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On September 23 2012 03:40 JustPlay wrote:Show nested quote +On September 23 2012 03:32 GoldenH wrote:
You realize by that logic you would buff colossus. Do colossus ever die against ground units once you get up to ~5? Broodlings don't count. Maybe in PvP they do sometimes. In TvP if you go next to a high colossus count without a bunch of vikings you are asking to lose, even if you emp them, and in ZvP you use your corruptors or broods to handle it (usually with fungal as well.) I'll be honest and say I don't like colossus. There is no soft counter in skillful play like there is against BW tanks. You need to reach for the hard counter or get slapped down unless your opponent plays colossally (ohohoho) stupid. I have a similar opinion on the state of tanks. I'd much rather see them have their damage or rate of fire upped a bit but overkill returned. Anyway, colossus likely wouldn't need to be buffed by that logic. They get stronger in numbers and fill the ground aoe role ridiculously well. You could redesign them to be stronger in smaller numbers but have diminishing returns as you get more, I guess.
Yeah, the magic number of colossus is between 8-10 colossus. It depends on what you scout from the opponent: if there's a lot of hydras and marines you might be okay moving out with 5, you're not going to kill him on that. But if there's a lot of roach or marauder or viking or basically anything besides marine, hydra and zealot, you're going to need more than 5 colossus.
So no, Colossus don't produce enough AOE that it would be meaningful, nothing like a few tanks or HT or lurker in BW.
While I like the idea of AOE as deterrent, you have to be careful with it in SC2 because it is so expensive it needs defense, you can't afford to scatter it around the map like in BW: and the other protoss units are so bad themselves they need to be in a ball.. which means you can only afford one AOE cluster, and one ball of units, so obviously you put them together, and so does your opponent, and then you have deathballs FIGHTING~~~
So yeah either that or just buff all other AOE and not the colossus and let it become the new carrier
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I thought the point about making units not bunch up so tight so that it's possible to fight ranged dps with melee units rather than auto-losing if you don't have the counter up was really good. It's incredibly lame that a maxed 3/3/3 zealot army doesn't even dent a 3/3 marine-medivac ball, but if you add in 2 storms, the Protoss army crushes. Let's make the basic ground units trade somewhat evenly and have the high-tech units give a small edge instead of one race instantly losing if they don't have the right tech and instantly winning if they do.
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awesome video.
BW was fun to play, units were fun, you did cool stuff with them. From noobs massing carriers to pros microing Lurkers and Vultures the game was so fun to play.
Sc2 is blob vs blob, deathball vs deathball. Zerg turtling all the time, Protoss deathballing it up. It's bland and silly.
I would rather play the BW Custom maps in the Sc2 game if it had a matchmaking ladder to the actual game.
Let's just hope Dustin Browder and David Kim are open minded enough to listen.
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I just want to clarify the unit spreading ideas. They would really only apply to the smaller weaker units like Marines, Zealots, Zerglings and banelings. Everything else would still group pretty tight like Stalkers and Marauders. This is far from just making the game easier. Honestly 9/10 times you want your marines heavily grouped up because that's where their damage is the strongest, the times you do need to spread are very specific and it would only really hurt storm/fungal mechanics.
How often do you see a group of zerglings all approach from the front and get gunned down as they try to approach, if they spread out a bit they would come in for a surround at a much cleaner angle with more of them connecting quickly. The same thing applies to banelings.
The main purpose of this though is to really take away the power of a tight marine ball and open Blizzard up to different things they can add to the game because marines are extremely op anymore. This is of course just my opinion and the healthy discussion and debate in this thread is great... I'm not seeing mass flames I'm seeing people search for a solution.
Second: For those that don't know me (most of you probably) I'm naively a Terran player. I play Zerg in the video to avoid the Terran QQ stuff that usually comes after a Terran player says something, and as a hint to the people that follow me that my next video will be a followup on the Zerg Tutorial I've been working on.
Last: Yeah, it's a rant and it's a long one. I really only intended on making a 5 minute video but by the time I was finished going through the points I wanted to make I had rambled for much longer than that. It wasn't even intentionally to talk that much about BW units, it just sort of turned out that way.
On September 23 2012 04:19 kcdc wrote:
I thought the point about making units not bunch up so tight so that it's possible to fight ranged dps with melee units rather than auto-losing if you don't have the counter up was really good. It's incredibly lame that a maxed 3/3/3 zealot army doesn't even dent a 3/3 marine-medivac ball, but if you add in 2 storms, the Protoss army crushes. Let's make the basic ground units trade somewhat evenly and have the high-tech units give a small edge instead of one race instantly losing if they don't have the right tech and instantly winning if they do.
If you force marines to spread out then 2/3rd's of their dps is cut, lings will actually get more surface area on the frontline marines and work their way back faster. As a Terran player you want your marines in as tight of a pack as possible against lings and zealots, just not against stuff that fires off AoE.
I agree with the second part of your points though, the straight crushing based on one or two landed storms is lame and should really only be adding an advantage, or a positional advantage when used.
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If you force marines to spread out then 2/3rd's of their dps is cut, lings will actually get more surface area on the frontline marines and work their way back faster. As a Terran player you want your marines in as tight of a pack as possible against lings and zealots, just not against stuff that fires off AoE.
I agree with the second part of your points though, the straight crushing based on one or two landed storms is lame and should really only be adding an advantage, or a positional advantage when used.
It won't actually cut their DPS that much--what it will do is increase the surface area where they can be hit by melee units and decrease the damage they take from AoE. But if you do decrease the damage they take from AoE, you almost have to rebalance their DPS or they'll be too good. Maybe you make them fire 10% slower or something. This makes marines less good against zealots and zerglings, but better against banelings, fungal, colossi and storm. Right now, marines are too strong but the counters to marines are too sharp, so I think everyone would be happy with a change that weakened marines against most units while simultaneously strengthening them against their counters.
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I disagree that the surface area is the important part when considering ranged vs melee units. Sure, it helps, but focus fire and depth of fire is far more important, acting as a multiplier to the surface area, which would only ever increase linerarly. Consider that forcefields are essential for a Protoss - not because it lets them come out ahead, but because it allows them to trade more evenly without giving as much free resources to the terran player. And why is that? Because every ranged unit still gets to hit the zealots, while the zealots surface area is actually decreased by the forcefields. But those units which are caught are unable to kite.
That's also what I feel the Colossus main role is, to discourage kiting by faster ranged units. It does a really poor job of AOE damage. Storm is also quite poor as AOE damage, but instead of discouraging kiting (in fact, kiting works great for baiting storm, making HT useless) - what Storm is good for is screwing with the AI, it makes medivacs NOT just target units being attacked, it makes some units spread or move out of the storm, nullifying the focus fire/depth of fire multiplier.
Storm does do some damage, but honestly, I feel like the Viper's Blinding Cloud ability is probably just as good, if not better, than psionic storm.
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FilterStarcraft, this is for you.
+ Show Spoiler +
I've had a scattered ball of thoughts about these things, and I've never really been able to put them together. You've done that, and I agree with everything you've said. Well done.
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One thing I want to know, and I'm sure more experienced members of the community can answer this; why do the big figures not shares their opinions on this matter?
For example, surely Day9, Artosis, Tasteless etc have opinions on these matters and they would have as big an influence on this kind of stuff as the pros. Do they not share their opinion because of money? Or maybe splitting their fanbase?
I mean I know Day9 talks about BW a lot because he played that and not SC2, but he must have an opinion about what would be good for SC2 and I don't understand why he's not more involved with these kinds of discussions. Even the pros it seems, don't want to share their opinions too much, although they're spending more time playing than sitting around on TL so I understand.
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you can find there opinions on certain interviews and such but having a web show be successful they need to stay unbias. Pros dont do it much cuz 2/3 of the community will eat them alive for complaining about such (even if its a legit concern)
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On September 23 2012 14:39 bistan wrote:
One thing I want to know, and I'm sure more experienced members of the community can answer this; why do the big figures not shares their opinions on this matter?
For example, surely Day9, Artosis, Tasteless etc have opinions on these matters and they would have as big an influence on this kind of stuff as the pros. Do they not share their opinion because of money? Or maybe splitting their fanbase?
I mean I know Day9 talks about BW a lot because he played that and not SC2, but he must have an opinion about what would be good for SC2 and I don't understand why he's not more involved with these kinds of discussions. Even the pros it seems, don't want to share their opinions too much, although they're spending more time playing than sitting around on TL so I understand.
Because holding onto their reputation is more important.
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Nice video, I agree with 95% of what he said... These are the important issues.
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On September 23 2012 14:39 bistan wrote:
One thing I want to know, and I'm sure more experienced members of the community can answer this; why do the big figures not shares their opinions on this matter?
For example, surely Day9, Artosis, Tasteless etc have opinions on these matters and they would have as big an influence on this kind of stuff as the pros. Do they not share their opinion because of money? Or maybe splitting their fanbase?
I mean I know Day9 talks about BW a lot because he played that and not SC2, but he must have an opinion about what would be good for SC2 and I don't understand why he's not more involved with these kinds of discussions. Even the pros it seems, don't want to share their opinions too much, although they're spending more time playing than sitting around on TL so I understand.
Day9, Artosis and company will never say anything of this sorts. Pro players will rarely say anything except about the balance of the game which impacts them directly.
You must understand, they are all professionals - this means they make money of this thing. They earn their lives around Starcraft. This means a number of things:
- they will never say that "the game is bad" or demean it in any way.
- they will never argue against Blizzard's decisions.
- they will never criticize the "fun" of the game. Artosis will yell "beautiful forcefields" even if it pains him inside for another 10 years if that earns him money.
- they will never speak up their mind about things if it is something extremely controversial in the community, because this will lose them fans.
And these aren't things to blame about them. We must simply understand that their position makes it as such that they cannot really state certain opinions for the good of their career.
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wowow good insight. awesome vid
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On September 23 2012 17:52 Kranyum wrote:Show nested quote +On September 23 2012 14:39 bistan wrote:
One thing I want to know, and I'm sure more experienced members of the community can answer this; why do the big figures not shares their opinions on this matter?
For example, surely Day9, Artosis, Tasteless etc have opinions on these matters and they would have as big an influence on this kind of stuff as the pros. Do they not share their opinion because of money? Or maybe splitting their fanbase?
I mean I know Day9 talks about BW a lot because he played that and not SC2, but he must have an opinion about what would be good for SC2 and I don't understand why he's not more involved with these kinds of discussions. Even the pros it seems, don't want to share their opinions too much, although they're spending more time playing than sitting around on TL so I understand. Day9, Artosis and company will never say anything of this sorts. Pro players will rarely say anything except about the balance of the game which impacts them directly. You must understand, they are all professionals - this means they make money of this thing. They earn their lives around Starcraft. This means a number of things: - they will never say that "the game is bad" or demean it in any way. - they will never argue against Blizzard's decisions. - they will never criticize the "fun" of the game. Artosis will yell "beautiful forcefields" even if it pains him inside for another 10 years if that earns him money. - they will never speak up their mind about things if it is something extremely controversial in the community, because this will lose them fans. And these aren't things to blame about them. We must simply understand that their position makes it as such that they cannot really state certain opinions for the good of their career.
Yeah. This is all very true.
Pro players DO have their opinions though. Most don't share them in a direct way with the community.
There are a few exceptions in idrA , Avilo and to some extent ClouD.
idrA and Avilo can be horribly biased sometimes and express things in a non-constructive way. Most of it should be seen as them venting their frustration openly. Most other players don't do this, but then again, very often they also bring up valid points about design and balance.
While Avilo is a controversial character in many people's eyes most people forget that he has actually made a number of guides here on TL.net where he talks about Raven usage in TvZ , his lategame TvP findings and more.
For the rest of the pro gamers opinions you have to read between the lines. There are terrans and zergs who have struggled as much or even more than the players mentioned above. I remember that deMuslim stated that "Protoss is incredibly strong right now" before gg-ing a MLG game. Later he has stated more openly on his stream that the matchup is "broken" in the sense that he thinks that the protoss side is easier to control. Very carefully he avoids to use the term "imbalanced", but that is essentially what he means.
I also remember that QXC tried to be constructive about the suggested snipe nerf. He suggested a milder version of the nerf with well motivated arguments. Blizzard didn't listen and if you watched his stream you could see him calling it: "Fucking nazi-balance" and later performing some kind of ceremonial burial of a text document containing a marine-ghost-medivac TvT build without tanks that relied on emp-ing the opponent's medivacs and sniping marines.
I feel that Blizzard only listens to loud and widespread complaints. I think that if you have an opinion you should state it.
That is why I am a huge supporters of the few that actually do speak up.
After all, a poorly designed game is not beneficial for their careers either.
I also feel that a part of the problem is that this community tends to magnify drama by a factor of 100. If someone says something about the touchy subject of game design or balance there are members of the community who will twist, bend and magnify whatever they find suitable to create as much drama as possible.
This is a big reason to why progamers tend to keep their opinions to themselves.
It is also built into the walls in the house of TL.net that you should have the mentality: "you lost the game because you played poorly, not because the game is imbalanced". This stems from the BW days. There is a fundamental difference though - in BW there were no patching of the game at all after the game started to be played competitively.
BW was a great game and I think it is very safe to say that SC2 has not reached its level yet.
After seeing the new units and concepts in Hots it is clear that some of the widespread concerns and complaints about the game such as the deathball phenomenon have not been addressed.
It is in both Blizzard's and the progamer's interest that the game is designed in a way so that games will appeal as many spectators as possible. For this to happen Blizzard needs to listen to the people who has the greatest game knowledge - the progamers. Thusly, the progamers also need to speak up about issues with the game and ignore all the community trolls.
Tl;DR - Speak the fuck up!
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What you are basically saying is: Don't introduce hard counters - it reduces the skillcap.
I agree, but your solution - to use units from brood war - is not the way to solve this. There is room for inventing fun units that have a high skillcap potential.
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FWIW, I don't think "deathballs" are really the problem that everyone says they are, and to the extent that they are a problem, they're fixable with small tweaks. There are lots of productive things to do with small groups of units. Terran obviously wants MMM task forces at every enemy base. Protoss wants chargelots and storms everywhere. Zerg wants to harass with speedlings....at least until they get infestors and broodlords, at which point they toy with their food for a copule minutes and then collect their win.
What prevents more of these types of activities are (1) players aren't yet good enough to do them much, and (2) you usually lose the harass force, which makes it easy to die to the counter-attack.
Expanding on point #2, you can't retreat against fungal, so all races lose their harass forces against Zerg. Protoss units can't get away from stimmed MM or speedlings, so every harassment is a suicide attack. Zerg players really could make more of harassment tactics, but they've found that turtling to infestor-broodlord is stronger, so they don't harass much anymore because they don't need to. In TvT at least, drops go relatively unpunished since they often get away and even if they die, you still have tank lines to fall back on.
HoTS adds early-game recall, which will make Protoss more active with small groups of units. And tempests will hopefully give P a non-vortex option to deal with broodlords, which will help to reduce deathballs on both sides--by freeing Protoss to use energy for recall and by forcing Zerg to do something other than sit back waiting for the GG composition.
The swarm host is another deathball-buster. It deals damage slowly but steadily over time. If you try to smash a swarm host army into the enemy's army, you'll only get one round of locusts out of the fight, and you'll lose.
There's still more that can be done tho. #1 would be making fungal a slow instead of a 100% root. It's dumb that any harassment force within 9 range of an infestor is automatically dead.
#2 would be making positional defense stronger. If I'm going to have forces all over the map, I need some way to not instantly die if the enemy attacks my front. Terran has that with siege tanks and PF's (until broodlords!), Zerg can get the economy to force zone control with a billion spines, and Protoss can zone against Terran bio with storms. But Zerg and Protoss could use better zone control options.
Lastly, #3 is weakening AoE damage and rebalancing everything else accordingly. Protoss armies are beyond pathetic without colossi or templar. Infestors are the strongest units in the game. AoE damage is strong at mid-sized armies, but it grows exponentially stronger as army size increase. This encourges players to play passively while stacking up AoE damage so that they can win at the end when those AoE abilities are their most powerful. Terran players don't have late-game AoE, so their gameplans revolve around winning early, neutralizing Protoss AoE with vikings and ghosts, or in the case of TvZ, just losing if the game hits 25 minutes. Let's tone down the power of AoE while buffing other units to compensate so that it's more rewarding to be active early and less rewarding to sit back and stack AoE damage.
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On September 24 2012 04:10 kcdc wrote:
FWIW, I don't think "deathballs" are really the problem that everyone says they are, and to the extent that they are a problem, they're fixable with small tweaks. There are lots of productive things to do with small groups of units. Terran obviously wants MMM task forces at every enemy base. Protoss wants chargelots and storms everywhere. Zerg wants to harass with speedlings....at least until they get infestors and broodlords, at which point they toy with their food for a copule minutes and then collect their win.
What prevents more of these types of activities are (1) players aren't yet good enough to do them much, and (2) you usually lose the harass force, which makes it easy to die to the counter-attack.
Expanding on point #2, you can't retreat against fungal, so all races lose their harass forces against Zerg. Protoss units can't get away from stimmed MM or speedlings, so every harassment is a suicide attack. Zerg players really could make more of harassment tactics, but they've found that turtling to infestor-broodlord is stronger, so they don't harass much anymore because they don't need to. In TvT at least, drops go relatively unpunished since they often get away and even if they die, you still have tank lines to fall back on.
HoTS adds early-game recall, which will make Protoss more active with small groups of units. And tempests will hopefully give P a non-vortex option to deal with broodlords, which will help to reduce deathballs on both sides--by freeing Protoss to use energy for recall and by forcing Zerg to do something other than sit back waiting for the GG composition.
The swarm host is another deathball-buster. It deals damage slowly but steadily over time. If you try to smash a swarm host army into the enemy's army, you'll only get one round of locusts out of the fight, and you'll lose.
There's still more that can be done tho. #1 would be making fungal a slow instead of a 100% root. It's dumb that any harassment force within 9 range of an infestor is automatically dead.
#2 would be making positional defense stronger. If I'm going to have forces all over the map, I need some way to not instantly die if the enemy attacks my front. Terran has that with siege tanks and PF's (until broodlords!), Zerg can get the economy to force zone control with a billion spines, and Protoss can zone against Terran bio with storms. But Zerg and Protoss could use better zone control options.
Lastly, #3 is weakening AoE damage and rebalancing everything else accordingly. Protoss armies are beyond pathetic without colossi or templar. Infestors are the strongest units in the game. AoE damage is strong at mid-sized armies, but it grows exponentially stronger as army size increase. This encourges players to play passively while stacking up AoE damage so that they can win at the end when those AoE abilities are their most powerful. Terran players don't have late-game AoE, so their gameplans revolve around winning early, neutralizing Protoss AoE with vikings and ghosts, or in the case of TvZ, just losing if the game hits 25 minutes. Let's tone down the power of AoE while buffing other units to compensate so that it's more rewarding to be active early and less rewarding to sit back and stack AoE damage.
agree with you on #1
#2 and #3 is EXACTLY the wrong approach. make static defense weaker! that way you can harrass all game and need units to defend which makes the deathball smaller. weaker static defense would really help harrassing for all races and make small groups of units be better --> smaller deathball, more multitasking needed, more skill needed. same thing goes with AoE: buff AoE so clumping your units in one big ball will get punished more.
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With regard to #2, you should be able to defend select zones effectively, but you shouldn't be able defend every zone. Siege tanks are a good example of well-designed zone defense--if there are a bunch of tanks in a spot, you can't attack there. You attack somewhere else. Planetary fortresses are not as well-designed since you can easily put them at every new base in late-game.
As for #3, the stronger late-game AoE is, the more the player with AoE will want to turtle. Protoss turtles against Terran because their non-AoE units can't engage Terran's units out on the map, and the AoE units aren't fully effective until army sizes are large. If you made zealots and stalkers better against bio and storms and colossi worse against bio, Protoss would be out on the map before 150 food. That would be cool.
The other thing I forgot to mention is designing maps so that players have vulnerable expansions before before 20 minutes. This is tough to do given current balance designs, particularly given Protoss's weak basic units and powerful AoE units. In order for Protoss to get a competitively timed third, they need to be able to defend it with zealots, sentries and stalkers, which means it has to be in a choke right next to the natural. This means that modern maps don't make your expansions vulnerable to harass until you need a fourth base.
Meanwhile, the 200 supply limit means you don't really want more than 72 workers which is optimal to mine 3 bases. This means you aren't properly rewarded for taking a fourth until your main is mining out. Add everything up, and players just don't need to expose themselves to harassment until their main is mining out. This makes the first 15 minutes of most games a snoozefest.
The problem could be addressed with less resources per base which would incentivize taking riskier expansions earlier since you'll need more bases to get optimal income out of your 72 workers. Or it could be addressed by making Protoss more able to defend an early third, which would in turn allow third bases to be more exposed.
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EPT![[image loading]](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9a/Choco_chip_cookie.jpg)
