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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.
You are correct but it was brought up -ALOT- before SC2 launched, especially the holy trinity of Roach-Immortal-Marauder, 3 well represented units that never felt like they belonged in SC2. Artosis was often one of the most prominent people in the community to complain about the plain and boring Marauder that made Terran in SC2 not feel like Terran at all, it feels at times like Protoss with Medivacs
The Roach reminds me more of the Dragoons than any kind of Zerg unit, it is the perfect example of a unit Zerg should NOT have and yet here we are. There was no reason to introduce this unit, when the Hydra could fulfill all the rules if it was tweaked around a bit number wise
Warhounds are just another unit in that line of thinking, a sort of nothing unit that is dull to watch. I understand Blizzard wants to spice Terran up because the everlasting image of StarCraft 2: WoL will always be a MM Terran running around stimmed killing Zerg and Protoss left and right, that is pretty much what WoL was in the first 6-8 months of this game. The question was always "can the Protoss/Zerg hold this timing push" by the same units and same tactic you have seen a dozen of times by the random Korean Terran number 9582th.
The Scout was useless in BW and the Firebat had very limited use, but at least those units looked and sounded cool, the Warhound is easily the worst looking unit ive ever seen in a Blizzard RTS, even the sprite based units in Warcraft 2 Tides of Darkness looked miles better.
So from every angle the unit is unwelcome, it looks like a unit that belongs in Command and Conquer: Electric Bogaloo
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On September 11 2012 04:33 Fairwell wrote:Show nested quote +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.
Well... templar-tech units, too. Though a stiff breeze is enough to kill a DT or HT, so that's really just the archon.
But the missiles auto-target mech anyway, no?
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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.
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.
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Not to be a dick, but I would point out that teenagers are still children.
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While I agree with this, should Blizzard remove the immortal as well? Chargelots are even more a-move than warhounds/immortals, what about them?
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I don't understand why people think the Warhound is an A-move unit. I really don't get it.
At its current (and especially pre nerf) variation, it simply has so much DPS and health that it can be a-moved against almost any unit in the game. That really is a balance issue. Stimmed Marauders are incredibly microable, but if they did 30 damage you could a-move them against just about everything.
The Warhound is supposed to be a fast long range unit with a somewhat slowish attack speed and high damage. It's basically a Terran Stalker on mega steroids. You can kite a lot of units with it and do 10 times the damage you normally would.
I think it does need to be balanced, because then people will actually bother to micro it. 220 health is pretty asinine and it does (did?) too much DPS.
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My 2 cents:
1. Blizzard has already created a money buffer for SC2 by making people pay 50 dollars. This fact just reinforces the idea that the average SC2 player is willing to push through a learning curve to actually play the game at a decent level. (I agree with you that they should increase the inherent skill cap of units.)
2. The warhound can learn a few things from the hydra. Hydras, in the sense that you stated in your post, are a-move units. They can attack at 6 range and can move. That is it. Yet there IS a strategy to using hydras. If hydras are caught in a head on engagement they will almost always end up on the losing end. The natural fix to this is to stick roaches in front of them to create a buffer. While a player doesn't necessarily have to micro each hydra, he has to plan ahead of how many roaches he has, how he will attack into a choke to increase the surface attacking area of hydras, and at the same time decreasing the surface attacking area of the roaches. Sure, let Blizzard make the warhound an a-move unit, but give it enough weaknesses so players can't just a-click across them map. Force them to asses what units they have in front of the warhounds, what units they have behind the warhounds, and what type of choke they are attacking into.
Mech is not supposed to be micromanaged. That's the very essence of mech. It's all about strategy and thinking ahead. Now while warhounds and battle hellions don't take much micro, like tanks, they still really don't really force players to plan far head. If you want to push with tanks you have to scan, know how far you can a-move ahead before you might have to siege. If you don't plan well, the opponent will flood in mid-siege. At that point you lose because of your failure to take into account the inherent weakness of siege tanks, the time it takes to siege. If I had a magic wand that could change mech however I wanted it I would turn the battle hellion transition into a semi-siege. Where, the battle hellions are useless at maneuvering in battle mode, yet amazing at defending the area around them. (and i mean literally they can't move, yet can change from battle to striker mode in less than a second, aka semi-siege) For the warhound, just lower it's health enough so they are weak in straight up engagement but work well behind an army buffer.
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I agree, the Warhound looks and feels like a unit taken out of a 20 years old RTS and should be removed.
So supposedly they wanted Terran to be able to play mech against Protoss so they gave them a unit from the factory that is good vs mechanical. But this is NOT mech, mech is supposed to be slow and methodical, have the ability to fortify areas of the map and do slow pushes that are hard to stop. The Warhound is freaking faster that marines and marauders! If by going mech against Protoss they mean a group of fast units that run around the map and snipe expansions then bring me back my bio any day.
At least the Marauders had a slow to anything they hit, a spell that increased their speed and attack speed for a short time but cut a piece of their health, the ability to be healed by medivacs and you also needed to be aware of splash damage. That sounds like a unit from an RTS in 2012.
On the other hand watching Warhounds fight is almost as boring as mass SCV vs mass SCV. Its a unit that moves and attacks. End of story. The fact that it autocasts an attack vs mechanical does not affect your gameplay at all, it is just more damage. There is no decision to be made whatsoever.
What Terran needs imo is not a new core unit, but a new viable tech choice for the end game, something like what should have been the Raven if it wasn't broken.
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On September 11 2012 05:08 Zane wrote:
While I agree with this, should Blizzard remove the immortal as well? Chargelots are even more a-move than warhounds/immortals, what about them?
No. Protoss is a race where you pay more to have these somewhat A-Move units like the Chargelots or Immortals, however, those two units require placement and a bit of micro to ensure they are optimally used.
The problem with the Warhound is that its only weakness is the Zealot (which is hardly a counter and can be countered straight-up by Battle Hellions anyways) and Air units, which we all know is extremely risky for Protoss. The Immortal or Stalker would provide a counter if they weren't completely negated by the Haywire Missile. Sentries are smashes in 3 hits by one Warhound, so you'd have to hit-and-run to land successful Forcefields or keep a Guardian Shield.
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Someone needs to make a pro mod in the arcade. Alter the units/game to be more esport oriented.
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Hmm I dont know... I am kinda bitter after being rolled by a-moving zerg and toss opponents and want to give them a taste of their own medicine 
If they remove the Warhound they would also need to do something about all the zerg and toss a-move units.
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On September 11 2012 05:26 Jasiwel wrote:Show nested quote +On September 11 2012 05:08 Zane wrote:
While I agree with this, should Blizzard remove the immortal as well? Chargelots are even more a-move than warhounds/immortals, what about them? No. Protoss is a race where you pay more to have these somewhat A-Move units like the Chargelots or Immortals, however, those two units require placement and a bit of micro to ensure they are optimally used. The problem with the Warhound is that its only weakness is the Zealot (which is hardly a counter and can be countered straight-up by Battle Hellions anyways) and Air units, which we all know is extremely risky for Protoss. The Immortal or Stalker would provide a counter if they weren't completely negated by the Haywire Missile. Sentries are smashes in 3 hits by one Warhound, so you'd have to hit-and-run to land successful Forcefields or keep a Guardian Shield.
But he said this is not a balance problem, as in, even if the warhound would cost as much as an immortal or it would be nerfed so it gets countered by stalkers or whatever, it would still be wrong. He said the problem is that it doesn't require mircro, which is true for a lot of other units as well.
I know that immortals require some positioning and target fire to be effective, but the warhound will require that too if you give the beta enough time.
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Well written, i agree completely, but blizz won't listen, they are all about the sales, and sales are a one time thing, so if people buy it once there is little reason to improve the current version, just get to work on the next game that will sell well and keep doing it. If people keep playing the old game they won't buy the new one, so why make the old one a good as possible when you can get a lot of sales on the next one.
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Italy12248 Posts
I feel like feedback like this coming from every single pro in the Hots beta (because let's face it, this is what everyone thinks) might push Blizzard to changing the unit. Maybe. But only if each and every single high profile player talked to them. Outside of something like that, i think Blizz is too damn proud to say "yep we fucked up. Here, Reavers instead of Colossi, BW microable Carriers instead of Tempests and while we are at it we are changing the Warhound to me a Goliath-like support unit." And i am sure, even they are aware of how completely bad some HotS or Wol units and ideas are.
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On September 11 2012 03:27 Novalisk wrote:
Yes, balancing won't fix the Warhound.
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.
He wrote this not specifically about the Warhound, but about A-move units in general and game design. He expressed this not only in his main post, but also later.
This is not simply bashing the warhound (which does represent one of the only a-move units for Terran) but it is a criticism of simple game design.
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I disagree and I tell you why: the players are not yet good enough to make it matter.
I dont think there is one player atm that is so fast that he can do anything he wants as fast as he wants, until we reach that point, adding units thats are just A move simply allow the Pros to do more stuff they couldnt do before or do the same stuff better, from the spectator POV he doesnt do less he just do other things , while not microing warhound he would micro the raven / medvic marine drop / macro or w/e else require the APM.
you might ask yourself what APM have to do with the warhound , but it has everything to do with it, there is enough things to do in the game already so the warhound just will be added to the end of list to things to spend thier APM on it, so right now it doesnt matter because it wont be micro either way.
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On September 11 2012 05:34 Zane wrote:Show nested quote +On September 11 2012 05:26 Jasiwel wrote:On September 11 2012 05:08 Zane wrote:
While I agree with this, should Blizzard remove the immortal as well? Chargelots are even more a-move than warhounds/immortals, what about them? No. Protoss is a race where you pay more to have these somewhat A-Move units like the Chargelots or Immortals, however, those two units require placement and a bit of micro to ensure they are optimally used. The problem with the Warhound is that its only weakness is the Zealot (which is hardly a counter and can be countered straight-up by Battle Hellions anyways) and Air units, which we all know is extremely risky for Protoss. The Immortal or Stalker would provide a counter if they weren't completely negated by the Haywire Missile. Sentries are smashes in 3 hits by one Warhound, so you'd have to hit-and-run to land successful Forcefields or keep a Guardian Shield. But he said this is not a balance problem, as in, even if the warhound would cost as much as an immortal or it would be nerfed so it gets countered by stalkers or whatever, it would still be wrong. He said the problem is that it doesn't require mircro, which is true for a lot of other units as well. I know that immortals require some positioning and target fire to be effective, but the warhound will require that too if you give the beta enough time.
I agree with his general principle, which is that these units should not play a large role in the game or be some of the strongest units for each race. Just being able to a-move a collosi, an immortal, a warhound or (any of zergs units, just kidding :D), is not what makes good game design, or so goes his argument.
And I agree with him. I think the beauty and complexity of BW is that it required a high level of skill to execute certain builds and attacks. And it was precisely this skill cap that made the game more of an art when played by the very best.
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It's been a while, but welcome back orb. Great post and good points, i tottaly aggre with your ideas here and personally things such as worker counts on your nexus in hots for example reduce skill as that takes less assessment from the player and therefore less possibility of error. Keep it up bro thanks for this.
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On September 11 2012 03:45 Bertolt wrote:Show nested quote +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.
A Hydralisk is equally fragile, incredibly vulnerable to area of effect damage and still you dont really get more out of them if you try to micro them. So we got equal starting positions yet the marine yields a much higher reward.
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On September 11 2012 06:10 Charon1979 wrote:Show nested quote +On September 11 2012 03:45 Bertolt wrote: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. A Hydralisk is equally fragile, incredibly vulnerable to area of effect damage and still you dont really get more out of them if you try to micro them. So we got equal starting positions yet the marine yields a much higher reward.
Well there are some differences. Marines have very small attack windows, so there's negligible punishment for stuttering at any given rate. They're also a lot faster than most other units when stimmed, so they actually have the capacity to micro out of or into DPS critical ranges. The problem is that every unit can't enjoy the benefit of being faster than the other units, so micro opportunities have to be handled in other ways.
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EPT
