor system is that there is no bigger advantage than not having an armor type at all This is typically archons and queens. Technically they are psionic but Blizzard doesn't really utilize this armor tag. Archons are kinda excused in that they are heavely countered by both the other races spells. This is however something i hate about the design of queens. Now i am not opposed to having more armor types: it was a system that worked in WC3, but there was no freebies in that system. All units had something they took more damage from. Now mind you taking "full" damage was also impactful. In SC2 most units only do 1/2-1/3 of their damage to a unit without their preferred armor type. The differences was much smaller back then. There was only one case of such a extreme reduction in WC3. My point is if you wanna add a medium armor tag, then you might wanna look at how beneficial it is not to be either light or armored and reduce said benefit. Because i don't like the current design of say queens that just take no damage from anything baring with T1 units that don't got preferences. Phew that become longer than i expected. Haha, no problem sir. We appreciate thoughtful responses. Anti-micro stuff has a place in an RTS, Crowd Control was in BW in spades, however, BW cc was high tech, expensive, time intensive, and hard to use. Smart cast has changed how much CC a player can apply to the field. Medium Armor is pretty simple and exists to allow more gradient unit relationhips. (It lets Hellions be strong against lings, and not terrible vs stalkers. Medium Armor Hydras means they take less damage from Hellions and Stalkers, but don't walk all over Immortals.) | ||
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LaLuSh
Sweden2358 Posts
My personal stance is that Starcraft 2's economic system should be the #1 priority. Barrin's FRB movement had the -- in hindsight -- obvious flaw of causing players to saturate too fast on 1 base. It had the right idea, but in my opinion ended up stagnating the flow and pace of the early game too much. While economies in SC2 WoL grow too fast. In FRB mod they grew too slowly and offered too little variation in the very early stages of the game. Maverck's Starcraft II Brood War mod has reintroduced "stupid worker A.I.". Through some script, he managed to get rid of the intelligent queuing behavior, making workers wander again as they did in Brood War. Why is this important? I argue that an economic system with a "higher ceiling" automatically helps balance the game. It serves as a silent mechanism that allows for the game to contain imbalance without breaking. What do I mean? Here's my claim: In Brood War, the differing saturation levels helped balance the game against overtly overpowered and imbalanced end game compositions. To claim that a maxed 3/3 mech army wasn't as imbalanced as anything you can find in Starcraft 2 is in my mind preposterous. To claim that zerg weren't amazingly cost efficient in a standard ZvT vs bio scenario is also to lie to oneself. Zerg were frequently 30-70 supply behind Terran throughout the mid and lategame of a Brood War game (and it wasn't considered abnormal at all). To claim that reavers, storms, archons and corsairs didn't provide for an insanely cost efficient early and midgame for Protoss in PvZ is also to be in denial (sometimes even extending into lategame provided they retain key units). So what balanced the imbalanced? How come Brood War could contain the imbalance but Starcraft II cannot? The argument: Throughout the first ten minutes of a game, the race with their workers dispersed on n+1 bases as opposed to n bases will have accumulated a few thousand minerals of a surplus. This effect admittedly exists in SC2's early game as well, but in a much less pronounced fashion, since there is no need to take an additional expo until you've begun oversaturating your current bases (on 2 bases with 4 gases this would kick in at 44 workers). In SC2 it exist's mostly in the form of larva inject giving zergs a head start in worker count. Which races generally tend to be on fewer bases in Brood War? The ones with slow moving, cost efficient and relatively "imbalanced" compositions. If a terran plays passive in TvP, a Protoss will quickly jump up to a 4th and a 5th as the terran is establishing their 3rd. Eventually even jumping up to a 6th and beyond. How does a higher base saturation ceiling help Protoss? In a 6base vs 3base situation, with the two players on an equal amount of workers, the Protoss will generally mine 1k+/minute more minerals per minute than his Terran opponent. Once the first battle occurs, the Protoss will sit on a 3k-5k surplus (with his economy just ramping up to max). The Protoss will delay, delay, delay. If a trade opportunity presents itself the toss will go for it. In later battles, if the terran waits for a maxed out army, the toss will generally try to engage as early as possible to have time to resupply after losing his army to the horribly imbalanced 3-3 mech composition. By then the Protoss will have burned through a 10k+ mineral surplus in order to stay on even footing with an imbalanced end game composition. NOTE: Unless heavily harassed, the Protoss is likely to have more workers than the Terran, due to constantly being up one or more bases to the terran. How would this same matchup play out in SC2? Protoss gets ahead in workers through chrono. Terran compensates through MULE. If Terran decides for heavy 2 base aggression, the Protoss generally will not hold his 3rd nor let it finish building (if it was even started). Heavy 2 base aggression gets dealt with a 2 base defense because:
So what you end up with everytime is a 2base vs 2base battle fought at Protoss' natural. How that battle goes determines the outcome of the game. What happens if the players decide to play passive? Protoss starts his third while scouting with an observer. If he sees a third CC or otherwise assesses the situation as a non-threat the P will not cancel the third. Terran doesn't care that he can't float out his 3rd ASAP. Saturation mechanic and MULEs compensate for it and keep the two economies even. Protoss camps because they are considered to have the slightly more overpowered end game composition (in combination with warp-gate mechanic which I will also address later). Terran generally feels forced to get something done. All in all, the two economies are relatively even matched. Any balancing that goes into the game must thus strive to balance out any imbalanced compositions as opposed to letting the game design naturally contain and deal with the imbalance. In february 2011 I wrote in my macro analysis thread: Large maps will simply and frankly favor the race that currently has the pleasure of being dominant when maxed out in a 3base vs. 3base late game situation. That race, as you’ll see, will be Protoss. And please don’t mistake this for whine; it’s merely stating what should be obvious. On the other end, the same maps will likely disfavor the previous most stable performing tournament race on blizzard-sized maps: Terran. Keep in mind this prediction was before Khaydarian nerf and before the infestor buff. But I find it held surprisingly true to the evolution of gameplay since. Once gameplay stabilized in such a manner that players consistently started reaching the lategame -- the race that dominated was generally the race which for the moment had the most imbalanced 3-base end game composition. Khaydarian era? Protoss. Post khaydarian? Terran in the EMP-radius era. Some zergs started breaking out in the infestor era post EMP-radius nerf. Terran regained control with discovering the "snipe" era. Post snipe? Zerg learned how to camp with BL/infestor. Protoss in PvT learned how to camp with templars and abuse warp-gates as Terran's were forced to make things happen. Throughout this Blizzard introduced a few patches that again temporarily destabilized earlier stages of the game. But in general, if the races reached the lategame, the flow of every game would follow the six one sentence paragraphs above. This is especially apparent in every ZvX matchup, where after a certain point it just stops mattering how many bases beyond the initial 3 the opponent of the zerg player holds. I wrote this a couple weeks ago: While 6 bases in SC2 and the extra gas that it grants might buy you the capability of making an army composed of a higher fraction of shinier units, the game will still ultimately come down to who wins the 200 vs 200 supply battle. There is no 10000 mineral buffer for the 6 base player who throughout the game has outplayed his camping opponent. Eventually the player has to engage his opponent's stronger composition. Being on 6 bases in Starcraft II will not make the clock tick on the 6 base player's side. Rather, for every minute that passes, the zerg opponent will catch up in the 200 supply armies' ratio of shiny units to cheap throwaway units. This is how you recognize a patchzerg. They will much moreso than normal zergs rush to 3 bases and into Hive while camping hard with spines -- doing literally nothing else. They go straight for the most imbalanced end game composition in the game and hope they don't die getting there! A broodlord infestor end game composition is a slow moving army, and as such it serves as a perfect analogy. Everytime Liquid'Hero loses a PvZ lategame you will see the same whine threads on reddit and TL. "6bases vs 3, LOL and the zerg still won!". But what can Hero do? He cannot avoid the zerg army forever. It must be engaged eventually. Protosses often find themselves in this situation after missing some sort of initial timing (that is hard to hit, but where a trade is possible). In Brood War the clock would be ticking in favour of Hero in the same exact situation in the same exact matchup. But in SC2 -- funnily enough -- the clock ticks against the 6base player, and instead for the player whose race happens to have the pleasure of currently being dominant when maxed out in a 3base vs. 3base late game situation. I do realize that your thread aspires to introduce suggestions that Blizzard could forseeably consider implementing as opposed to radical ones they would likely ignore (...my style of argumentation). Nonetheless I have provided my reasoning for why I consider the economic system should be ranked #1 in any lobbying initiative aiming to influence Blizzard. If this basic fact is ignored there will be no permanent change for the better. Any and all balancing that goes into the game will eventually be forced to focus on making late game compositions as evenly matched as possible. Many people seem to have a notion that this kind of balancing, if succesful, will solve all problems and magically better the gameplay. But a few tweaks on the infestor will not suffice in my opinion (the authors of the OP don't seem to disagree). Where I disagree with the OP is in their view that tweaking units and rearranging tiers will have any noticeable effect. I believe the following will be achieved by the OP's approach:
Now, the changes I would suggest wouldn't fly with Blizzard, because they'd require a substantial rebalancing of the strength of units. You think fungal growth is a problem? It ain't got shit on the defiler's spells. There are countless examples from Brood War that make SC2 "overpoweredness" pale in comparison. You did a good and methodologically sound job in "identifying the problems" for every proposed area of change. What I miss from your post, is the willingness to rank and prioritize between problems. All problems are not created equal, there may be one that disguises as the root of another misidentified problem. I can't help it. But, to me, every single proposed unit balance change or tier rearrangement is a cosmetic change. I sympathize with the fact that you're trying to present incremental changes for which there may be a realistical chance of Blizzard listenning and taking heed. But if I'm to be honest, my opinion is that any sort of unit balance suggestions are purely cosmetical suggestions. Gameplay will find its way back to the old mould of 3vs3 base imbalanced endgame compositions whenever it has had time to stabilize. I know I said I was going to address some other points in this post. I kept writing non stop so I forgot about them by now. I aim to make my own condensed thread about these issues, in order to promote the Starcraft II Brood War mod. Be on the look out for that one. It'll be more coherent. Here's SC2BW micro teaser: | ||
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Celeritas
Australia52 Posts
1. The Oracle's Time Warp ability is bugged and doesn't seem to work (neither does the slow on Fungal Growth) 2. Burrow costs supply to use on Ultralisks (tried to burrow when maxed and it wouldn't let me) 3. After researching Grooved Spines for the Hydralisk, the visual change did not appear on the models (the extra spines would appear during the attack animation, then disappear afterwards). While the upgrade itself worked, the lack of a visual indicator for the opponent creates ambiguity for the Zerg's opponent. | ||
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LaLuSh
Sweden2358 Posts
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topsecret221
United States108 Posts
On December 15 2012 13:29 LaLuSh wrote: One question though. Is Barrin involved in the OP?!?! I'm not quite sure what you mean by "involved"... If you're asking if he was part of the creative team that helped write the post or develop the mod, then no: as far as I'm aware, we were never in direct contact with Barrin. | ||
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FoxyMayhem
624 Posts
I am reading your post, thank you for bringing these issues up. Unfortunately, I have a serious wrist injury and cannot reply properly via text (I wrote over three weeks slowly, and used voice-to-text programs despite their innacurracy). If you're interested it talking more about the economy, I'd love to talk over skype. ID is in a PM. Barrin is not involved, though I did talk to him a fair amount back when 6m2g was first launching, and read and debated that article to death. Your point about the 3base vs 3base death spiral is very insightful. I'm curious for other pro views on the subject, too. Perhaps we do need to dig deeper and rip SC2's economic systems out by the roots. Like you said, 6m2g alone will not cut it, that's part of the reason we didn't build from the ground up for the FRB maps, as much as I feel the economy needs a change. This hampers our ability to appeal to Blizzard, but as you said, it may be the most important part of the changes. | ||
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Qwyn
United States2779 Posts
This needs to be seen. The Blizzard devs. need to read this. Can you post it on their pro forums? I've read your old posts but this is amazingly well written and positively constructed....and is built upon a solid background. | ||
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Facultyadjutant
Sweden1876 Posts
 reading everything | ||
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gulden
Germany205 Posts
I hope you can get some solid results which could blizzard help improve the game! | ||
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Darksoldierr
Hungary2012 Posts
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Callynn
Netherlands917 Posts
I lost count how many times Blizzard said that SC2 is not Brood War yet still people are saying SC2 is fundamentally flawed because it doesn't compare to the identical themes of the predecessor. Take the analogy between the Dragoon and the Stalker for example. Both lore-wise and strategy-wise the Stalker is a worthy follow-up of the Dragoon because Dragoons can no longer be built (Aiur is lost, and most of the Templar Caste who were building Dragoons from fallen Protoss warriors is annihilated). The Stalker is the Shakuras version, the Dark Templar version of the Dragoon - and the Dark Templar culture is, in contrast to the glorious power base of Aiur's Templar Caste, one of nomadism, stealth and assasination. The theme could not be captured in a better way, so let's move on to your argument - why is the Protoss Stalker not as strong as the Dragoon in a strategic point of view. Simply said, Warp-in would make the Dragoon a much more powerful unit than it was in Brood War. There is no way you can start to combine the new strategic grounds Blizzard attempted to uncover while maintaning the balance of Brood War. Warp-in, Chronoboost, Inject Larva and MULE are all modern attempts at creating depth and at some levels, I feel they succeeded at these attempts. Please note that while the Stalker is slightly weaker than the Dragoon, it still has a larger health pool than any tier 1 unit and is incredibly fast. To compensate it even has a slightly smaller collision size. All these fine-tuning aspects are ignored when bashing into Blizzard's creation and saying 'we know better, let's make a glorified Brood War'. Well after studying game design I can tell you, you don't know better and continuing the comparison to a completely different game just makes you look like a conservative nostalgic who is afraid of the future. Yes, Blizzard made tons of mistakes in WoL and yes the game is basically a completely new game based on old lore which makes it painful for fans sometimes (I personally didn't like the hollywoodesque character of the campaign for example), but in all this chaos Blizzard is improving the game and polishing it to make it a worthy strategy game that more people around the world can watch and enjoy. For money, but also for our entertainment. And I think that if your truly want to compare games, you should go take a look at classic starcraft without brood war and then tell me it was as balanced as WoL - because it was not. I think it's awesome that you want to help in improving the game and it's community as it shows you truly care. Does it show a bit of jealousy? It certainly feels that way. Try building a whole new engine and unit balance based on a 10 y/o game and you'll know what I'm talking about. Trying to polish up someone else's hard work is nothing short of an insult if you feel the game should just be 'that game with other graphics' (which is not something said litteraly, but that's how I felt it was said). Lastly I wish you good luck with your project and I hope you bring out a mod that inspires some different approaches to improvement from Blizzard to the real game, but at the moment I have not seen a single SC2 mod that is superior in crisp balance to WoL. | ||
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