Why the Warhound should NOT be balanced - Page 32

On September 10 2012 15:46 Megabuster123 wrote:
I agree with everything you just said, but I'm like 99% sure we're all just fucked and blizzard is going to leave it in the game because they don't give a shit about anything you just said.

On September 16 2012 17:36 FreeZer wrote:


Apologize!

On September 16 2012 17:48 Diabulus wrote:
THANK GOD they removed Warhound, that unit was OP as heck :S It kills stalkers, it kills zealots, it kills immortals, it kills collosus. It is too good for its price, at least they should have made it cost more supply and more, like an immortal at least, i mean the thing costs as much as a stalker?! and same supply and stuff... it shouldve been 4 supply like immortal and 250/100 or 300/200 then they wouldnt whave had to remove it.

On September 17 2012 08:14 drazak wrote:
What are you talking about apolo? The high level use of entomb is immense, you can prevent brood lord tech by 30-60 seconds with it easy if your opponent is mineral-light because you kept him on a low base count.

On September 17 2012 12:53 drazak wrote:
Not everything needs to be micro intensive to be interesting. This is high level, IMO, unlike the warhound, you have to know when and where to use it.

On September 17 2012 13:15 NicolBolas wrote:


No, things in general don't need to be micro-intensive to be interesting. But it certainly helps. And while good use of Entomb can change games, it isn't interesting to watch. You're watching someone fly a unit in at a critical time so that it can do one thing and then leave.

It just isn't very exciting. If it succeeds, all you saw was the Oracle fly in, cast a spell once, and fly out. If it fails, you see it die. That is not the stuff that good television is made of.

The Oracle's Entomb is just too binary: either you succeed, in which case it works perfectly, or you fail, in which case nothing happens. Some element of being able to succeed better than another player would be nice.

On September 17 2012 13:30 R3demption wrote:

I think in the early stages of the beta people should refrain from making such sweeping statements. In the early stages YES the oracle seems binary. And its very boring because either its stopped or it succeeds and it really comes down to if the opponent expects it or not.

But just wait. Sooner or later this unit will be expected 100% of the time. It will be the prime Protoss harass unit (the balance changes so far look like it will improve its usage). Then Protoss will have to invent new ways to sneak in.

I forsee the tension build up and the "sneakyness" to be the real draw to this unit. The usage of it is quick and easy and doesnt really require much micro. The movement of the unit will be more critical in the future and since its so fast and maneuverable, it will become exciting.

Think:
Using hallucinations of other air units to draw fire to protect a lagging behind oracle.

Or using real air units (pheonix) in tandem to draw fire as well as harass.

Further out expansions being harder to defend and therefore camped by multiple oracles as the game goes on

Air v Air battles of mixed compositions to help protect the oracle

Just give it time.

On September 17 2012 14:40 NicolBolas wrote:


It doesn't matter how many ways there are to sneak it in; it's still very binary. Either it gets in and X economic damange is done, or it doesn't. Drops aren't binary; drops could do lots of economic damage, or they could do none. But they could also do less than the maximum, depending on how the enemy reacts. A Banshee can clear an entire mineral patch, or it can snipe a couple of workers, all depending reactions and micro.

You can "forsee" a lot of things; that doesn't mean it's going to happen. One could "forsee" Zerg players using burrow-micro to save Roaches like Protoss players use Blink-micro. But they usually don't.

On September 15 2012 07:49 Blazinghand wrote:
you don't balance pro fencing swords for noobs to use, IamTheWhiteGuy. Anyone with a basic knowledge of game design knows what's up here

On September 10 2012 15:39 -orb- wrote:
Pros: Newbies get inspired to actually spend time playing the game because they see professional players doing amazing moves that they didn't even know/think were possible. It encourages them to continue playing the game because they still have many things they haven't mastered.

On September 18 2012 04:54 IamTheWhiteGuy wrote:

This is emblematic of just why this notion of "skill balance" is colossally retarded.

You don't balance pro fencing swords for noobs to use - you make good swords so that someone can pick one up and fence, and a master can make music with it.

The difference between adding a high skill ceiling and making a game difficult to play is COLOSSAL. As a consistent middling diamond player (this is before Master League) who is getting back into it, I'm shocked and appalled at the level of mimetic stupidity that e-sports frenzy has caused.

On September 17 2012 13:30 R3demption wrote:
I think in the early stages of the beta people should refrain from making such sweeping statements. In the early stages YES the oracle seems binary. And its very boring because either its stopped or it succeeds and it really comes down to if the opponent expects it or not.

But just wait. Sooner or later this unit will be expected 100% of the time. It will be the prime Protoss harass unit (the balance changes so far look like it will improve its usage). Then Protoss will have to invent new ways to sneak in.

On September 18 2012 05:06 Honeybadger wrote:


I agree with you, but I just wanted to point out that this statement is bullshit. It can be as challenging as reaching the stars, but when you have to work three times as hard as your opponents in the lower tiers, just to compete with them, there is a problem with over-complicating something. It's the reason EvE online, which is an incredible, deep game, never took over the world. It was (and still is, despite many attempts at improving the early gameplay) just so fucking hard to play and learn, that it turned many players off.

Newbies don't get inspired. They don't watch pro games. They just see that as hard as they work, they never seem to get better, compared to their rival races, and this makes them stop playing.

I was a low masters player just after master was released. Every patch that came out for about six months did nothing but make me work harder, and I never seemed to get an edge up on my opponents. The times I played zerg, I was disgusted about how little micro I had to do for my skill level. Bear in mind, this isn't top tier play, but mid-high play. I micro'd my zerglings and all of a sudden my ratios were better than terran, which I had played since beta? That should tell you something about lower level brackets.

The constant nerfs, requirements that I play twice as well as my opponents to beat them, combined with the pissy, whiney player base that came straight from world of warcraft (I can complain about WoW because I used to play it professionally, lolz. It really does make you into a whiner) all contributed to why I basically never play anymore.

I liked the warhound in its overall simplicity. We needed a simple, do-all unit for mech, and the warhound has some great potential for beefing up what has been a shitty experience that is mech, when no matter how many tanks and thors you have, you will get rolled by mass a-move. Tanks are buffed now, along with ravens, so I don't know how the warhound fits in, but I will say this: Low level terran players still need a stable answer to the mutalisk. Thors just don't do it, marines are too hard to micro when you aren't mid-masters.

On September 18 2012 05:06 Honeybadger wrote:


Have my babies. This is exactly the problem. Games need to be easy to learn, difficult to master. You can't just balance for the pro tiers, because then you're creating massive problems. If a unit can be micro'd to twice its effectiveness, then it needs to be balanced at that point, is the current idea. Problem is, only 5% of players can reach that. So blizzard is essentially shooting themselves in the foot by balancing the game in such a way that makes those units that are so great when micromanaged, terrible when they aren't. That's not how you increase your customer/player base.

On September 18 2012 05:11 Honeybadger wrote:


This. Unless a unit makes the game unwinnable, don't fuck with it until more raw data is coming out. Blizzard is responding knee-jerk to things so early on. It would be like running a clinical trial, and changing the medication every two weeks based on results with a sample size of 75 people. That's a shit way to get solid data.

On September 18 2012 05:49 NicolBolas wrote:

While I agree in the abstract that you need data to make balance changes, these are not balance changes. These are "quality of gameplay" changes. There's a difference.

A shitty unit is a shitty unit, no matter how balanced it is.

On September 18 2012 10:15 Honeybadger wrote:


I will counter this entire argument with one statement: Vultures were considered to be a shitty unit, too.