EPT
Let me know what you think of it (other than it's too long), if you agree or disagree and show up points/problems that I might have missed with my suggestion.
I would be quite happy if someone could repost this on the Bnet HotS Beta forum so it has the chance to get some developers attention, but if you do so, make sure you keep the formatting tidy, it's a long ass text...
Edit: posted it on EU Bnet forum.
1. Introduction
This is NOT an outcry to remove Warp Gates, Sentries or Colossi, so please bear with me.
I am going to describe a number of problems revolving around Force Fields, that could all be solved by a simple & minor change, all minor problems that might be caused by this proposed change are tackled by the current Mothership Core design.
When looking at the Force Field it seems that its original purpose is a defensive one. While it actually fulfills this role quite nicely, the way it's designed also allows for a very powerful offensive use which brings up many problems in subsequent balancing.
2. Problems
2.1 High Level Play
2.1.1 Sentry/Immortal All-In
The most prominent example of heavy offensive Force Field usage is the 2 base Sentry/Immortal all-in. Being a lot harder to defend than to execute it represents a low risk/high reward situation for the attacker. That in and of itself is not reason enough to patch specifics addressing this strategy, but it should be obvious why situations like these should be avoided in favor of low risk/low reward and high risk/high reward situations. While this specific situation in WoL has stabilized it's going to get worse again in HotS.
The typical push starts out with 3 Immortals and 7-8 Sentries and is difficult enough to hold as is. Now imagine the same attack but with 1 Sentry substituted by a Mothership Core (and 1 Probe cut if you will to even the out resources). This twists the risk/reward relation even more and the whole situation is even more favorable for the attacker.
-The Protoss can easily stay until all Sentry energy is depleted and then safely retreat, it's practically a certain way to kill a third base without losing much of anything.
-If the Protoss sees an opening to finish the game right away he has now even more staying power due to the ability to top of energy on two Sentries and thus has more Force Fields available despite having less Sentries!
-Thanks to the flying nature of the Mothership Core, the Protoss can prepare this attack more safely by scouting ahead (Observer is usually cut until burrow is a threat), it also has free reign after the Queens are picked off which will certainly happen with this kind of attack.
-None of the new Zerg Units are any help in defending an attack like this since they are higher up the tech tree and with the currently available units it is difficult enough to defend the regular push hitting without a Mothership Core.
2.1.2 Warp Prism Sentry drop blocking the main ramp
While this is a high risk/high reward situation, it is still way harder to defend than to execute, even if scouted. Once position is secured on the high ground it is almost impossible not to lose most of one's tech and economy. I'm not going to go too much into detail about this but it should be clear that the addition of a Mothership Core doesn't make this situation any more favorable for the Zerg player...
2.1.3 Denying the ability to micro
One point that has been brought up since the early days of SC2 is that Force Fields actually reduce the amount of micro potential in a battle. Having your army cut in half and being engaged in a battle where you're outnumbered feels bad, additionally denying the possibility of a tactical retreat leads to nothing but a frustrating gameplay experience.
This is also one of the points that leads to aforementioned balancing problems. Do you balance around two armies engaging head on or around one being able to chip away at the other? Given the current strengths of the various units, this problem is mostly solved by map makers. When it comes to places on the map where fights can occur, they always have to account for the ability of at least one player to alter the terrain. Chokes, ramps and narrow passages have to be placed very sparsely and with care, in a way this restricts diversity of maps. When carelessly moving around a map like Crossfire (and to an extent Cloud Kingdom) and your opponent has area of effect damage like Siege Tanks or Psi Storm, it's like playing with fire. With Force Fields it's even more dangerous because you can't back up anymore, instead of taking some damage you're definitely losing units, it's more like playing with explosives.
2.2 Spectating
Force Fields cutting an army in half can be quite exciting to watch for someone new to SC2, however we see it less and less on the highest levels because good players know how dangerous engaging a Sentry heavy army can be and how to avoid losses.
The resulting situation where one player tries to bait out Force Fields without getting his units trapped is interesting as well and can create a lot of tension, but it's only appreciable by a comparatively small number of either very experienced viewers or good players.
2.3 Low Level Play
While the lower level of play should not be a major factor when making balance or design decisions, it doesn't hurt to look how lesser skilled players might be affected by a planned change. In a perfect world the game would be equally balanced at all levels and if there's a way to get closer to that without affecting pro level play it should be done.
Let's look at how Force Fields play out at lower skill levels:
When attacking, one is paying attention to his group of units and is ready to cast spells at any time. Force Fields will not be placed as precisely and multiple Force Fields won't be put down as quickly but the attacker will have a huge advantage because he's paying attention.
When not attacking, one is occupied macroing or scouting and suddenly has to react. While for experienced players this only takes a fraction of a second, a lower level player often times is completely flustered by an attack and often doesn't get the Force Field placed before ~2 seconds have passed.
This is true in all three PvX matchups, whether it be trapping a bunch of Zerglings or Marines while your opponent isn't watching or preventing them from stimming and running up your ramp while you're chronoboosting an upgrade. Bottom-line it's an even better tool for offensive maneuvers than for pure defense.
2.4 Offense vs. Defense in context of the Protoss arsenal
Is this offensive capability bad? Well no, not in general. But when we look at the underlying macro mechanic of the Protoss race - Warp Gates - we see that it ignores the fundamental concept of defenders advantage which in turn makes balancing an absolute nightmare. As far as I know the Sentry was originally introduced to alleviate this problem by adding defensive tools without making Gateway units too strong. Hopefully I was able to list enough problems to show why the Sentry is not fulfilling its original role but is at least as good for offense if not better.
So adding tools which are better for defense than offense help compensate flaws in the design aspect of Warp Gates while keeping this unique mechanic in the game and thus keep the high diversity of the three races. The current Mothership Core design with its Purify ability and Recall only usable on a Nexus is a step in the right direction.
3. Solution
The obvious place to look at is the Sentry with its Force Field, how can it be tweaked to actually fulfill its purpose?
There have been a lot of ideas floating around, like making Force Fields attackable, giving it an effect like Chrono Rift from the single player campaign or making it a channeling ability similar to Graviton Beam (Sentry unable to do anything while keeping FF up, can be cancelled or gets cancelled when caster dies). Most of these aren't very promising except maybe the latter, but there's a much simpler solution to it:
Lower the Force Field casting range from 9 to ~4 or 5.
I'm not certain about the actual number but it should be as short ranged as possible without harming its defensive capabilities. I think range 4 or 5 should be about right, any shorter and it gets difficult to place Force Fields for a tactical retreat or protect a wall against Banelings, any longer and it will retain most of its offensive utility.
4. Effects of proposed change on specified problems
4.1 High Level Play
4.1.1 Sentry/Immortal All-In
While I'm not a fan of nerfing certain strategies into oblivion, it might well happen to this specific one. It would be a lot harder to execute and limited to certain maps where you can block the stream of reinforcements and keep attacking the Zergs third base. It might still work on Daybreak for example, focus firing the base while the Zergs forces take the longer way around and then using Recall to get out after enough damage has been dealt.
4.1.2 Warp Prism Sentry drop blocking the main ramp
Oddly enough this strategy would still be viable but more difficult to execute. Forcing Sentries to stay closer to the ramp means they have less time to actually deal damage to buildings. Depending on the actual range it could be made possible to pick of Sentries from the low ground after rerooting Spine Crawlers. Again the addition of a Mothership Core lowers the risk on this kind of attack and it might be similarly popular despite being harder to execute.
4.1.3 Denying the ability to micro
Except for catching some Zerglings there would be no more forceful army splitting, so obviously we should see the biggest effect here. Not being able to freely alter the terrain and split up parts of the enemy army at will would change gameplay for Protoss early and midgame quite drastically. Some would argue that Protoss can only move out on the battlefield because of Force Fields or otherwise they are constantly at risk of losing their army. That is true for WoL but with the addition of the Mothership Core there is now a new way to put on pressure without heavily committing to it.
It also might allow for more variability in maps because the actual terrain can't be changed that drastically anymore by one race. Though this is purely speculative from my side as I know too little about actual mapmaking.
4.2 Spectating
On the one hand there would definitively be less Force Fields overall and very little opportunity to trap a couple of units except maybe some Zerglings here and there, meaning fewer "oooooh" and "aaaaah" moments.
On the other hand there is the potential for more mid and early game engagements overall, when there's less risk of losing half an army without achieving anything. I think this is quite desirable because the current midgame in the Protoss matchups is either very stale or some kind of all-in from either side.
4.3 Low Level Play
As elaborated before, on lower levels Force Fields work even better offensively than defensively. With all skill levels suffering from the Warp Gate mechanic equally, lowering the offensive potential of Force Field should have even more positive effects on gameplay in the lower leagues.
4.4 Offense vs. Defense in context of the Protoss arsenal
The core defensive uses of Force Field like blocking of a ramp or protecting your wall against a Baneling bust are practically unaffected by lowering the casting range. You could argue that a wall-in is now very difficult to defend against Roaches and Terran Bio pressure, but by adjusting the wall-in so that it utilizes the Nexus (like many do on Antiga Shipyard for example) you can now use Purify to help defend.
Taking away offensive versatility from the Sentry and making it a core defensive unit was not possible in WoL without major changes to other units, but it works in beautiful synergy with the Mothership Core.
5. Conclusion & Prospect
With Dustin Browder stating roughly 3 weeks ago: "We are not going to (at this time) remove Force Field or adjust Warp Gates.", it seems to me that you guys at Blizzard are either aware of the problems caused by those two things or are still harassed heavily by BW fanboys who won't shut up until they have an HD remake of their favorite game. The motivation for my plea is definitely not nostalgia since I haven't played BW (except the campaign), but the point with Warp Gate and Force Field (and Fungal Growth to some extent, but one race at a time...) being problematic still stands. I actually like the way both these things help SC2 distinguish itself from BW and I can absolutely understand why you hang on to it so strongly. However not trying to repair a flaw after it's been identified is unacceptable!
WoL has turned out quite well and is undoubtedly the best RTS released in the past couple of years. That said there's still quite a lot of room for improvement. So far I love the direction HotS is going, removing the Warhound & Replicant, the changes to Mothership Core, Widow Mine, Tempest, Oracle, reintroduction of the Carrier...everything is moving into the right direction!
But keep in mind that there's another expansion you need to invent new stuff for and if the underlying problem isn't touched, your creative team will have a hard time coming up with something. It would most likely be as hard as it is now to come up with a new Gateway unit without completely breaking the game. Why would it need to be a Gateway unit? Well it doesn't need to be, but many agree that there is a gaping hole in the Protoss midgame as their Gateway units early on are fairly strong but get overwhelmed in the midgame once Stim/Medivacs are ready or get overwhelmed by the cheap Zerg swarm, forcing the Protoss to turtle up until they can move out again with their strong lategame army. Coincidentally there is also a hole in the tech tree - no new unit gets introduced with the Twighlight Council. By bolstering the Protoss defenses without making it possible to use the same tools aggressively, it puts the game on a more solid basis and balance becomes less fragile. It should become easier to work from there creatively, as the restraints for a new Gateway unit should be lowered.
Forgive me for rambling on endlessly, but I also see this as a community educating effort. The more people know in detail about balancing and design difficulties created by Warp Gates and Sentries, the higher the chance of someone having a stroke of genius and coming up with something great!
I hope you consider my idea, similar to an Aspirin it should change more problems than it creates
6. Some final ideas on balance/design changes that might deserve a thought or two
These are not well refined but I thought I'd put them out there (the first two should work well with my suggested change to Force Field range), maybe someone will put more thought into it and come up with something better, community fighting!
- Stalker scalability: 10(+1)/4A up to 10(+2)/4A or 10(+1)/4(+1)A
- tradeoff for getting Warp Gates and/or slight adjustment of warp-in times e.g. Sentry 4sec, Zealot/Stalker 6-8sec, DT/HT 10sec (get fast defense vs. slower Zealot/Archon remax)
- remove Thor Strike Cannon (buff!)
- change Viking Assault mode damage from 12 to 2*7 (think TvP mech)
- Vortex radius from 2.5 to 2
- change Fungal Growth root effect into heavy snare, keep the damage
tl;dr
If I wanted to put it in one sentence, I would have. It took a long time to write, so if you care, you'll read it. I tried to format it nicely so it's easy to skim over it.
Have a nice day!
