On December 15 2012 19:02 gulden wrote: love the mothership vortex replacement aka stasis field and the FG slowing instead of stunning.
I hope you can get some solid results which could blizzard help improve the game!
Isolation Pulse is actually a better ability than Stasis from an esports perspective because there are more gradients of success and more offensive and defensive options, as well as more counterplay.
Example: You can Ice a pack of broodlords removing them from the fight if they don't spread in time, Similarly, you can spend 100 energy as they amove into you with a huge swarm, effectively turning their units into forcefields if they don't split or retreat. In both of these cases, you get a huge advantage in that fight, and gain that ground, but you don't get the garenteed kills that Stasis or Vortex gave you. Meaning that the fight has ended, but the game is still on.
Defensively, you can use it to save valuable units, or sacrifice attacking supply to create temporary terrain blockers. Or drop two to cover a retreat. Timing this in a fight requires commitment and being able to read the battle field three seconds in advance, which is really tough.
Finally, because Ice'd units can move, you can use it on your own dudes to safely commit supply to an objective, like a hatchery behind a spine forest. The enemy sees the 12 invulnerable Zealots, or three warp prisms marching right though their defenses and have to react to that.
However, there is counterplay to all of this to mitigate or take advantage of the ability. For example, if you see your Brood Lords being targeted the Ice, you can split them to ensure that you still have an army that can fire. Or, you can clump them to ensure their survival while you rally units to defend them. Or, you can clump ground units in the pulse and do an invulnerable Zergling runby to hit their fourth. Allowing movement makes this spell a completely different animal.
My question to you is: Do you want to play a game or two tomorrow? The channel is One Goal. :D
Concider merging this with Starbow (http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=304955)? I think both projects are amining for the same result. The SC2 that we really wanted but did not get. Some of the changes are quite similar, it would be a bad thing if there were many MOD's trying to do the same, competing instead of one MOD vs SC2.
I've been playing Starbow for a littlewhile now and I have no desire whatsoever to go back to regular sc2. It seems this will be the same thing ... kinda.
Your warpgate solution is way, way over the top and this is symptomatic of the way these things go.
The correct solution is the one with the smallest deviation from the metagame as is possible which is to restore defenders advantage (paticularly in PvP) through macro advantage. In this situation you simply reverse the building/cooldown timers of warpgates and gateways, resulting in a substantial shift between the two building modes.
This has the preferred effect without completely gutting early Protoss aggression or the interesting warp gate mechanic. It is also MUCH more likely to be taken seriously by Blizzard.
If there are issues (mainly Colossus efficiency against concaves, forcefield promoting all ins, warp gates removing defenders advantage) then they should be dealt with in isolation. Community moralising does nothing. Blizzard has an entire team, most of whom are career game designers. They will toss those changes in front of a committee and unless they have genuine reasoning behind them you will get laughed at.
The best changes have come about when argued, in isolation and with sober thought backed up by genuine evidence.
EDIT: Removed some sections of this because it came across harsher than I intended my tone to be. I apologise.
Oh and as for larva efficiency, the main overarching reason why zerg production efficiency is off the charts is because their production is overwhelmingly centralised around single buildings and increases linearly with time, not available resources.
This means that every 40s you get a new larva inject and given high efficiency units and a bank, a zerg gains the equivalent of four additional production structures, per hatchery, per 40s, for energy.
The main advantage this gives zerg is NOT in terms of the sheer number of units they can pump out - in fact a protoss/terran can easily match a zerg in this sense as anyone who has ever played a macro terran who has 4 factories, 12 reactor barracks and 3 starports will attest (which can contribute a total of upwards of 50 supply every 30-40s, allowing a terran to completely remax within 1m 30s from zero army supply).
The advantage that zerg has is that their production is innate to their expansions. While this carries an increased risk (every loss of a hatchery is a reduction to not only their economy but their production) it also allows a zerg who is on the front foot to effectively flood an opponent who is on the defensive with more and more units eventually securing an easy win or worse, producing a huge swell of impossible to kill units. It is also the only production structure which becomes more effective with time. A barracks is only capable of producing a set number of units within a given time interval. A hatch has no such problem.
More importantly, they have virtually no frontloaded gas cost to their tech structures. The situation I mentioned above for terran has a minimum gas cost of 600 for the barracks, 500 gas for the factories and depending on the situation, nearly 450 gas for the starports! This is in addition to the mineral costs (1800 for the rax!) and you're looking at a substantial amount of money required just to produce this basic, low end macro terran remax - something which zerg get for free.
There are a number of possible solutions to this ranging from adjusting queens to reduce the rate at which zerg gather larva or possibly adjusting the amount of stored/generated larva for hives, hatcheries and lairs to something which represents the amount of resource input into producing one.
I'm not sure your adjustment of the hydra really goes far enough in dealing with this problem.
However, since you are considering changes, I would like to suggest something else for the Colossus rather than its current iteration.
If it is possible, have the beams fire in two parallel lines away from the Colossus. I believe that will have the effect of causing the Colossus to require the skill you desire it to have - namely because it allows the Colossus to extend its range beyond 9 with appropriate positioning, rewards flanks of concaves, splits up the deathball (since Colossi no longer contribute to each others fire by overlapping if they are stood side by side) and reduces the effectiveness of the unit in general.
In order to balance this, I would probably increase the health/shields of the Colossus.
On December 15 2012 13:27 LaLuSh wrote: I applaud your effort and agree with a fair deal of your statements. With the sheer amount of suggestions you've made, though, I'm also bound to have reservations about some of them. Where I also veer off in a different direction, is in the identification of the basic premises:
What changes are the most urgent?
Why are they the most urgent?
How do we rank them?
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:
The game is much more fast paced due to macro mechanics (will talk about this later) and a more linearly scaling saturation mechanic.
A third base will not pay itself off in time. You will not have enough workers for it to have an immediate effect. Furthermore: the terran army is not -- as opposed to in BW -- slow moving. In SC2 bio is predominantly used in TvP. There is not much one can do in order to "delay" a mobile composition.
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:
You will once again destabilize the early and mid game, much like HotS will, and this might create the illusion of an actual change having occured in the flow of gameplay. People will be wow:ed by amazing strategies for ~6 months until gameplay stabilizes, and you once again find yourselves deadlocked in this 3vs3 base spiral of doom.
The area in which you may effect real change is in changing the production mechanics of the races (though, you're only targetting warp-gate, which I believe is a mistake, you have to nerf the larva mechanic as well). I rank production mechanics #2 in importance after reforming the economic system. And they both sort of go hand in hand. Nerf larva inject and you've nerfed zerg economy in the same move. Barrin showed a single mineral patch can mine at a 38% higher rate in SC2. The game needs to be slowed down in addition to a saturation reform.
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:
If this is true, then how do you explain that BW is statistically far more imbalanced than WoL?
Regarding the stalker: the intent is to be strong in brief engagements, but falter in a drawn-out fight, right? I propose you give it a strong attack that becomes weaker on successive shots, and recharges outside of battle. That way, it can be highly mobile and reasonably durable with good damage and good range, yet not dominate battles as a core unit.
Further, more interesting than losing damage with each attack is losing range. A change of range greatly alters unit behavior and the shape in which a clash occurs, calls for lots of repositioning. But it still allows your Stalkers to dish out their full damage throughout a conflict, if you're willing to blink into harm's way instead of out of it. Now you have a skirmisher that's also an assassin; what it can't do is fight a normal concave-oriented battle like a regular ranged combatant.
sc2 is a mass game, and as such, it is aimed at the masses - masses get mad and upset if something is too hard, because they want to feel good at it. Basic human behaviour
people got too used to winning off a deathball push, with no prior action to cripple the opponent required. Just a straight up "macro game" of "i take 3 bases, make army and go". If you suddenly tell them they have to play better, faster, multitask and practice micro to maintain the league they are in, they'll just bitch and moan that the changes are stupid, the game was perfect before and uisahfaiugbiuaieuRAAAAAAGE. If the game is to actually reward better micro, multitasking, mechanics and harassment, it should have been like that from the start
you will also not get any support from the pros, or at least not a lot of them, for the obvious reasons - why would they cripple their chances of winning and increase the practice time required? How many of the slower ones would drop out because of that? Plus koreans would just dominate harder ;3
On December 15 2012 23:18 AngryPenguin wrote: I'm trying to play but the channel is empty and I cannot find noone to play with on bnet T.T
We are, of course, working with the issue that every mod/custom game designer has when they start out: lack of publicity. This means that the channel will not be really heavily occupied until we take off, but people have been popping in and out of it for a little while.
Try asking some b.net friends if they would like to test out a new map that you found.
Very fun game mode. Just got finished trying out a couple games. It may not be balanced yet, but you can really feel some of the changes they are trying to get through. It is just close enough to sc2 to be similar, but just unique enough to create a different (possibly better) feeling game.
This all sounds great and I really hope you get the attention you deserve! It would be amazing if the community got behind this to the extent that it ultimately convinces Blizzard to make some much needed but risky design decisions to clear up the fundamental problems with the game. I'm not that hopeful... but fingers crossed! :D
One thing I would suggest is that I really feel like the widow mine needs to not hit air.. it just conceptually makes air harass feel far too coinflippy. If you have a flock of mutas (or possibly even phoenixes/oracles if air becomes more viable in PvT) and want to harass a mineral line.. you just can't know whether you're going to ravage an unprepared terran or if there's 4 widow mines buried in your path that can one shot your entire air force and effectively end the game. Now there is the option to get speed overseers.. but that's an additional investment and even then you're leashing your fast moving aerial harass unit to a 2.75 speed blimp. Then even when you have the overseer this still may not allow harass as mines outrange mutas so you either just try to avoid them entirely or have to sacrifice a 100/100 muta for every 75/25 mine in order to clear them.
It may well turn out to be the case that on the balance of probabilities muta harass versus mines gives a positive expected result for the zerg... but even if that's the case I still think having an important element of the game effectively be a lottery is bad design. On the other hand the Jotun seems like a vastly preferable option as it would provide much more meaningful interplay between the harasser and harassee :D
Also, no changes for the corruptor/muta/broodlord?
Oh yes and Gestation Spores was mentioned in the dynamics bit regarding the swarm host but doesn't appear to be anywhere else.. was this renamed to Potent Broods?
On December 15 2012 20:47 SaWse wrote: Nice wall of text I'm sure you put a lot of effort into this but I doubt blizzard will ever take any of you serious.
EPT
