[D] Terran, TvP and game-design - Page 23

On October 01 2011 05:49 PredY wrote:
How about you having wrong unit composition? He has collosus and you have no vikings? You lose. He has storms and you have no EMPs?

On October 04 2011 01:46 PredY wrote:

no im not kidding. blings counter marines right? until people realized with good control you can split the marines and mitigate bling damage as much as possible. try that with tanks vs immortals. it's just the hard counter design which blizzard went for.

On October 04 2011 01:46 PredY wrote:

no im not kidding. blings counter marines right? until people realized with good control you can split the marines and mitigate bling damage as much as possible. try that with tanks vs immortals. it's just the hard counter design which blizzard went for.

On October 01 2011 05:49 PredY wrote:

3.2 TvP


I talked about TvZ and TvT. Do you know what those matchups have in common? Tanks. Tanks made BW so awesome. Tanks make TvZ and TvT in SC2 very fun to play/watch. You can control ground, abuse the terrain, siege. They take a lot of skill to play with but the reward is high, but not in TvP. It's quite sad but almost every protoss unit counters them. Do you remember when tanks did 60 damage? Good times. They were actually quite useful back then. Right now, i wanna cry every time i have 20 of them slaughtered in 10 seconds.

I must admit, on some maps, tanks are quite viable. For example, on Shakuras, it's possible to play marine tank with support (ghost/banshee) - an example is a game from Shoutcraft 3 DDE vs Socke (VOD). Unfortunately, on most maps it's suicidide to go anything but bio (f.e. Taldarim). It works well on Shakuras because there's not much room to blink harass and 3base is quite safe, then split map situation favors terran.

So what is the reason TvP is all bio? Marauders and warpgates. It's unfortunate that TvP got screwed because tanks were "too strong" in TvZ and were nerfed. Marauders are much more cost effective vs protoss. Hell i hate them, marauders. Such a boring unit. Even more than collosus. You make marine marauder then switch to marine marauder and in late game transition into marine marauder, errrr wait a minute...there's just no option like in other matchups.Warpgates is in my oppinion the worst game mechanic they could put into the game, but that has been discussed to death. I really DO HOPE they will change it in HoTS, but i don't expect so.

Another issue i have with TvP is there's minimum micro in fights, all you do is make concave before the fight them stim and run in. Cast some emps. Then you watch if you have enough or not. Theres no micro against banelings or infestors like in TvZ. Micro will never save your ass like in TvZ. Good position will never save your ass like in TvT, because you have no tanks, and warpgates are pretty good eh! Nothings angers me more than cutting off protoss expo from his main army and have 20 zealots warped in to my back, same with drops.

How about you having wrong unit composition? He has collosus and you have no vikings? You lose. He has storms and you have no EMPs? You lose. Remember when in BW you had no tanks but you could still kill lurkers with godly micro? Or when you have too many vultures against a lot of dragoons but not enough tanks, you would go in and surround with mines and then 10 goons turned to blue goo? I want THAT!


4 Conclusion


Thanks for reading!

On October 04 2011 02:01 Apollo_Shards wrote:


Why is this thread features? It seems to me its just broodwar reminiscing disguised as what I consider poor theory crafting. Most of these statements arent even correct.

Minimum micro fights? All you do is concave? I dont know what matches you've been watching where are you do is that but with EMPs, focus fire, feedback, storms and stutter step that is a ton more than "just a concave". And whining about warpgates because you didnt scout a pylon while you contained him? Then you didnt contain him, simple as that. Its silly to think that protoss should just stay in their base if a terran is outside with units. Thats like saying you get frustrated because zerg can build 10 drones at a time. Complaining about the basic function of a race is pointless. And for the last part of not knowing what he has? Terrans have this thing called scan. It's free, there are quite a bit of them, and they scout a large area.

This really just seems like a way for the poster to show how he thinks broodwar is superior with poor arguments made to help hide that.

On October 04 2011 02:03 sVnteen wrote:
really awesome post

i agree with everything but the point that micro isnt a part of tvp

i mean its certainly not much micro involved for toss (guardian shield +a-move+storm)
but for terran you have to do quite a lot of things if you dont want to get completely shredded (emp+focusfire with vikings+dodge remaining storms+stutterstep vs zealots)

also if you engage in a bad position with terran vs p ur sooooo dead since some ffs will just trap you and you will die horribly

On October 04 2011 02:01 Apollo_Shards wrote:
Why is this thread features? It seems to me its just broodwar reminiscing disguised as what I consider poor theory crafting. Most of these statements arent even correct.

Minimum micro fights? All you do is concave? I dont know what matches you've been watching where are you do is that but with EMPs, focus fire, feedback, storms and stutter step that is a ton more than "just a concave". And whining about warpgates because you didnt scout a pylon while you contained him? Then you didnt contain him, simple as that. Its silly to think that protoss should just stay in their base if a terran is outside with units. Thats like saying you get frustrated because zerg can build 10 drones at a time. Complaining about the basic function of a race is pointless. And for the last part of not knowing what he has? Terrans have this thing called scan. It's free, there are quite a bit of them, and they scout a large area.

This really just seems like a way for the poster to show how he thinks broodwar is superior with poor arguments made to help hide that.

On October 04 2011 02:01 neoghaleon55 wrote:
Am I the only one that sees these threads for what they really are?
Really well concealed balance whines.
"wow...tvp is not as fun as broodwars because I can't use tanks!"
is exactly what it came down to.
-tanks are useless
-if they get collosi or templar, I die
-it's so hard!
-i don't want to play anymore!


I have to support thorzaine's comment that tvp does require a lot more micro than you give it credit for. And if you also retract your statements, you should include them in the OP, instead of telling people that you posted something later in the thread.

On October 04 2011 02:01 neoghaleon55 wrote:
Am I the only one that sees these threads for what they really are?
Really well concealed balance whines.
"wow...tvp is not as fun as broodwars because I can't use tanks!"
is exactly what it came down to.
-tanks are useless
-if they get collosi or templar, I die
-it's so hard!
-i don't want to play anymore!


I have to support thorzaine's comment that tvp does require a lot more micro than you give it credit for. And if you also retract your statements, you should include them in the OP, instead of telling people that you posted something later in the thread.

On October 04 2011 02:07 MLG_Wiggin wrote:


What matches has he been watching? Probably some of the ones he's been playing in.
http://wiki.teamliquid.net/starcraft2/Predy
This isn't a thread about theorycrafting or balance or specific games. It's not featured for that. It's featured because a pro player made a well thought out thread about what many consider a design flaw in the game that effects this particular match up.




I don't understand how you can call this a balance whining thread. Nothing in OP or any of the pro/blue posters have said anything other then basicly that bio is actually too strong and it limits the DESIGN of the MU. Nothing about balance.

On October 04 2011 02:01 neoghaleon55 wrote:
Am I the only one that sees these threads for what they really are?
Really well concealed balance whines.
"wow...tvp is not as fun as broodwars because I can't use tanks!"
is exactly what it came down to.
-tanks are useless
-if they get collosi or templar, I die
-it's so hard!
-i don't want to play anymore!


I have to support thorzaine's comment that tvp does require a lot more micro than you give it credit for. And if you also retract your statements, you should include them in the OP, instead of telling people that you posted something later in the thread.

On October 04 2011 01:46 PredY wrote:

no im not kidding. blings counter marines right? until people realized with good control you can split the marines and mitigate bling damage as much as possible. try that with tanks vs immortals. it's just the hard counter design which blizzard went for.

On October 04 2011 01:12 BADSMCGEE wrote:
predy, heaven forbid you should have to scout and counter an INCREDIBLY expensive tech choice that takes multiple minutes to begin paying for itself...Not to mention BOTH of which are not even choices from toss perspective...after 6 medivacs hit the field you NEED AOE. so NOT having ghosts AND vikings is just mind-numbing. Consider all of the aggressive options that terran has that are low risk but potentially yield game ending results if the toss doesn't scout and split and defend against them perfectly. how severe of a mistake do you feel like you need to make to lose the game?

On October 04 2011 02:06 Apollo_Shards wrote:


Rofl, ok we'll just ignore the forcefields, storm, feedback, focus fire, and blink and call that A moving.

On October 03 2011 19:42 Deezl wrote:
I'm entirely confused about why this thread is spotlighted for game analysis. The OP's post has exactly one source, which is Dustin Browder's interview where he talks about the design of the game and how it is balanced and so on and so forth. Its a good insight, that the PvT and PvZ matchups were balanced around the power of Colossus and all matchups suffered as a result. But I don't believe that new ground was covered here that deserved a spotlight. I'll go into detail on the OP, and then go on a huge rant on to the replies that have followed and as to why you should reconsider hitting the post button sometimes if you're not that great of a player. It will be glorious.

PredY - Summarizing
PredY greatly dislikes the (lack of) unit diversity that is present in TvP, because he likes Tanks for their strategic play and hates Marauders because playing them is a bit like bashing your head against the wall (bashing your army into the Toss's base). The standard composition, MMM + Ghosts or Vikings, he feels, is forced when playing vs. P because its the best composition possible, even in endgame situations, because charge Zealots hard counter tanks and are available at all times, while a well-controlled Marauder-Ghost-Medivac-whatever ball can beat Charge Zeals extremely cost-effectively, and do bonus damage against everything else that P has. So MMM with subtle variations is VERY strong vs. P, because it can handle every composition thrown at it. Checklist?

Zealot - useless without excellent FFs or charge. Marauder-Ghost
Stalker - only cost-effective vs vikings in the air. Marauder-anything
Sentry - Does no damage and is countered by EMP, but early and seeing a lot of use makes it a good unit.
Immortal - Deals bonus damage to Marauders! But gets bonus damage dealt to it by Marauders... countered by marines, doubly so because each Immortal made is not a colossus. Also countered by Ghosts.
Phoenix/Void Ray/Carrier - Vikings, Marines, and Terran may choose to add Thors... overall just good for harassment.
High Templar - Terran adds Ghosts. You get to play the Ghost vs. HT mini-game to see if you can land storms or not. Too many ghosts and you need Colossus. If anyone makes a major mistake the game ends.
Colossus - Terran adds Vikings, both players take more bases and add Ghosts and HTs or Pheonix and continue to upgrade their ground army.

Therefore you can take on anything with with Bio vs. Protoss. There's no rock paper scissors but for the openings, and Bio FORCES High Templar or Colossus (and is still effective vs it). Also right now, P has no really valid timings against T that don't involve tier 3 tech, because they all got nerfed, so P can no longer do any kind of contain to force medivacs or tanks to bust.


There are some good arguments against this; Mech can hit pre-chargelot timings, 1/1/1 into contain, Goody argument, but basically what Predy wants is for positional, traditional tank-based PvT from broodwar. But that's just what Predy wants. At least 66% of the Starcraft II population doesn't care (P and Z players). And lot of T players like playing Bio. So why spotlight this thread?



Wait, what? Tanks are what make the game good and tactical? You want to go mech vs. P ... just because its more fun? Then do it. Make it fun. Find ways to keep them tanks alive.



If you take away my warpgates you have to give me Blink Dragoons. Try to get tanks rolling then, bud! I'm sorry you got caught between my army and my base but you KNOW that I can do that and you STILL get bodied by it then you need to re-evaluate your strategy.



While TvZ and ZvZ are more micro intensive, TvP is not short on Micro by any stretch, and you can always improve your spreading, stutter stepping and multitasking with drops. Over-microing can be bad, which I'm fine with. If you want more "skill" units to be added to HoTS, that's fine and I'm all for it, but the micro in TvP is present and still developing.



What kind of paragraph is this? Did you think about using a scan? This isn't even true because you can hit marauder-medivac timings before 2 colossus or Templar have storm and do massive damage while getting the right tech online, or drop to delay pushes to get your tech online, or just go raw marauder and split the army with drops and try to snipe them. In order to make Vikings you have to SWAP A BUILDING. Ghost academy is a tier 1.5 building that costs 100gas and builds fairly quick. And you should have EMPs anyway. I'm sorry you can't counter my tier 3 AoE 150-200 gas units with just marines and marauders. I'm sorry Protoss doesn't have shots that you can dodge 100% of the time if your micro is amazing.




So tl;dr, Predy's post reads much more like a "Please bring back tanks to TvP" rant than a history, a balance discussion or anything else. I'm all for new strategies that raise the skill cap and input new units and builds into the scene, I think everyone is. But that doesn't make posts on the subject spotlight worthy. His replies, however, are quite good (about how Marauders decrease the skill cap, etc). But I think what he'll find is that we're not quite as deep into Starcraft II as he thinks we are.