Kudos to Filter for making this video, which I feel raises some very good points. Yes he talks a bit about BW but the fact is that BW is a great example of a game with great gameplay. So is Counter Strike, which he also talks a little bit about. We need to make Blizzard realize that there are still some very obvious gameplay faults with SC2 that they NEED to make their top priority, above anything else. I hope the community will stand behind him, he's also contributed an amazing piece of work for new players to the game (his Bronze to Masters series).
I want to see HoTS focused on gameplay, and how the game plays. Not balance. I don't care if you need to reduce the damage of a certain unit after the fact. I don't care if the game launches and it's slightly unbalanced because a protoss reaver that happened to make it in the game, from the gameplay stuff, is just a little bit too strong. We can fix that. What we can't fix is if HoTS comes out, Terran has nothing new and exciting, Zerg has all this cool new stuff, and Protoss players don't even play the game cause their race is still terribly designed. We need to fix this stuff and now is the time to fix it, while the game's still in beta.
I think Blizzard is listening to the community, and it's important that they do, because we can't just sit here and talk about balance; "Well you know, the Swarm Host is good but, let's reduce the range from 3 to 2." No! Figure out if it's a good unit. Should we put a different unit in? Is that unit effective? Is that unit a specific counter to something else? If it is, why is in the game? Get it out.
i completely agree with filter and everything he said. he seems to know what hes talking about and has a good understanding on how to fix sc and make it the that it used to be rather than the generic noobfriendly activision game that it has become.
I agree with Filter 100% on this. I really hope Bliz listens to this. Also, his B=>M series made my play much better. I can't recommend that series enough.
I completely agree that gameplay design should always come first. But since it seems clear (and reasonable) that they don't want to make a BW 2, i hope they will at least focus their attention on big flaws (infestors, vortex, ffs) while trying to make other units/spells more skill rewarding and entertaining (colossus, phoenix ..ye i personally find range upgraded phoenixes quite sad to watch, the rare times we have them).
I did only watch up to 10mins, but I absolutly didn't want to watch any further, as I just completly disagree. Awesome gameplay is created by units that are balanced in ways so that they are used actively all the time.
Just using his examples: Reaper: 5rax reaper was completly overpowered, but it was awesome to play with, awesome tense to watch and even playing against it, was in a way awesome, because it felt soooo good when you could beat it, while it was sooooo tense all the time. What they did with the reaper was nerf it into an underpowered state. What they should have done, is BALANCE IT in a way that reapers would still get used! Find that sweetspot that creates tense gameplay, where most of the time a player will get an advantage of it, but not wins or loses straight up. Tempest: it's a unit that shoots the opponent. Always (not anymore with 15range, but I'd hope it gets a little bit more again throughout the beta). If properly BALANCED. How does that not create tense moments? What the game needs is more units that can attack even if you don't allin.
The HotS units are some of the best ideas because if we look at them: Oracle: fast harass unit; support unit for hit squads against fungal - introduces more active play Tempest: long ranged unit; when properly used, it should shoot the opponent and force a reaction that is not "turtle harder) - introduces active play MS Core: Allows Protoss to walk out on the map early; introduces active play Swarm Host: Sends Units to the opponent from long range; Should always do that, because the unit should be safe itself. - introduces active play Battle Hellion: allows the hellion to be a better combat unit if need be; producing more fast harass units means more active play.
Basically the only unit that is somewhat questionable in terms of more active play is the widow mine, as it could turn out that the best way to play against it would be to sit back and not move until you are ready to clear the map from minefields with a huge army (though for that the widow mine would have to be properly balanced first)
What blizzard needs to do, is balance units in ways so that they actually can do more stuff, even if the opponent turtles, while diminishing their all-in potential. In WoL, mostly just the 2nd one has been done. It's not a question of design, if the reaper is overpowered. It's a question of "how close is the battle between reapers and the defender".
On September 20 2012 23:53 Big J wrote: I did only watch up to 10mins, but I absolutly didn't want to watch any further, as I just completly disagree. Awesome gameplay is created by units that are balanced in ways so that they are used actively all the time.
Just using his examples: Reaper: 5rax reaper was completly overpowered, but it was awesome to play with, awesome tense to watch and even playing against it, was in a way awesome, because it felt soooo good when you could beat it, while it was sooooo tense all the time. What they did with the reaper was nerf it into an underpowered state. What they should have done, is BALANCE IT in a way that reapers would still get used! Find that sweetspot that creates tense gameplay, where most of the time a player will get an advantage of it, but not wins or loses straight up. Tempest: it's a unit that shoots the opponent. Always (not anymore with 15range, but I'd hope it gets a little bit more again throughout the beta). If properly BALANCED. How does that not create tense moments? What the game needs is more units that can attack even if you don't allin.
The HotS units are some of the best ideas because if we look at them: Oracle: fast harass unit; support unit for hit squads against fungal - introduces more active play Tempest: long ranged unit; when properly used, it should shoot the opponent and force a reaction that is not "turtle harder) - introduces active play MS Core: Allows Protoss to walk out on the map early; introduces active play Swarm Host: Sends Units to the opponent from long range; Should always do that, because the unit should be safe itself. - introduces active play Battle Hellion: allows the hellion to be a better combat unit if need be; producing more fast harass units means more active play.
Basically the only unit that is somewhat questionable in terms of more active play is the widow mine, as it could turn out that the best way to play against it would be to sit back and not move until you are ready to clear the map from minefields with a huge army (though for that the widow mine would have to be properly balanced first)
What blizzard needs to do, is balance units in ways so that they actually can do more stuff, even if the opponent turtles, while diminishing their all-in potential. In WoL, mostly just the 2nd one has been done. It's not a question of design, if the reaper is overpowered. It's a question of "how close is the battle between reapers and the defender".
sure balance is good, but if everything is already balanced in the beta or even before it, why not just release the game? Considering that you said that you stopped listening 10 minutes in means that youdidnt hear anything else that he had to say regarding the issue.
Great video in general and I really hope Blizzard pays attention to the concept of being bold with beta changes.
Now is the time to take those risks and see how they play out, please take heed Blizzard.
I want to talk further about a few things that Filter mentions. Sometimes I get a bit opinionated, so be warned.
1) The Marine.
I have hated this unit since day 1, and I have offered a simple solution to it's broken numbers for at least a year now. -5hp. That's it. Filter brings up the mechanic of unit spread during movement and I think this moreso adds to the power of the marine rather than takes away from it. Marines having the highest DPS per cost in the game isn't as much of an issue as their extreme cost-effectiveness is. The cost-effectiveness comes from their tankiness, not their damage output.
Bio was non-existant in BW TvP not because Tanks and Vultures were awesome, but because Marines simply died too damn fast. They did great damage, but 1 small mistake and the whole game was over. This is why mech was the standard in that MU and the late-game standard for every MU.
Marines doing great damage is fine. Marines having 55 hp, being able to tank Zealots, Banelings, Archons, and Siege Tanks is not. Marines need to be squishier for the health of the game and the Terran race specifically, they are currently too good in WoL and need to be addressed in a direct manner. IMO, this unit is responsible for 90% of the balance problems in SC2 right now because it is too powerful and artificially inflates the power of the other races units simply because they need ways to deal with the Marine.
2) Specific counter units. A LOT of units in SC2 suffer from this problem, too many to name, so I want to just grab 1 or 2 of them and focus on the aspects of these units that are problematic.
The Immortal, specifically it's Hardened Shield contribute to the lack of great Mech play in TvP. Immortals are a fine unit IMO, and if they were the only method Protoss had to fight against hard Siege containment, I would be ok with it. But currently in the game of SC2, the Immortal acts as an icing on the cake the really puts the nail in the coffin of TvP mech. Siege Tanks struggling against Zealots is fine, trading equally against Blink Stalkers is right about where they should be, and being slow and unweildly when pushing is perfect; but adding in the Immortal, which can take an ungodly 13 siege tank shots before going down really just causes mech to be too risky and unrewarding. Coupling that with the lack of zoning mechanics that BW style spider mines provided really shuts down any opportunity for us to see some of the best positional-based gameplay I have ever seen in any RTS come to SC2. Mech in BW TvP was somewhat unique and beautiful in the RTS world, Blizzard should be pulling out all the stops to bring something like that back in HotS.
The Void Ray on the other side of the spectrum has become a unit without a cause. It seems to originally have been designed as a snowball unit which was quickly decided to be too powerful of a mechanic and does not fit within the realm of SC. It then became some sort of an anti-armored unit and has since, slowly changed into a generalist Air unit akin to the Mutalisk but it suffers from all the same things the Scout did in BW. Too expesive, too slow, too useless. To make matters worse, Blizzard seems intent on adding the Tempest to the game, which sadly enough, seems to be becoming more and more of a Void Ray itself. Now we have 2 useless Protoss Air Units!
Protoss Air in general, and the Void Ray (and now Tempest) specifically needs to be addressed in a meaningful way. These units suck and either need to be given a meaningful role or removed from the game.
3) Where does balance come in?
Filter brings up the fact that Balance should not be the leading discussion right now. And I totally agree with him there. We should be looking for fun and interesting mechanics. Ways to make existing things more engaging and what cool ideas can be added to them. The community needs to stop worrying about whether or not the numbers themselves are right, that's Blizzards job.
Filter also mentions the reduction of the locust range from 3 to 2. I actually think this IS a meaningful number that the community has a right to be worried about, and I bring about the example of the Roach. This unit had it's range increased from 3 to 4 and that one small increment changed the unit in ways that the vast majority of the community had written off; even immediately after the change. 3 range Roaches struggled vs pretty much everything and were largely useless. 4 range Roaches gave Zerg a meaningful means to fight Protoss armies in the middle of the map, apply pressure to Protoss bases, and are generally just a solid unit that gives Zerg a robust core unit throughout the midgame (sometimes a bit too robust IMO).
While tweaking numbers is largely the responsibility of Blizzard, those small changes can cause units to have vastly different feels to them. Blizzard HAS to get these numbers right, even during the beta, or we as a community cannot give meaningful input on how the units play out together and how the overall game feels. Numbers matter, even from a "mechanics and interactions" point of view.
I agree with much of what he says, but I really disagree about the auto-spreading units part at the end. Spreading units is one of the things that actually takes skill in SC2. If you get a large clump hit by a fungal or storm, it's your own fault for not spreading well enough. Shouldn't be taking micro out of the game, should be adding more.
On September 20 2012 23:53 Big J wrote: I did only watch up to 10mins, but I absolutly didn't want to watch any further, as I just completly disagree. Awesome gameplay is created by units that are balanced in ways so that they are used actively all the time.
Just using his examples: Reaper: 5rax reaper was completly overpowered, but it was awesome to play with, awesome tense to watch and even playing against it, was in a way awesome, because it felt soooo good when you could beat it, while it was sooooo tense all the time. What they did with the reaper was nerf it into an underpowered state. What they should have done, is BALANCE IT in a way that reapers would still get used! Find that sweetspot that creates tense gameplay, where most of the time a player will get an advantage of it, but not wins or loses straight up. Tempest: it's a unit that shoots the opponent. Always (not anymore with 15range, but I'd hope it gets a little bit more again throughout the beta). If properly BALANCED. How does that not create tense moments? What the game needs is more units that can attack even if you don't allin.
The HotS units are some of the best ideas because if we look at them: Oracle: fast harass unit; support unit for hit squads against fungal - introduces more active play Tempest: long ranged unit; when properly used, it should shoot the opponent and force a reaction that is not "turtle harder) - introduces active play MS Core: Allows Protoss to walk out on the map early; introduces active play Swarm Host: Sends Units to the opponent from long range; Should always do that, because the unit should be safe itself. - introduces active play Battle Hellion: allows the hellion to be a better combat unit if need be; producing more fast harass units means more active play.
Basically the only unit that is somewhat questionable in terms of more active play is the widow mine, as it could turn out that the best way to play against it would be to sit back and not move until you are ready to clear the map from minefields with a huge army (though for that the widow mine would have to be properly balanced first)
What blizzard needs to do, is balance units in ways so that they actually can do more stuff, even if the opponent turtles, while diminishing their all-in potential. In WoL, mostly just the 2nd one has been done. It's not a question of design, if the reaper is overpowered. It's a question of "how close is the battle between reapers and the defender".
sure balance is good, but if everything is already balanced in the beta or even before it, why not just release the game? Considering that you said that you stopped listening 10 minutes in means that youdidnt hear anything else that he had to say regarding the issue.
Yeah, listened to the rest now. All he talks is stuff that can and should be achieved via balance. Thors are too bad anti air vs anthing but mutalisks? Buff it against other things. AoE is too good? Nerf it. Marines are too good in big balls now? Nerf the big balls. There are a lot of simple parameters that are responsible for that (supply, range, dps, upgrades, production)
There is literarily nothing that he mentioned, that could not be dealt with by balancing.
ehm i think you got it wrong, tvp in wol playing mech is not viable(at any level), what they are trying to make is make mech viable. The most easy way would just remove thor cannons and its mana. guess what? instead of 200hp 300min/200gas unit, you have 400hp unit.. problem solved tvp mech viable. Second your comment about positioning is bullshit, because there is no positioning in low lvl games, terran mech armies lose in straight up battles. For example terran is sieged up, toss a moves, both players does zero micro, toss wins. Now can you explain a noob why he cant make high tech unit in certain mu and must really on first avaible bio units? And why is that not imbalanced. As far as i am aware both ZERG and TOSS pretty much can make all units in every mu, especially on low level. So why cant terran make half of there tech tree units. Your logic is flawed.
On September 21 2012 00:07 Jermstuddog wrote: 2) Specific counter units. A LOT of units in SC2 suffer from this problem, too many to name, so I want to just grab 1 or 2 of them and focus on the aspects of these units that are problematic.
The Immortal, specifically it's Hardened Shield contribute to the lack of great Mech play in TvP. Immortals are a fine unit IMO, and if they were the only method Protoss had to fight against hard Siege containment, I would be ok with it. But currently in the game of SC2, the Immortal acts as an icing on the cake the really puts the nail in the coffin of TvP mech. Siege Tanks struggling against Zealots is fine, trading equally against Blink Stalkers is right about where they should be, and being slow and unweildly when pushing is perfect; but adding in the Immortal, which can take an ungodly 13 siege tank shots before going down really just causes mech to be too risky and unrewarding. Coupling that with the lack of zoning mechanics that BW style spider mines provided really shuts down any opportunity for us to see some of the best positional-based gameplay I have ever seen in any RTS come to SC2. Mech in BW TvP was somewhat unique and beautiful in the RTS world, Blizzard should be pulling out all the stops to bring something like that back in HotS.
The Void Ray on the other side of the spectrum has become a unit without a cause. It seems to originally have been designed as a snowball unit which was quickly decided to be too powerful of a mechanic and does not fit within the realm of SC. It then became some sort of an anti-armored unit and has since, slowly changed into a generalist Air unit akin to the Mutalisk but it suffers from all the same things the Scout did in BW. Too expesive, too slow, too useless. To make matters worse, Blizzard seems intent on adding the Tempest to the game, which sadly enough, seems to be becoming more and more of a Void Ray itself. Now we have 2 useless Protoss Air Units!
Protoss Air in general, and the Void Ray (and now Tempest) specifically needs to be addressed in a meaningful way. These units suck and either need to be given a meaningful role or removed from the game.
These two problems are the same. If mech were actually viable in PvT, I guarantee you that we would see much more of SkyToss.
I can't tell you how many times I've tried to discuss the faulty design of SC2 units with people only to have a bunch of morons turn it into balance discussion or whine about how this addition or that addition would be overpowered.
People who can't understand something as simple as the difference between good game design and balance have no business discussing either of them, and should just play the damn game and leave the process of improving it to more abstract minds.
Game design comes first. It sets the parameters and the dynamics for interesting and fun game interactions and mechanics. Balancing is the last fucking thing to worry about - it's just tweaking numbers and variables after the fact to give both sides an equally fair chance at playing.
Filter is a hero for making a video that might actually help get this point across to more people. Thank you OP.
The protoss mechanics are, as I feel, a big issue. Looking at ZvT, it's a beautiful matchup. Often the action is everywhere: drops, run by. Also the main battles are amazing to watch. They often range several screens. Everything is spread out and the positional war, and angels are important.
With protoss vs x the main battles, is more often than not, all the forces for both players pretty clumpted up. And than you throw as much spells as possible in that small area. The subtleties of the battles are less prominent and less exciting.
On September 20 2012 23:35 wcr.4fun wrote: Great video. Everything that's wrong with sc2: No fun, but "balanced".
Yet you have 417 posts on a forum about the game and are talking about it 2 years after it started being played.
Sometimes (oft-times) the hyperbole in this forum is absurd.
SC2 has its flaws but is still better than 95% of the games out there.
I played sc2 in 2010 for 3 months and picked it up another month or two in 2012 but I got incredibly bored with infestor broodlord. I'm here now mostly for brood war and sharing my opinion on how the game sc2 could be better. This account has also been made only very recently. Also being better than 95 percent of the games doesn't mean it's good, besides brood war and some good old wc3 tft, I don't really have other RTS games (with emphasis on micro/macro) to turn too.
On September 20 2012 23:53 Big J wrote: I did only watch up to 10mins, but I absolutly didn't want to watch any further, as I just completly disagree. Awesome gameplay is created by units that are balanced in ways so that they are used actively all the time.
Just using his examples: Reaper: 5rax reaper was completly overpowered, but it was awesome to play with, awesome tense to watch and even playing against it, was in a way awesome, because it felt soooo good when you could beat it, while it was sooooo tense all the time. What they did with the reaper was nerf it into an underpowered state. What they should have done, is BALANCE IT in a way that reapers would still get used! Find that sweetspot that creates tense gameplay, where most of the time a player will get an advantage of it, but not wins or loses straight up. Tempest: it's a unit that shoots the opponent. Always (not anymore with 15range, but I'd hope it gets a little bit more again throughout the beta). If properly BALANCED. How does that not create tense moments? What the game needs is more units that can attack even if you don't allin.
The HotS units are some of the best ideas because if we look at them: Oracle: fast harass unit; support unit for hit squads against fungal - introduces more active play Tempest: long ranged unit; when properly used, it should shoot the opponent and force a reaction that is not "turtle harder) - introduces active play MS Core: Allows Protoss to walk out on the map early; introduces active play Swarm Host: Sends Units to the opponent from long range; Should always do that, because the unit should be safe itself. - introduces active play Battle Hellion: allows the hellion to be a better combat unit if need be; producing more fast harass units means more active play.
Basically the only unit that is somewhat questionable in terms of more active play is the widow mine, as it could turn out that the best way to play against it would be to sit back and not move until you are ready to clear the map from minefields with a huge army (though for that the widow mine would have to be properly balanced first)
What blizzard needs to do, is balance units in ways so that they actually can do more stuff, even if the opponent turtles, while diminishing their all-in potential. In WoL, mostly just the 2nd one has been done. It's not a question of design, if the reaper is overpowered. It's a question of "how close is the battle between reapers and the defender".
sure balance is good, but if everything is already balanced in the beta or even before it, why not just release the game? Considering that you said that you stopped listening 10 minutes in means that youdidnt hear anything else that he had to say regarding the issue.
Yeah, listened to the rest now. All he talks is stuff that can and should be achieved via balance. Thors are too bad anti air vs anthing but mutalisks? Buff it against other things. AoE is too good? Nerf it. Marines are too good in big balls now? Nerf the big balls. There are a lot of simple parameters that are responsible for that (supply, range, dps, upgrades, production)
There is literarily nothing that he mentioned, that could not be dealt with by balancing.
Do you even understand anything of what the video was saying? Game play first, balance comes next.
On September 20 2012 23:53 Big J wrote: I did only watch up to 10mins, but I absolutly didn't want to watch any further, as I just completly disagree. Awesome gameplay is created by units that are balanced in ways so that they are used actively all the time.
Just using his examples: Reaper: 5rax reaper was completly overpowered, but it was awesome to play with, awesome tense to watch and even playing against it, was in a way awesome, because it felt soooo good when you could beat it, while it was sooooo tense all the time. What they did with the reaper was nerf it into an underpowered state. What they should have done, is BALANCE IT in a way that reapers would still get used! Find that sweetspot that creates tense gameplay, where most of the time a player will get an advantage of it, but not wins or loses straight up. Tempest: it's a unit that shoots the opponent. Always (not anymore with 15range, but I'd hope it gets a little bit more again throughout the beta). If properly BALANCED. How does that not create tense moments? What the game needs is more units that can attack even if you don't allin.
The HotS units are some of the best ideas because if we look at them: Oracle: fast harass unit; support unit for hit squads against fungal - introduces more active play Tempest: long ranged unit; when properly used, it should shoot the opponent and force a reaction that is not "turtle harder) - introduces active play MS Core: Allows Protoss to walk out on the map early; introduces active play Swarm Host: Sends Units to the opponent from long range; Should always do that, because the unit should be safe itself. - introduces active play Battle Hellion: allows the hellion to be a better combat unit if need be; producing more fast harass units means more active play.
Basically the only unit that is somewhat questionable in terms of more active play is the widow mine, as it could turn out that the best way to play against it would be to sit back and not move until you are ready to clear the map from minefields with a huge army (though for that the widow mine would have to be properly balanced first)
What blizzard needs to do, is balance units in ways so that they actually can do more stuff, even if the opponent turtles, while diminishing their all-in potential. In WoL, mostly just the 2nd one has been done. It's not a question of design, if the reaper is overpowered. It's a question of "how close is the battle between reapers and the defender".
sure balance is good, but if everything is already balanced in the beta or even before it, why not just release the game? Considering that you said that you stopped listening 10 minutes in means that youdidnt hear anything else that he had to say regarding the issue.
Yeah, listened to the rest now. All he talks is stuff that can and should be achieved via balance. Thors are too bad anti air vs anthing but mutalisks? Buff it against other things. AoE is too good? Nerf it. Marines are too good in big balls now? Nerf the big balls. There are a lot of simple parameters that are responsible for that (supply, range, dps, upgrades, production)
There is literarily nothing that he mentioned, that could not be dealt with by balancing.
almost everything you said goes against each other though. Only way to nerf big balls of marines is to have good aoe, but you also said nerf aoe. Thors are made to counter light air units, viking is supposed to counter everything else as the viking is basically a goliath that isnt ground based and doesnt have an aoe aa-attack.Maybe remove the viking and the thor to replace them with a bw goliath? marines do a ton of damage but only when together, if you make them spread then they are in small groups (1-3 if you are good at splitting). A single zealot or archon can clean up 3 marines easily right? just throwing around some random ideas.
On September 21 2012 00:07 Jermstuddog wrote: 2) Specific counter units. A LOT of units in SC2 suffer from this problem, too many to name, so I want to just grab 1 or 2 of them and focus on the aspects of these units that are problematic.
The Immortal, specifically it's Hardened Shield contribute to the lack of great Mech play in TvP. Immortals are a fine unit IMO, and if they were the only method Protoss had to fight against hard Siege containment, I would be ok with it. But currently in the game of SC2, the Immortal acts as an icing on the cake the really puts the nail in the coffin of TvP mech. Siege Tanks struggling against Zealots is fine, trading equally against Blink Stalkers is right about where they should be, and being slow and unweildly when pushing is perfect; but adding in the Immortal, which can take an ungodly 13 siege tank shots before going down really just causes mech to be too risky and unrewarding. Coupling that with the lack of zoning mechanics that BW style spider mines provided really shuts down any opportunity for us to see some of the best positional-based gameplay I have ever seen in any RTS come to SC2. Mech in BW TvP was somewhat unique and beautiful in the RTS world, Blizzard should be pulling out all the stops to bring something like that back in HotS.
The Void Ray on the other side of the spectrum has become a unit without a cause. It seems to originally have been designed as a snowball unit which was quickly decided to be too powerful of a mechanic and does not fit within the realm of SC. It then became some sort of an anti-armored unit and has since, slowly changed into a generalist Air unit akin to the Mutalisk but it suffers from all the same things the Scout did in BW. Too expesive, too slow, too useless. To make matters worse, Blizzard seems intent on adding the Tempest to the game, which sadly enough, seems to be becoming more and more of a Void Ray itself. Now we have 2 useless Protoss Air Units!
Protoss Air in general, and the Void Ray (and now Tempest) specifically needs to be addressed in a meaningful way. These units suck and either need to be given a meaningful role or removed from the game.
These two problems are the same. If mech were actually viable in PvT, I guarantee you that we would see much more of SkyToss.
While I agree that making mech viable immediately lends more credibility to SkyToss, it doesn't help with the fact that Void Rays (and now Tempests) are just bad units.
They don't fulfill any meaningful role and are hogging up that slot in the Protoss Air Force.
Ignoring the Tempest, I think the Void Ray needs to be addressed regardless and given a meaningful role.
"Overpriced, slow, useless version of Mutalisk" is not meaningful nor interesting.
nice video and really good insights. although i disagree in some points (swarm host is a good game design that allows zerg to pressure in the midgame without being all in or having to turtle. autospreading needs to still make units kind of clump up since splitting units adds nice micro to the game. but you are right that it shouldnt be THAT clumped up like right now) most points you have are really well thought out.
4 things blizzard needs to do:
1. implement 1 BW unit in the game every patch in the beta and listen to high level player feedback. either remove another unit (colossus vs reaver as they have same role) or just add a BW unit (lurker vs swarm hosts as they have different roles).
2. buff units with good game design that are in WoL: BCs, ravens, hydras, carrier etc.
3. rework units with bad game design that are in WoL: archon toilet, FF, fungal, warpgate tech, concussive, NP (either too strong or too weak), hardened immortal shields etc.
4. take down the supply of some units (while possibly nerfing them): roaches, hydras, ultras, swarm host, viper, thor, BC, tank, collosus, carrier, VR, tempest
first of all rework groundbreaking things like warpgate, marine dps, clumping and add lower supplies to units.
after that get to the other points mentioned!
JUST TRY A LOT MORE THINGS BLIZZ! YOU ARE ON A GOOD WAY WITH REMOVING WARHOUND AND REINTRODUCING CARRIER. GET EVEN MORE HARDCORE WITH TRYING STUFF IN THE BETA! :-)
On September 20 2012 23:53 Big J wrote: I did only watch up to 10mins, but I absolutly didn't want to watch any further, as I just completly disagree. Awesome gameplay is created by units that are balanced in ways so that they are used actively all the time.
Just using his examples: Reaper: 5rax reaper was completly overpowered, but it was awesome to play with, awesome tense to watch and even playing against it, was in a way awesome, because it felt soooo good when you could beat it, while it was sooooo tense all the time. What they did with the reaper was nerf it into an underpowered state. What they should have done, is BALANCE IT in a way that reapers would still get used! Find that sweetspot that creates tense gameplay, where most of the time a player will get an advantage of it, but not wins or loses straight up. Tempest: it's a unit that shoots the opponent. Always (not anymore with 15range, but I'd hope it gets a little bit more again throughout the beta). If properly BALANCED. How does that not create tense moments? What the game needs is more units that can attack even if you don't allin.
The HotS units are some of the best ideas because if we look at them: Oracle: fast harass unit; support unit for hit squads against fungal - introduces more active play Tempest: long ranged unit; when properly used, it should shoot the opponent and force a reaction that is not "turtle harder) - introduces active play MS Core: Allows Protoss to walk out on the map early; introduces active play Swarm Host: Sends Units to the opponent from long range; Should always do that, because the unit should be safe itself. - introduces active play Battle Hellion: allows the hellion to be a better combat unit if need be; producing more fast harass units means more active play.
Basically the only unit that is somewhat questionable in terms of more active play is the widow mine, as it could turn out that the best way to play against it would be to sit back and not move until you are ready to clear the map from minefields with a huge army (though for that the widow mine would have to be properly balanced first)
What blizzard needs to do, is balance units in ways so that they actually can do more stuff, even if the opponent turtles, while diminishing their all-in potential. In WoL, mostly just the 2nd one has been done. It's not a question of design, if the reaper is overpowered. It's a question of "how close is the battle between reapers and the defender".
sure balance is good, but if everything is already balanced in the beta or even before it, why not just release the game? Considering that you said that you stopped listening 10 minutes in means that youdidnt hear anything else that he had to say regarding the issue.
Yeah, listened to the rest now. All he talks is stuff that can and should be achieved via balance. Thors are too bad anti air vs anthing but mutalisks? Buff it against other things. AoE is too good? Nerf it. Marines are too good in big balls now? Nerf the big balls. There are a lot of simple parameters that are responsible for that (supply, range, dps, upgrades, production)
There is literarily nothing that he mentioned, that could not be dealt with by balancing.
almost everything you said goes against each other though. Only way to nerf big balls of marines is to have good aoe, but you also said nerf aoe. Thors are made to counter light air units, viking is supposed to counter everything else as the viking is basically a goliath that isnt ground based and doesnt have an aoe aa-attack.Maybe remove the viking and the thor to replace them with a bw goliath? marines do a ton of damage but only when together, if you make them spread then they are in small groups (1-3 if you are good at splitting). A single zealot or archon can clean up 3 marines easily right? just throwing around some random ideas.
Why is the only way to nerf marines good AoE? (apart from me not thinking that there is anything wrong with the relationship between AoE and Marines) Make marines bigger and give them less range and less dps and suddenly big marine balls suck hardcore, because instead of 50marines shooting at once, only 30will shoot and 20 will try to hump their big fat frontman.
Of course really balancing everything out with the the parameter changes I wrote is hard as it will create other problems. But autospread will give you incredible problems as well.
On September 21 2012 00:23 Dephy wrote: ehm i think you got it wrong, tvp in wol playing mech is not viable(at any level), what they are trying to make is make mech viable. The most easy way would just remove thor cannons and its mana. guess what? instead of 200hp 300min/200gas unit, you have 400hp unit.. problem solved tvp mech viable. Second your comment about positioning is bullshit, because there is no positioning in low lvl games, terran mech armies lose in straight up battles. For example terran is sieged up, toss a moves, both players does zero micro, toss wins. Now can you explain a noob why he cant make high tech unit in certain mu and must really on first avaible bio units? And why is that not imbalanced. As far as i am aware both ZERG and TOSS pretty much can make all units in every mu, especially on low level. So why cant terran make half of there tech tree units. Your logic is flawed.
Zerg has to make lings/spine crawlers/queens to defend before they even think about going to stuff like mutas, you think thats imbalanced too? Or how Protoss has to make zealots, stalkers, and sentries before they can branch of into templar tech or robo tech. I guess thats imbalanced too.
I understand what you're saying about how terran cant make half of there tech tree but, do you notice how terran players dont ever transition into mech and instead just plain out start making factories with a ton of mech units? If I was a zerg or toss player, I would read it and then simply counter it. No race should be able to just "tech" without some kind of problem, especially the way the terran players try to tech when they play mech. Protoss dont rush for collosus or templar. Why? because its bad and will cause you to lose the game simply because you dont have enough units to defend yourself. Same with zerg. Why should terran be any different?
I am a terran player btw but this I always try to play the devils advocate. Players wonder why mech doesnt work, well maybe if you actually did something throughout the early and mid-game instead of turtling on 2-3 bases, you would probably be in a better position to transition to mech.
The ONLY thing that could be wrong with mech in tvp is the Thor, BUT a high templar should not be able to get in range of a thor to feedback it thanks to ghosts and how they outrange templar with both snipe and emp. If you dont make ghosts simply because you want an all-mech army, then you will just lose simply because emp is an important part of TvP that should not be left out of any unit comp in WoL. Even if you go sky-terran vs P, you still need to be able to deal with feedbacks and storms.
On September 20 2012 23:53 Big J wrote: I did only watch up to 10mins, but I absolutly didn't want to watch any further, as I just completly disagree. Awesome gameplay is created by units that are balanced in ways so that they are used actively all the time.
Just using his examples: Reaper: 5rax reaper was completly overpowered, but it was awesome to play with, awesome tense to watch and even playing against it, was in a way awesome, because it felt soooo good when you could beat it, while it was sooooo tense all the time. What they did with the reaper was nerf it into an underpowered state. What they should have done, is BALANCE IT in a way that reapers would still get used! Find that sweetspot that creates tense gameplay, where most of the time a player will get an advantage of it, but not wins or loses straight up. Tempest: it's a unit that shoots the opponent. Always (not anymore with 15range, but I'd hope it gets a little bit more again throughout the beta). If properly BALANCED. How does that not create tense moments? What the game needs is more units that can attack even if you don't allin.
The HotS units are some of the best ideas because if we look at them: Oracle: fast harass unit; support unit for hit squads against fungal - introduces more active play Tempest: long ranged unit; when properly used, it should shoot the opponent and force a reaction that is not "turtle harder) - introduces active play MS Core: Allows Protoss to walk out on the map early; introduces active play Swarm Host: Sends Units to the opponent from long range; Should always do that, because the unit should be safe itself. - introduces active play Battle Hellion: allows the hellion to be a better combat unit if need be; producing more fast harass units means more active play.
Basically the only unit that is somewhat questionable in terms of more active play is the widow mine, as it could turn out that the best way to play against it would be to sit back and not move until you are ready to clear the map from minefields with a huge army (though for that the widow mine would have to be properly balanced first)
What blizzard needs to do, is balance units in ways so that they actually can do more stuff, even if the opponent turtles, while diminishing their all-in potential. In WoL, mostly just the 2nd one has been done. It's not a question of design, if the reaper is overpowered. It's a question of "how close is the battle between reapers and the defender".
sure balance is good, but if everything is already balanced in the beta or even before it, why not just release the game? Considering that you said that you stopped listening 10 minutes in means that youdidnt hear anything else that he had to say regarding the issue.
Yeah, listened to the rest now. All he talks is stuff that can and should be achieved via balance. Thors are too bad anti air vs anthing but mutalisks? Buff it against other things. AoE is too good? Nerf it. Marines are too good in big balls now? Nerf the big balls. There are a lot of simple parameters that are responsible for that (supply, range, dps, upgrades, production)
There is literarily nothing that he mentioned, that could not be dealt with by balancing.
almost everything you said goes against each other though. Only way to nerf big balls of marines is to have good aoe, but you also said nerf aoe. Thors are made to counter light air units, viking is supposed to counter everything else as the viking is basically a goliath that isnt ground based and doesnt have an aoe aa-attack.Maybe remove the viking and the thor to replace them with a bw goliath? marines do a ton of damage but only when together, if you make them spread then they are in small groups (1-3 if you are good at splitting). A single zealot or archon can clean up 3 marines easily right? just throwing around some random ideas.
Why is the only way to nerf marines good AoE? (apart from me not thinking that there is anything wrong with the relationship between AoE and Marines) Make marines bigger and give them less range and less dps and suddenly big marine balls suck hardcore, because instead of 50marines shooting at once, only 30will shoot and 20 will try to hump their big fat frontman.
Of course really balancing everything out with the the parameter changes I wrote is hard as it will create other problems. But autospread will give you incredible problems as well.
Auto spreading would be bad. What Filter was mentioning was the mechanic that auto-clumps your units when you do any type of move command. That is a bad mechanic that should be removed as its bad for all races.
I have hated this unit since day 1, and I have offered a simple solution to it's broken numbers for at least a year now. -5hp. That's it. Filter brings up the mechanic of unit spread during movement and I think this moreso adds to the power of the marine rather than takes away from it. Marines having the highest DPS per cost in the game isn't as much of an issue as their extreme cost-effectiveness is. The cost-effectiveness comes from their tankiness, not their damage output.
Bio was non-existant in BW TvP not because Tanks and Vultures were awesome, but because Marines simply died too damn fast. They did great damage, but 1 small mistake and the whole game was over. This is why mech was the standard in that MU and the late-game standard for every MU.
Marines doing great damage is fine. Marines having 55 hp, being able to tank Zealots, Banelings, Archons, and Siege Tanks is not. Marines need to be squishier for the health of the game and the Terran race specifically, they are currently too good in WoL and need to be addressed in a direct manner. IMO, this unit is responsible for 90% of the balance problems in SC2 right now because it is too powerful and artificially inflates the power of the other races units simply because they need ways to deal with the Marine.
I just wanted to say that I cant agree more about the marine. As far as I know, the Zerglings stayed the same number wise as in BW (Except for Adrenal glands I guess is a nerf) and the same can be said about the zealot (Except for charge is also a nerf).
Then comes the marine. Free +5 HP. Upgradable +10 HP. Dont need to upgrade range anymore, they come with it.
I mean... at this point, why make an upgrade for an already shitty unit like the Hydralisk so it gets +1 range when the marines come with it? Makes no sense, either give the Hydras their free range like the marines or have the marines have to upgrade their range to have 5. And for the free 5 HP buff, it makes EVERYTHING less good against the marine. They never needed it, it was a free buff probably because it was the Terran expasion or because Browder just felt like marines are cool or something...
On September 20 2012 23:53 Big J wrote: I did only watch up to 10mins, but I absolutly didn't want to watch any further, as I just completly disagree. Awesome gameplay is created by units that are balanced in ways so that they are used actively all the time.
Just using his examples: Reaper: 5rax reaper was completly overpowered, but it was awesome to play with, awesome tense to watch and even playing against it, was in a way awesome, because it felt soooo good when you could beat it, while it was sooooo tense all the time. What they did with the reaper was nerf it into an underpowered state. What they should have done, is BALANCE IT in a way that reapers would still get used! Find that sweetspot that creates tense gameplay, where most of the time a player will get an advantage of it, but not wins or loses straight up. Tempest: it's a unit that shoots the opponent. Always (not anymore with 15range, but I'd hope it gets a little bit more again throughout the beta). If properly BALANCED. How does that not create tense moments? What the game needs is more units that can attack even if you don't allin.
The HotS units are some of the best ideas because if we look at them: Oracle: fast harass unit; support unit for hit squads against fungal - introduces more active play Tempest: long ranged unit; when properly used, it should shoot the opponent and force a reaction that is not "turtle harder) - introduces active play MS Core: Allows Protoss to walk out on the map early; introduces active play Swarm Host: Sends Units to the opponent from long range; Should always do that, because the unit should be safe itself. - introduces active play Battle Hellion: allows the hellion to be a better combat unit if need be; producing more fast harass units means more active play.
Basically the only unit that is somewhat questionable in terms of more active play is the widow mine, as it could turn out that the best way to play against it would be to sit back and not move until you are ready to clear the map from minefields with a huge army (though for that the widow mine would have to be properly balanced first)
What blizzard needs to do, is balance units in ways so that they actually can do more stuff, even if the opponent turtles, while diminishing their all-in potential. In WoL, mostly just the 2nd one has been done. It's not a question of design, if the reaper is overpowered. It's a question of "how close is the battle between reapers and the defender".
sure balance is good, but if everything is already balanced in the beta or even before it, why not just release the game? Considering that you said that you stopped listening 10 minutes in means that youdidnt hear anything else that he had to say regarding the issue.
Yeah, listened to the rest now. All he talks is stuff that can and should be achieved via balance. Thors are too bad anti air vs anthing but mutalisks? Buff it against other things. AoE is too good? Nerf it. Marines are too good in big balls now? Nerf the big balls. There are a lot of simple parameters that are responsible for that (supply, range, dps, upgrades, production)
There is literarily nothing that he mentioned, that could not be dealt with by balancing.
almost everything you said goes against each other though. Only way to nerf big balls of marines is to have good aoe, but you also said nerf aoe. Thors are made to counter light air units, viking is supposed to counter everything else as the viking is basically a goliath that isnt ground based and doesnt have an aoe aa-attack.Maybe remove the viking and the thor to replace them with a bw goliath? marines do a ton of damage but only when together, if you make them spread then they are in small groups (1-3 if you are good at splitting). A single zealot or archon can clean up 3 marines easily right? just throwing around some random ideas.
Why is the only way to nerf marines good AoE? (apart from me not thinking that there is anything wrong with the relationship between AoE and Marines) Make marines bigger and give them less range and less dps and suddenly big marine balls suck hardcore, because instead of 50marines shooting at once, only 30will shoot and 20 will try to hump their big fat frontman.
Of course really balancing everything out with the the parameter changes I wrote is hard as it will create other problems. But autospread will give you incredible problems as well.
They tried with a unit called the Warhound. It was o big for its supply so army compositions with it seemed so big and scary even if it something like that it's not a big advantage. In chokepoints they sucked so hard because just 10% of them actually fight in these situations.
Well, people bitched so much about that, then Blizz removed it, Because people just coudn't blind counter it and were getting angrier.
I have hated this unit since day 1, and I have offered a simple solution to it's broken numbers for at least a year now. -5hp. That's it. Filter brings up the mechanic of unit spread during movement and I think this moreso adds to the power of the marine rather than takes away from it. Marines having the highest DPS per cost in the game isn't as much of an issue as their extreme cost-effectiveness is. The cost-effectiveness comes from their tankiness, not their damage output.
Bio was non-existant in BW TvP not because Tanks and Vultures were awesome, but because Marines simply died too damn fast. They did great damage, but 1 small mistake and the whole game was over. This is why mech was the standard in that MU and the late-game standard for every MU.
Marines doing great damage is fine. Marines having 55 hp, being able to tank Zealots, Banelings, Archons, and Siege Tanks is not. Marines need to be squishier for the health of the game and the Terran race specifically, they are currently too good in WoL and need to be addressed in a direct manner. IMO, this unit is responsible for 90% of the balance problems in SC2 right now because it is too powerful and artificially inflates the power of the other races units simply because they need ways to deal with the Marine.
I just wanted to say that I cant agree more about the marine. As far as I know, the Zerglings stayed the same number wise as in BW (Except for Adrenal glands I guess is a nerf) and the same can be said about the zealot (Except for charge is also a nerf).
Then comes the marine. Free +5 HP. Upgradable +10 HP. Dont need to upgrade range anymore, they come with it.
I mean... at this point, why make an upgrade for an already shitty unit like the Hydralisk so it gets +1 range when the marines come with it? Makes no sense, either give the Hydras their free range like the marines or have the marines have to upgrade their range to have 5. And for the free 5 HP buff, it makes EVERYTHING less good against the marine. They never needed it, it was a free buff probably because it was the Terran expasion or because Browder just felt like marines are cool or something...
does terran need sensor tower? why isnt ghost emp an upgrade? why does terran get PFs?
On September 20 2012 23:53 Big J wrote: I did only watch up to 10mins, but I absolutly didn't want to watch any further, as I just completly disagree. Awesome gameplay is created by units that are balanced in ways so that they are used actively all the time.
Just using his examples: Reaper: 5rax reaper was completly overpowered, but it was awesome to play with, awesome tense to watch and even playing against it, was in a way awesome, because it felt soooo good when you could beat it, while it was sooooo tense all the time. What they did with the reaper was nerf it into an underpowered state. What they should have done, is BALANCE IT in a way that reapers would still get used! Find that sweetspot that creates tense gameplay, where most of the time a player will get an advantage of it, but not wins or loses straight up. Tempest: it's a unit that shoots the opponent. Always (not anymore with 15range, but I'd hope it gets a little bit more again throughout the beta). If properly BALANCED. How does that not create tense moments? What the game needs is more units that can attack even if you don't allin.
The HotS units are some of the best ideas because if we look at them: Oracle: fast harass unit; support unit for hit squads against fungal - introduces more active play Tempest: long ranged unit; when properly used, it should shoot the opponent and force a reaction that is not "turtle harder) - introduces active play MS Core: Allows Protoss to walk out on the map early; introduces active play Swarm Host: Sends Units to the opponent from long range; Should always do that, because the unit should be safe itself. - introduces active play Battle Hellion: allows the hellion to be a better combat unit if need be; producing more fast harass units means more active play.
Basically the only unit that is somewhat questionable in terms of more active play is the widow mine, as it could turn out that the best way to play against it would be to sit back and not move until you are ready to clear the map from minefields with a huge army (though for that the widow mine would have to be properly balanced first)
What blizzard needs to do, is balance units in ways so that they actually can do more stuff, even if the opponent turtles, while diminishing their all-in potential. In WoL, mostly just the 2nd one has been done. It's not a question of design, if the reaper is overpowered. It's a question of "how close is the battle between reapers and the defender".
sure balance is good, but if everything is already balanced in the beta or even before it, why not just release the game? Considering that you said that you stopped listening 10 minutes in means that youdidnt hear anything else that he had to say regarding the issue.
Yeah, listened to the rest now. All he talks is stuff that can and should be achieved via balance. Thors are too bad anti air vs anthing but mutalisks? Buff it against other things. AoE is too good? Nerf it. Marines are too good in big balls now? Nerf the big balls. There are a lot of simple parameters that are responsible for that (supply, range, dps, upgrades, production)
There is literarily nothing that he mentioned, that could not be dealt with by balancing.
almost everything you said goes against each other though. Only way to nerf big balls of marines is to have good aoe, but you also said nerf aoe. Thors are made to counter light air units, viking is supposed to counter everything else as the viking is basically a goliath that isnt ground based and doesnt have an aoe aa-attack.Maybe remove the viking and the thor to replace them with a bw goliath? marines do a ton of damage but only when together, if you make them spread then they are in small groups (1-3 if you are good at splitting). A single zealot or archon can clean up 3 marines easily right? just throwing around some random ideas.
Why is the only way to nerf marines good AoE? (apart from me not thinking that there is anything wrong with the relationship between AoE and Marines) Make marines bigger and give them less range and less dps and suddenly big marine balls suck hardcore, because instead of 50marines shooting at once, only 30will shoot and 20 will try to hump their big fat frontman.
Of course really balancing everything out with the the parameter changes I wrote is hard as it will create other problems. But autospread will give you incredible problems as well.
They tried with a unit called the Warhound. It was o big for its supply so army compositions with it seemed so big and scary even if it something like that it's not a big advantage. In chokepoints they sucked so hard because just 10% of them actually fight in these situations.
Well, people bitched so much about that, then Blizz removed it, Because people just coudn't blind counter it and were getting angrier.
The thing about it is though, Blizzard tried something to see how it would work in the game. It didnt work, and the rest is history. Why can't they try that with BW units instead of saying that it wouldn't be interesting enough to bring them back while coming up with "new units" that have the same concepts as the old units?
I have hated this unit since day 1, and I have offered a simple solution to it's broken numbers for at least a year now. -5hp. That's it. Filter brings up the mechanic of unit spread during movement and I think this moreso adds to the power of the marine rather than takes away from it. Marines having the highest DPS per cost in the game isn't as much of an issue as their extreme cost-effectiveness is. The cost-effectiveness comes from their tankiness, not their damage output.
Bio was non-existant in BW TvP not because Tanks and Vultures were awesome, but because Marines simply died too damn fast. They did great damage, but 1 small mistake and the whole game was over. This is why mech was the standard in that MU and the late-game standard for every MU.
Marines doing great damage is fine. Marines having 55 hp, being able to tank Zealots, Banelings, Archons, and Siege Tanks is not. Marines need to be squishier for the health of the game and the Terran race specifically, they are currently too good in WoL and need to be addressed in a direct manner. IMO, this unit is responsible for 90% of the balance problems in SC2 right now because it is too powerful and artificially inflates the power of the other races units simply because they need ways to deal with the Marine.
I just wanted to say that I cant agree more about the marine. As far as I know, the Zerglings stayed the same number wise as in BW (Except for Adrenal glands I guess is a nerf) and the same can be said about the zealot (Except for charge is also a nerf).
Then comes the marine. Free +5 HP. Upgradable +10 HP. Dont need to upgrade range anymore, they come with it.
I mean... at this point, why make an upgrade for an already shitty unit like the Hydralisk so it gets +1 range when the marines come with it? Makes no sense, either give the Hydras their free range like the marines or have the marines have to upgrade their range to have 5. And for the free 5 HP buff, it makes EVERYTHING less good against the marine. They never needed it, it was a free buff probably because it was the Terran expasion or because Browder just felt like marines are cool or something...
The reason why marines got the buff is because healing them came later in the game. Because of that, they were ok at the beginning but are really powerful at the point medivacs come out. They also got a plus one to dmg, btw. Zealots got a 1 armor but shields were reduced by 10 compared to BW.
I do agree with the base concept, the problem is that the "unavaiable strategies" are more for the terran race, so the point should be not to do terran easier but to do protoss and zerg harder. Btw blizzard has made it's choise, they choosed to watch for casual gamers and the easy money, atm I don't know if I will buy Hots and probably there is a lot of people just like me it's actually thinking about that decision.
On September 21 2012 01:12 SarcasmMonster wrote: It always upsets me when people advocate replacing the Medivac w/ the Medic.
The Medivac is the best addition in SC2.
It's a cool concept, but breaks other shit so hard. Now you've got bio with flying medics who can transport your bio everywhere on the map regardless of terrain features. You have less attacking options in the beginning because you don't have medics healing you. It's not as good as you think it is, it has good things going for it, but when you analyze it further, it creates a lot of problems. Medics took up space in your ground army, making you less prone to aoe but they could also block melee units like zerglings. With sc2's engine, marines can clump up even better, making their dps even more insane, but even more vulnerable to aoe, which means aoe got nerfed even harder and thus people who could split well, their marines got even more stronger, resulting in other terran stuff not being as strong and other races needing other buffs and so on and so on....
On September 21 2012 01:12 SarcasmMonster wrote: It always upsets me when people advocate replacing the Medivac w/ the Medic.
The Medivac is the best addition in SC2.
It's a cool concept, but breaks other shit so hard. Now you've got bio with flying medics who can transport your bio everywhere on the map regardless of terrain features. You have less attacking options in the beginning because you don't have medics healing you. It's not as good as you think it is, it has good things going for it, but when you analyze it further, it creates a lot of problems.
I find bio play in SC2 much better than bio play in BW. I feel like SC2 is more encouraging of multitasking w/ bio (<3 MMA)
You have less attacking options in the beginning because you don't have medics healing you.
already has a very strong early game, I don't see that as necessarily a problem.
Anyways just finished the vid. Agree with your conclusion.
I disagree with your comment on bringing back broodwar units. We need to embrace the new and make sc2 a totally different game. But I do agree that blizzard is simplifying the game way too much.
Also due to the pathing and way the ai works when moving. ( Auto clumps) Lurkers and reavers would be a bit too powerful. If 1 race gets a burst splash unit that 1 shots things, then in that case i'd say terran needs one as well. Either increase tank damage or decreased HSM energy needs.
On September 20 2012 23:53 Big J wrote: I did only watch up to 10mins, but I absolutly didn't want to watch any further, as I just completly disagree. Awesome gameplay is created by units that are balanced in ways so that they are used actively all the time.
Just using his examples: Reaper: 5rax reaper was completly overpowered, but it was awesome to play with, awesome tense to watch and even playing against it, was in a way awesome, because it felt soooo good when you could beat it, while it was sooooo tense all the time. What they did with the reaper was nerf it into an underpowered state. What they should have done, is BALANCE IT in a way that reapers would still get used! Find that sweetspot that creates tense gameplay, where most of the time a player will get an advantage of it, but not wins or loses straight up. Tempest: it's a unit that shoots the opponent. Always (not anymore with 15range, but I'd hope it gets a little bit more again throughout the beta). If properly BALANCED. How does that not create tense moments? What the game needs is more units that can attack even if you don't allin.
The HotS units are some of the best ideas because if we look at them: Oracle: fast harass unit; support unit for hit squads against fungal - introduces more active play Tempest: long ranged unit; when properly used, it should shoot the opponent and force a reaction that is not "turtle harder) - introduces active play MS Core: Allows Protoss to walk out on the map early; introduces active play Swarm Host: Sends Units to the opponent from long range; Should always do that, because the unit should be safe itself. - introduces active play Battle Hellion: allows the hellion to be a better combat unit if need be; producing more fast harass units means more active play.
Basically the only unit that is somewhat questionable in terms of more active play is the widow mine, as it could turn out that the best way to play against it would be to sit back and not move until you are ready to clear the map from minefields with a huge army (though for that the widow mine would have to be properly balanced first)
What blizzard needs to do, is balance units in ways so that they actually can do more stuff, even if the opponent turtles, while diminishing their all-in potential. In WoL, mostly just the 2nd one has been done. It's not a question of design, if the reaper is overpowered. It's a question of "how close is the battle between reapers and the defender".
sure balance is good, but if everything is already balanced in the beta or even before it, why not just release the game? Considering that you said that you stopped listening 10 minutes in means that youdidnt hear anything else that he had to say regarding the issue.
Yeah, listened to the rest now. All he talks is stuff that can and should be achieved via balance. Thors are too bad anti air vs anthing but mutalisks? Buff it against other things. AoE is too good? Nerf it. Marines are too good in big balls now? Nerf the big balls. There are a lot of simple parameters that are responsible for that (supply, range, dps, upgrades, production)
There is literarily nothing that he mentioned, that could not be dealt with by balancing.
almost everything you said goes against each other though. Only way to nerf big balls of marines is to have good aoe, but you also said nerf aoe. Thors are made to counter light air units, viking is supposed to counter everything else as the viking is basically a goliath that isnt ground based and doesnt have an aoe aa-attack.Maybe remove the viking and the thor to replace them with a bw goliath? marines do a ton of damage but only when together, if you make them spread then they are in small groups (1-3 if you are good at splitting). A single zealot or archon can clean up 3 marines easily right? just throwing around some random ideas.
Why is the only way to nerf marines good AoE? (apart from me not thinking that there is anything wrong with the relationship between AoE and Marines) Make marines bigger and give them less range and less dps and suddenly big marine balls suck hardcore, because instead of 50marines shooting at once, only 30will shoot and 20 will try to hump their big fat frontman.
Of course really balancing everything out with the the parameter changes I wrote is hard as it will create other problems. But autospread will give you incredible problems as well.
They tried with a unit called the Warhound. It was o big for its supply so army compositions with it seemed so big and scary even if it something like that it's not a big advantage. In chokepoints they sucked so hard because just 10% of them actually fight in these situations.
Well, people bitched so much about that, then Blizz removed it, Because people just coudn't blind counter it and were getting angrier.
Warhound had 7range and did not suck in chokepoints.
On September 21 2012 01:20 BuffaloSoldier wrote: I do agree with the base concept, the problem is that the "unavaiable strategies" are more for the terran race, so the point should be not to do terran easier but to do protoss and zerg harder. Btw blizzard has made it's choise, they choosed to watch for casual gamers and the easy money, atm I don't know if I will buy Hots and probably there is a lot of people just like me it's actually thinking about that decision.
Thinking the same thing. It is seriously hinged on new units and modifications to old ones. Personally, i don't think they even have to bring back old bw units. All they have to do is make fun units with unique concepts. I'm hoping they fix it coz it would be worth the money for sure. If not, then i might jsut take up Dustin Browder's suggestion and pick up bw.
On a side note, they really should not make units based on bw units but aren't as exciting. Gets people comparing them and asking why they don't just bring back the old units.
On September 21 2012 01:12 SarcasmMonster wrote: It always upsets me when people advocate replacing the Medivac w/ the Medic.
The Medivac is the best addition in SC2.
It's a cool concept, but breaks other shit so hard. Now you've got bio with flying medics who can transport your bio everywhere on the map regardless of terrain features. You have less attacking options in the beginning because you don't have medics healing you. It's not as good as you think it is, it has good things going for it, but when you analyze it further, it creates a lot of problems.
I find bio play in SC2 much better than bio play in BW. I feel like SC2 is more encouraging of multitasking w/ bio (<3 MMA)
You have less attacking options in the beginning because you don't have medics healing you.
already has a very strong early game, I don't see that as necessarily a problem.
Anyways just finished the vid. Agree with your conclusion.
They buffed marines (+1 range, +5 free health, + shield etc) to make aggression possible. Combined with medivacs, marines get insane in the mid/end game.
I also saw another poster explaining it pretty well: "Bio is still just so mobile, thanks to medivacs (which I very much dislike from a design standpoint). Bio can see up cliffs, move up cliffs, heal, and deal massive damage, all thanks to medivacs. Also, since the dropship is also a medic, it frees up one or two more slots in the cargo hold for more units. Obviously Terran drops are absolutely devastating in SC2 compared to BW. "
While I might not agree with his points I definitely agree with the "Fuck Balance" point and lets figure out better gameplay. Starcraft 2 might not last for LoV, Especially if HOTS is more of the same style. I know the numbers are going to dwindle over time but damn. Ladder is just Zerg and Protoss in the high master area on NA. I literally get 10% or less Terrans to play against.
I don't even know how many times I have posted about bringing the Reaver back just to test it on beta I can tell you it's more than 4, It's my favorite BW unit and easily a great replacement for the ever boring Colossus.
I am sure this video like many other will be looked over and nothing changed because Blizzard is pretty stubborn with the way they want to make their game. In the end it's up to them to make a game that we will continue to play like BW for 10+ years.
On September 21 2012 01:36 SigmaoctanusIV wrote: While I might not agree with his points I definitely agree with the "Fuck Balance" point and lets figure out better gameplay. Starcraft 2 might not last for LoV, Especially if HOTS is more of the same style. I know the numbers are going to dwindle over time but damn. Ladder is just Zerg and Protoss in the high master area on NA. I literally get 10% or less Terrans to play against.
I don't even know how many times I have posted about bringing the Reaver back just to test it on beta I can tell you it's more than 4, It's my favorite BW unit and easily a great replacement for the ever boring Colossus.
I am sure this video like many other will be looked over and nothing changed because Blizzard is pretty stubborn with the way they want to make their game. In the end it's up to them to make a game that we will continue to play like BW for 10+ years.
Would really be a shame if they killed bw and have this die out soon after.
The point about people whining balance and not talking about gameplay is good, but apart from that... well I'm at a loss.
What else in there was meaningful? There was some hope for BW units back in before (which we've heard a million times before). There was some complaining about marines (!). I'm honestly confused by why this has received a positive response. Some one help me please.
On September 21 2012 01:42 MCDayC wrote: wtff. I thought this was kinda terrible.
The point about people whining balance and not talking about gameplay is good, but apart from that... well I'm at a loss.
What else in there was meaningful? There was some hope for BW units back in before (which we've heard a million times before). There was some complaining about marines (!). I'm honestly confused by why this has received a positive response. Some one help me please.
its true blizzard will do fuck-all about it. but these are players who are just expressing their concerns, who want to play the best (and most entertaining) game possible. they do not agree blizzard is doing a good job at that.
On September 21 2012 01:42 MCDayC wrote: wtff. I thought this was kinda terrible.
The point about people whining balance and not talking about gameplay is good, but apart from that... well I'm at a loss.
What else in there was meaningful? There was some hope for BW units back in before (which we've heard a million times before). There was some complaining about marines (!). I'm honestly confused by why this has received a positive response. Some one help me please.
I'm not Filter, but my own point is that the game in is current state has some gameplay flaws that make some aspects of the game very boring. Instead of working out these issues, too many just scream OP UP on things instead of thinking about how the units work fundamentally, and that's what Blizz is doing as well.
I don't want BW with updated graphics, and neither does Filter I think. It's just that a game like BW is/was pretty much the benchmark for good fun RTS units and gameplay. You have to analyze why the units all had a great role and were fun to use, make generalizations from that, and then use those rules to make new units. It's just learning from the past, and some people think Blizzard have failed to analyze and learn from what made their past games great.
On September 21 2012 01:42 MCDayC wrote: wtff. I thought this was kinda terrible.
The point about people whining balance and not talking about gameplay is good, but apart from that... well I'm at a loss.
What else in there was meaningful? There was some hope for BW units back in before (which we've heard a million times before). There was some complaining about marines (!). I'm honestly confused by why this has received a positive response. Some one help me please.
I'm not Filter, but my own point is that the game in is current state has some gameplay flaws that make some aspects of the game very boring. Instead of working out these issues, too many just scream OP UP on things instead of thinking about how the units work fundamentally, and that's what Blizz is doing as well.
I don't want BW with updated graphics, and neither does Filter I think. It's just that a game like BW is/was pretty much the benchmark for good fun RTS units and gameplay. You have to analyze why the units all had a great role and were fun to use, make generalizations from that, and then use those rules to make new units. It's just learning from the past, and some people think Blizzard have failed to analyze and learn from what made their past games great.
I agree with the first bit, and as I said, that part of the video made sense, but the rest of it was a ramble on SC2, with no clarity or structure, and I won't even get started on the Marine QQing, that was just strange to hear in 2012.
On September 21 2012 01:42 MCDayC wrote: wtff. I thought this was kinda terrible.
The point about people whining balance and not talking about gameplay is good, but apart from that... well I'm at a loss.
What else in there was meaningful? There was some hope for BW units back in before (which we've heard a million times before). There was some complaining about marines (!). I'm honestly confused by why this has received a positive response. Some one help me please.
I'm not Filter, but my own point is that the game in is current state has some gameplay flaws that make some aspects of the game very boring. Instead of working out these issues, too many just scream OP UP on things instead of thinking about how the units work fundamentally, and that's what Blizz is doing as well.
I don't want BW with updated graphics, and neither does Filter I think. It's just that a game like BW is/was pretty much the benchmark for good fun RTS units and gameplay. You have to analyze why the units all had a great role and were fun to use, make generalizations from that, and then use those rules to make new units. It's just learning from the past, and some people think Blizzard have failed to analyze and learn from what made their past games great.
I agree with the first bit, and as I said, that part of the video made sense, but the rest of it was a ramble on SC2, with no clarity or structure, and I won't even get started on the Marine QQing, that was just strange to hear in 2012.
I definitely agree with you, it is a ramble, but to be honest he's a prominent community figure and I wanted to get a good discussion about SC gameplay going into HoTS. Everyone has their own opinion about what can be improved in Starcraft so all I really took from the video was that first part.
On September 21 2012 01:42 MCDayC wrote: wtff. I thought this was kinda terrible.
The point about people whining balance and not talking about gameplay is good, but apart from that... well I'm at a loss.
What else in there was meaningful? There was some hope for BW units back in before (which we've heard a million times before). There was some complaining about marines (!). I'm honestly confused by why this has received a positive response. Some one help me please.
I'm not Filter, but my own point is that the game in is current state has some gameplay flaws that make some aspects of the game very boring. Instead of working out these issues, too many just scream OP UP on things instead of thinking about how the units work fundamentally, and that's what Blizz is doing as well.
I don't want BW with updated graphics, and neither does Filter I think. It's just that a game like BW is/was pretty much the benchmark for good fun RTS units and gameplay. You have to analyze why the units all had a great role and were fun to use, make generalizations from that, and then use those rules to make new units. It's just learning from the past, and some people think Blizzard have failed to analyze and learn from what made their past games great.
Well, but what are those flaws? Turtlefests? Change the stats of the units accordingly that certain pressure/timings are only stoppable by building units, but if the timing/pressure doesn't hit, the units should be useful to perform pressure/do a timing on their own and now the opponent has to build units. Boring units? Change their stats until they are at sweetpoints that create interesting interaction (like stalkers kiting marines, marines splitting vs banelings, ling bling fights, MMM vs Tanks) Useless features? (like strike canons, tunneling claws, carriers, hydralisks, reapers) Just repair what is holding them back.
BW was not good because a slow unit with incredible damage is great design, it was good because the slow unit with incredible damage found a sweet spot in the balance, where you could tech to it somewhat safely and fast and overcome it's slowness with a dropship while your opponent did lack the tools to deal with the dropship easily.
I agree with most of what he said in his video, but that elitist crap he spews at around 6 - 7:30 almost nearly ruins his argument. All players need to be taken into account. All players as in every ladder level.
On September 21 2012 02:24 Kinaesthetic wrote: I agree with most of what he said in his video, but that elitist crap he spews at around 6 - 7:30 almost nearly ruins his argument. All players need to be taken into account. All players as in every ladder level.
No, they don't. The ideal is to improve oneself and become a better player. If the game caters to low-level players, where is the motivation to improve?
The skill ceiling should be as high as possible so that the game can support eSports in the best manner. Ten years from now the casual Bronzies and Silvers probably won't still be playing or watching StarCraft. They don't matter in the long run, and things should not be made easier for them so that they can feel rewarded for sub-par play. This is not elitist thinking. This is the basic competitive spirit that drives all sports.
On September 21 2012 02:24 Kinaesthetic wrote: I agree with most of what he said in his video, but that elitist crap he spews at around 6 - 7:30 almost nearly ruins his argument. All players need to be taken into account. All players as in every ladder level.
No, they don't. The ideal is to improve oneself and become a better player. If the game caters to low-level players, where is the motivation to improve?
The skill ceiling should be as high as possible so that the game can support eSports in the best manner. Ten years from now the casual Bronzies and Silvers probably won't still be playing or watching StarCraft. They don't matter in the long run, and things should not be made easier for them so that they can feel rewarded for sub-par play. This is not elitist thinking. This is the basic competitive spirit that drives all sports.
The skill ceiling is unreachable high, noone will ever play SC2 perfectly. I agree that Silvers and Bronzies should not be considered when it comes to design/balancing if this should be an esports title, yet everything else should be done to keep them playing/watching, else SC2 will be dead in 10years.
On September 21 2012 01:36 SigmaoctanusIV wrote: While I might not agree with his points I definitely agree with the "Fuck Balance" point and lets figure out better gameplay. Starcraft 2 might not last for LoV, Especially if HOTS is more of the same style. I know the numbers are going to dwindle over time but damn. Ladder is just Zerg and Protoss in the high master area on NA. I literally get 10% or less Terrans to play against.
I don't even know how many times I have posted about bringing the Reaver back just to test it on beta I can tell you it's more than 4, It's my favorite BW unit and easily a great replacement for the ever boring Colossus.
I am sure this video like many other will be looked over and nothing changed because Blizzard is pretty stubborn with the way they want to make their game. In the end it's up to them to make a game that we will continue to play like BW for 10+ years.
Would really be a shame if they killed bw and have this die out soon after.
Lol. HotS isn't going to die out "soon". It's still in fucking beta! The swarming bitchy gnats of TL aren't a good litmus test.
On September 21 2012 01:42 MCDayC wrote: wtff. I thought this was kinda terrible.
The point about people whining balance and not talking about gameplay is good, but apart from that... well I'm at a loss.
What else in there was meaningful? There was some hope for BW units back in before (which we've heard a million times before). There was some complaining about marines (!). I'm honestly confused by why this has received a positive response. Some one help me please.
I'm not Filter, but my own point is that the game in is current state has some gameplay flaws that make some aspects of the game very boring. Instead of working out these issues, too many just scream OP UP on things instead of thinking about how the units work fundamentally, and that's what Blizz is doing as well.
I don't want BW with updated graphics, and neither does Filter I think. It's just that a game like BW is/was pretty much the benchmark for good fun RTS units and gameplay. You have to analyze why the units all had a great role and were fun to use, make generalizations from that, and then use those rules to make new units. It's just learning from the past, and some people think Blizzard have failed to analyze and learn from what made their past games great.
I agree with the first bit, and as I said, that part of the video made sense, but the rest of it was a ramble on SC2, with no clarity or structure, and I won't even get started on the Marine QQing, that was just strange to hear in 2012.
I definitely agree with you, it is a ramble, but to be honest he's a prominent community figure and I wanted to get a good discussion about SC gameplay going into HoTS. Everyone has their own opinion about what can be improved in Starcraft so all I really took from the video was that first part.
Wait, how is he a prominent community figure? I've followed the SC 2 scene since release, but have never heard of filter until this thread.
On September 20 2012 23:53 Big J wrote: I did only watch up to 10mins, but I absolutly didn't want to watch any further, as I just completly disagree. Awesome gameplay is created by units that are balanced in ways so that they are used actively all the time.
Just using his examples: Reaper: 5rax reaper was completly overpowered, but it was awesome to play with, awesome tense to watch and even playing against it, was in a way awesome, because it felt soooo good when you could beat it, while it was sooooo tense all the time. What they did with the reaper was nerf it into an underpowered state. What they should have done, is BALANCE IT in a way that reapers would still get used! Find that sweetspot that creates tense gameplay, where most of the time a player will get an advantage of it, but not wins or loses straight up. Tempest: it's a unit that shoots the opponent. Always (not anymore with 15range, but I'd hope it gets a little bit more again throughout the beta). If properly BALANCED. How does that not create tense moments? What the game needs is more units that can attack even if you don't allin.
The HotS units are some of the best ideas because if we look at them: Oracle: fast harass unit; support unit for hit squads against fungal - introduces more active play Tempest: long ranged unit; when properly used, it should shoot the opponent and force a reaction that is not "turtle harder) - introduces active play MS Core: Allows Protoss to walk out on the map early; introduces active play Swarm Host: Sends Units to the opponent from long range; Should always do that, because the unit should be safe itself. - introduces active play Battle Hellion: allows the hellion to be a better combat unit if need be; producing more fast harass units means more active play.
Basically the only unit that is somewhat questionable in terms of more active play is the widow mine, as it could turn out that the best way to play against it would be to sit back and not move until you are ready to clear the map from minefields with a huge army (though for that the widow mine would have to be properly balanced first)
What blizzard needs to do, is balance units in ways so that they actually can do more stuff, even if the opponent turtles, while diminishing their all-in potential. In WoL, mostly just the 2nd one has been done. It's not a question of design, if the reaper is overpowered. It's a question of "how close is the battle between reapers and the defender".
sure balance is good, but if everything is already balanced in the beta or even before it, why not just release the game? Considering that you said that you stopped listening 10 minutes in means that youdidnt hear anything else that he had to say regarding the issue.
Yeah, listened to the rest now. All he talks is stuff that can and should be achieved via balance. Thors are too bad anti air vs anthing but mutalisks? Buff it against other things. AoE is too good? Nerf it. Marines are too good in big balls now? Nerf the big balls. There are a lot of simple parameters that are responsible for that (supply, range, dps, upgrades, production)
There is literarily nothing that he mentioned, that could not be dealt with by balancing.
almost everything you said goes against each other though. Only way to nerf big balls of marines is to have good aoe, but you also said nerf aoe. Thors are made to counter light air units, viking is supposed to counter everything else as the viking is basically a goliath that isnt ground based and doesnt have an aoe aa-attack.Maybe remove the viking and the thor to replace them with a bw goliath? marines do a ton of damage but only when together, if you make them spread then they are in small groups (1-3 if you are good at splitting). A single zealot or archon can clean up 3 marines easily right? just throwing around some random ideas.
Why is the only way to nerf marines good AoE? (apart from me not thinking that there is anything wrong with the relationship between AoE and Marines) Make marines bigger and give them less range and less dps and suddenly big marine balls suck hardcore, because instead of 50marines shooting at once, only 30will shoot and 20 will try to hump their big fat frontman.
Of course really balancing everything out with the the parameter changes I wrote is hard as it will create other problems. But autospread will give you incredible problems as well.
They tried with a unit called the Warhound. It was o big for its supply so army compositions with it seemed so big and scary even if it something like that it's not a big advantage. In chokepoints they sucked so hard because just 10% of them actually fight in these situations.
Well, people bitched so much about that, then Blizz removed it, Because people just coudn't blind counter it and were getting angrier.
Warhound had 7range and did not suck in chokepoints.
Well, a warhound still fits almost 4 squares, if you fight something not melee like MMM or Roaches, the third row of Warhounds won't shot. The dps density is too low, because the supply density it's also too low. This is the reason of why the Warhound had such speed, range and health. They would completely suck outside of early game or being a very specific Immortal counter (and Ghost saomewhat fill this role with EMP), in other words, they couldn't be "core" as Blizz wanted.
On September 21 2012 01:42 MCDayC wrote: wtff. I thought this was kinda terrible.
The point about people whining balance and not talking about gameplay is good, but apart from that... well I'm at a loss.
What else in there was meaningful? There was some hope for BW units back in before (which we've heard a million times before). There was some complaining about marines (!). I'm honestly confused by why this has received a positive response. Some one help me please.
I'm not Filter, but my own point is that the game in is current state has some gameplay flaws that make some aspects of the game very boring. Instead of working out these issues, too many just scream OP UP on things instead of thinking about how the units work fundamentally, and that's what Blizz is doing as well.
I don't want BW with updated graphics, and neither does Filter I think. It's just that a game like BW is/was pretty much the benchmark for good fun RTS units and gameplay. You have to analyze why the units all had a great role and were fun to use, make generalizations from that, and then use those rules to make new units. It's just learning from the past, and some people think Blizzard have failed to analyze and learn from what made their past games great.
I agree with the first bit, and as I said, that part of the video made sense, but the rest of it was a ramble on SC2, with no clarity or structure, and I won't even get started on the Marine QQing, that was just strange to hear in 2012.
I definitely agree with you, it is a ramble, but to be honest he's a prominent community figure and I wanted to get a good discussion about SC gameplay going into HoTS. Everyone has their own opinion about what can be improved in Starcraft so all I really took from the video was that first part.
Wait, how is he a prominent community figure? I've followed the SC 2 scene since release, but have never heard of filter until this thread.
Prominent isn't the right word; more like well-respected.
His bronze to masters series will basically bring you from complete noob to having a very good mechanical understanding of the game, which basically means it'll drill constant SCVs/Depots into your skull, make you understand timings, how tech works, how taking expansions works, how to analyze your replays etc etc. The idea is by the end of the videos you can pretty much go out and learn any strategy you want because you'll be able to execute it well and understand what you're doing. It's nothing absolutely revolutionary, but it's a very good practice routine for beginners and IMO the fastest way to improve.
On September 21 2012 02:24 Kinaesthetic wrote: I agree with most of what he said in his video, but that elitist crap he spews at around 6 - 7:30 almost nearly ruins his argument. All players need to be taken into account. All players as in every ladder level.
No, they don't. The ideal is to improve oneself and become a better player. If the game caters to low-level players, where is the motivation to improve?
The skill ceiling should be as high as possible so that the game can support eSports in the best manner. Ten years from now the casual Bronzies and Silvers probably won't still be playing or watching StarCraft. They don't matter in the long run, and things should not be made easier for them so that they can feel rewarded for sub-par play. This is not elitist thinking. This is the basic competitive spirit that drives all sports.
The skill ceiling is unreachable high, noone will ever play SC2 perfectly. I agree that Silvers and Bronzies should not be considered when it comes to design/balancing if this should be an esports title, yet everything else should be done to keep them playing/watching, else SC2 will be dead in 10years.
Every game that isn't turn based has unlimited skill ceiling, because you can always do things faster, make the perfect response at every time, 'kite' with units (no matter how boring, balanced,... the game is).
Brood war is a lot more skillfull than starcraft 2. Anyone with a brain and a little bit of basic knowledge about both games knows this. And I'm not even talking about things like auto-mine, smart-casting, unlimited selection etc. There's nothing like moving shot in sc2, there's no mutalisks micro, there's no vulture patrol micro, there's nothing that takes considerable amount of skill to become good at BESIDES marine micro. The potential in BW units is inifite while remaining humanly possible, the only 'infinite' potential in sc2's units is having 'automoton 2000' like micro which is humanly impossible.
No sc2 won't be dead if you make a FUN game and a game with depth to it, micro-wise and strategy wise. Brood war is the living proof of it, what more do you want??
All the points are really easy to understand and I fully agree with them, however he has missed one thing which is important to make SC2 less about balance and which is crucial to making all playstyles equally viable.
The different production speed boosts (Reactor, Chronoboost, Warp Gate, Larva inject) affect the production capabilities of the races differently. While Zerg can "burst produce" anything they want (up to the number of - theoretically unlimited - stockpiled larvae) Protoss and Terran arent that lucky. Protoss can at least burst-produce the core of their army, but even they dont have "Warp Gate" for air units. Terrans are the least lucky in that regard and not being able to quickly reproduce their Siege Tanks and Thors is the main reason for mech not being equally viable to bio in a competitive scene. Since these burst productions are new and linked to the economy production boost (chronoboosted Probes, extra larvae from the first few larvae injects) the corresponding terran skill (MULE) has to be removed as well.
Personally I also feel that limiting the number of units in a control group will be good for gameplay, because you stop thinking with the deathball-1-control-group. This in addition to the automatically&optional spread out units AND a buff to AoE damage (except Fungal Growth) should open up new opportunities for more interesting gameplay.
On September 21 2012 02:24 Kinaesthetic wrote: I agree with most of what he said in his video, but that elitist crap he spews at around 6 - 7:30 almost nearly ruins his argument. All players need to be taken into account. All players as in every ladder level.
I want to pull off stuff that's challenging for me. I've only reached gold league briefly, but I still like units that reward skill and attention. Just because a low level player can't do e.g. awesome marine splits doesn't mean they aren't taken into account. The problem with things that are easy to do is that they tend to make differences in skill less relevant than things that are hard to do.
Marines are an example of a unit that's easy to use but can reward differences in skill, because you can do difficult stuff that greatly increases their effectiveness. I can do simple splits but they aren't nearly as effective as MarineKing's.
The Reaver on it's own doesn't really feel difficult to use, but it's effectiveness keeps increasing as you get better at using it with the shuttle.
I went back to 6:30 in the video. Blizz shouldn't completely ignore casuals, but there definitely shouldn't be an a-move unit that crushes tank lines by itself because that negates the effort put in by the tank player with a no effort action.
I agree 100%. The mere fact that Blizzard has the reasources to test out some radical things for Hots and yet, still keeps on with the same old shit they've been doing/feeding us for the last 2 years is hillarious.
This video started kind of good, the design should go gameplay first, balance second. Everything after that just sounded extremely biased. Marines are bad, add the reaver and the goliath etc. etc. completely ignoring that the goliath would make vikings obsolete as it is basically the same unit or that the reaver was kinda dependant on BW pathing with huge gaps between units.
I agreed when he said he is ranting, because it sounds a lot like it. Nony put in effort to make a coherent argument, with prepared visual demonstration and this just looks like someone thinks he does the same when he rants about his love of BW, over some random game of his, which features ZvP, the matchup about which he doesn´t talk at all during his rant. More effort please.
On September 21 2012 02:24 Kinaesthetic wrote: I agree with most of what he said in his video, but that elitist crap he spews at around 6 - 7:30 almost nearly ruins his argument. All players need to be taken into account. All players as in every ladder level.
I want to pull off stuff that's challenging for me. I've only reached gold league briefly, but I still like units that reward skill and attention. Just because a low level player can't do e.g. awesome marine splits doesn't mean they aren't taken into account. The problem with things that are easy to do is that they tend to make differences in skill less relevant than things that are hard to do.
Marines are an example of a unit that's easy to use but can reward differences in skill, because you can do difficult stuff that greatly increases their effectiveness. I can do simple splits but they aren't nearly as effective as MarineKing's.
The Reaver on it's own doesn't really feel difficult to use, but it's effectiveness keeps increasing as you get better at using it with the shuttle.
I went back to 6:30 in the video. Blizz shouldn't completely ignore casuals, but there definitely shouldn't be an a-move unit that crushes tank lines by itself because that negates the effort put in by the tank player with a no effort action.
Bad players should not be able to perform anywhere near the level of a good player. Simple as that. Its tough love, but if you really want to pull of a sick tactic then work on it. Dumbing down the game for lower level player to feel better will hurt everyone. Its not elitist its the truth.
On September 20 2012 23:53 Big J wrote: I did only watch up to 10mins, but I absolutly didn't want to watch any further, as I just completly disagree. Awesome gameplay is created by units that are balanced in ways so that they are used actively all the time.
Just using his examples: Reaper: 5rax reaper was completly overpowered, but it was awesome to play with, awesome tense to watch and even playing against it, was in a way awesome, because it felt soooo good when you could beat it, while it was sooooo tense all the time. What they did with the reaper was nerf it into an underpowered state. What they should have done, is BALANCE IT in a way that reapers would still get used! Find that sweetspot that creates tense gameplay, where most of the time a player will get an advantage of it, but not wins or loses straight up. Tempest: it's a unit that shoots the opponent. Always (not anymore with 15range, but I'd hope it gets a little bit more again throughout the beta). If properly BALANCED. How does that not create tense moments? What the game needs is more units that can attack even if you don't allin.
The HotS units are some of the best ideas because if we look at them: Oracle: fast harass unit; support unit for hit squads against fungal - introduces more active play Tempest: long ranged unit; when properly used, it should shoot the opponent and force a reaction that is not "turtle harder) - introduces active play MS Core: Allows Protoss to walk out on the map early; introduces active play Swarm Host: Sends Units to the opponent from long range; Should always do that, because the unit should be safe itself. - introduces active play Battle Hellion: allows the hellion to be a better combat unit if need be; producing more fast harass units means more active play.
Basically the only unit that is somewhat questionable in terms of more active play is the widow mine, as it could turn out that the best way to play against it would be to sit back and not move until you are ready to clear the map from minefields with a huge army (though for that the widow mine would have to be properly balanced first)
What blizzard needs to do, is balance units in ways so that they actually can do more stuff, even if the opponent turtles, while diminishing their all-in potential. In WoL, mostly just the 2nd one has been done. It's not a question of design, if the reaper is overpowered. It's a question of "how close is the battle between reapers and the defender".
sure balance is good, but if everything is already balanced in the beta or even before it, why not just release the game? Considering that you said that you stopped listening 10 minutes in means that youdidnt hear anything else that he had to say regarding the issue.
Yeah, listened to the rest now. All he talks is stuff that can and should be achieved via balance. Thors are too bad anti air vs anthing but mutalisks? Buff it against other things. AoE is too good? Nerf it. Marines are too good in big balls now? Nerf the big balls. There are a lot of simple parameters that are responsible for that (supply, range, dps, upgrades, production)
There is literarily nothing that he mentioned, that could not be dealt with by balancing.
almost everything you said goes against each other though. Only way to nerf big balls of marines is to have good aoe, but you also said nerf aoe. Thors are made to counter light air units, viking is supposed to counter everything else as the viking is basically a goliath that isnt ground based and doesnt have an aoe aa-attack.Maybe remove the viking and the thor to replace them with a bw goliath? marines do a ton of damage but only when together, if you make them spread then they are in small groups (1-3 if you are good at splitting). A single zealot or archon can clean up 3 marines easily right? just throwing around some random ideas.
Why is the only way to nerf marines good AoE? (apart from me not thinking that there is anything wrong with the relationship between AoE and Marines) Make marines bigger and give them less range and less dps and suddenly big marine balls suck hardcore, because instead of 50marines shooting at once, only 30will shoot and 20 will try to hump their big fat frontman.
Of course really balancing everything out with the the parameter changes I wrote is hard as it will create other problems. But autospread will give you incredible problems as well.
They tried with a unit called the Warhound. It was o big for its supply so army compositions with it seemed so big and scary even if it something like that it's not a big advantage. In chokepoints they sucked so hard because just 10% of them actually fight in these situations.
Well, people bitched so much about that, then Blizz removed it, Because people just coudn't blind counter it and were getting angrier.
Warhound had 7range and did not suck in chokepoints.
Well, a warhound still fits almost 4 squares, if you fight something not melee like MMM or Roaches, the third row of Warhounds won't shot. The dps density is too low, because the supply density it's also too low. This is the reason of why the Warhound had such speed, range and health. They would completely suck outside of early game or being a very specific Immortal counter (and Ghost saomewhat fill this role with EMP), in other words, they couldn't be "core" as Blizz wanted.
Okay so.... Do we really need to discuss this further? What part of boring unit do you not get about the warhound? Its a steamroller. Not a strategic unit. Thats why we complained.
On September 21 2012 02:24 Kinaesthetic wrote: I agree with most of what he said in his video, but that elitist crap he spews at around 6 - 7:30 almost nearly ruins his argument. All players need to be taken into account. All players as in every ladder level.
I want to pull off stuff that's challenging for me. I've only reached gold league briefly, but I still like units that reward skill and attention. Just because a low level player can't do e.g. awesome marine splits doesn't mean they aren't taken into account. The problem with things that are easy to do is that they tend to make differences in skill less relevant than things that are hard to do.
Marines are an example of a unit that's easy to use but can reward differences in skill, because you can do difficult stuff that greatly increases their effectiveness. I can do simple splits but they aren't nearly as effective as MarineKing's.
The Reaver on it's own doesn't really feel difficult to use, but it's effectiveness keeps increasing as you get better at using it with the shuttle.
I went back to 6:30 in the video. Blizz shouldn't completely ignore casuals, but there definitely shouldn't be an a-move unit that crushes tank lines by itself because that negates the effort put in by the tank player with a no effort action.
Bad players should not be able to perform anywhere near the level of a good player. Simple as that. Its tough love, but if you really want to pull of a sick tactic then work on it. Dumbing down the game for lower level player to feel better will hurt everyone. Its not elitist its the truth.
/signed a lowly diamond player
I agree completely. Making things too easy removes fun, and if I can't pull something off in my own games it's cool to watch. If theres something a pro can do that most players can't, removing that thing won't improve the game for lower level player since they weren't doing it anyway.
I agree 100%, it is so sad about the bad design of sc2, and that people like day9 keep saying it's good.
Casual players do not go "Oh look at that great game the pros played, I want to do that." They don't care about timing pushes or building placement. So the lower level design should just be about whoever macros the best and gets their army in the right place. All that other stuff is what should be design at a high level, and Blizzard can't do that in their meetings, only pros can, on the playing field, and more options for protoss and zerg at every stage of the game, scouting too, will only make the game better, instead of having to sacrifice things that make for a better game just so you can survive that stupid early game all-in.
hey this is good. ill definitely buy Hots if they put these in. idc if its imba. they can fix that. but reavers, unit unclump. goliath. lurkers. sounds awesome!
I have hated this unit since day 1, and I have offered a simple solution to it's broken numbers for at least a year now. -5hp. That's it. Filter brings up the mechanic of unit spread during movement and I think this moreso adds to the power of the marine rather than takes away from it. Marines having the highest DPS per cost in the game isn't as much of an issue as their extreme cost-effectiveness is. The cost-effectiveness comes from their tankiness, not their damage output.
Bio was non-existant in BW TvP not because Tanks and Vultures were awesome, but because Marines simply died too damn fast. They did great damage, but 1 small mistake and the whole game was over. This is why mech was the standard in that MU and the late-game standard for every MU.
Marines doing great damage is fine. Marines having 55 hp, being able to tank Zealots, Banelings, Archons, and Siege Tanks is not. Marines need to be squishier for the health of the game and the Terran race specifically, they are currently too good in WoL and need to be addressed in a direct manner. IMO, this unit is responsible for 90% of the balance problems in SC2 right now because it is too powerful and artificially inflates the power of the other races units simply because they need ways to deal with the Marine.
I just wanted to say that I cant agree more about the marine. As far as I know, the Zerglings stayed the same number wise as in BW (Except for Adrenal glands I guess is a nerf) and the same can be said about the zealot (Except for charge is also a nerf).
Then comes the marine. Free +5 HP. Upgradable +10 HP. Dont need to upgrade range anymore, they come with it.
I mean... at this point, why make an upgrade for an already shitty unit like the Hydralisk so it gets +1 range when the marines come with it? Makes no sense, either give the Hydras their free range like the marines or have the marines have to upgrade their range to have 5. And for the free 5 HP buff, it makes EVERYTHING less good against the marine. They never needed it, it was a free buff probably because it was the Terran expasion or because Browder just felt like marines are cool or something...
The reason why marines got the buff is because healing them came later in the game. Because of that, they were ok at the beginning but are really powerful at the point medivacs come out. They also got a plus one to dmg, btw. Zealots got a 1 armor but shields were reduced by 10 compared to BW.
Pretty damn sure the marines always did 6 dmg. Also pretty damn sure the zealots had 1 base armor in BW.
So the marine is the only base unit that got buffed and not nerfed, they must feel pretty good.
On September 21 2012 07:06 baba1 wrote: Pretty damn sure the marines always did 6 dmg. Also pretty damn sure the zealots had 1 base armor in BW.
So the marine is the only base unit that got buffed and not nerfed, they must feel pretty good.
Been a while since I played BW but I believe a big part of why SC2 marine is so darn good is because its kiting is practically a moving shot. Imagine if marine was kind of like the hellion where there is a big delay between stopping to a halt and firing. It would be nowhere as good as it is now.
On September 21 2012 07:06 baba1 wrote: Pretty damn sure the marines always did 6 dmg. Also pretty damn sure the zealots had 1 base armor in BW.
So the marine is the only base unit that got buffed and not nerfed, they must feel pretty good.
Been a while since I played BW but I believe a big part of why SC2 marine is so darn good is because its kiting is practically a moving shot. Imagine if marine was kind of like the hellion where there is a big delay between stopping to a halt and firing. It would be nowhere as good as it is now.
This is true, and a big part of the reason I have such a problem with the bonus HP they gave the marine in SC2.
Marine micro is a high-skill mechanic and as such encourages better play on both sides. The Terran executing the micro needs to be quick and accurate to do so properly and the Protoss/Zerg on the other side needs to manage the engagement properly to limit the effectiveness of the technique. The very core of Marine micro is what makes competitive gaming fun and interesting; it has become a defining feature of competitive SC2 and as such, should not be touched.
The 5 bonus HP Blizzard saw fit to give Marines way back in beta has turned the unit into a powerhouse that has tilted every single MU involving Terran into a race against Marine production. This has proven problematic for SC2 balance since release, and is ruining the game IMO.
Marines need to have their health specifically nerfed and no other aspect because it keeps the unit useful in the high-level way that it is already useful while toning down the cost-effectiveness as the game continues on.
Terran ALSO needs a higher-tech alternative to marine play. The role that the Goliath filled in BW and I think the Ghost/Thor was SUPPOSED to fill in SC2. Unfortunately, one of these units has been nerfed into oblivion and the other never truly filled it's role in the first place.
Well stated video It's simple...Blizzards needs to add fun units/abilities and remove boring ones. And there are a lot of the latter... They are so obsessed with one-deminsion balancing that the game is spiraling down hill. We need units with weaknesses...units that emphasis positioning over speed. We need to re-examing stupid a-move units like roach/immortal/archon/marauder/thor/colossi and ask why have such well rounded simplistic a-move units? Fast units with good range and hp create deathballs and build order wins that are more aking to rock-paper-scissors than a proper strategy game. So easy to fix...is this fun? Is this not fun? Is it natural that terran always goes vs protoss: marauder/marine > medivac > viking > ghost. Or vs zerg, hellion harass into drop ship harass into a big timing attack before the zerg spirals out of control. Or PvP always goes 4gate if the choke is too big...mass colossi almost every other game? Why is it so acceptable that the game is so predictable? With the right thought process SC2 could evolve leaps and bounds from where it is now which will never happen
On September 21 2012 07:06 baba1 wrote: Pretty damn sure the marines always did 6 dmg. Also pretty damn sure the zealots had 1 base armor in BW.
So the marine is the only base unit that got buffed and not nerfed, they must feel pretty good.
Been a while since I played BW but I believe a big part of why SC2 marine is so darn good is because its kiting is practically a moving shot. Imagine if marine was kind of like the hellion where there is a big delay between stopping to a halt and firing. It would be nowhere as good as it is now.
Actually marines are so strong because you can have 50 in one control group and move them around and micro them very easily. in BW you had medics in with your marines so you had to control 2-3 control groups to make them effective. Unlimited selection makes everything so damn easy.
On September 21 2012 07:06 baba1 wrote: Pretty damn sure the marines always did 6 dmg. Also pretty damn sure the zealots had 1 base armor in BW.
So the marine is the only base unit that got buffed and not nerfed, they must feel pretty good.
Been a while since I played BW but I believe a big part of why SC2 marine is so darn good is because its kiting is practically a moving shot. Imagine if marine was kind of like the hellion where there is a big delay between stopping to a halt and firing. It would be nowhere as good as it is now.
Actually marines are so strong because you can have 50 in one control group and move them around and micro them very easily. in BW you had medics in with your marines so you had to control 2-3 control groups to make them effective. Unlimited selection makes everything so damn easy.
True but in BW the marine had to stand still while shooting so stuff like lurkers vs stim bio was pretty balanced and microing marines against lurkers was really difficult. Honestly I don't think lurkers would be that in SC2 TvZ because how quickly a good player can spread+focus with marines. It will force scans/detection from terran but baneling mines already accomplish that.
@ Jermstuddog: Any terran who has spent enough time playing his race knows that the marine is ridiculously good. I have been playing WoL since beta and back then the marine was so good that any tech+marine all-in was broken esp on the beta maps. Blizz answer back then was to nerf terran tech options around the marine. Now the game has developed to a point where marine centric armies backed by strong mechanics are the best terran late game has to offer.
This is fine for Korean terrans (I guess? Although I doubt anyone enjoys the feeling of using marines against storm/colo or infestor comps) but a lot of macro terrans are obviously frustrated with the late game esp. those of use who enjoyed the positional siege based mech play which is pretty much absent from WoL and things don't look good for HoTS either. For now its just grinding games and improving mechanics, but it wouldn't hurt Blizz to throw a bone or two our way.
On September 21 2012 07:06 baba1 wrote: Pretty damn sure the marines always did 6 dmg. Also pretty damn sure the zealots had 1 base armor in BW.
So the marine is the only base unit that got buffed and not nerfed, they must feel pretty good.
Been a while since I played BW but I believe a big part of why SC2 marine is so darn good is because its kiting is practically a moving shot. Imagine if marine was kind of like the hellion where there is a big delay between stopping to a halt and firing. It would be nowhere as good as it is now.
Actually marines are so strong because you can have 50 in one control group and move them around and micro them very easily. in BW you had medics in with your marines so you had to control 2-3 control groups to make them effective. Unlimited selection makes everything so damn easy.
True but in BW the marine had to stand still while shooting so stuff like lurkers vs stim bio was pretty balanced and microing marines against lurkers was really difficult. Honestly I don't think lurkers would be that in SC2 TvZ because how quickly a good player can spread+focus with marines. It will force scans/detection from terran but baneling mines already accomplish that.
@ Jermstuddog: Any terran who has spent enough time playing his race knows that the marine is ridiculously good. I have been playing WoL since beta and back then the marine was so good that any tech+marine all-in was broken esp on the beta maps. Blizz answer back then was to nerf terran tech options around the marine. Now the game has developed to a point where marine centric armies backed by strong mechanics are the best terran late game has to offer.
This is fine for Korean terrans (I guess? Although I doubt anyone enjoys the feeling of using marines against storm/colo or infestor comps) but a lot of macro terrans are obviously frustrated with the late game esp. those of use who enjoyed the positional siege based mech play which is pretty much absent from WoL and things don't look good for HoTS either. For now its just grinding games and improving mechanics, but it wouldn't hurt Blizz to throw a bone or two our way.
I will readily admit that both sides of Terran are broken. The Marine is too good, but there is also a huge lack of ANYTHING ELSE. Blizz really should address this huge problem in the game.
Agreed with most of the things in the video. Especially that gameplay should always come before balance. Lets face it, a colossus is not fun to play with, its not fun to play against either. That is an example of a unit that has bad game design. And most people would agree that removing it (and adding something with a similar role, like reaver) would be for the best.
As I only played customs in BW; did BW have any "hard counter" units? (like the colossus is to the marine, immortal to roach etc)
On September 21 2012 09:12 Millet wrote: Agreed with most of the things in the video. Especially that gameplay should always come before balance. Lets face it, a colossus is not fun to play with, its not fun to play against either. That is an example of a unit that has bad game design. And most people would agree that removing it (and adding something with a similar role, like reaver) would be for the best.
As I only played customs in BW; did BW have any "hard counter" units? (like the colossus is to the marine, immortal to roach etc)
I agree with the overall philosophy gameplay first, balance second, but the examples in the video are just bad. I get the feeling that the author does not understand what he is talking about.
If anything, ToHS is already introducing several great concepts from the gameplay point of view, and I I'm liking it much more than WoL.
On September 21 2012 09:12 Millet wrote: As I only played customs in BW; did BW have any "hard counter" units? (like the colossus is to the marine, immortal to roach etc)
Sure, in this respect BW is the same in comparison to SC2. In BW hts and reavers counter marines even harder than colossus. That is why you rarely see marines in BW TvP past some early games. The only difference in BW is that some units can be microed better to increase their potential both to counter even harder (good storms in BW are much harder to pull off than in SC2, but BW storms hard counter even more things) or to reduce hard countering (i.e. microless vultures are hard countered by dragoones, but proper mine micro can make gragoones less of a counter).
Both SC2 and BW are very similar in respect that they have many hard counters, but BW engine/design allows for more interesting positional and micro-intensive play that can sometimes mitigate this hard-countering aspect or make it even stronger (to the point that many units in BW are not used at all in some match-ups).
I feel that HoTS makes things better. However more micro potential in HoTS is always appreciated.
On September 21 2012 09:12 Millet wrote: Agreed with most of the things in the video. Especially that gameplay should always come before balance. Lets face it, a colossus is not fun to play with, its not fun to play against either. That is an example of a unit that has bad game design. And most people would agree that removing it (and adding something with a similar role, like reaver) would be for the best.
As I only played customs in BW; did BW have any "hard counter" units? (like the colossus is to the marine, immortal to roach etc)
Firebat vs zergling, scourge vs battlecruiser/carrier, corsair/valkyrie vs muta are the only ones I can think of where a unit was designed specifically to counter another unit. In practice, none of these could be said to be hard counters thanks to micro and the spread out nature of brood war battles.
On September 21 2012 09:12 Millet wrote: Agreed with most of the things in the video. Especially that gameplay should always come before balance. Lets face it, a colossus is not fun to play with, its not fun to play against either. That is an example of a unit that has bad game design. And most people would agree that removing it (and adding something with a similar role, like reaver) would be for the best.
As I only played customs in BW; did BW have any "hard counter" units? (like the colossus is to the marine, immortal to roach etc)
Firebat vs zergling, scourge vs battlecruiser/carrier, corsair/valkyrie vs muta are the only ones I can think of where a unit was designed specifically to counter another unit. In practice, none of these could be said to be hard counters thanks to micro and the spread out nature of brood war battles.
Firebat vs Zergling depended on the numbers, and whether or not Zerg could get a good surround on it or not. Mass firebats were not the norm anyways lol
Battlecruisers in critical mass actually destroyed scourge, since they would one-shot them. Carriers would have a problem against scourge, but were often accompanied by sairs to block that. Scourge weren't really "designed" to be hardcounters to those units anyways lol
Corsairs and Valks destroyed mutas when they achieved critical mass, but doing so was not exactly easy or common to do (at least with the Valks, mass Corsair play being the norm is a fairly new development). Plus, there are a LOOOT of games where progamers take out Corsair fleets w/ some awesome Muta/Scourge micro .. similar w/ Valks too
I mean, hardcounters can exist, but there needs to be a room for micro potential. So I totally support the idea/concept of this thread
Although I agree with most of what he said, I think we really need to give up hope and stop wasting time trying to get Blizzard to bring back any broodwar units. It is just not going to happen. They would be admitting to failure if they did that and clearly that is not something Blizzard likes to do. Instead lets encourage them to bring in units similar to broodwar, like they are already doing. The swarm host is basically a lurker, the viper is basically a defiler and the widow mine is basically a spider mine. Now if they could go ahead and just bring in something like a Reaver and something like a Goliath, we should be set for a good expansion. (And no, the Oracle is not like a Reaver. The Oracle looks like it is going to be a very boring unit. Except for maybe the Phase Shift thing)
What really concerns me is how come it takes Blizzard so long to realise the Warhound was broken? What kind of internal testing are they doing with these unit concepts they come up with? I mean any SC2 player, from Bronze to GM could see that the Warhound was not only incredibly boring, but also very overpowered. The fact that it made it into closed beta testing really worries me.
On September 21 2012 09:12 Millet wrote: Agreed with most of the things in the video. Especially that gameplay should always come before balance. Lets face it, a colossus is not fun to play with, its not fun to play against either. That is an example of a unit that has bad game design. And most people would agree that removing it (and adding something with a similar role, like reaver) would be for the best.
As I only played customs in BW; did BW have any "hard counter" units? (like the colossus is to the marine, immortal to roach etc)
Firebat vs zergling, scourge vs battlecruiser/carrier, corsair/valkyrie vs muta are the only ones I can think of where a unit was designed specifically to counter another unit. In practice, none of these could be said to be hard counters thanks to micro and the spread out nature of brood war battles.
Firebat vs Zergling depended on the numbers, and whether or not Zerg could get a good surround on it or not. Mass firebats were not the norm anyways lol
Battlecruisers in critical mass actually destroyed scourge, since they would one-shot them. Carriers would have a problem against scourge, but were often accompanied by sairs to block that. Scourge weren't really "designed" to be hardcounters to those units anyways lol
Corsairs and Valks destroyed mutas when they achieved critical mass, but doing so was not exactly easy or common to do (at least with the Valks, mass Corsair play being the norm is a fairly new development). Plus, there are a LOOOT of games where progamers take out Corsair fleets w/ some awesome Muta/Scourge micro .. similar w/ Valks too
I mean, hardcounters can exist, but there needs to be a room for micro potential. So I totally support the idea/concept of this thread
By 'design' I meant what the original developers were thinking of back in 1998. Obviously BW evolved in an infinite number of ways the development team could never have imagined, leading to BW effectively having no de facto hard counters. Regarding scourge I actually would say that they were specifically envisioned as a capital ship counter. Strategy guides from those days specifically recommended using scourge against BC/Carrier. Scourge dealing 110 damage had to have been a deliberate decision made so that scourge could 5 shot BC/carrier while not being able to 1-shot smaller air units. Thus (again, in theory) it was much more cost efficient to use your scourge against capital ships than small/medium flyers. Of course in practice capital ships were never made against zerg anyways except in BGH so scourge were primarily anti muta/sair/observer/dropship/science vessel, but I highly doubt the original devs saw that coming.
On September 21 2012 02:24 Kinaesthetic wrote: I agree with most of what he said in his video, but that elitist crap he spews at around 6 - 7:30 almost nearly ruins his argument. All players need to be taken into account. All players as in every ladder level.
I want to pull off stuff that's challenging for me. I've only reached gold league briefly, but I still like units that reward skill and attention. Just because a low level player can't do e.g. awesome marine splits doesn't mean they aren't taken into account. The problem with things that are easy to do is that they tend to make differences in skill less relevant than things that are hard to do.
Marines are an example of a unit that's easy to use but can reward differences in skill, because you can do difficult stuff that greatly increases their effectiveness. I can do simple splits but they aren't nearly as effective as MarineKing's.
The Reaver on it's own doesn't really feel difficult to use, but it's effectiveness keeps increasing as you get better at using it with the shuttle.
I went back to 6:30 in the video. Blizz shouldn't completely ignore casuals, but there definitely shouldn't be an a-move unit that crushes tank lines by itself because that negates the effort put in by the tank player with a no effort action.
Bad players should not be able to perform anywhere near the level of a good player. Simple as that. Its tough love, but if you really want to pull of a sick tactic then work on it. Dumbing down the game for lower level player to feel better will hurt everyone. Its not elitist its the truth.
/signed a lowly diamond player
i share your sentiments. blizzard seems to be focusing more on the casual gamers and their feelings. make the game easier for them so more casual gamers will buy
On September 21 2012 02:24 Kinaesthetic wrote: I agree with most of what he said in his video, but that elitist crap he spews at around 6 - 7:30 almost nearly ruins his argument. All players need to be taken into account. All players as in every ladder level.
I want to pull off stuff that's challenging for me. I've only reached gold league briefly, but I still like units that reward skill and attention. Just because a low level player can't do e.g. awesome marine splits doesn't mean they aren't taken into account. The problem with things that are easy to do is that they tend to make differences in skill less relevant than things that are hard to do.
Marines are an example of a unit that's easy to use but can reward differences in skill, because you can do difficult stuff that greatly increases their effectiveness. I can do simple splits but they aren't nearly as effective as MarineKing's.
The Reaver on it's own doesn't really feel difficult to use, but it's effectiveness keeps increasing as you get better at using it with the shuttle.
I went back to 6:30 in the video. Blizz shouldn't completely ignore casuals, but there definitely shouldn't be an a-move unit that crushes tank lines by itself because that negates the effort put in by the tank player with a no effort action.
Bad players should not be able to perform anywhere near the level of a good player. Simple as that. Its tough love, but if you really want to pull of a sick tactic then work on it. Dumbing down the game for lower level player to feel better will hurt everyone. Its not elitist its the truth.
/signed a lowly diamond player
i share your sentiments. blizzard seems to be focusing more on the casual gamers and their feelings. make the game easier for them so more casual gamers will buy
you got the point. Actualy ca$h it's what really matter, not the quality.
On September 21 2012 02:24 Kinaesthetic wrote: I agree with most of what he said in his video, but that elitist crap he spews at around 6 - 7:30 almost nearly ruins his argument. All players need to be taken into account. All players as in every ladder level.
I want to pull off stuff that's challenging for me. I've only reached gold league briefly, but I still like units that reward skill and attention. Just because a low level player can't do e.g. awesome marine splits doesn't mean they aren't taken into account. The problem with things that are easy to do is that they tend to make differences in skill less relevant than things that are hard to do.
Marines are an example of a unit that's easy to use but can reward differences in skill, because you can do difficult stuff that greatly increases their effectiveness. I can do simple splits but they aren't nearly as effective as MarineKing's.
The Reaver on it's own doesn't really feel difficult to use, but it's effectiveness keeps increasing as you get better at using it with the shuttle.
I went back to 6:30 in the video. Blizz shouldn't completely ignore casuals, but there definitely shouldn't be an a-move unit that crushes tank lines by itself because that negates the effort put in by the tank player with a no effort action.
Bad players should not be able to perform anywhere near the level of a good player. Simple as that. Its tough love, but if you really want to pull of a sick tactic then work on it. Dumbing down the game for lower level player to feel better will hurt everyone. Its not elitist its the truth.
/signed a lowly diamond player
i share your sentiments. blizzard seems to be focusing more on the casual gamers and their feelings. make the game easier for them so more casual gamers will buy
you got the point. Actualy ca$h it's what really matter, not the quality.
Funny how that backfired. Brood War sold 11 million copies. Starcraft 2 hasn't even gotten to half that. So developing for mass appeal obviously doesn't work.
Anyway, good video, I definitely agree with a lot you said. I think Blizzard should be far more radical in their changes and push towards making the game more dynamic, fun, and overall just a better gameplay experience. The numbers can come later! And like you said this beta is a perfect time to do some wild changes, just see how it goes. Remove the Marauder for a week. Swap the Roach and Hydralisk, etc. Just do some radical changes, there is NOTHING TO LOSE Blizzard! You've made a vast and complex, good game, no one decision should be taken as the final solution, experiment! Hell I think even having a separate WoL PTR style client where every couple of weeks they do some further tweaks with very radical changes to the game. If some of the changes draws people in and they like how it works and plays....why not put it into the actual game?
good video, blizz is being stubborn not bringing back mechanics and units from sc1, most of the design and mechanics in sc1 were genius, why not implement some of them instead of trying so hard to come up with something new and failing to satisfy, ie. warhound.
On September 20 2012 23:53 Big J wrote: I did only watch up to 10mins, but I absolutly didn't want to watch any further, as I just completly disagree. Awesome gameplay is created by units that are balanced in ways so that they are used actively all the time.
Just using his examples: Reaper: 5rax reaper was completly overpowered, but it was awesome to play with, awesome tense to watch and even playing against it, was in a way awesome, because it felt soooo good when you could beat it, while it was sooooo tense all the time. What they did with the reaper was nerf it into an underpowered state. What they should have done, is BALANCE IT in a way that reapers would still get used! Find that sweetspot that creates tense gameplay, where most of the time a player will get an advantage of it, but not wins or loses straight up. Tempest: it's a unit that shoots the opponent. Always (not anymore with 15range, but I'd hope it gets a little bit more again throughout the beta). If properly BALANCED. How does that not create tense moments? What the game needs is more units that can attack even if you don't allin.
The HotS units are some of the best ideas because if we look at them: Oracle: fast harass unit; support unit for hit squads against fungal - introduces more active play Tempest: long ranged unit; when properly used, it should shoot the opponent and force a reaction that is not "turtle harder) - introduces active play MS Core: Allows Protoss to walk out on the map early; introduces active play Swarm Host: Sends Units to the opponent from long range; Should always do that, because the unit should be safe itself. - introduces active play Battle Hellion: allows the hellion to be a better combat unit if need be; producing more fast harass units means more active play.
Basically the only unit that is somewhat questionable in terms of more active play is the widow mine, as it could turn out that the best way to play against it would be to sit back and not move until you are ready to clear the map from minefields with a huge army (though for that the widow mine would have to be properly balanced first)
What blizzard needs to do, is balance units in ways so that they actually can do more stuff, even if the opponent turtles, while diminishing their all-in potential. In WoL, mostly just the 2nd one has been done. It's not a question of design, if the reaper is overpowered. It's a question of "how close is the battle between reapers and the defender".
Completely disagree with you. Balance didn't seem to have much to do with the evolution of WoL imo. From 2010 to now.
I really agree the game needs to be fun and they shouldn't be shy for trying anything even if its recycling units from bw. +1
In my opinion the key point is that Blizzard should start to try even crazier things out. As in the video said they should just implement BW Units (reaver, lurker, goliath,...) to see the impacts. Later on they can decide. But Blizzard decides without showing us why and without testing it out.
its so easy to get caught up in the balance issues but starcraft was fun for me before i had a clue how to properly play it. Just playing bgh with my buddies and all the amazing fun units are what makes sc such a fantastic game.
Chess is a very deep game, and once you get good at it, it can be alot of fun. Unfortunately, the average person does not like to play chess. However those who do, are long term players, and revel in strategic aspects of the game.
Alot more people play Checkers. Easy to learn and play.Exciting at first, but once you under stand the shallow mechanics of the game(basically not randomly moving pieces) people get bored very quickly, when they realize the lack of dynamic game-play(much like TicTacToe). And all the casuals want to do is simplify the game even more with "House-Rules"(Cheats). These simplification of a simple game irritate those who attempt to find the strategic depth of the game and thus these players leave, and then the normal casuals leave as a result of interest in a different game. + Show Spoiler +
These are observation I noted while doing my community service at a summer camp. I actually wrote a paper on this. Though I can't find it T_T. It had to do with Business and the Psychology of instant gratification.
On September 22 2012 04:01 GinDo wrote: Brood War = Chess SC2 = Checkers
Chess is a very deep game, and once you get good at it, it can be alot of fun. Unfortunately, the average person does not like to play chess. However those who do, are long term players, and revel in strategic aspects of the game.
Alot more people play Checkers. Easy to learn and play.Exciting at first, but once you under stand the shallow mechanics of the game(basically not randomly moving pieces) people get bored very quickly, when they realize the lack of dynamic game-play(much like TicTacToe). And all the casuals want to do is simplify the game even more with "House-Rules"(Cheats). These simplification of a simple game irritate those who attempt to find the strategic depth of the game and thus these players leave, and then the normal casuals leave as a result of interest in a different game. + Show Spoiler +
These are observation I noted while doing my community service at a summer camp. I actually wrote a paper on this. Though I can't find it T_T. It had to do with Business and the Psychology of instant gratification.
Awful analogy. Brood war is a game that benefits from deep strategic analysis, as well as brute-force development of mechanics. While chess doesn't have so much in the way of mechanics (analyzing the board quickly and accurately could maybe count), I can accept an analogy between chess and brood war.
SC2 has nothing in common with checkers. Checkers does not benefit from deep strategic analysis, since most of the strategy is surface-level and doesn't go very deep. Checkers benefits with casuals because there's only one "unit" on the board, with a second that can be made by kinging a piece. Ultimately, though, the general strategy of checkers is something that becomes apparent to you within a few games. If you play enough you might get to a better understanding, but not by a lot, because much of the strategy is so apparent.
SC2, like BW, is a game that benefits from deep strategic analysis (you could argue it benefits less than brood war, although I would be skeptical), but with lower mechanical requirements than brood war. This means that SC2 gets more casuals than brood war, because it doesn't take hours and hours of practice just to play the game somewhat properly, but the strategy is still fairly high-level and beyond the casual player. It has a big number of units in the game, which means casuals don't even know right off the bat what half the stuff in the game even is, and have to figure it out as they go. And the gap between a casual and high-level player is MASSIVE, where in checkers it is barely a gap at all.
TL;dr: If you want to say BW is chess and SC2 is a slightly modified chess with some of the more tedious difficulties of chess removed, sure. But the checkers analogy just doesn't make sense.
1) Not enough strong area damage to shutdown death balls and encourage scrappy defenses and fights on multiple fronts 2) Bases require too many workers, develop too slowly, and become too important as a result of those two factors. 3) Due to #1 and #2 your mega bases need to be close and easily defended, meaning drops and harassment play are not very effective at all and require very little skill to respond to.
Most games are a snooze fest for 8-12 minutes, and then it's a never ending stalemate until one army completely obliterates the other almost instantly and unstoppably rams in to someone's base immediately after. There's certainly exceptions in some matchups where trades are common, but these are huge fundamental issues with the game compared to its predecessor.
Ideally, you'd benefit more from your initial few workers and require less on gas per base. You'd also want to take more bases, and defense/fights would be more complicated because being all grouped up would generally be a large disadvantage.
There are also unit issues in some matchups, but those aren't worth talking about because everyone is aware and talking about them. The expansion is also trying to fix that to some degree, and I'm sure the next one will too.
edit: I have a high masters T account and a high masters Z account. I do drop play all the time as T, and I tend to favor a more aggressive zerg playstyle. I've also been mid masters as random.
As a Zerg playing i honestly don't want Lukers. I feel like Swarmhosts are far more interesting. However i agree with the other unit examples. Goliaths, Change AI of Carriers, Revers.
Though, i would be disapointed if Lukers replaced Swarm Hosts.
On September 23 2012 01:51 JustPlay wrote: The biggest problems with SC2:
1) Not enough strong area damage to shutdown death balls and encourage scrappy defenses and fights on multiple fronts
That's a really interesting way of looking at it. Instead making blizzards AI worse, so that units spread out. Just make AoE dmg more powerful to discourage the death balls.
bases require way too many workers, I agree. In sc2, if you want to have 4 bases saturated you'd need 88 workers, barely having anything left for a sizeable army (because everything has such high supply costs as well)....
With that many drones, I could saturate around 7 bases in brood war. And still have 112 hydras as an army.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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 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.
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.
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...
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.
EPT
already has a very strong early game, I don't see that as necessarily a problem.
It's simple...Blizzards needs to add fun units/abilities and remove boring ones. And there are a lot of the latter... They are so obsessed with one-deminsion balancing that the game is spiraling down hill. We need units with weaknesses...units that emphasis positioning over speed. We need to re-examing stupid a-move units like roach/immortal/archon/marauder/thor/colossi and ask why have such well rounded simplistic a-move units? Fast units with good range and hp create deathballs and build order wins that are more aking to rock-paper-scissors than a proper strategy game. So easy to fix...is this fun? Is this not fun? Is it natural that terran always goes vs protoss: marauder/marine > medivac > viking > ghost. Or vs zerg, hellion harass into drop ship harass into a big timing attack before the zerg spirals out of control. Or PvP always goes 4gate if the choke is too big...mass colossi almost every other game? Why is it so acceptable that the game is so predictable? With the right thought process SC2 could evolve leaps and bounds from where it is now which will never happen 
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