OneGoal: A better SC2 [Project Hub] - Page 25

On January 12 2013 08:38 Doominator10 wrote:
Oh snap, I hate when Im making a big post and ppl are posting smaller posts while im editing for grmmar and stufz T_T.
See above.

On January 12 2013 08:32 Hider wrote:
You are willing to change stuff that Blizzard will never do (the whole warpgate thing + switch around the stalker and the immortal).

On January 12 2013 08:32 Hider wrote:
You changed all of the aiblities of the oracles even though it actually worked okay'ish in hots.

On January 12 2013 08:32 Hider wrote:
You added a new unit (something Dustin Browder said they won't do)

On January 12 2013 08:32 Hider wrote:
The viking has a new role as well (?)

On January 12 2013 08:32 Hider wrote:
Siege tanks overkill (Blizzard won't do that as well).

On January 12 2013 08:32 Hider wrote:
But you won't change the counter to the collosus?

It seems very weird, and I can't see the consistency. The unit role of the collosus will remain the same if its anti air targetability is removed (it will still be good against the same kind of units as previously). But it just has a different counter (micro or well postioned tanks) which is just much more awesome.

I would very much appreciate if you define these constraints a bit more detailed, because I don't think I am the only one who is a bit confused.

On January 12 2013 10:48 topsecret221 wrote:


Correct... Warp Gate needed to be available as a later upgrade, for balance purposes, and so that we don't see nothing but Warp Gates all day every day. It got quite annoying, and didn't provide any kind of player choices or diversity between the Gateway and Warp Gate. Stalker and Immortal were messed with as, once again, it felt proper to bring them in line with their identities. The Immortal is a powerful, straightforward unit that can mow down enemy lines and shrug off high powered attacks, and is literally just an upgrade of the dragoon. Similarly, the stalker, being a Dark Templar unit, is more subversive, tricksy, and more oriented towards raiding and picking off small groups of enemies than fighting off armies... So we tried to get these units to play the same way that they feel they should.



Okay-ish isn't quite enough for us... The oracle needed a more defined roll, and it's spells needed to have more of a deceptive nature (once again, being a DT unit). It felt more in line with the unit's aesthetic theme, as well as opening up more opportunities for exciting games and counterplay. Besides, HotS is still beta: the stuff is still being changed



We added a reworked campaign unit because Terran needed a real way to bring anti-air to mech (the thor is poor for this reason as outlined by ItWhoSpeaks articles and the mega post below the OP), so we restored the Thor to it's original theme and identity and provided an alternate for mech players to experiment with, and should have a good potential for back and forth gameplay.



Because of the anti-air nature of the diamondback, we felt that the viking being the end all unit in air engagements wasn't the best idea. Besides, the carrier and cattlebruiser need as many reasons to get back into the fight as before (we're also tweaking the corruptor for this reason: anti-capital ships aren't fun to play against because they're so effective at it for their cost)



Has nothing to do with the unit's identity. In fact, it is a nerf to the unit to make up for all of the power buffs that it's receiving, as well as offering a more exciting opportunity for ground counterplay.



You seem to be confusing unit role and unit identity. Though these are often linked, it isn't quite the same: the role of a unit is what particular purpose it suits on the battlefield, and what it excels at the most. For example, the role of a hellbat is to fight large numbers of zerglings or zealots. But the identity of the unit is that it is a transformation of the hellion and has better combat capabilities.

It's role is complementary to it's role in this case. But what about something more convoluted: the Mothership. It is a powerful, T3 caster that can shut down large portions of an enemy army and keep the rest of the army invisible while it's present. It's identity is an ancient ship of immense power that can house hundreds of protoss, and can take small fleets on it's own. Obviously this can't be done in gameplay, but it feels powerful and fairly important (because of the limited number of them you can have).

The colossus' height is crucial to it's identity: it is supposed to be a towering, bone-chilling enemy that wreaks havoc on lightly armored enemies. Being so massive, it is no surprise that it can be attacked by AA cannons, or step over 50 foot cliffs like it's nothing. It's also why we cannot alter the basic weakness of the unit. We can indirectly mitigate the severity of this weakness, but the weakness itself is there to stay.

On January 12 2013 10:58 Doominator10 wrote:
@Hider
The skill from using colossus I feel should be the skill of a positional unit as opposed to a spell caster or a core unit.

The statement itself can seem underwhelming, but I will try to illustrate my point.

+ Show Spoiler +



Every type of unit has its own distinct micro skill set that needs to be appropriately mastered.
The type of "easy to learn difficult to master" philosophy I believe you are infatuated with is the micro of spell casters and all around units. To be continued:

All-around units tend to be good no matter in what position they are in, but become exponentially stronger when controlled IN a battle. This generally falls under the mechanics such as kiting, stutter step, splitting (not pre-made concaves, splitting in battle such as marine v baneling), and creates generally exciting WOW HOLY $#@! for spectators if done correctly. They are usually massable, expendable (compared to the rest of the army), and can chase down positional units and spell-casters when attacking.

Positional units tend to have a "switch" moment when they are at there most effective. Seige Tanks plant themselves on the ground, and the area surrounding the tank becomes the Terran's "position" that the opposing player must break or circumnavigate. You cant really, "break" a position of all-around units, as they dont lock down a position with a huge burst of damage to any unit that comes near them. They do damage over time (short amount of time sadly in WoL), as opposed to tanks and lurkers and such, who will maybe get 1-3 volleys off before they disengage from battle. (They die, kill the enemy, or the enemy runs. No chasing.) Their micro comes not from "doing" a whole lot while engaging in a fight, but rather the skillful manipulation of the terrain relative to the opposing army, their bases, your reinforcement line, and your bases. It requires a different type of mindset to play where your doing all of your micro before the battle even begins. Focus firing is about as much "in-battle micro" you really only need from a positional unit. The battle is won before the forces actually meet. It is decided in an instant, but the foreplay between battles can last for minutes, building tension and creating excitment.

Spell Casters do not / should not have an impact on the global strategy of a match. They are not/ SHOULD not be massable. They are far too volatile and reliant on many more factors than positional units and all-around units. Instead, they are tactical tide-turners, with what should be very specific methods of enhancing your army, or making life miserable for your opponent. Generally, I think spell casters generally have spells that align with buffing or debuffing the All-around units ( Usually AOE spells such as storm, fungal, EMP, guardian shield), buffing or debuffing the positional units (Spells that tend to affect a singular unit by manipulating terrain or your opponents forces in relation to terrain such as forcefield, recovery drone, nueral parasite, all combat spells from Viper. ), or neutralizing enemy spell casters (EMP, Snipe, Graviton Beam, Feedback, Yamato to name a few). Naturally, some spells overlap (Ex. Yamato I would consider an Anti-Position as well as an Anti-Caster, while Guardian shield and Dark swarm are Pro-Unit spells)

All units have some properties in each. Think of stat points in an RPG. You have a limited number of stat points to spend in each trait (All-around, Position, or Spells). All-Around can more easily out-maneuver and overwhelm Position, but it is not (or at least SHOULD be not) easy to do so. Position can easily obliterate most All-Around, with the exception of all but the most cunning tactical minds. Casters TEND to be better against position (Nueral parasite, abduct, NUKES, and blinding cloud have the POTENTIAL to absolutely rape positional play), but still can be useless if not controlled correctly. Casters TEND to be worse against All-Around units (Bomber exposes the weaknesses of fungal from all-around play, check the Day9 daily where Bomber keeps throwing units at infestors until the energy is out. Then they are useless), but good control can still yield AMAZING results.

The infestor had an issue because it was effective and easy to control vs all three types. Infested terrans destroyed protoss all around units and mech position, while fungal raped BOTH all-arounds and protoss position. (Protoss position I feel involves a lot of sentries, and, or Sky Toss). It was essentially a hybrid of Spell Caster, and All-around unit, which is the worst possible type of no-no. You do not have enough stat points to heavily invest in All-around, and Spell Caster, but blizzard F!@#$ed up and trying to make it happen anyways, leading to an lesser quality in design. (Screw balance for now. Tic Tac Toe is balanced, but BORING AS $#@!)

---------------
Back to the colossus, I feel your issue is that you do not see the "easy to learn, difficult to master" aspect of positional units. I feel that positional play is actually a bit Harder (a bit) to learn, and Easier to master. (Its still pretty hard since it was hard to learn in the first place.) The beauty and micro of having positional units, is a purer test of tactics before the engagement. People who don't know starcraft as well would think that positional play is more boring than unit play, but the community who have been with starcraft a bit longer remember that it was the POSITIONAL play in broodwar that made it such a huge success and big spectator sport. (Also helped make it harder for new people to step in and actually play.)

Starcraft gave such a huge boon to spell casters due to smart casting, that it innately became EASY to use spells, and the spells WERE ALREADY designed to mitigate positional play. As is, the WoL colossus is more of an all-around unit, since it has no spells (not even an ability) and it has little potential for positional play. The cliff-walking was the only endearing feature that fit into one of these categories. Making an all-around unit AS EXPENSIVE AS IT IS, goes against the fact that All-around units want to be massable. They can balance it all they want, but it won't help it's flawed design at all.

Making the colossus a positional unit, lets it fit within one of these categories, and gives protoss some much needed autonomous positional unit. Protoss never had a ground purely positional unit in SC2. The sentry as a hybrid was just a band-aid for that fact.

Positional units DO NOT REQUIRE MUCH ATTENTION DURING A BATTLE, which is why I say let it do its work while I spend my APM on other units. Siege tanks do not require much attention during a battle (outside of focus firing), but your APM is spent microing hellions to get a better angle or marines to run away from banelings. The were the heavy hitters in both cases, but they were protected by the hellions and used at meatshields by the marines (lol). Protoss would be using them as the heavy hitters, and they would be spending their APM on Forcefields, Blink micro, and or Immortal Dancing. OR, just like with hellions and tanks, they have the ability to not be microed at all, and still do a ton of damage, simply by being in the right spot at the right time. (Collosus and zealots in a choke = no micro required.) BUT, they have the POTENTIAL to have even more efficiency when they are microed, and that is the beauty of positional play.

A bad player just sends in his colossus and watches the fireworks. A good player meticulously plans out every detail of when and where the collosus is, what unit it is shooting at, and the OTHER units protecting it during the battle. The big pieces are the position BEFORE the battle, and the OTHER units DURING the battle.

HOLY!@# long post. Should have made my own thread...

Edit: Sorry for the bad formatting T_T This even hurts me trying to read this. Cntrl MouseWheel up for Zoom

On January 12 2013 12:39 Doominator10 wrote:
**Units do not NEED an activated or toggled spell, ability, or mode to solve design issues.**

On January 12 2013 12:39 Doominator10 wrote:
**Units do not NEED an activated or toggled spell, ability, or mode to solve design issues.**

Positional play has very little to do with the way it does damage. (Although most positional units have splash damage in some form or another as a basic attack). It is more-so the fact that the unit creates a zone of control around the unit, where the opponent must be extremely careful about entering. What if the siege tank didnt do splash damage when sieged. (Costs adjusted appropriately). Would it still be a positional unit? YES. It's not just the attack type of the unit, but the fact tht the opponent must either choose to commit to entering its zone of control, or commit to getting around it. The low/ lack of movement speed in the unit, as well as the burst damage and danger it poses when in a good position is what makes it a positional unit. The tempest is another example of a positional unit. It doesn't have the same burst dmg as a tank, but its points were taken away from damage and given to mobility (its flying) and its range (about the range of a siege tank, and it hits air units. =__=) If the points were more balanced across all three, it would be more of an all-around unit, like the carrier and void ray.

The linear attack is more so focused on the conceptual design as opposed to its implementation.
(More focused on Identity rather than role)

The minimum range is the I think offers the biggest, and subtlest change turning it into more of a positional unit. The linear AOE does affect it to a large degree as well, since the linear AOE isn't at its peak effectiveness vs concaves anymore. The old colossus essentially made protoss want to ball up, as the opposing force would start to arc in a concave, where the colossus would be most effective. We / I want concaves to help fight against colossus, not for them. Thus, pre splitting units becomes even more rewarding for the player utilizing All-Around units against them.

Again, the focus for the linear attack change is not on its role, but on it's identity. But, by making the unit fit its identity better, we coincidentally make it fit its role better as well.

Also, the Thor is not as tall as the colossus, Lore wise.

THE FIRST OBJECTIVE OF THE MOD IS TO MAKE UNITS FEEL LIKE THEY BELONG WHERE THEY ARE.
The colossus was originally concieved, and always has been, as a REALLY REALLY TALL WALKER OF DEATH. Naturally inspired by the War of the Worlds model. Its the reason why WoL PvP was called War of the Worlds, because it was always colossus vs colossus battles. The Thor is not a towering monstrosity whos head reaches the heavens, it is a big, bulky, chunk of metal that the Terrans managed to scrap together. It is big, not tall. The in-game models might not represent that very well, but really, like 6 marines are the width of a battlecruiser. It will not be perfect representation, and the only thing we can do it make it so that we feel as close to playing the real thing as possible while in the game, despite the graphical representation not doing it justice.

A bit taller pfft. Think of an 8 ft tall basketball player vs a 4ft9 scrub. That 8ft guy is "a bit" taller than the scrub I would say =___= Yet if shown in a game you would only see it look a few pixels taller. Think about the unit itself, and how the person FEELS when they are controlling that unit. Not just generic balance stuff. What does a person EXPECT when they field this unit. How would someone WANT to control it. Just focusing on generic balance stuff before design has been what blizzard has been doing for the past 3-4 years (has it been that long now?)

On January 12 2013 12:48 MNdakota wrote:


Exactly. Having a unit with just an attack is okay.

On January 12 2013 14:00 Hider wrote:
Again, I advice you to read my posts analyzing all the design flaws of giving the unit a standard line attack. Honestly, im getting a little tired of repeating my self again and again. If you disagree, that's fine, but you could at leat take your time to read my posts and try to argue why my arguments aren't valid.

On January 11 2013 21:45 Hider wrote:
+ Show Spoiler +

This is the collosus idea I suggested as well.
This vertical line abliity should be something that could be activated every 10th/20th second.
Collosus's normal attack (from HOTS/WOL) should be kept but DPS reduced by 20% (or something like that) and anti air units shouldn't be able to hit collosus.
This will incentivize warp prism play as you can pick up a colllosus in a warp prism and use it to flank the opposing army (if the opposing army has a great flank the ability will be very inefficient unless you flank with the collosus).


The counter to collosus will now be micro rather than something silly like attackmoved corrupters/vikings. While the ability in it self will be difficult to use properly, the collosus is still somewhat okay'ish at lower levels as it still is pretty decent with its attack-move ability (should still soft counters marines and be acceptable against maurauders), and I think it is asily balanaceable across various skill levels as I belive it will take a somewhat similar amount of skills to use it optimally as to remicro against it.

I believe this change could lead to a lot of creative uses for the collosus, and the ingame potential is endless. Think about how world class players could have 3-4 collosus's in various warp prism and micro them back and forth to get the optimally damage out of the ability. Also this will make collosus drops very great at harassing workers (almost similar to how hellion works).

Again, I advice you to read my posts analyzing all the design flaws of giving the unit a standard line attack. Honestly, im getting a little tired of repeating my self again and again. If you disagree, that's fine, but you could at leat take your time to read my posts and try to argue why my arguments aren't valid.

On January 13 2013 06:19 Laertes wrote:
Hey OneGoal, I am UloseTheGame or Laertes, the Starbow people will know who I am.+ Show Spoiler +
~Ulose