EPTWhy the Warhound should NOT be balanced - Page 8
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aznboi918
United States70 Posts
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TedJustice
Canada1324 Posts
It's a great post, but it seems like they're stuck in their ways. | ||
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aznboi918
United States70 Posts
On September 10 2012 18:51 Morphs wrote: The Warhound is no coincidence. Blizzard wanted exactly this, as stated in interviews. According to Blizzard, the Warhound was purposely created as an a-move unit since there's already so much micro involved in playing Terran... that doesn't fix the problem... instead of adding a-move units they should instead do the opposite... remove a-move units from the other races and introduce skillbased units... lol | ||
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maybenexttime
Poland5536 Posts
On September 11 2012 00:44 Sated wrote: Although people dislike the Colossus, they serve a role in the Protoss army that no other unit serves. The Warhound, on the other hand, is a Marauder that comes out of a Factory. Terran already have Marauders, they don't need the Warhound (or Marauders should be removed). The only reason Dragoons have micro potential is because BW pathing is buggy as fuck. That was not an intentional unit design. Mine defusing without Obs (move a little forward to pop the Spider Mines, back off, press "hold" or FF the Mine), getting out of Vulture surrounds/sniping Mines, hold-micro vs. early Terran pushes, tanking for Reaver in Reaver drops. Yeah, because that's all related to Dragoon's pathing... | ||
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zmansman17
United States2567 Posts
On September 10 2012 15:56 SheaR619 wrote: Agreed but honestly at this point, I don't even care anymore. For the warhound to EVEN make it into beta AND survived a balance patch has made me completely lost faith in blizzard. The more I watch HotS stream, the more I question why this unit is even in the game. So many people has already expressed their hate toward this unit. If this unit is completely reworked during the next patch, I don't know what to say. I feel exactly the same way. | ||
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drooL
United Kingdom2108 Posts
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Novalisk
Israel1818 Posts
But having it removed entirely is wishful thinking by this point. If it was changed to be more fun to play and observe, by toning its A-Move down and giving it a better toolset, then that would be optimal. | ||
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nocrA
Italy27 Posts
On September 11 2012 01:59 nocrA wrote: I kinda agree with the rest of the post but i want to make 2 points: 1 the above part about knowledge might sound reasonable but it is obviously false if we think even for a moment about board games(in particular Go and Chess). These games have no "difficulty of executing a tricky task" AND they are extremely difficult to play. One might argue that these are not good spectator sports(in fact they are not mainstream) but I think the problem is that you need much more knowledge of the games to appreciate them in relation to sports/RTS games, and not that they are bad spectator games. In a game of Go or Chess you use your general knowledge to come up with fresh solutions to the new positions that you face. This happens because little changes in the position cause great long term changes in the strategy and because after a few moves ( it depends but for chess it's usually 10/15 moves) you always face new positions you don't have "solutions" as you call them. In RTS this doesn't apply for various reasons: • you have imperfect knowledge. IMHO even if creates some strategy (proxys, all-ins) it kinda makes RTS feel gimmicky sometimes and it could remove higher level strategy. But it would make for a very different game: attacking would become very difficult because your opponent would know way before and could counterattack as soon as you leave(but you could see the conter attack before it happens).It would remove coin-flips.But imagine if in sc2 when you drop you don't drag the enemy army away you would be countered 100% because your opponents knows 30 seconds before that it's coming. • the game is fast This means you have no time to figure something out during the game, like you could in chess, apart from tactic decisions. "Learning happens between games" Day9 • the game is more "fluid". By that I mean that you can move as many units as you want freely, while in chess you can move only one piece at a time, you have pawns and pieces are pretty immobile. In chess much strategy comes from the fact that you can't move pawns backwards and one of the basic strategic rules is to block a target then attack it; this is almost impossible in sc2 apart from some tactics (FF, FG, Concussive). The only thing similar to chess immobility and slowness to change position I can think of is when  choses a tech path and can't transition easily and the terran mech, but it is still way more mobile than a blocked pawn.• the mechanics are often as important as the strategy This united with point #2 means that the knowledge becomes slowly evolving, so easily assimilable and because you often have few general strategies per MU you end up in the same positions (because of #3 there is less difference between them) doing the same generic moves so you need "the simple difficulty of executing a tricky task". So in a sense you are right that in RTS you have to have difficult mechanics but I think that this is unfortunate because it means that there is little strategy.(we should call them RTs) 2 This is not strongly related to the post. I think there are two types of micro and I think SC2 is a good step in removing the bad one*: •Bad Micro When you have to manually do something which you would never do differently(meaningless actions) E.g. sending the workers to mine at the start of the game E.g. when in bw you have to babysit the dragoon after you moved it because it's retarded. •Good Micro When you have to manually do something which you could do differently(meaningful actions) E.g. imagine if blink was automatic, always backwards and only for damaged units(like the AI does). This would obviously reduce strategy(no blink forward/ blink away) even if the IA maybe uses blink better than everybody in engagements(ever seen blink hack in action?). •So we can also have bad micro design When the games takes automatic decisions(and you can't toggle off) when sometimes it would be better to do otherwise. E.g. the lurker if there was no hold lurker trick it would be bad design because sometimes it's better to not attack immediately something that comes in range. E.g. the widow mine that auto-attacks units that come in range and can't be toggled off. *but a lot the good one was removed too like moving shot (see Micro, Where art thou?) and also zone control and in HotS it's being added to  and "removed" to in a sense (warhound should deny siege tank in TvT and tanks are now replaced by warhounds in mech TvP)I'm curious how a perfect information sc2 game or in general RTS would be. BTW The warhound isn't 100% 1-A because you can engage then run, wait for the hayware missile to recharge then engage again doing more damage and taking more damage than just 1-A. Also you can kite zealots, slow roaches marines without stim ecc... But It has no positional value Sorry if I quote myself but nobody answered Sirlin, author of Playing to Win said about strategy in starcraft: I wish Starcraft focused more on strategy than it does. If there's a pie of 100% of whatever to focus on, some of that is strategy and a whole lot is related to APM (actions per minute). The more the focus is on one, the less on the other. And Blizzard has been explicit that they want the skill test to include high APM. Blizzard improved the UI of Starcraft 2 over Starcraft 1 to allow things like selecting more than 12 units at a time, and using tab to cycle through unit types within a selection. This allows the player execute decisions better. That is, first the player decides what he wants to do (strategy) then physically issues the commands to make that happen in the game (execution). The UI decisions I just mention shift the emphasis towards strategy mattering a bit more, so that's good. Fighting against the UI to perform the exact same tasks in Starcraft 1 does add "more skill" for sure, but it's a kind of skill that is not related to strategy, hence its removal. That said, other extra clicks were added on purpose in Starcraft 2, and units designed specifically to reward very high APM usage. Some other similar game could be very similar to Starcraft, but focus less on execution and more on strategy. In other words, it would give much less reward to a 300 APM player over a 100 APM player than Starcraft 2 does. The result of this would be that if more players were on equal footing APM-wise (because it's less rewarded, or capped or whatever) then strategy matters more. This is what Extra Credits wants, to have more freedom of strategy choices without spending so much time honing skills on perfectly timed, memorized build orders. This has NOTHING to do with game balance though. That Starcraft has really well-balanced races is not the CAUSE of this problem, and making the races intentionally imbalanced so as to create a less fair game would not solve the problems. | ||
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wcr.4fun
Belgium686 Posts
It's like yin/yang, they're two opposites but they complement each other and are both needed. We aren't even seeing better strategic choices in sc2 than in brood war. Players with worse mechanics, but 'good strategic' sense can now compete with players who have better mechanics and equally as good strategic sense (talking about the top of players) because the effect of better mechanics stagnates at the top in sc2 as opposed to brood war. An A player on Iccup (or 1500 Fish or w/e) has pretty good mechanics, better than a grandmaster player, that's for sure. His strategic decisions are okay. Then you've got a person like flash, who's got insane game sense and strategic decision making. But his mechanics are also a billion times better than an A player. That's what's so beautiful about bw imo. Whereas in sc2, a grandmaster player's mechanics, are not as good as a pro, but there's a lot less difference than when comparing flash vs A iccup player. | ||
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[F_]aths
Germany3947 Posts
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mrtomjones
Canada4020 Posts
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Zaphod Beeblebrox
Denmark697 Posts
On September 11 2012 02:50 Kranyum wrote: Hey Orb, I fully agree: it was the kind of post I would have made, but sadly I have lost faith a while ago and I am too busy to care as much as before. Your point about the warhound is perfectly valid, but what about the following units: - Roach - Corruptor - Collosus - Immortal - Thor - Marrauder Seems to me that your arguement can be just as easily applied to all these units on the list. That is the point I tried to make in my post a few pages back. SC2 units are in general a lot more shallow than their BW counterparts. This is due to the "fixed weaknesses" of these units. Without weaknesses a unit cannot be given any major strengths. The Immortal and Thor are actually kinda vulnerable, and very slow, so they have some detriments, allowing them to have quite the punch without people screaming imbalance. But the Colossus, Marauder, Roach, Corruptor, Voidray, Warpgate mechanic and well the Warhound all have no real weaknesses. They are simple tough damaging units with good range and good mobility. The Zealot is kinda on this list with charge, as it removes one of the major weaknesses of old Zealots, but with small size and clumping, they still are weak to major splash. Its true that a lot of the BW units had weaknesses because of the AI and pathing. But my point is that they HAD real weaknesses - not what those weaknesses were. Take each and every one of the 1a units and give them a "problem" that will give clear, easy or very exploitable counterplay, especially in big battles, and I'm sure SC2 will be a lot more interesting to both watch and play. And before the "casuals" say that this will make the game only cater to the Pro's - BW siege tanks, carriers or lurkers were a lot better with micro, but didn't really need it to be used well against an less than stellar opponent, because they still performed fine without micro. | ||
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Bertolt
United States75 Posts
On September 11 2012 02:58 hnim wrote: I disagree with the marine part, I think it's a well designed unit because of how fragile it is, meaning it is incredibly vulnerable to area of effect damage, meaning that you will get much more mileage out of marine micro than well, almost any other unit. Amen, simple yet skill rewarding. | ||
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BlackPanther
United States872 Posts
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WeRRa
378 Posts
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aaycumi
England265 Posts
The game is balanced or not and you have little right, as do I, to say what the problems with "Meta" beyond: "People are Warhound All-Ining Me too Much". | ||
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KholdBloodeD
United States11 Posts
On September 11 2012 03:08 aznboi918 wrote: blizzard is a corporation... no matter what they do in the end everything that they do must serve in some way or purpose to meet their final goal which is profit... the more people who play the more profitable the game is... a game like broodwar that lasted 10 years is unfortunately very counterproductive to what they truly want so that is why they are trying to balance competitiveness in sc2 with the shelf-life of the game.... Unfortunately, this may be the case. Many game devs nowadays seem to be succumbing to what I think is the 'Call of Duty effect'; that is, to pump out iteration after iteration year after year because the product is so profitable, with little respect for actually making a quality game that people will spend lots of time with. The dichotomy that you pointed out between Blizzard wanting people to play their game and setting people up to buy the next one is interesting, because if one game is too well designed, the players might not want to switch over to the new one when it comes out. I also feel that Blizzard is coming up with new units just for this purpose - to give people some reason to pick up the new game. From what I've seen, they approached new units with the philosophy of 'What would be cool to put in HoTS that would make people want to buy it on first sight?' instead of 'What units could possibly affect the game in a positive way that is both interesting to both watch and play for extended periods of time?' In other words, I felt that Blizzard is shoehorning units in to make the game feel new, and then in the aftermath, they have to clean up the mess that they left behind (i.e. Warhounds) | ||
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pockie
United States30 Posts
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entrust
Poland196 Posts
Blizzard is all about money. They are stuck in their cave and they are not planning on going out anytime soon. They should learn from Valve and Dota2 - this is how e-sports is done. | ||
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Fairwell
Austria195 Posts
On September 11 2012 02:03 Bagi wrote: Why are people ignoring the fact that warhounds need to be focus firing mechanical units to be effective? That fact alone makes them more micro intensive than many other units in the game. Because they are actually really cost effective against any protoss unit composition without this focus fire. The zealot is the only unit a warhound could be shooting at in a tvp that is not mechanical and due to it's low supply cost of 2 is even annihilating zealots once the armies get bigger. Whenever I watch hots streams I see protoss just lose or throwing 3-4 armies at one warhound army and trying to overwhelm it with way more bases. It's true that some WOL units should be changed as well but this doesn't mean that the design of the warhound is even more boring. Colossi need to be protected and focus fire unit clumps (not shooting at some nearby building on auto attack or one lonely marauder), roaches actually have burrow movement, immortals have such a big difference in dps that they really need to attack the armored units etc. All those are actually units that are way not as exciting to watch like hts etc and it would be great if those units would be more interesting and the skill ceiling even higher, but that doesn't mean that new units have to be even more terrible than the old ones. It's really important to discuss unit design really early on because that's the only chance something might be changed (however I highly doubt it when I look at WOL beta and nothing has been taken out any more). Stats will be modified accordingly anyways after a while, but terrible unit designs will stay until the end of SC2 because Blizzard is not willing to take the risk of doing some fundamental changes to the game because those will screw up balance a lot and require even more further balance changes. | ||
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