There are so many little issues with protoss game play in all the matchups. You did a great job in the op, but the issues are actually even deeper, IMO. The points you make about map design cannot be overstated. If we look at how terran changed from BW to WOL, some of the changes were things like supply depot lowering, bunker salvage, building armor upgrades, PF's, turret range upgrades. These things all promote terrans defense. Protoss could really use some mechanics for walling and securing expansions, similar to what terran has. This would make map design much more flexible.
Another thing they need to change is Gateways, they should produce a little faster than warp gates, so warp gate = better offense, gateway = better production. Warp gates should be a choice not a mandate. It is not viable to play with gateways instead of warp gates, it should be, and there should be some tradeoff and decision between the mobility vs production. Also, pvp would be less horrible. I think sentries would be much cooler if they just pushed stuff back with force fields, instead of the FF sitting there. Get rid of charge and put it back to just a movement buff (and lower the price), so it's not a "no micro" ability.
But look at the issues with protoss and look at the fixes
weak gateway units ------------------------> FF,colossus no map presence early/mid game ----> Recall poor harass -----------------------------------> oracle trouble with anti air--------------------------> phoenix range Difficulties on defense after 2 bases--> mother ship core
weak gateway units -----------> make gateways produce faster than warp gates, remove FF, buff gateway units low mobility/map presence -> Give oracle a mass blink, so it can blink an army(like recall/blink mixed) poor harass----------------------> get rid of colossus add reavers trouble with anti air ----------> give stalkers +2 per attack upgrade instead of +1 defending 3 bases------------> Nexus provide psi, energy can heal unit's shields, cannon range research
Protoss would be much more fun to play like this ^^
Because the protoss design suck hard as shit. That's why you don't see back and forth games like in ZvZ, TvT or ZvT.
Once protoss lose their key units in the army, is a fking death sentence due to the high costs and slow production times (not saying is up, just pretty all-inish). So due this, as a P player, you have to make a very specific timming all-in, or some sort of gimmick play to make your path for some kind of all-in. Once you attack, is almost always all-in, because if you lose your army (or even trade armies), is game, there is no back and forth for P. And warp tech make that even worse.
On October 12 2012 07:14 FeeLdAfuRy wrote: This is such a great post and I agree with everything you said.
The only thing that I would add is that buffing Protoss tier 1 would also require Warp Gate to be made a higher level tech (possibly tier 3) so as to limit 4/6gate type strategies from becoming unbeatably strong.
I proposed a fix many months ago, and now Starbow uses it, so I'm really pumped and loving it.
Here is the fix: Make Warpgates have a LONG cooldown. Make gateways produce units MUCH faster. So that means you use Gateways to macro, and only a few warpgates for quick defense, late game warm prism harass, or whatever else. Doing this makes having tons of warpgates macro suicide, because you can't produce fast enough. Warpgates would still be situationally useful, but not the CLEARLY better option.
So... this is clearly a nerf to the warpgate mechanic. So, you buff gateway units a ton. And get rid of forcefields....
This is a great fix, and if you don't believe me, go watch a Starbow match.
I like this idea. Swap the build time of units around so that warp gate is longer. Suddenly defender advantage returns, you get 1 big warp in when attacking and then you're slowly getting weaker. Need to make considerations to things like proxy gate cheese in PvZ etc.
Once this is done I don't think you need to buff gateway units themselves, just reduce their cost. 125/50 for a stalker is too expensive. it's on par with most tier 2 units for the other races.
Other changes I'd like to see tested are:
Cannon from cyber instead of forge. That way it's still too slow for cannon rushing, but fast enough for decent base defence. With faster gateway unit build times opening gateway expand is even more viable than it already is. I don't know if this makes detection too easily available regardless of protoss tech path. Possible issue may require cannon cost to be tweaked.
Switch the stalker + damage from armoured to light. Stalkers would become good harass units capable of killing off workers, lings, zealots, sentries and marines. This may even make a role for the void-ray open up again since stalkers would be capable with dealing with marines and mutas while being nerfed vs the VR themselves...
If both changes are made cannons would become more important for holding things like maruader or roach play so possibly give them +damage to armoured. That way the stalkers will be micro'd to try and pick off the light unit 'shield' while the cannons deal with the armoured units. zealots and FF to protect the cannons and pylons from surround.
4 gates are very nerfed since you need tougher units like immortals to deal with armoured units properly, but stalker harass has real possibilities, especially with blink.
4 stalkers should be able to do serious damage to a mineral line (like every other drop payload) via warp prism harassment. right now 4 stalkers are appallingly bad for that role and zealots are too slow, even with charge, to do considerable damage, leaving only DT, HT or immortals for economy harassment.
On October 12 2012 14:29 Kharnage wrote: 4 stalkers should be able to do serious damage to a mineral line (like every other drop payload) via warp prism harassment. right now 4 stalkers are appallingly bad for that role and zealots are too slow, even with charge, to do considerable damage, leaving only DT, HT or immortals for economy harassment.
4 zealots dropped into a mineral line with charge kills workers about as fast as 2 DTs if the workers dont run. Its also about the same if the workers do run as well.
I would like to see the stalkers range increased by 1 and in exchange have a longer blink cooldown or research time or something. I believe in BW if goons had their range upgrade and marines did not they had a longer range by two grids and it ended up looking something like this.
Zealot charge is good upgrade and everything but seeing as how it is a melee unit I would love to see just a speed increase in the zealot nothing huge like somewhere in between worker speed and the 2.25 normal movespeed they have now.
This would also mean that zealot stalker armies would have better synergy. Due to movement speeds that are closer together and toss would have more of reason to have their units further from their base as hit and fall back tactics (that would be more common with an increased range) work better when there is more distance to fall back with.
After the t1 gets its buff then the collosus could be redefined to have a better role. Right now it is like this. Terran/zerg builds unit a.) its a ground unit ----> toss builds collosus b.) its an air unit -----> toss builds something to kill air units.
I would like to see collosus say have reduced damage to armor but extra to light so there is a difference between the immortal and the collosus
On October 12 2012 15:27 terranghost wrote: Zealot charge is good upgrade and everything but seeing as how it is a melee unit I would love to see just a speed increase in the zealot nothing huge like somewhere in between worker speed and the 2.25 normal movespeed they have now.
This would also mean that zealot stalker armies would have better synergy. Due to movement speeds that are closer together and toss would have more of reason to have their units further from their base as hit and fall back tactics (that would be more common with an increased range) work better when there is more distance to fall back with.
The charge upgrade already increases zealot speed to 2.75, almost as much as a worker (2.81). It's still not enough though, in my opinion - I'd like to see charge replaced with a significant speed upgrade to maybe 3.375 (the speed of stimmed bio). This would allow for much more micro from protoss players. First of all, charge actually limits micro since the charge is canceled if you issue a move command. Secondly, the speed upgrade would let protoss players more easily flank with zealots, manually surround enemy armies (much like zerglings), and send small groups to harass expansions (and they could actually chase down workers).
I think a something like giving Stalkers a range buff at Cybernetics Core would do wonders - you could have stronger Stalkers early game, but at the expense ofna much later Warpgate tech, meaning you would choose between stronger tier 1 gateway army without warpgates, or a weaker gateway army with warpgates and a tier 2 (timing-wise) upgrade that would help stalkers against stimmed marines and roaches alike.
With this, we could even consider making sentries start with half the energy so they cant immediately forcefield, and give them a khaydarian amulet style upgrade at twilight council (or cybercore) to help balance out sentry-based timing pushes.
kcdc I'm surprised you did not go into why protoss t1 units have been balanced over time to be so weak. A lot of people have pointed out that the warp in mechanic is the primary reason for this. The ability to warp in units anywhere on the map is a ball and chain on the relative strength of these units. I like the ideas in your thread but there was no discussion on this issue. I assume it's yet another issue blizzard will be unwilling to tackle.
On October 12 2012 07:14 FeeLdAfuRy wrote: This is such a great post and I agree with everything you said.
The only thing that I would add is that buffing Protoss tier 1 would also require Warp Gate to be made a higher level tech (possibly tier 3) so as to limit 4/6gate type strategies from becoming unbeatably strong.
I proposed a fix many months ago, and now Starbow uses it, so I'm really pumped and loving it.
Here is the fix: Make Warpgates have a LONG cooldown. Make gateways produce units MUCH faster. So that means you use Gateways to macro, and only a few warpgates for quick defense, late game warm prism harass, or whatever else. Doing this makes having tons of warpgates macro suicide, because you can't produce fast enough. Warpgates would still be situationally useful, but not the CLEARLY better option.
So... this is clearly a nerf to the warpgate mechanic. So, you buff gateway units a ton. And get rid of forcefields....
This is a great fix, and if you don't believe me, go watch a Starbow match.
I think it is a cool idea and the Gateway Warpgate relationship and mechanics should be expanded. I have this idea that the Gateway once upgraded into a Warpgate, should be transformable back into a Gateway without cost but with a transformation time(4-5s). The same applies to subsequent transformation back into a Warpgate. Warp-ins will now have a longer cool down period, while the Gateway produces units faster, essentially flipping the current unit build time between Gateway and Warpgate.
What this does is that it introduces a layer of strategic decision making and base management(more clicks overall) to the Protoss player. There will now be expand builds that doesn't involve getting Warpgate tech immediately. Warp-in will become a great tool in the mid game when Protoss needs to harass and pressure the opponent, and also later for drop defence. Yet even in the late game it is not always a good idea to have all your gates as Warpgates, as army trades doesn't favour the Protoss with a Pylon in the front lines as much now.
Should a player chooses, Warp gate all-ins would still be viable, yet the windows of success closes more rapidly as your next round of warp-ins are now slower. This also helps PvP by giving the player the option to switching back to Gateway production to gain a defender's advantage, and not die so easily because your opponents Warpgate count and timing directly counter yours in the early game(This is why WoL PvP hinges so much on the build order).
It will also be interesting to see how players balance the Warpgate, Gateway counts in their builds, and how they would change the counts, either to carry out their strategy or to react to the game conditions.
With this new gameplay mechanics in place, gateway units can be tweaked accordingly. The goal would be to make Forcefields more forgiving, as in better in defence, but less powerful offensively, the later which has been slightly addressed by making warp-ins slower. I do feel that it is not necessary to overhaul FF to achieve this goal. Rather it is the synergy of other units/structure/abilities in defence that should do better. But this reply is getting too long so I won't get into that now.
What do you guys think? TLDR: The Warp-in changes are essentially the same as a lot of the posts about P recently in the HoTs discussion: warp-in cool down > Gateway. What I proposed is to add the ability to switch between Warpgate and Gateway. Edit: Was just pointed out that this ability was always there. New TLDR: switch the builtime/cooldown between Warpgate & Gateway, with a lower switch time from Warpgate to Gateway.
The warpin mechanic is necessary to keep up with zerg larva inject and terran reactors. Chronoboost alone wouldn't be enough, as it would have to be split between boosting gateways and nexuses. Even if gateways were given a build time buff, it wouldnt be enough. Warpgates are necessary because the protoss army is the least mobile in the game, and functions the worst when split.
On October 12 2012 07:14 FeeLdAfuRy wrote: This is such a great post and I agree with everything you said.
The only thing that I would add is that buffing Protoss tier 1 would also require Warp Gate to be made a higher level tech (possibly tier 3) so as to limit 4/6gate type strategies from becoming unbeatably strong.
I proposed a fix many months ago, and now Starbow uses it, so I'm really pumped and loving it.
Here is the fix: Make Warpgates have a LONG cooldown. Make gateways produce units MUCH faster. So that means you use Gateways to macro, and only a few warpgates for quick defense, late game warm prism harass, or whatever else. Doing this makes having tons of warpgates macro suicide, because you can't produce fast enough. Warpgates would still be situationally useful, but not the CLEARLY better option.
So... this is clearly a nerf to the warpgate mechanic. So, you buff gateway units a ton. And get rid of forcefields....
This is a great fix, and if you don't believe me, go watch a Starbow match.
I think it is a cool idea and the Gateway Warpgate relationship and mechanics should be expanded. I have this idea that the Gateway once upgraded into a Warpgate, should be transformable back into a Gateway without cost but with a transformation time(4-5s). The same applies to subsequent transformation back into a Warpgate. Warp-ins will now have a longer cool down period, while the Gateway produces units faster, essentially flipping the current unit build time between Gateway and Warpgate.
What this does is that it introduces a layer of strategic decision making and base management(more clicks overall) to the Protoss player. There will now be expand builds that doesn't involve getting Warpgate tech immediately. Warp-in will become a great tool in the mid game when Protoss needs to harass and pressure the opponent, and also later for drop defence. Yet even in the late game it is not always a good idea to have all your gates as Warpgates, as army trades doesn't favour the Protoss with a Pylon in the front lines as much now.
Should a player chooses, Warp gate all-ins would still be viable, yet the windows of success closes more rapidly as your next round of warp-ins are now slower. This also helps PvP by giving the player the option to switching back to Gateway production to gain a defender's advantage, and not die so easily because your opponents Warpgate count and timing directly counter yours in the early game(This is why WoL PvP hinges so much on the build order).
It will also be interesting to see how players balance the Warpgate, Gateway counts in their builds, and how they would change the counts, either to carry out their strategy or to react to the game conditions.
With this new gameplay mechanics in place, gateway units can be tweaked accordingly. The goal would be to make Forcefields more forgiving, as in better in defence, but less powerful offensively, the later which has been slightly addressed by making warp-ins slower. I do feel that it is not necessary to overhaul FF to achieve this goal. Rather it is the synergy of other units/structure/abilities in defence that should do better. But this reply is getting too long so I won't get into that now.
What do you guys think? TLDR: The Warp-in changes are essentially the same as a lot of the posts about P recently in the HoTs discussion: warp-in cool down > Gateway. What I proposed is to add the ability to switch between Warpgate and Gateway.
Personally, I think adding a Stalker range buff to cybercore (like in broodwar) would solve all of Protoss early game problems, and give an option of whether to go warpgate or stalker range first. It wouldnt break bio like in BW, either, because of the marauder and the medivac.
You could combine this idea with the idea of making gateways produce faster than warpgates, so you actually have a reason to switch them while attacken and switch back when on the defense and so on.
On October 12 2012 17:25 playnice wrote: I think it is a cool idea and the Gateway Warpgate relationship and mechanics should be expanded. I have this idea that the Gateway once upgraded into a Warpgate, should be transformable back into a Gateway without cost but with a transformation time(4-5s). The same applies to subsequent transformation back into a Warpgate. Warp-ins will now have a longer cool down period, while the Gateway produces units faster, essentially flipping the current unit build time between Gateway and Warpgate.
What this does is that it introduces a layer of strategic decision making and base management(more clicks overall) to the Protoss player. There will now be expand builds that doesn't involve getting Warpgate tech immediately. Warp-in will become a great tool in the mid game when Protoss needs to harass and pressure the opponent, and also later for drop defence. Yet even in the late game it is not always a good idea to have all your gates as Warpgates, as army trades doesn't favour the Protoss with a Pylon in the front lines as much now.
...
What I proposed is to add the ability to switch between Warpgate and Gateway.
You can already do that! Just noone ever uses it, because it is utterly and completely useless atm
On October 12 2012 17:25 playnice wrote: I think it is a cool idea and the Gateway Warpgate relationship and mechanics should be expanded. I have this idea that the Gateway once upgraded into a Warpgate, should be transformable back into a Gateway without cost but with a transformation time(4-5s). The same applies to subsequent transformation back into a Warpgate. Warp-ins will now have a longer cool down period, while the Gateway produces units faster, essentially flipping the current unit build time between Gateway and Warpgate.
What this does is that it introduces a layer of strategic decision making and base management(more clicks overall) to the Protoss player. There will now be expand builds that doesn't involve getting Warpgate tech immediately. Warp-in will become a great tool in the mid game when Protoss needs to harass and pressure the opponent, and also later for drop defence. Yet even in the late game it is not always a good idea to have all your gates as Warpgates, as army trades doesn't favour the Protoss with a Pylon in the front lines as much now.
...
What I proposed is to add the ability to switch between Warpgate and Gateway.
You can already do that! Just noone ever uses it, because it is utterly and completely useless atm
Edit: Argh, sorry I meant to edit my other post
LoL, I actually didn't know that. But the idea stands. I just wanted to elaborate more on how it actually would impact gameplay in a positive way with the swap of build times.
MMM has to be better than basic gateway units, else bio is not viable. Roaches being that strong is just dumb, yet more a problem of the roach and how zerg has to play against warpgate allins, than with protoss.
The problem here is that you can't buff Gateway units unless you kill the Warpgate mechanic. The strength of Warpgate allins doesn't come from the units' own strength, it comes from the broken mechanics that power the allin. From the automatic proxying of all production and the subsequent loss of defender's advantage to the Gateway transformation unit swell where you get two cycles back to back to being able to build production much later than other races because of frontloaded production. Consider a game of Marinecraft (SC2 with CC, depot, rax, starport, refinery, scv, marine, medivac). It's a simple, yet robust game with many emergent rules concerning tactics and strategy from econ/army/tech struggle to ambushing reinforcements to defender's advantage to proxying to positioning to area control to the effects of winning an engagement, flanks, high ground mechanics and the like. Rules about how the game can be expected to pan out. Rules that are there despite not being stated anywhere.
Protoss break a ridiculous number of these rules by virtue of warpgates and forcefields. The issues can be masked by things like weak gateway units, forcefields and keeping the warpgate mechanic away from the most vulnerable super early game portion of the game, but the issues are there. And the masking actions cause their own problems which result in bad, gimmicky-feeling gameplay. The game may be balanced, but it just doesn't feel good. For toss to be truly good - as in both balanced and satisfying to play - they need to kill warp gates and lamefields.
While I wholeheartedly agree with the OP. I think blizzard will never go for big sweeping changes. Especially taking out FF and Warping. So I think we as a community need to think of small changes that will achieve the same effect.
I was playing with the idea that, instead of having 3 levels of attack/armor/shield upgrades for the game, why not we have 4 levels. With the final levels skewed more to stronger armor so in general all units last longer and the first level being cheaper than the current level 1 and upgrade faster.
This will make the early Level 1 make units last longer, allowing for more back and fourth in fights. As well as more micro-intensive endgames.
I probably came up with the "remove Warpgate and Sentries" thing before anyone else, but since nothing has happened to address these issues for all this time, we can be sure that they will not be dealt with this way. The game has been balanced with these units and concepts in mind, so Protoss will always look somewhat funny from a design perspective.
EPT
