EPTWhy Protoss Is Frustrating to Play Or Play Against - Page 5
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armada[sb]
United States432 Posts
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HeavenResign
United States702 Posts
They don't pay enough attention to them and may never. | ||
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moofang
508 Posts
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Demicore
France503 Posts
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MyNameIsAlex
Greece827 Posts
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K_osss
United States113 Posts
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K_osss
United States113 Posts
On October 12 2012 17:11 Pabs wrote: 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. I've heard a few suggestions in other threads that give Blizzard the ability to tune this as needed for balance. - When in warpgate mode increase the build time of units - Move warpgate back in the tech tree - Increase time required to phase in a unit -Phase in units with no shields and the list of suggestions go on. Those may not be the right solution but they certainly are a starting point one could build from. | ||
EsportsJohn
United States4883 Posts
On October 12 2012 20:09 armada[sb] wrote: Oh my dear god, some of these suggestions are absurd and it's clear that half of you have never played protoss. I approve this statement!! It's silly to think of a) changing warp gate mechanics or b) removing FF from the game because EVERYTHING IN THE GAME IS BALANCED AROUND THEM ATM. No reason on completely screwing over the game design just so that you can have what you think is a better system. Range upgrades are interesting, but it makes no difference on protoss as stalkers are still generally useless as the game progresses. I DO NOT like kcdc's argument, I think it has huge holes in the logic (like that Condemned Ridge was designed with protoss in mind HA), and I think most of the suggestions are off. Coming from the perspective of a protoss player, I think protoss, especially with the addition on MSC, is by far the most interesting race at the moment with tons and tons of different openings, probably the most varied of any race. I would like to see the protoss midgame and lategame balanced a little better, but I'm 100% that adding something useful to the game would be better than trying to redesign the game from the ground up. That being said, let's look at what HotS could be, not what WoL isn't. | ||
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RinconH
United States512 Posts
Perhaps for LOTV if the game loses steam at HOTS. | ||
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Treehead
999 Posts
On October 12 2012 06:44 kcdc wrote: To begin, I'd like to directly address Dustin's statement that gateway units can be "very, very deadly." ... How does this pattern impact gameplay more broadly? Most obviously, Protoss plays as a turtly race that wants to defend efficiently until they can force one big fight with all their forces. Hence, the familiar sight of the “Protoss deathball” with every unit Protoss has built all game packed together under one guardian shield. Nobody likes the deathball, but there are more fundamental gameplay problems that arise from Protoss’s weak T1. Perhaps the worst problem is that weak gateway units force convergence in map design to the point that every tournament-quality map plays more or less the same for the first 15 minutes. In order to play a competitive macro game, Protoss needs a tight choke leading into their natural so that they can defend with just a couple sentries, and in PvZ, Protoss also needs to be able to defend their natural and third bases simultaneously with forcefields. The result is that every modern map has a freebie natural expansion and a closed off third base tucked right next to the natural. Entombed Valley is the poster-child for this layout, but you see the same features on Cloud Kingdom, Ohana, Metropolis, and Condemned Ridge. Maps that deviate from this layout (think Korhal Compound or Dual Sight) don’t allow Protoss to take a third on remotely even economic terms, and force Protoss to play 1-base and 2-base all-ins. This map convergence not only produces stale play where a single build can be fitted to every single map, but because competitive maps must allow 3 bases to be defended by forcefields, every race gets three easily defended bases. Optimal mining income can be achieved on three bases, so players are not forced to expose themselves to attack until 15 or 20 minutes into the game. The result is a monotonous, boring beginning to the vast majority of games. Players and spectators hate “No Rush 15,” but the Protoss-mandated map features too often force it. ... As for what to do about these issues, I fear that the required changes may be too significant and risky for Blizzard to undertake. Nonetheless, I hope they’re willing to be bold and consider altering the balance of strength between core gateway units, tech units and forcefields. Gameplay is stale and frustrating for all three races, and players would greatly appreciate it if Blizzard would at least take a crack at the underlying problems. My suggestions for a starting point would be to: -slightly increase marine and hydralisk collision radius to reduce the AoE damage they take from colossi and storms -nerf or remove forcefield -buff zealots and stalkers relative to marines, marauders, roaches and zerglings (may require a direct roach nerf) I don’t think the changes would be as game-warping as one might fear. Already, Protoss players are gravitating away from sentries in PvT building only enough to survive a stim timing before their tech comes online. And in PvZ, sentries are only built as a counter to roaches. If Protoss players could deal with roaches any other way, they’d happily invest those resources elsewhere. Meanwhile, the changes would allow more open maps with more opportunities to harass and attack earlier in the game. Additionally, Protoss would finally be able to split their forces, and you wouldn’t see as many deathballs. And best of all, the battles wouldn’t be so damn binary. Stronger zealots might narrowly lose to stimmed marines. And because storms would deal less AoE damage to marines, the battle supplemented by a storm would also be less lopsided in favor of the zealots. Yeah, I mean what Dustin said is just silly. Marines and Marauders that you can warp in anywhere on the map would break the game. Try it in the map editor, you won't be playing long before the first 2-rax comes with 6 extra food and breaks your back. I believe his point, though, may have been chronologically driven by the design process - it may be that protoss units were made weaker due to FFs, and then gateways were fine because these units were weaker... or something. But claiming unsupported gateway can be "very, very deadly" is just flat out wrong. Gateway units without tech are many times less deadly than the other race's equivalents - as you've shown. I'm not sure this thread is still being taken seriously (given the last three pages), but I wanted to point a few things out here. 1. Protoss does play differently, and oriented around FF usage and tech units rather than the more massable (but weak) gateway units. I guess I don't view this as necessarily a bad thing (it keeps the races not homogenous, which I view as positive), but rather something which may take some changes to work around suitably in order to keep PvX balanced without turning every game (as you mentioned) into NR 15 games. They've currently done the most obvious thing, which is just to make bases easier to defend, without looking to add offensive options against things which are too easy to hold. In TvZ right now, for example, both races seem to be building three bases right away (though Terran's third expansion is delayed, they make the CC rather early for mules). In HotS, we've got the MsC, which I'm not convinced (maybe I just haven't watched enough games), isn't going to be the thing which makes halting early aggression without perfect FFs possible (or more possible, as the case may be). Maybe someone else knows it's not enough? Buff MsC's damage greatly, and limit its movement (at least away from the base) greatly to avoid rush builds. We build our tech for damage - because our gateway units are terrible at damage dealing. 2. Mapmakers in WoL were definitely hindered by these constraints, but will it be the same in HotS? Blizzard doesn't seem to think so (based on their map design). I see more attack paths for the natural and thirds which are a lot more open. As a protoss, this makes me nervous ("how do I defend my third without a billion FFs?") but I'm holding out on hope that there's gonna be a way to do it - other than building infinity sentries. 3. The "deathball" syndrome is a result of Colossus design, not of the need for tech units. Look at the HT. It's a high tech unit which can deal a ton of damage without needing to be in a big blob of units to do it. It's unit design (not protoss reliance on tech) which makes the deathball. By redesigning stargate, I was hopeful they'd add another HT-like unit (one which can deal high damage, support itself and is micro intensive) but instead we got an incredibly low dps secondary capital ship that I haven't really seen anyone use to great effect and a raiding unit which I don't think anyone likes using. | ||
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Grendel
Belgium126 Posts
You can't compare zealots and stalkers with marines and marauders. You have to compare zealots, stalkers AND sentries. And only if Sentry loses all combat focused abilities OR is moves to another tech you can talk about buffing the other gateway units. In other words: it's unlikely that it will change. | ||
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Fenris420
Sweden213 Posts
First off I would like to say that I think we should never justify something by saying: ”It is already like that and it would be too much of a pain to change”. If a basic mechanic changes the game in a negative way, we should try to improve that basic mechanic. It should have been improved a long time ago, but it wasn’t and now we are left to take the consequences. Secondly I think people need to let go off their balance concerns. This is not a thread about the protoss race’s relative strength compared to the other two. It is a thread about how protoss functions and what is not good about it. For the topic itself, personally I think it comes down to damage output. Protoss armies are made up of a bulk of gateway units with very high hitpoints and overall rather poor damage output. To make up for that we have colossus and storms. Pretty much every mid- to late game army for protoss consists of the same key components. Gateway units to provide a meatshield, to increase the number of shots a colossus can get off and perhaps let your storms land in a better place. Then storms and colossus, enough to kill the opponent’s army. Compare that to terran armies where the damage comes from marauders and marines. Zerg armies (up to a point) consist of ling/roach. Ghosts, medivacs and Vikings are supplements to bio. They don’t kill armies, they provide specific functions to take out colossus and storms. Why does zerg build corruptors? To kill colossus. For a long time 2base colossus was a top level strategy vs Z. The problem is; why do you actually build stalkers beyond a 2 base allin? Most of the time it comes down to dealing with air. If somehow you knew there would be no air, pure zealot/robo would solve all your problems. I guess the underlying problem here is that P’s own air is not that great. That would also explain why PvP degenerates into colossus wars every time it goes into late game. Past the point where you need force fields to survive a timing attack on two bases, you generally only want 1-2 sentries for guardian shield. You are never splitting your army up anyway. That leaves zealots, who are purely hitpoints in the latter game. They barely ever get close to a bio ball or even roaches once the supply count gets up past 100. Ever seen that 12 zealot warpin that suicides into an expansion just because a protoss player is on 6 base and can’t spend his minerals? That’s equivalent to 48 zerglings or 24 marines. Even though the zealots with 3 armor basically never dies, they won’t kill your base either, but 3 dropships full of stimmed marines will. Damage output is on a different tech level for protoss and it disables smaller forces from moving around, since the damage they do never seems to justify their cost. That’s why protoss sits in their base and that’s why colossus is so very common. | ||
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50bani
Romania480 Posts
On October 13 2012 01:03 Fenris420 wrote: Secondly I think people need to let go off their balance concerns. This is not a thread about the protoss race’s relative strength compared to the other two. It is a thread about how protoss functions and what is not good about it. For the topic itself, personally I think it comes down to damage output. It IS a thread about protoss' relative strengths and weaknesses lol! That is how we should think about how a particular race should be played. kcdc is unhappy that maps have all converged on a few ideas, and all maps in competition are too similar. | ||
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FeyFey
Germany10114 Posts
Otherwise t1 of toss with their full upgrades run over the other races t1 units pretty handy and if the opponent is one upgrade behind then it is not even close. (excluding reaper marauder, who destroys anything on ground). But Bio is pretty bad without t3 unit support as well aka Medivac. But I have to admit, that I don't play a gateway heavy Protoss style, so maybe this evil gateway unit issues everyone sees in Protoss never came to my attention. | ||
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algue
France1436 Posts
Protoss is frustrating to play because a+click all the time make you feel bad at some point User was temp banned for this post. | ||
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Cyro
United Kingdom20285 Posts
On October 13 2012 01:49 algue wrote: protoss is frustrating to play against because of the power of their a+click Protoss is frustrating to play because a+click all the time make you feel bad at some point Yea, really feels bad losing all of your colossi before they fire a shot and then getting everything emp'd by cloaked ghosts because he scanned your observers and oneshot them with vikings and losing a battle at the 20 minute mark taking you down 100 food because you dont use 3 hotkeys and bio is hillariously powerful compared to protoss army if AOE doesnt land Frustrating to play AGAINST because it is actuly difficult to control properly and to get a feel for how to be aggressive with medivac timing and it seems that nobody in low master or below can do it anywhere near correctly | ||
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Jermstuddog
United States2231 Posts
One of the most prominent builds in the entire PvZ MU is 7 gate blink all-in. While there are many different variants of these, the core to ALL of them is Stalkers with Blink making up 90% or more of the army. This type of play is so powerful, easy to execute, and hard to defend, that Zerg is forced to rush into 3-base play simply to keep up with macro, tech up to lair, and get all their necessary research while sacrificing overlords to scout Protoss' base, and even then, we see top-level pros lose quite consistently to this simple build. The fact of the matter is that Zerg has a tough time dealing with Blink Stalkers. Buffing the core stats of the Stalker would essentially break ZvP unless you radically change Zerg as well. This build specifically is problematic to any protoss nerf involving force field being a justification for gateway unit buffs. Blink Stalkers kill Zerg without force field. | ||
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Cyro
United Kingdom20285 Posts
One of the most prominent builds in the entire PvZ MU is 7 gate blink all-in. While there are many different variants of these, the core to ALL of them is Stalkers with Blink making up 90% or more of the army. This type of play is so powerful, easy to execute, and hard to defend, that Zerg is forced to rush into 3-base play simply to keep up with macro, tech up to lair Blink stalker all-ins in their current form didnt exist before zerg played 3hatch before gas, they used to be much more delayed and often come with observers, but the old style got destroyed once zerg made the switch to 3hatch play Blink Stalkers kill Zerg without force field. Noooo they do not, blink stalker all in's bring sentries for a reason, and you are gonna get crushed by large blobs or roaches or lings if you go blink with anything other than jangbi style third massing chrono's on your first gateway | ||
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Jermstuddog
United States2231 Posts
On October 13 2012 02:10 Cyro wrote: Blink stalker all-ins in their current form didnt exist before zerg played 3hatch before gas, they used to be much more delayed and often come with observers, but the old style got destroyed once zerg made the switch to 3hatch play. Zerg doesnt have to play 3 hatch to hold a blink all in, they just choose to because it puts them in a much better position vs a bunch of other styles And 3 hatch play came in response to FFE. None of this changes the fact that 7-gate blink kills Zergs with no force fields needed. Address that concern before you go praising Stalker buffs as necessary for the good of the game. edit: to argue your edit: I would argue that 3 base Zerg is merely equal with 2 base Protoss around the time these 7-gate attacks hits. Zerg is functioning off 4 gasses, has worse tech than the Protoss, and barely keeps up in worker counts (~53 probes vs 60 drones). You're suggesting Zerg is doing fine if he's on equal bases with Protoss? Why does all convetional knowledge of the game disagree? | ||
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mlspmatt
Canada404 Posts
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