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HoTS Gameplay vs. Balance - Page 7

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Decendos
Profile Joined August 2011
Germany1341 Posts
Last Edited: 2012-09-23 20:48:47
September 23 2012 20:47 GMT
#121
thats what i was talking about. you should buff AoE like tanks (while nerfing marines) and nerf static defense so that you have to leave 1-2 tanks + 1 bunker with marines in it per base to defend it --> smaller deathball. same thing for zerg (leave ling bling + 1 infestor per base) after fungal damage buff and protoss storm + collossi damage buff. that way you make defending vs harrass more skillful, make harrassing better and split up the deathball. it basically means if you go for a deathball all your bases can be harrassed so going for a deathball will have a big disadvantage compared to splitting your units.

the supply and the mineral/gas thing you mention is another thing (while being true).
kcdc
Profile Blog Joined April 2010
United States2311 Posts
Last Edited: 2012-09-23 22:01:00
September 23 2012 22:00 GMT
#122
Seriously, strengthening AoE is the worst possible thing you could do for game design. If you buff my colossi and my storm while weakening my zealots, I will sit in my base until I'm maxed 100% of the time because maxed fights will be the only ones I can win. The more powerful you make the units that only work in deathballs, the more players have to deathball.

Conversely, if you make it so I can hold my own with zealots and stalkers, I'll be out on the map with multi-pronged harass all game.

Think about it this way--which race is the most active with small groups of units hitting multiple spots on the map? Terran. Which race has the worst late-game AoE damage? Terran. That's not a coincidence.

If you nerf fungal, storm and colossi while buffing other aspects of Zerg and Toss to balance the nerfs, you'll see them playing more like Terran with small and frequent attacks because it will be a stronger play style than sitting back and turtling up AoE.
SigmaoctanusIV
Profile Blog Joined April 2010
United States3313 Posts
September 23 2012 22:47 GMT
#123
Some gameplay stuff would be buffing gateway units by making stalkers a little stronger and giving senties a buff towards light and making zealots slightly faster and nerfing warpgates a bunch so players want to use gateways and warpgates become a strategical ability more then just standard protoss play. Then gateway units will be able to fight without protoss just sitting in base tell 200 deathball and that is the only way to play. Also I am 100% for replacing colossus with Reavers.
I am Godzilla You are Japan
Thrasymachus725
Profile Joined April 2010
Canada527 Posts
September 23 2012 23:52 GMT
#124
I want reavers back because I think they have the same power of the colossus, with a more innovative and interesting way to control them. A-moving is lame, and reavers are still weak to anti-air by way of sniping shuttles.
The meaning of life is to fight.
Decendos
Profile Joined August 2011
Germany1341 Posts
September 24 2012 07:34 GMT
#125
On September 24 2012 07:00 kcdc wrote:
Seriously, strengthening AoE is the worst possible thing you could do for game design. If you buff my colossi and my storm while weakening my zealots, I will sit in my base until I'm maxed 100% of the time because maxed fights will be the only ones I can win. The more powerful you make the units that only work in deathballs, the more players have to deathball.

Conversely, if you make it so I can hold my own with zealots and stalkers, I'll be out on the map with multi-pronged harass all game.

Think about it this way--which race is the most active with small groups of units hitting multiple spots on the map? Terran. Which race has the worst late-game AoE damage? Terran. That's not a coincidence.

If you nerf fungal, storm and colossi while buffing other aspects of Zerg and Toss to balance the nerfs, you'll see them playing more like Terran with small and frequent attacks because it will be a stronger play style than sitting back and turtling up AoE.


i think i know what you are trying to say but think about it this way: more AoE and worse static defense means you have to control space with your units (like tanks, HT, infestor etc.). that way the deathball just got smaller. now with a nerfed marine your zealot stalker sentry army got a lot stronger AND you get recall with the MC which addresses your point of protoss being all in if they move on the map with small amounts of units.

what i dont get is that you say you will turtle with more AoE and move out only then maxed. now you actually can move out with 1-2 colossi or 1-2 HT since their AoE is stronger so you need less of them. that combined with recall and toss will be able to move out nearly 100% of the game.

most important thing: higher AoE means going for a deathball gets worse since clumped up units will evaporate a lot faster and multipronged attacks with smaller amounts of units gets better and better.
Big J
Profile Joined March 2011
Austria16289 Posts
September 24 2012 09:24 GMT
#126
On September 24 2012 07:00 kcdc wrote:
Seriously, strengthening AoE is the worst possible thing you could do for game design. If you buff my colossi and my storm while weakening my zealots, I will sit in my base until I'm maxed 100% of the time because maxed fights will be the only ones I can win. The more powerful you make the units that only work in deathballs, the more players have to deathball.

Conversely, if you make it so I can hold my own with zealots and stalkers, I'll be out on the map with multi-pronged harass all game.

Think about it this way--which race is the most active with small groups of units hitting multiple spots on the map? Terran. Which race has the worst late-game AoE damage? Terran. That's not a coincidence.

If you nerf fungal, storm and colossi while buffing other aspects of Zerg and Toss to balance the nerfs, you'll see them playing more like Terran with small and frequent attacks because it will be a stronger play style than sitting back and turtling up AoE.


I agree with you, that stronger AoE won't weaken deathballs. I mean, let's say the colossus is stronger - are you going to run over the map because of that with your first colossus and 5stalkers? not really. You will still turtle up untill you have the colossi to beat mass ground and the anti air to beat mass air and it only will come down to you being able to attack earlier - unless the opponent can get an equal scary splash force out in the same time, at which point anything but more splash is useless and all the changes is that the deathballs contain more splash units instead of singlefire units. (PvP, TvT and ZvZ have all taught us, that there is no so thing as "too much splash", where you can start to split of parts of your army)

Yet I'm not quite certain what could be done about this, apart from balancing the game around FRB.
I feel like the production differences between the races don't really work out. For example, in TvT everything is rather smooth productionwise and the units rather slow, so you cannot defend a lot of locations at once and you don't have a huge wave (though still big ones) of newly produced units to defend.
In ZvZ you can have nice interaction, because you have units that are so fast, that they don't have to worry too much about newly produced units, as they can retreat fast and counter fast.
And also in PvP, I think the situation up to the counter-all-colossus is good. Both players can do a lot of damage with blink and prism or just straight up warp gate attacks, yet noone really has to turtle too hard and finds himself afterwards in a position of not being able to attack with a ton of statics.

Then we look at the non mirrors:
TvZ: zerg overruns Terran unless Terran turtles. Terran overruns Zerg, unless Zerg doesn't try to get aggressive and turtles. Yet the situation is somewhat good, because all the units in the matchup are not really beefy, so you can trade easily.
PvT: Terran overruns Protoss unless Protoss turtles. Warpgate timings destroy Terran unless Terran turtles. The best part is that both parties have somewhat good drops (especially T ofc)
ZvP: yeah, Protoss has no chance unless they turtle really hard. And then they can do a huge timing, that Zerg cannot trade down, because of how those high HP units work. You kill all of them, or you kill none of them. How does Zerg deal with that? Build high HP units...
Andre
Profile Blog Joined August 2009
Slovenia3523 Posts
Last Edited: 2012-09-24 09:59:17
September 24 2012 09:58 GMT
#127
I agree on some of the points made in this topic, balance shouldn't even be a priority. Nor should gameplay(in the sense of how X MU should be played), but unit design.

If there are units in the game who scale with the amount of apm used on them, who force the enemy to use APM to counter them. Then we will have a dynamic game.

It always comes back to BW, but the dynamic between vultures/dragoons is the prime example of this. Vulture in itself doesn't counter dragoons, but with spidermine placement it can.

We shouldn't just copy units from BW either, SC2 works so very different because of the engine. Perhaps in a way it's harder to design interesting units for SC2, but that's how it is.

Is there a difference between me using an infestor and stephano? Very negligible, fungals are 90% of the time the same.
Is there a difference between me using a group of marines and MKP? Yes, very.

I always ask myself this questions, and if you see a certain unit used basically the same(in terms of effectivness) on a pro level that it's used on a lower level - then it is in my opinion a bad unit.
You must gather your party before venturing forth.
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