EPTWhy the Warhound should NOT be balanced - Page 10
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kaOz1985
Germany20 Posts
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testthewest
Germany274 Posts
On September 10 2012 17:28 architecture wrote: They've dug themselves into too deep of a hole with: 1. Ridiculous macro mechanics that accelerate the game superfast 2. Sentries (which forces junk like roaches and marauders to compensate) 3. Ridiculous amounts of mobility that negate position What happens when you have game where you can't hold position? Every army needs to be able to fight on the move at sufficiently high EV, or be easily outmaneuvered and completely crushed 2) is wrong in my opinion. Not sentries force roaches, roaches force sentries. Roaches kill every gateway unit, that's why forcefield are needed to survive. Furthermore: There is a hugh difference between good and bad forcefields, and doing it right is often not trivial (otherwise: why do you see so many pros fail at them?). I agree that forcefields suck, become they seem to be the reason why gateway units are so bad. | ||
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Cabinet Sanchez
Australia1097 Posts
On September 10 2012 22:57 Fairwell wrote: Is there a single reason (like any reason at all) that the warhound in its current state should stay and make it into SC2:HOTS release? Developer time Money Lazyness Stubborness Ignorance | ||
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NickAbc423
United States10 Posts
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testthewest
Germany274 Posts
On September 11 2012 04:45 unteqair wrote: All units in this game are a-move. From time to time you might studder step or pull/blink an injured unit back, but beyond that there is little. The flaw in this game is how it's so vital to move in big balls. Instead of multiple fronts being the norm, they are a rarity. It's not just the warhound; it's everything. As much as no one wants to admit it, people don't like the warhound because it counters stalkers and immortals, two fan favorites. It's not about balance. I wish the guy who designed BW designed this game. Let's not get hyperbole. You need some basic units. Furthermore is blinking, marine splitting or zergling surrounding micro. It's not so hard, that only Flash can do it, still there are gradual differences from a diamond player splitting up to Marineking levels. Same for the others mentioned. You can't have 200 supply and all of they special fairy units, each needing special treatment to do anything. Even the Immortal is a good unit, because it forces you to targetfire, if you want to use him to real effect. Collosus is also a nice unit, not because of it's need to be microed (even thou in very high level play you have to, or vikings shred them before the fight starts), but because they force a response. A game, in which you could use any unit you liked, no matter what the opponent did, and just won because you microed like a god will just look like WC3. I think Warhound should be removed, because it's too close to the marauder, and the marauder (having stim, and weaknesses like light armor) is the better unit. Furthermore it has the feel of a bio unit, not mech. | ||
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EnE
417 Posts
In my opinion, the swarm host is just as good an example of this. Right now, it's used far too often in lategame to an overpowered degree because it's utility is too great. It's obvious the locusts should be a melee unit and perhaps have more movement speed instead, but blizzard are keeping them ranged in a desperate attempt for them to be different from broodlings. Because of this, blizzard is instead of nerfing the range of the SH or Locust, nerfing their damage output. This creates weaker units, and a one-dimensional, low multitasking style of gameplay. Nerfing their damage makes their use in midgame less interesting, instead of nerfing them where they needed it, in larger numbers. It's LAZY BALANCING. If blizzard doesn't realize this and change their design philosophy NOW to what it was in broodwar, big strengths and big weaknesses for units instead of letting them have enormous overlap and just nerfing their damage until they all suck, then I have very little hope for HotS. | ||
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Forikorder
Canada8840 Posts
once people figured out how to micro Thors (thank you MKP) there became no such thing as an Amove unit | ||
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Brahoono
119 Posts
On September 11 2012 07:33 Forikorder wrote: people call EVERY unit an amove unit then people figure out "hey if i jsut micro it then it becomes alot better" once people figured out how to micro Thors (thank you MKP) there became no such thing as an Amove unit ofc every unit is microable no matter how simple it is. But that's not the point here...it's about how much potential the unit has when a really good player uses it. You got this with Vultures or Mutas in scbw...the effectiveness of the unit is hugely dependent to how good a player uses it. You won't really have that with a Thor or a Warhound. Bio in sc2 is similar to that though...this style in general has a really high skillceiling. | ||
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fer
Canada375 Posts
-orb- wrote: "Even if you do not agree with me about high skill mechanics being necessary and even vital to the success of Starcraft 2 as an esport, what is the justification for putting in a unit that fills exactly the same role as the marauder? Terran already has an attack move, hyper mobile, tanky, high dps unit that can only attack ground. Why do they need a second one?" Was this orb-Chief Game Designer speaking, or just orb-Protoss player? It's a very concerning trend. Every time one of these write-ups posted by closet-intellectuals pops up in Teamliquid, if the word count is high enough, the community seems to just swallow it all up. The positive-feedback loop is never ending, and I can't help but to feel Blizzard feels obligated to pander to the circlejerk in fear of losing popularity or whatever. I've no doubt Blizzard is filled with competent people who can dissect a post like this and realize it mostly means nothing, but nonetheless community response is often times so overwhelming. 1/5, should've been a blog. | ||
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Xahhk
Canada540 Posts
On September 11 2012 08:01 fer wrote: While I stopped taking this pseudo-essay seriously somewhere between the second and third paragraph, I have to admit he saved his best for the last one. Was this orb-Chief Game Designer speaking, or just orb-Protoss player? It's a very concerning trend. Every time one of these write-ups posted by closet-intellectuals pops up in Teamliquid, if the word count is high enough, the community seems to just swallow it all up. The positive-feedback loop is never ending, and I can't help but to feel Blizzard feels obligated to pander to the circlejerk in fear of losing popularity or whatever. I've no doubt Blizzard is filled with competent people who can dissect a post like this and realize it mostly means nothing, but nonetheless community response is often times so overwhelming. 1/5, should've been a blog. This is true, I don't he mentioned the fact that Blizzard entirely intended the warhound to be an a-move unit to complement everything else that needs to be micro'd (especially marauders in tvp-ease of doing so is debatable but you still need to micro). | ||
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Cainam
United States421 Posts
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ssregitoss
Turkey241 Posts
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EsportsJohn
United States4883 Posts
There was this thing called "skill". You could shoot a guy if you camped in the right spot and shot as he came around the corner. But a pro could do a 360 and do the same thing, and faster too. In BW, you could decimate a worker line with a reaver, but a pro could do that too...plus macro perfectly behind it as well as microing a push at the front. It was this thing called "skill" that separated the two players. Easy to learn, hard to master. Blizzard has said several times that they wanted to implement ways for newer players to stay interested; however, they are doing this by encouraging WINS, not LEARNING. The fundamental problem here with the way Blizzard is trying to balance SC2 is that they want newer players to have bigger steps that are less rewarding as opposed to smaller steps that are quite rewarding. They don't want new/low level players to overcome little things like worker splitting, basic macro, basic micro, etc; they want them to instead be able to go into a game and be able to win. This is a HUGE problem. It's the same approach Infinity Ward took when they destroyed CoD with MW3. Raising the skill floor and trying to balance the rest of the game around this misperceived notion of "fun" only causes more and more problems in the competitive world as things that were commonly used in high level strategy and high level thought are done away with in favor of "helping the average joe out". If Blizzard wants to make the game more fun and more exciting for everyone, they really need to look at creating smaller, more rewarding steps than instawin buttons. It's the mastery of something as relatively inconsequent and simple as a zealot rush that brings joy and excitement to a player; when that stops working, a player needs to find a new way to solve the same problem using the knowledge he learned from the zealot rush. And that's where fun begins. | ||
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EsportsJohn
United States4883 Posts
On September 11 2012 07:33 Forikorder wrote: people call EVERY unit an amove unit then people figure out "hey if i jsut micro it then it becomes alot better" once people figured out how to micro Thors (thank you MKP) there became no such thing as an Amove unit I want to note that we still haven't found a really good way to micro hydras off creep yet lol. | ||
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BoZiffer
United States1841 Posts
On September 11 2012 00:14 kcdc wrote: This isn't anywhere close to true. You can kite, you can spread units against AOE damage, you can flank, you can position for concave, you can drop, you can hit multiple fronts, etc etc. If a unit doesn't have a user-cast spell and doesn't fly, people on TL want to act like you can't micro it. I'm not thrilled with the warhound design, but let's not pretend that you can't micro it. Its speed is one of the big reasons that it doesn't feel like mech, but that speed also allows warhound opening harass against Protoss where you kite zealots while you focus down stalkers and sentries. Was just going to say the same thing. Watched a bunch of pro streams with some early warhound harrass that was micro intensive. I think it needs to be tweaked, maybe boosted +1 more supply to lower its quickly growing mass of numbers as game time increases but micro opportunities are still there. | ||
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OrganicDoom
United States32 Posts
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Swords
6038 Posts
On September 11 2012 08:34 SC2John wrote: When you look at any truly competitive game (the most obvious that come to mind are SC:BW, Counterstrike, and Halo), you see that the main design goal of the game was to create a very simple world with simple goals with an infinite amount of ways to solve them and an infinite amount of ways to execute them. There was this thing called "skill". You could shoot a guy if you camped in the right spot and shot as he came around the corner. But a pro could do a 360 and do the same thing, and faster too. In BW, you could decimate a worker line with a reaver, but a pro could do that too...plus macro perfectly behind it as well as microing a push at the front. It was this thing called "skill" that separated the two players. Easy to learn, hard to master. Blizzard has said several times that they wanted to implement ways for newer players to stay interested; however, they are doing this by encouraging WINS, not LEARNING. The fundamental problem here with the way Blizzard is trying to balance SC2 is that they want newer players to have bigger steps that are less rewarding as opposed to smaller steps that are quite rewarding. They don't want new/low level players to overcome little things like worker splitting, basic macro, basic micro, etc; they want them to instead be able to go into a game and be able to win. This is a HUGE problem. It's the same approach Infinity Ward took when they destroyed CoD with MW3. Raising the skill floor and trying to balance the rest of the game around this misperceived notion of "fun" only causes more and more problems in the competitive world as things that were commonly used in high level strategy and high level thought are done away with in favor of "helping the average joe out". If Blizzard wants to make the game more fun and more exciting for everyone, they really need to look at creating smaller, more rewarding steps than instawin buttons. It's the mastery of something as relatively inconsequent and simple as a zealot rush that brings joy and excitement to a player; when that stops working, a player needs to find a new way to solve the same problem using the knowledge he learned from the zealot rush. And that's where fun begins. This post to me sums up what orb's main point seems to be quite eloquently. What Blizzard doesn't seem to understand is people enjoy games that are difficult. People enjoy a challenge, because then if they win they feel as though they've been rewarded for their hard work. This concept comes through nicely in all these posts about people's favorite units from Broodwar. The best units it seems are ones that are capable of doing massive damage, but essentially have huge design flaws that make them impractical unless the user gains mastery over them. Reavers can turn a game around, but are slow and easily killed unless the player can protect them. Gaining mastery over a unit that has a high skill ceiling is more fun than gaining mastery over a unit with a low skill ceiling. Blowing up a whole worker line instantly with a scarab and escaping is the reward a player gets for his hard work and practice. In my opinion, most major damage dealers in a game like SC2 should be of the high risk/high reward variety. Currently, very few of them are. Tanks, DTs, HTs (maybe), Banshees, Ghosts/nukes, and Infestors (if tweaked slightly) are all at least close to a state of having big weaknesses (usually very low hit points + high costs) and yet are all able to do lots of damage if used skillfully. These units are fun to watch (aside from Infestors, because fungal is boring to watch). Meanwhile, Colossi, Thors, Carriers (the SC2 variety, remember), Broodlords do not require much skill to use and yet do tons of damage - this is less fun to watch because it's harder to see the impressive awareness/micro/control/positioning required from the other units. The biggest problem though is the major damage dealers (aside from Protoss who get the best "a-move" damage dealer in the game) in many cases in SC2 are inexpensive/low risk/do tons of damage/are easily massable. Basically it's low risk to make the units, and high reward. Marauders, stimmed marines, roaches, Warhounds (just added) etc. are cheap, easy to use, and do insane amounts of damage. I'd love to see these units fight it out, but have the reward for using them be lower. It'd still be fun to see how people control these large armies when they deal less damage, because then there's more time to control lots of little units, or control your hardest to control expensive damage dealers. That's fun to watch, and fun to play. Some of new Heart of the Swarm units are bizarre in terms of this kind of design: You have the Oracle and Tempest which are high risk/low reward units. From a risk assessment point of view there's almost no way to see why you would make these units. With their current design they have little ability to turn a game around (no high reward) and they're insanely expensive and force you down a tech tree that isn't particularly good against any of the easily massable, inexpensive, high reward units. Some of them just add to the problem of low risk/high reward: Warhounds, duhhh. Maybe battle hellions, but I'm not sure yet. I think the switching of modes could result in some exciting things. Some of them maybe have promise: Vipers are squishy, but quite powerful and can turn a battle around. Mothership Core is inexpensive and can be used change the early game/allow for free attacks that can ruin an economy. However, they get weaker as the game goes on. Widow Mines are inexpensive, but need great skill to work effectively as they are stationary in the ground when attacking. Some I don't know about. Swarm Hosts seem like a good high risk/high reward type unit, but I really hate the concept of a unit that makes free units. If locusts cost minerals that would be pretty interesting in my opinion. There's plenty to disagree with in here, but as a Tl;dr I'll just write: The most fun units are the ones that are expensive and hard to use, but if used correctly are really effective and thus fun to play with. And micro light units should not do insane amounts of damage. | ||
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Arterial
Australia1039 Posts
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Lawliet
United States70 Posts
Functionally they work just like a beefier marauder. So if you nerf the cost too much they would become useless. They also completely neutralize a playstyle..... In TvP Warhound's ability is completely dumbtarded. Thanks to it's ability it basically hard counters it's own hard counter. However, to end on a higher note..... with a reasonable damage nerf Warhound won't be dumb in TvZ | ||
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LowEloPlayer
United States205 Posts
Plus, in BW there were just so many cool things that could be used which makes the game so deep. And it goes past just spells like mass recall. The units themselves are not "a-move" friendly. A-move terran bio vs. lurkers, I'll see how that one works out. A-move a Reaver (more like A-sit-there-and-wait-a-minute-to-have-it-move-from-your-main) and waste scarabs on buildings and on single marines. And, about Warhounds being a-move friendly, sadly its not just them that blizzard is implementing. A lot of the new units are just so.. silly. Oracle? Do you want vision, vision (+ anti-cloak, as if observers didn't do the job), or to disrupt mining for a bit? And sadly, Oracle is honestly one of the more "cooler" units that Blizzard introduced. And. Although this is just something little. The addition of the "Select army" button and telling you how many harvesters are mining minerals on a hatchery, it seems like a little thing which is really stupid to complain about but it's the fact that they implemented it at all which suggests that Blizzard are trying to dumb down the game, as you suggested and I agree 200% with ur post. | ||
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