EPT[D] Terran, TvP and game-design - Page 24
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1Ender
22 Posts
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frosecold
Venezuela76 Posts
And there is one real reason to get colossi or Hight Templars, its becaus you as prottoss NEED splash damage of some kind, be it colossi, HT, or archons... There is no other way to deal with MMM in mid late game, you say tanks? i was so sick of tanks in BW, they drop near ur ep and can turtle for ever!, im glad toss has a counter to that now, we have inmortals you have marines... | ||
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MLG_Wiggin
United States767 Posts
On October 04 2011 02:23 Apollo_Shards wrote: If he's playing in the matches then he should be even more aware that not dodging storms and feedback or getting off good emps will cost you the engagement. " 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. " That is EXACTLY what theorycrafting and balance discussion is. Edit: Checked your posting history. Dedicated this account to defending terrans in every balance discussion on this site I see. I also like this line "Imbalanced is a Zerg word. " Classy. It's actually the only account I have o_o I just don't understand where you are coming from. The overriding consensus in this thread is "nerf bio"... how is it a balance whine? As for defending Terran... I also think bio should be nerfed in this match up? I'm not trying to defend Terran here. I'm trying to say that you have a bunch of pros weighing in on this thread, maybe you should heed what they say? | ||
Whitewing
United States7483 Posts
But warp gates made them nerf most of the gateway units, and much of what Protoss needed for strategy variety wasn't there anymore. In the original design, Protoss had much better defensive structures, which compensated for the power of cloaked banshees somewhat, for example. Their cannons could phase and move around to relocate inside of power fields like how spore and spine crawlers can. This was removed because cannon rushing was too good if you could leap frog the cannons, but they never compensated by weakening the enemy units which were originally designed with phase cannons in mind. Out of all the races, Protoss feels the most incomplete. You can tell this very easily by examining the amount of upgrades each race has available that aren't just +1 weapons/armor/shield upgrades, upgrades that significantly affect the power/role of the unit. Now, they did have more, but for some weird reason, rather than balancing things by modifying upgrades, they just removed them flat out. It was still only two upgrades however. Hell, in the original game design, you could warp in every single protoss ground unit once you teched enough, including immortals and colossi. Just bad game design for the start, and it's catching up to toss. Terran: Barracks Tech Lab - 4 Factory Tech Lab - 3 Starport Tech Lab - 5 Engineering Bay - 3 Fusion Core - 2 Ghost Academy - 2 Total - 19 Zerg: Spawning Pool - 2 Lair - 4 Roach Warren - 2 Baneling Nest - 2 Hydralisk Den - 1 Infestation Pit - 2 Ultralisk Cavern - 1 Total - 14 Protoss: Cybernetics Core - 2 Twilight Council - 2 Templar Archives - 1 Fleet Beacon - 1 Robotics Bay - 3 Total - 9 Now look at the units each race has that are made regularly in games: Terran: Marine, Marauder, Ghost, Hellion, Siege Tank, Thor, Viking, Banshee, Raven, Medivac Units rarely seen at all: Reapers, Battlecruisers. Zerg: Zergling, Roach, Baneling, Hydralisk, Infestor, Mutalisk, Corrupter, Brood Lord, Queen, Ultralisk Units rarely seen at all: ...? Maybe hydras and ultras count because they kind of suck? Protoss: Zealot, Stalker, Sentry, High Templar, Dark Templar, Immortal, Observer, Colossus, Phoenix, Void Ray, Archon Units rarely seen at all: Warp Prism (this is starting to change), Carrier, Mothership. Now look at that list and think about which units are actually good and more than just a couple are made when the player makes them, and you'll find the terran list stays about the same (thor goes down to the rarely used list), the zerg list stays about the same (queen goes down since you usually make just one per hatch), but the Protoss unit list loses Dark Templar, Phoenix, and Void Rays (and observers too I guess) from the list of units. DT's, Phoenix and Void Rays are only really useful right when they come out, and you make a few at most of each, trying to get as much use out of each of them as possible when you make them in a macro game. More than 6 phoenix is too much, and more than 3-4 void rays nowadays is suicide. If you make more than 2-4 DT's for harass, you're just HOPING he didn't get detection. Terran has way more options for significant upgrades than both zerg and protoss, and zerg is way ahead of protoss. I hope we don't have to wait until legacy of the void to see an improvement here, but it seems likely that we will. Zerg is going to get the most attention in HotS, and terran got the most attention for WoL. I think the matchup stagnated to just bio vs toss because Toss is a half-finished race. If Protoss had a better response to bio, we'd see more mech play (it's just plain beefier and stronger). I think terran is 7/8 done as a race (minor tweaks), zerg is about 3/4 done (needs some small changes and maybe a major change or two like complete unit replacements), and Protoss is maybe halfway there. They only reason they win at all is that Blizzard overcompensated for the lack of Protoss variety by giving them some tier three units that are, frankly, too strong, but they have to be. | ||
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kiy0
Portugal593 Posts
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FILM
United States663 Posts
But most importantly I agree with the OP in that we should wait until HotS for answers to these larger issues. I cannot see a minor fix here or there aiding this game design issue. | ||
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Patriot.dlk
Sweden5462 Posts
If protoss play well and if blue flames don't outright kill a shitload of probes etc it's really hard. Right now I open reaper first and try to pin him to his base and scout and maybe snatch a probe kill. After a reaper reactor marines directly. Then I get fact asap armory asap and make 2 hellions when armory builds. Then you have 2 hellions and a reaper to get some shit done while you build up thors and marines and gets a command center. If I spot a really early nexus I might try to bust it. The hellions and the reaper need to try to reduce the number of forward pylons as much as possible . A late raven and thors need to block out obs and by then I deviate into something like a third, full switch to air, many tanks or whatever. Constantly need to try to do damage with hellions. When you move out be prepared for a base trade. This style is really fun at least but I feel like I have to do so much shit and and against someone who knows my style i feel so insecure :/ | ||
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Big J
Austria16289 Posts
On October 04 2011 03:24 Whitewing wrote: I think part of the problem in general is Blizzard's design for Protoss units in particular. You can see this quite obviously based on the progression path of development, but they had this idea that protoss units would have low DPS, high health, and their DPS would increase as the fight goes on. Units like the Soul Hunter and the Void Ray followed this progression. Only thing is, Blizzard later realized it was a terrible design and pulled the Soul Hunter (but kept the Void Ray?), but then never properly compensated Protoss for the roles these units were supposed to fill. The Soul Hunter, for example, was intended to be a bio ball killer that came out of the gateway that wasn't a caster, and was just a normal part of the army, and was ranged. In other words, they envisioned the Protoss gateway army being able to hold their own vs. the bioball when they came up with the original design for the game without needing colossi at all, even with ghosts. The unit attacked air and ground, but was bad vs. mech, very bad vs. mech. This is part of the reason the ghost seems so powerful with EMP and why it beats HT so easily: it was designed the way it is now when Protoss had a much stronger gateway army without tier 3, and hasn't been significantly changed since (only change IIRC is the cost change and the slight EMP nerf). But warp gates made them nerf most of the gateway units, and much of what Protoss needed for strategy variety wasn't there anymore. Out of all the races, Protoss feels the most incomplete. You can tell this very easily by examining the amount of upgrades each race has available that aren't just +1 weapons/armor/shield upgrades, upgrades that significantly affect the power/role of the unit. Now, they did have more, but for some weird reason, rather than balancing things by modifying upgrades, they just removed them flat out. It was still only two upgrades however. Terran: Barracks Tech Lab - 4 Factory Tech Lab - 3 Starport Tech Lab - 5 Engineering Bay - 3 Fusion Core - 2 Ghost Academy - 2 Total - 19 Zerg: Spawning Pool - 2 Lair - 4 Roach Warren - 2 Baneling Nest - 2 Hydralisk Den - 1 Infestation Pit - 2 Ultralisk Cavern - 1 Total - 14 Protoss: Cybernetics Core - 2 Twilight Council - 2 Templar Archives - 1 Fleet Beacon - 1 Robotics Bay - 3 Total - 9 Terran has way more options for significant upgrades than both zerg and protoss, and zerg is way ahead of protoss. I hope we don't have to wait until legacy of the void to see an improvement here, but it seems likely that we will. Zerg is going to get the most attention in HotS, and terran got the most attention for WoL. Zerg upgrades are mostly upgrades you need to make the unit playable at all. That goes by design of the Zerg race. (you get all units from hatch, but therefore the tech for a single unit is very expensive) -) zergling, roach, baneling speed are all required to make the units playable -) overlord speed was originally intentended to cost 50/50, so you would always get it once you have lair tech (as overlords already lost their detection tech) Terran upgrades follow the same guidelines. Because Terran is so low tech generally, the units kind of need to need upgrades. Else early Terran play would be OP, or lategame Terran play UP. Protoss is designed to have a complete techtree on the gateway. Upgrades should mostly provide options, rather than balancing the game. The focus for the upgrades is more on hightech units, because similar to terran, some of them were thought to be OP if they started with the upgrade. (Colossi, HTs, Carrier) | ||
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Whitewing
United States7483 Posts
On October 04 2011 03:41 Big J wrote: Zerg upgrades are mostly upgrades you need to make the unit playable at all. That goes by design of the Zerg race. (you get all units from hatch, but therefore the tech for a single unit is very expensive) -) zergling, roach, baneling speed are all required to make the units playable -) overlord speed was originally intentended to cost 50/50, so you would always get it once you have lair tech (as overlords already lost their detection tech) Terran upgrades follow the same guidelines. Because Terran is so low tech generally, the units kind of need to need upgrades. Else early Terran play would be OP, or lategame Terran play UP. Protoss is designed to have a complete techtree on the gateway. Upgrades should mostly provide options, rather than balancing the game. The focus for the upgrades is more on hightech units, because similar to terran, some of them were thought to be OP if they started with the upgrade. (Colossi, HTs, Carrier) I would disagree with this. Players use roaches all the time before they have speed or burrow (and often don't get roach burrow at all in a lot of games). Players make use of banelings defensively without getting speed as well, and then sometimes switch out of banelings instead of getting speed. You can make excellent use of most units without getting their major upgrade, as long as you aren't planning on basing your entire gameplan around that unit. Sure, some upgrades from each race are needed to really make those units shine, but you can make use of the units without the upgrade. People who play mech often open with a few marines to stop scouting and for some early defense and never get stim. Players don't always get blink for their stalkers, despite making stalkers. None of these upgrades, with the exception of warp gate is 100% required for every game regardless of strategy. They are options you can select to make a certain style of play significantly stronger. The fact that there are far fewer upgrades for Toss (and zerg to a lesser extent) speaks to the incompleteness of the races: it suggests flat out that they have fewer strategy options. The amount of upgrades available is indicative of the amount of theoretical variety each race can have. | ||
mr_chapy
Ecuador33 Posts
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humbre
353 Posts
On October 04 2011 03:27 kiy0 wrote: The TvP matchup got completely screwed up when Blizzard decided to lower the cost of ghosts. 90% of the game that go longer than the amount of time Terrans need to get 4 or 5 ghosts out are one-sided game. 2 good EMP are usually enough to decide a fight. One single and easy to land spell with ridiculous range can literally deal damage in the 3 digit category. you see you are whats wrong with this forum, completely clueless people write garbage out of their ass (no wonder most pro players stopped to read it), fyi in tvp matchup gas is not a problem you always starve on minerals it was already said by many pro terrans so you would expect even bronze players by now to know that but no ... | ||
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jlips6
United States5 Posts
while I agree that lategame protoss would benefit from more significant tech advanteges from upgrades, and more variety, protoss upgrades are meant to be more beneficial due to their timing. This makes even more sense when you analyze the chrono-boost mechanic. Simple upgrades from protoss are actually meant to be specifically gotten before other races in order to take advantage of timings. EX: (and here's something that not enough people take advantage of) the +1 armor upgrade on protoss gives zealots and sentries +2 armor. Do you know how significant that is? combined with guardian shield, that means a marine would do 2 damage per shot. This upgrade in this context is meant to give protoss a very specific advantage at a very specific time. Protoss upgrades do not fully contribute to their lategame potential like terran upgrades do. (ex: +2 structure armor? absurdly powerful upgrade! auto-tracker? Insanely useful!) The only lategame upgradse I would argue that contributes to protoss the same way that terran upgrades do are shield upgrades, and hallucination. The lack of depth in those upgrades is actually meant to encourage timings. There is depth, but it requires a lot of thought to pinpoint. | ||
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1st_Panzer_Div.
United States621 Posts
As far as not using mech goes, I think mech could be great vs toss, and the only reason we don't see it is because T wins more often than not by just going MMM/ghost viking. Sure it can burn them sometimes in the really late game, but looking at koreans it seems to be working very well for them. I'd love if they simply removed the maruder and then reduced the build time of siege tanks instead. Or give back firebats, but give firebats the bonus to armor and be armored... that would make for some insanely interesting micro battles in all MUs. Blitzing in with siege tanks and tactically sieging them was really cool in BW, the maruder has basically made unsieged tanks useless now. | ||
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Whitewing
United States7483 Posts
On October 04 2011 04:07 jlips6 wrote: on the topic of protoss upgrades: while I agree that lategame protoss would benefit from more significant tech advanteges from upgrades, and more variety, protoss upgrades are meant to be more beneficial due to their timing. This makes even more sense when you analyze the chrono-boost mechanic. Simple upgrades from protoss are actually meant to be specifically gotten before other races in order to take advantage of timings. EX: (and here's something that not enough people take advantage of) the +1 armor upgrade on protoss gives zealots and sentries +2 armor. Do you know how significant that is? combined with guardian shield, that means a marine would do 2 damage per shot. This upgrade in this context is meant to give protoss a very specific advantage at a very specific time. Protoss upgrades do not fully contribute to their lategame potential like terran upgrades do. (ex: +2 structure armor? absurdly powerful upgrade! auto-tracker? Insanely useful!) The only lategame upgradse I would argue that contributes to protoss the same way that terran upgrades do are shield upgrades, and hallucination. The lack of depth in those upgrades is actually meant to encourage timings. There is depth, but it requires a lot of thought to pinpoint. Right, this is why I didn't make any mention or comparison to the power of specific upgrades. I did not, for example, say that charge is weaker than stim. Rather, I was merely commenting on the amount of upgrades that exist, as it is a good indicator (although not sufficient in and of itself) of the level of the completeness of a race. I also want to point out that these upgrades are intended, mostly, to give units an additional function, not just make the unit better in combat. Zergling speed, for example, takes zerglings which had only the function of early defense, and it gives them more combat power. But it does more than that, it also allows them to take map control, and it allows them to threaten and commit to counter attacks and backstabs. It also lets them defend multiple locations because of how fast they can bounce back and forth. Overlord speed allows overlords to become good scouts in addition to making them better dropships and lets them flee attackers more easily. Stim significantly beefs up the attack power of bio units, but it makes bio drops much more potent as well as allowing bio units to play defense better (see muta harass vs. defending marines for example). Blink also works out well here: it makes the stalker much more potent in combat due to blink micro, but also gives stalkers a semi-decent harass function as well as making them much better in a defensive role. But upgrades which do not, in any way, change the options that a unit gives you aren't nearly as powerful. Charge for zealots makes them much stronger in a straight up fight, but they can't fill any additional role than they did before. They can't defend multiple bases better, you can't take map control with just chargelots. They don't get any better at harass, they just get beefier. The same goes for upgrades like the catapult for carriers and hydra range for hydralisks. These are poorly designed upgrades (not bad upgrades to get, obviously they are good, but the design for them is bad). For good game design, upgrades other than your standard +1 weapons or +1 armor should allow units to fill an additional function or give you more options for that unit, not just make them a little bit better at their existing function. Upgrades that just make units a little bit beefier aside from these +1 ups are badly designed. With specific focus in the TvP matchup and upgrades that are generally obtained: Examples of badly designed upgrades might be concussive shells, combat shields, and charge. These do not add extra functions to the units they enhance, but just make them a little stronger in combat. Examples of well designed upgrades in this matchup would be stim, blink, siege mode, and cloak. | ||
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NicolBolas
United States1388 Posts
On October 03 2011 19:27 Roblin wrote: agreed, as a matter of fact, how many units have been known to not have been changed? as in, what units have have the exact same stats as they did the very first time any knowledge was released to the public? as far as I know, these are the units that not been changed: all races: workers terran: marine (except for stim research) maruader (except for stim research) hellion (except for BF research) banshee ****************I think viking have had some change, but else this spot would say viking zerg: overlords (except for speed research (cost 50/50 in early beta)) zergling baneling ****************queen have had changes to their air attack right? hydralisk protoss: carrier DT correct me if im wrong None. Not "the very first time any knowledge was released to the public". All of those units had at least some changes. Marines dithered between 40 and 45 base Hp. Marauders did different amounts of damage. The Hellion upgrade once made them attack faster. Banshees used to be AoE. Banelings once didn't have an anti-building attack. Vikings used to be built from the Factory (they were ground units that became air units, not vice-versa). Queens used to be radically different. Hydralisks and Roaches traded places between Tier 1 and Tier 2 a lot. Even SCVs got dropped by 15 Hp (they used to be 60 like SC1). I don't have certain knowledge of the other three (Zerglings, Carriers, and DTs), but I seriously doubt that they never touched their stats or upgrades at all. On October 03 2011 22:49 jeffvip wrote: Simple, that's the reason why player choose Terran instead of Protoss or Zerg. If I want mobility I'll prefer playing as Zerg & to play as Protoss if I like high tech unit. Terran literary means dirty, slow, heavy metal, strong fire power and space control. Then why have the Barracks at all? If you want every Terran game to be about what comes out of the Factory, then just take away the Barracks entirely. Get rid of the Starports too; no point in keeping them around. Those units are too mobile, what with their ability to fly. Nope, we need more Siege Tanks, Thors, and Hellions. I just want one matchup where Terrans aren't just building Factory stuff. Just one matchup where they have to go with Bio or Air or something else. Just one. Is that really too much to ask? I can understand if you want a unit more interesting than the Marauder, which is more or less point-and-click. But that should be done by making a unit that is more interesting, not by saying, "I want more Tanks!" On October 04 2011 03:46 Whitewing wrote: I would disagree with this. Players use roaches all the time before they have speed or burrow (and often don't get roach burrow at all in a lot of games). Players make use of banelings defensively without getting speed as well, and then sometimes switch out of banelings instead of getting speed. You can make excellent use of most units without getting their major upgrade, as long as you aren't planning on basing your entire gameplan around that unit. Sure, some upgrades from each race are needed to really make those units shine, but you can make use of the units without the upgrade. People who play mech often open with a few marines to stop scouting and for some early defense and never get stim. Players don't always get blink for their stalkers, despite making stalkers. None of these upgrades, with the exception of warp gate is 100% required for every game regardless of strategy. They are options you can select to make a certain style of play significantly stronger. The fact that there are far fewer upgrades for Toss (and zerg to a lesser extent) speaks to the incompleteness of the races: it suggests flat out that they have fewer strategy options. The amount of upgrades available is indicative of the amount of theoretical variety each race can have. A simple count of upgrades has no bearing on the strategic options to a race. An upgrade is not a unit of "strategery" or something. It is simply an upgrade. Some upgrades are pretty much necessary to extend the life of a unit. You will almost never build Hydralisks without getting range. You will almost never spend very long on Zerglings without speed. If you're going for Roaches at all, you will get speed as soon as conditions permit. Marauders without Concussive Shells aren't worth much. And can you even call them Siege Tanks without Siege Mode? Notice how most of the Terran upgrades are of the "I need this in order to use this unit significantly" variety. You wouldn't dare invest heavily in Bio without getting Stim, Concussive Shells, and Combat Shields. You wouldn't dare invest heavily in Tanks without getting Siege Mode; that'd be stupid. And so forth. Oh sure, you might see a Zerg build a small group of Zerglings without speed, but they're only building those to defend or harass until they get the units that they want. There are "necessary" upgrades and there are elective upgrades. The latter are the ones that you choose to use in order to cause some effect. You pick this as part of an overall strategy beyond "this unit is a big part of my unit composition." There is also a third category of upgrades: useless ones. These are things you will never get. They're never worthwhile to even bother with. And a lot of the SC2 Terran upgrades are things you never bother with. When was the last time someone got the bunker upgrade or building armor or High-Sec Auto-tracking in a professional match? When was the last time you saw Strike Cannons? Seeker Missile is a bit more likely, but even it is still rather iffy. Virtually every Zerg upgrade is useful. You won't necessarily always use it, but they are useful. So if you subtract, let's say 3, from the Terran count, you get 16. The main reason that the Protoss have fewer upgrades is that their third spellcaster (Mothership, in case you forgot. Don't feel bad; it's easy to forget that thing exists) has no upgrades. It's too expensive, in both time and money, to add a bunch of upgrades onto its already high cost. I'm not going to defend Blizzard on the Mothership thing; that is not how you design a unit that you can only build one of. So if there's a lack of strategic play around upgrades with the Protoss, you can point to the Mothership taking up valuable spellcaster space. But a lack of Protoss upgrades is not an indication of them being unfinished. It's an indication of the Mothership's existence. And if you want to count upgrades, here's how SC1 did it: Terran: 18 Academy: 5 Machine Shop: 4 Control Tower: 2 Science Facility: 3 Covert Ops: 4 Zerg: 15 Spawning Pool: 2 Hydralisk Den: 3 Hatchery/Lair/Hive: 4 Queen's Nest: 2 Ultralisk Cavern: 2 Defiler Nest: 2 Protoss: 21 Cybernetics Core: 1 Robotics Support Bay: 3 Observatory: 2 Fleet Beacon: 5 Arbiter Tribunal: 3 Citadel of Adun: 1 Templar Archives: 6 What does this tell us? The Protoss have 50% more upgrades than the Zerg; are the Zerg "unfinished" in SC1? But look at what most of the Protoss upgrades are. The plurality of their upgrades are for spellcasters. Upgrades for HTs, Dark Archons, Arbiters, and Corsairs (which are in fact spellcasters) make up almost half of their upgrades. Did having those upgrades make them so much more "strategic" than the SC1 Zerg? One thing that Blizzard did in SC2 was take away a lot of these upgrades. You don't have to tech to a Fleet Beacon and research something to give Phoenixes Graviton Beam; they come with it for free. If Corsairs came with D-Web, you can be sure that Corsairs would have been a much more frequently used unit. It wasn't that D-Web wasn't good; it was a good spell, and on a relatively cheap, semi-massable unit. But the tech investment was simply never worth it. Blizzard recognized a lot of these cases in SC2 and rightly removed them. Similarly, Blizzard wanted early-game spellcasters in the game. The Sentry and the Ghosts (the Queen was supposed to be the Zerg equivalent, but she got stuck on Larva duty). Something low-tech and fairly heavy on the gas, but could make an immediate impact with proper micro. In order to do that, they had to give those units spells immediately. They still had some spells that would be upgraded. But the units both have two spells that require no research. Upgrades, in and of themselves, don't mean anything for the available strategic options. You can't just count upgrades and say, "Race X is more strategic than Race Y". You have to look at the whole picture. | ||
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Whitewing
United States7483 Posts
On October 04 2011 04:29 NicolBolas wrote: None. Not "the very first time any knowledge was released to the public". All of those units had at least some changes. Marines dithered between 40 and 45 base Hp. Marauders did different amounts of damage. The Hellion upgrade once made them attack faster. Banshees used to be AoE. Banelings once didn't have an anti-building attack. Vikings used to be built from the Factory (they were ground units that became air units, not vice-versa). Queens used to be radically different. Hydralisks and Roaches traded places between Tier 1 and Tier 2 a lot. Even SCVs got dropped by 15 Hp (they used to be 60 like SC1). I don't have certain knowledge of the other three (Zerglings, Carriers, and DTs), but I seriously doubt that they never touched their stats or upgrades at all. Then why have the Barracks at all? If you want every Terran game to be about what comes out of the Factory, then just take away the Barracks entirely. Get rid of the Starports too; no point in keeping them around. Those units are too mobile, what with their ability to fly. Nope, we need more Siege Tanks, Thors, and Hellions. I just want one matchup where Terrans aren't just building Factory stuff. Just one matchup where they have to go with Bio or Air or something else. Just one. Is that really too much to ask? I can understand if you want a unit more interesting than the Marauder, which is more or less point-and-click. But that should be done by making a unit that is more interesting, not by saying, "I want more Tanks!" A simple count of upgrades has no bearing on the strategic options to a race. An upgrade is not a unit of "strategery" or something. It is simply an upgrade. Some upgrades are pretty much necessary to extend the life of a unit. You will almost never build Hydralisks without getting range. You will almost never spend very long on Zerglings without speed. If you're going for Roaches at all, you will get speed as soon as conditions permit. Marauders without Concussive Shells aren't worth much. And can you even call them Siege Tanks without Siege Mode? Notice how most of the Terran upgrades are of the "I need this in order to use this unit significantly" variety. You wouldn't dare invest heavily in Bio without getting Stim, Concussive Shells, and Combat Shields. You wouldn't dare invest heavily in Tanks without getting Siege Mode; that'd be stupid. And so forth. Oh sure, you might see a Zerg build a small group of Zerglings without speed, but they're only building those to defend or harass until they get the units that they want. There are "necessary" upgrades and there are elective upgrades. The latter are the ones that you choose to use in order to cause some effect. You pick this as part of an overall strategy beyond "this unit is a big part of my unit composition." There is also a third category of upgrades: useless ones. These are things you will never get. They're never worthwhile to even bother with. And a lot of the SC2 Terran upgrades are things you never bother with. When was the last time someone got the bunker upgrade or building armor or High-Sec Auto-tracking in a professional match? When was the last time you saw Strike Cannons? Seeker Missile is a bit more likely, but even it is still rather iffy. Virtually every Zerg upgrade is useful. You won't necessarily always use it, but they are useful. So if you subtract, let's say 3, from the Terran count, you get 16. The main reason that the Protoss have fewer upgrades is that their third spellcaster (Mothership, in case you forgot. Don't feel bad; it's easy to forget that thing exists) has no upgrades. It's too expensive, in both time and money, to add a bunch of upgrades onto its already high cost. I'm not going to defend Blizzard on the Mothership thing; that is not how you design a unit that you can only build one of. So if there's a lack of strategic play around upgrades with the Protoss, you can point to the Mothership taking up valuable spellcaster space. And if you want to count upgrades, here's how SC1 did it: Terran: 18 Academy: 5 Machine Shop: 4 Control Tower: 2 Science Facility: 3 Covert Ops: 4 Zerg: 15 Spawning Pool: 2 Hydralisk Den: 3 Hatchery/Lair/Hive: 4 Queen's Nest: 2 Ultralisk Cavern: 2 Defiler Nest: 2 Protoss: 21 Cybernetics Core: 1 Robotics Support Bay: 3 Observatory: 2 Fleet Beacon: 5 Arbiter Tribunal: 3 Citadel of Adun: 1 Templar Archives: 6 What does this tell us? The Protoss have 50% more upgrades than the Zerg; are the Zerg "unfinished" in SC1? But look at what most of the Protoss upgrades are. The plurality of their upgrades are for spellcasters. Upgrades for HTs, Dark Archons, Arbiters, and Corsairs (which are in fact spellcasters) make up almost half of their upgrades. Did having those upgrades make them so much more "strategic" than the SC1 Zerg? One thing that Blizzard did in SC2 was take away a lot of these upgrades. You don't have to tech to a Fleet Beacon and research something to give Phoenixes Graviton Beam; they come with it for free. If Corsairs came with D-Web, you can be sure that Corsairs would have been a much more frequently used unit. It wasn't that D-Web wasn't good; it was a good spell, and on a relatively cheap, semi-massable unit. But the tech investment was simply never worth it. Blizzard recognized a lot of these cases in SC2 and rightly removed them. Similarly, Blizzard wanted early-game spellcasters in the game. The Sentry and the Ghosts (the Queen was supposed to be the Zerg equivalent, but she got stuck on Larva duty). Something low-tech and fairly heavy on the gas, but could make an immediate impact with proper micro. In order to do that, they had to give those units spells immediately. They still had some spells that would be upgraded. But the units both have two spells that require no research. Upgrades, in and of themselves, don't mean anything for the available strategic options. You can't just count upgrades and say, "Race X is more strategic than Race Y". You have to look at the whole picture. Well, there's a big difference between 21 vs. 15 upgrades and 19 vs. 9, but yeah, just the count in and of itself is insufficient, merely indicative. But you also made a point in the favor of what I'm talking about: SC2 got rid of a lot of those upgrades that existed in SC1, for all races. But read what I wrote above about the purpose of upgrades: what is the purpose of upgrades specifically? Would marines be completely useless in the game if upgrades didn't exist? The purpose of upgrades is to give you additional uses for the units that you are upgrading. I would also say that some of the upgrades you listed aren't useless, against heavy muta play, every terran should get hi-sec auto-tracking and probably building armor too. It significantly weakens a massive investment from zerg with minimal expenditure from terran. The only upgrades terran has that I would consider to be worthless are the Cadeceus reactor and neosteel frames. But my argument about the race being unfinished was based upon the entirety of the post above, which also included arguments around units that were removed during development, (all three races were designed in tandem with each other, but Blizzard failed to appropriately compensate for unit removal by balancing other races properly), a lack of ability to make use of entire trees of tech aside from specific timings in all matchups, and how much of the race is entirely unused due to design flaws. | ||
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Roxy
Canada753 Posts
That is like saying when the toss has no colosi or templar vs bio, toss is screwed. A race has those units at their disposal and if they opt not to use it and lose because of it that is their own fault. I also disagree about the affectiveness of tanks. Protoss gets decimated when they attak into seiged tanks. The only time I would attack a decent amount of MMT is if the tanks were unseiged. I agree that as far as army control goes, it is more tedious for the terran to position things, but it is also frustrating for protoss to have every unit in their arsenal be less cost effective with the exception of the colosus. | ||
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VPVash
United States139 Posts
On October 01 2011 06:16 Thorzain wrote: I feel that TvP IS really micro intensive. EMP everything, move your units out of storms, focus fire individual colossi with vikings and kite zealots if he's zealot heavy. And while you're kiting zealots you have to move back your ghosts so that they dont all get killed in the blink of an eye. All these things at the same time. It's freaking hard if you ask me! Also Thorzain, what about Terran macro....I think it's really hard trying to macro as terran kiting and everything else. But I still don't know how I feel about this match up. Maybe before engaging as toss, have a Warp prism in the main of the terrans base and warp in like 6 DT's and force him to engage your army....but over Idk just trying to throw some suggestions out there. GL HF GG's | ||
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Hider
Denmark9341 Posts
"Bio is boring to play/watch" "Tanks are fun". OBv. i agree that from a game design perspective mech should be more viable vs toss. I dont mind opening bio, doing some dropping, establishing a 3rd while transiitoning into mech late game. This would require a complete redesign however (which I hope they will do in HOTS). A solution could be like this: 1) Change the design og the collosus to make it worse vs mech and slightly stronger vs bio. However the mehanics required to use this unit optimal should be much much higher. 2) Combined with the collosus change, emp should be reworked. Let emp drain energy instant but do dmg to shield over a small time period (e.g. 2 secs). 3) Buff hellions to make them stronger vs protoss ground units, while unchanged in strenght vs zerg/terran. This will prob require that they become stronger vs non light armored units, or perhaps has a mechanic that make it harder for opp to use lack of mobility (like vultures had in bw with mines). Again this would require a somewhat rechange of the hellions. IMO these 3 factors would together result in a much more entertaining and dynamic tvp. | ||
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EnderSword
Canada669 Posts
He acknowledges that some players simply don't play the style he's complaining about, but then says he didn't bother to check if those guys were doing well. Whole thing seems silly, 'We only play this style....except for 1/1/1 which is dominating the scene, and mech play which I'm ignoring' If most people wrote this, it'd just be closed. The bioball right now is pretty successful, so there's not a lot of incentive to move away from it. There was a time when mech was almost unstoppable, and 1/1/1 shows the ability to mix bio and mech early for amazing results. There's a lot of options here and we see more all the time, I don't think its bad design that people use viable strategies. | ||
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