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On September 10 2012 21:14 Evangelist wrote:
The only condition that a unit requires for inclusion in a game is that it has substantive differences than another unit. That is why a battlecruiser and a marine are able to co-exist despite arguably being comparable to each other (terrans only have two low damage rapid fire units). The only problem with the warhound is that it overlaps far too much with the marauder and at the same time is also better than the marauder. This is due to the following reasons:
- it costs the same supply and only slightly higher amounts of resources
- it is more mobile
- it carries improved damage against nearly all of the opponents a marauder is expected to face
- it has a longer range
- it has higher HP
- it can be mass repaired
So for the same supply you get improved damage, longer range, more mobility, high survivability and the ability to be repaired. It is even larger, so it suffers less from siege tank fire.
There were plenty of overlapping units in BW. This constant harping on about the reaver and the dragoon and so on - there was nothing particularly special about the dragoon or the vulture or lurkers. Lurkers were just immobile hellions. Dragoons were just stalkers with a bit more damage. The vulture doesn't even have the micro of the hellion for gods sake.
The only unit people keep going on about is the reaver. Well you know what? I've had it with the reaver. I'm going to call it what it was. It was a complete design failure. It was a stupid unit that couldn't survive without entire tactics being based around its use. It was slow, buggy and looked ridiculous. There was no micro involved in the reaver without the use of shuttles. It lagged a mile behind every other unit, it required extra building micro in a game already overloaded with it. What's more, it was a dumb fire unit - it just did splash damage in a game completely overloaded with splash damage
The reaver epitomised everything that was wrong with BW design. It epitomised everything people misunderstand about system design. The colossus is a far better unit.
Dustin, is that you? Change the Warhound please!
You are wrong not in opinion, but in facts, ex: Vultures had MORE micro then Hellions, not less; lurkers were space control units, nothing to do with hellions, etc.
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On September 10 2012 21:14 Evangelist wrote:
The reaver epitomised everything that was wrong with BW design. It epitomised everything people misunderstand about system design. The colossus is a far better unit.
I don't suppose you'd take kindly to just "LOL" as a response would you?
I used to like the Colossus but I was a stupid newbie to SC2 and didn't understand the problems with the unit.
It cliff walks, it has splash damage, it has very long range, it still moves reasonably quickly, it's still fairly strong.
Besides being attackable by air and no air attack, it's got far too many positives to negatives.
It's like the warpgate and gateway. I didn't get it at first but having read a few posts here and actually thinking on it, the design is so mind bogglingly broken it's just retarded. (I have no issue with warping in anywhere with a pylon or prism, the fact that warpgates have 0 compromise / shortcomings means Blizzard should simply remove the gateway, it's bad design)
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On September 10 2012 21:14 Evangelist wrote:
The only condition that a unit requires for inclusion in a game is that it has substantive differences than another unit. That is why a battlecruiser and a marine are able to co-exist despite arguably being comparable to each other (terrans only have two low damage rapid fire units). The only problem with the warhound is that it overlaps far too much with the marauder and at the same time is also better than the marauder. This is due to the following reasons:
- it costs the same supply and only slightly higher amounts of resources
- it is more mobile
- it carries improved damage against nearly all of the opponents a marauder is expected to face
- it has a longer range
- it has higher HP
- it can be mass repaired
So for the same supply you get improved damage, longer range, more mobility, high survivability and the ability to be repaired. It is even larger, so it suffers less from siege tank fire.
There were plenty of overlapping units in BW. This constant harping on about the reaver and the dragoon and so on - there was nothing particularly special about the dragoon or the vulture or lurkers. Lurkers were just immobile hellions. Dragoons were just stalkers with a bit more damage. The vulture doesn't even have the micro of the hellion for gods sake.
The only unit people keep going on about is the reaver. Well you know what? I've had it with the reaver. I'm going to call it what it was. It was a complete design failure. It was a stupid unit that couldn't survive without entire tactics being based around its use. It was slow, buggy and looked ridiculous. There was no micro involved in the reaver without the use of shuttles. It lagged a mile behind every other unit, it required extra building micro in a game already overloaded with it. What's more, it was a dumb fire unit - it just did splash damage in a game completely overloaded with splash damage
The reaver epitomised everything that was wrong with BW design. It epitomised everything people misunderstand about system design. The colossus is a far better unit.
Have you watched a single BW game, let alone played one? You are absolutely clueless. Compared to Vulture, Hellion is an a-move unit. Another a-move unit like the Colossus far better than the Reaver? I hope you are trolling. T______T
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This might be the best OP I've read in a very long time in any forum. I agree with everything you said in the post.
Great write-up Orb.
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On September 10 2012 22:00 maybenexttime wrote:Show nested quote +On September 10 2012 21:14 Evangelist wrote:
The only condition that a unit requires for inclusion in a game is that it has substantive differences than another unit. That is why a battlecruiser and a marine are able to co-exist despite arguably being comparable to each other (terrans only have two low damage rapid fire units). The only problem with the warhound is that it overlaps far too much with the marauder and at the same time is also better than the marauder. This is due to the following reasons:
- it costs the same supply and only slightly higher amounts of resources
- it is more mobile
- it carries improved damage against nearly all of the opponents a marauder is expected to face
- it has a longer range
- it has higher HP
- it can be mass repaired
So for the same supply you get improved damage, longer range, more mobility, high survivability and the ability to be repaired. It is even larger, so it suffers less from siege tank fire.
There were plenty of overlapping units in BW. This constant harping on about the reaver and the dragoon and so on - there was nothing particularly special about the dragoon or the vulture or lurkers. Lurkers were just immobile hellions. Dragoons were just stalkers with a bit more damage. The vulture doesn't even have the micro of the hellion for gods sake.
The only unit people keep going on about is the reaver. Well you know what? I've had it with the reaver. I'm going to call it what it was. It was a complete design failure. It was a stupid unit that couldn't survive without entire tactics being based around its use. It was slow, buggy and looked ridiculous. There was no micro involved in the reaver without the use of shuttles. It lagged a mile behind every other unit, it required extra building micro in a game already overloaded with it. What's more, it was a dumb fire unit - it just did splash damage in a game completely overloaded with splash damage
The reaver epitomised everything that was wrong with BW design. It epitomised everything people misunderstand about system design. The colossus is a far better unit. Have you watched a single BW game, let alone played one? You are absolutely clueless. Compared to Vulture, Hellion is an a-move unit. Another a-move unit like the Colossus far better than the Reaver? I hope you are trolling. T______T
You can say vultures required more micro than hellions (moving show and whatnot) but calling hellion amove is far from the truth
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On September 10 2012 22:41 MattBarry wrote:Show nested quote +On September 10 2012 22:00 maybenexttime wrote:On September 10 2012 21:14 Evangelist wrote:
The only condition that a unit requires for inclusion in a game is that it has substantive differences than another unit. That is why a battlecruiser and a marine are able to co-exist despite arguably being comparable to each other (terrans only have two low damage rapid fire units). The only problem with the warhound is that it overlaps far too much with the marauder and at the same time is also better than the marauder. This is due to the following reasons:
- it costs the same supply and only slightly higher amounts of resources
- it is more mobile
- it carries improved damage against nearly all of the opponents a marauder is expected to face
- it has a longer range
- it has higher HP
- it can be mass repaired
So for the same supply you get improved damage, longer range, more mobility, high survivability and the ability to be repaired. It is even larger, so it suffers less from siege tank fire.
There were plenty of overlapping units in BW. This constant harping on about the reaver and the dragoon and so on - there was nothing particularly special about the dragoon or the vulture or lurkers. Lurkers were just immobile hellions. Dragoons were just stalkers with a bit more damage. The vulture doesn't even have the micro of the hellion for gods sake.
The only unit people keep going on about is the reaver. Well you know what? I've had it with the reaver. I'm going to call it what it was. It was a complete design failure. It was a stupid unit that couldn't survive without entire tactics being based around its use. It was slow, buggy and looked ridiculous. There was no micro involved in the reaver without the use of shuttles. It lagged a mile behind every other unit, it required extra building micro in a game already overloaded with it. What's more, it was a dumb fire unit - it just did splash damage in a game completely overloaded with splash damage
The reaver epitomised everything that was wrong with BW design. It epitomised everything people misunderstand about system design. The colossus is a far better unit. Have you watched a single BW game, let alone played one? You are absolutely clueless. Compared to Vulture, Hellion is an a-move unit. Another a-move unit like the Colossus far better than the Reaver? I hope you are trolling. T______T You can say vultures required more micro than hellions (moving show and whatnot) but calling hellion amove is far from the truth
He said 'compared to'. It's a relative comparison for micro required.
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Orb you are describing everything I am feeling about the warhound. I've watched a ton of hots streams lately in order to see the new units in actual play and the warhound disgusts me most. Not the fact that it's way too strong (The beta has just started and I'm confident that Blizzard will get the stats right for the release.) but rather that this unit seems to make SC2:HOTS a terrible game.
Yes, low league terrans will love it at first, because they only need to make this unit and a-move to victory. But at some point people will want to improve and do better than their terran colleagues and then there is just not so much room to improve. Even the colossus has be the microed in certain situations (like not shooting a nearby building while attacking or actually attacking marines etc and not some thor or move it back vs vikings) or the chargelot (ever happened to you that they charge around some nearby building instead of the opponent's units or charge after when they shouldn't (always instantly having to pull them back or you will lose them for free), although those offer nothing compared to units like hts, ghosts etc.
I think everybody wants mech to be viable (that means bio still being viable and mech being a viable alternative based on your personal play style/opponent/map etc). Everything that introduces more different unique playstyles and options makes the game more interesting to watch and play in the long run. However, from what I've seen on the streams the warhound is not only a unit that is way too strong (hence why everyone is blindly going for them right now and stats will be tweaked later on if necessary) but it doesn't look/feel like mech at all.
A mech unit doesn't necessarily need to be super immobile but the main army strength (which is usually considered to be the tanks once they reach a certain number) should be rather slow/bulky/immobile while rewarding positioning a lot. If an army is supply efficient/cost efficient etc there need to be other tradeoffs hence why the core of mech dps/army strength is immobile. The hellion in this instant can be mobile to harass/scout etc because they can't kill an army on their own (not talking about early game 6 hellions vs some lings only here :-)).
So where does that leave the warhound? Intended to actually be a better fitting version of the thor initially, Blizzard all of a sudden decided to keep the thor in the game and remove the anti air from the warhound. Instead now there is a unit that is really mobile and makes the tank rather obsolete (except for certain situations where tanks are still better). So all of a sudden everything exciting about the terran gameplay (either bio, really aggressive playstyle with good map control/multipronged attacks etc and mech, the positional slow play methodic play) is gone when the terran decides to make warhounds (with only a little bit of support cause warhounds obviously don't shoot up).
I'm afraid that while Blizzard has stated that everything is still possible once the Beta starts (like reworking a unit if it fails), they only intend to do so if they don't find a way to change the stats of a unit to make it balanced and that they are not going to take the effort to delay the expansion and rework this unit. I hope so much that I am just totally wrong here. They also didn't rework any units in SC2 Beta and only ever changed the stats to make the balance work. But exactly like they removed the replicator (while being a really interesting unit opening a ton of nice tactics) this unit simply had to go because it reduced options from the game which is never good. People should not be afraid to make different units and make them work.
So the question that I've been asking myself for the last few days again and again is:
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?
I can't seem to find a single reason why this unit should add some depth or new layer to the game. For other units such as the swarm host etc there are good reasons for this unit (doesn't matter here if you like this unit or not personally, but it really adds something to the game), for the warhound there isn't. Blizzard please remove the warhound in its current state and give terrans another newly designed mech unit instead and/or tweak/buff other aspects of mech to make it viable without making it broken in tvz and people will be grateful for years to come.
For all those people (sad as it is there are some scattered around in the different threads about hots) who actually really like the design of the warhound, please provide your reasoning why this unit adds something to the game. I'm really interested to see their point of view.
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I totally agree; I was watching this PvT game and God it was so fucking boring; there was no drops, no force fields no emps or snipes; not one fucking intense moment.
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On September 10 2012 22:41 MattBarry wrote:Show nested quote +On September 10 2012 22:00 maybenexttime wrote:On September 10 2012 21:14 Evangelist wrote:
The only condition that a unit requires for inclusion in a game is that it has substantive differences than another unit. That is why a battlecruiser and a marine are able to co-exist despite arguably being comparable to each other (terrans only have two low damage rapid fire units). The only problem with the warhound is that it overlaps far too much with the marauder and at the same time is also better than the marauder. This is due to the following reasons:
- it costs the same supply and only slightly higher amounts of resources
- it is more mobile
- it carries improved damage against nearly all of the opponents a marauder is expected to face
- it has a longer range
- it has higher HP
- it can be mass repaired
So for the same supply you get improved damage, longer range, more mobility, high survivability and the ability to be repaired. It is even larger, so it suffers less from siege tank fire.
There were plenty of overlapping units in BW. This constant harping on about the reaver and the dragoon and so on - there was nothing particularly special about the dragoon or the vulture or lurkers. Lurkers were just immobile hellions. Dragoons were just stalkers with a bit more damage. The vulture doesn't even have the micro of the hellion for gods sake.
The only unit people keep going on about is the reaver. Well you know what? I've had it with the reaver. I'm going to call it what it was. It was a complete design failure. It was a stupid unit that couldn't survive without entire tactics being based around its use. It was slow, buggy and looked ridiculous. There was no micro involved in the reaver without the use of shuttles. It lagged a mile behind every other unit, it required extra building micro in a game already overloaded with it. What's more, it was a dumb fire unit - it just did splash damage in a game completely overloaded with splash damage
The reaver epitomised everything that was wrong with BW design. It epitomised everything people misunderstand about system design. The colossus is a far better unit. Have you watched a single BW game, let alone played one? You are absolutely clueless. Compared to Vulture, Hellion is an a-move unit. Another a-move unit like the Colossus far better than the Reaver? I hope you are trolling. T______T You can say vultures required more micro than hellions (moving show and whatnot) but calling hellion amove is far from the truth
Vultures are probably the "least" A-Move unit that attacks "normal" in all of SC/BW.
When not microed they plain suck and are not even that great against the stuff they, with some control, totally dominate (unless in high numbers were they would melt everything before being hit anyway).
The Hellion is similar but can't be microed as nicely, therefore its baseline attack dominates the stuff it's good against even harder when not caught totally offguard but really can't do much when overwhelmed, you could not overwhelm nicely controlles Vultures whit Zealots or Zerglings unless you cornered them (or better they let themselves getting cornered) , they were too fast + movingshot.
The Lurker is also nothing like the Hellion... Lurkers were actually pretty tanky... And cloaked... Yeah, they share the "line" attack.. But that’s like saying Stalkers, Marines, Hydralisks and Thors are the same because they all just shoot stuff...
Btw: The Warhound should in fact not be balanced, it should be removed.
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On September 10 2012 23:03 i)awn wrote:
I totally agree; I was watching this PvT game and God it was so fucking boring; there was no drops, no force fields no emps or snipes; not one fucking intense moment.
a week in to the beta....
a week in to the WoL beta I bet it looked like WoL was gonna be all a-moving, 5 mins games. Ofc everyone is useing the warhound right now, its SHINY AND NEW. Once it gets balanced things will change, once people get bored of messing around with it etc.
It might be a broken unit, it might need to go or be changed, but a week in to the beta isn't anywhere near enough time to make any clear conclusions. Obviously none of you have ever worked in science or technology or the arts, the piece of music you hear on the radio that you love so much didn't sound anything like that when it was first written, that film you loved was 3 hours long when it was written, had plot holes galore and terrible dialogue. These things take time to become the final product that everyone loves, that is the whole point of a FUCKING BETA
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On September 10 2012 23:03 i)awn wrote:
I totally agree; I was watching this PvT game and God it was so fucking boring; there was no drops, no force fields no emps or snipes; not one fucking intense moment.
This is exactly what I've felt many times lately while watching streams compared to WoL. Whenever a player in HOTS goes for mass warhounds all of a sudden so much depth is lost.
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agreed, but as sad as it is, i think the warhound will stay ingame because of youth protection issues. if they get a new unit/model/whatever the existing evaluation is obsolete which means further release delay.
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On September 10 2012 23:13 emythrel wrote:
a week in to the WoL beta I bet it looked like WoL was gonna be all a-moving, 5 mins games.
Yeah, it's really all a-moving 15 minute games.
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Another article called it a mech marauder, but I cant even agree with that. The warhound is worse, with a marauder there is at least some micro, ie microing against collosus.
but with the warhound. there really isnt anything that you can do with it other than A click
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On September 10 2012 23:29 marshmallow wrote:Show nested quote +On September 10 2012 23:13 emythrel wrote:
a week in to the WoL beta I bet it looked like WoL was gonna be all a-moving, 5 mins games. Yeah, it's really all a-moving 15 minute games.
And all the stuff people didn't like was kept in... Seems like the same thing is happening in this Beta...
I really don't get the Warhound. No one wanted that thing, yet for some reason Blizzard seems to think that it's totally necessary and people will come to like it... Because.. That has worked for the Colossus? (lol).
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Orb... I've become a fan after that ;D
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That was a well written post. I agree with everything you said.
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EPT
