EPTBlizzard: Gateway/Warpgate only a lowlevel issue? - Page 8
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Coffeeling
Finland250 Posts
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ledarsi
United States475 Posts
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Cabinet Sanchez
Australia1097 Posts
On October 16 2012 07:10 ledarsi wrote: I am with the coffee zombie. Although if someone makes a compelling enough custom map that people start playing it over ladder, I expect Blizzard is able enough to copy it. They clearly have no idea what they are doing, and need a model to follow. Someone should seriously make a custom map with the warp gates / gateway build times reversed, just that. | ||
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Cabinet Sanchez
Australia1097 Posts
On October 16 2012 05:40 SarcasmMonster wrote: I've seen lots of people say this. Is this pessimism or is there some strong reason to believe this. Have you been following them for the last couple of years? There's not a goddamn hope in hell they'd change fundamentals unless it's a full blown sequel or expansion pack. HoTS is an expansion pack and they still won't even consider looking at this, they don't believe it's a problem, if they won't do it for a BETA for an unrealeased full expansion, we're all kind of wasting our time, sadly. | ||
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Patate
Canada441 Posts
PvP is broken x2. Honestly, does Blizzard really think this matchup is interesting? Seriously now... How can they acknowledge that whining about warpgate is a low level thing.. it's not. It has nothing to do with balance, it has something to do with how we want the game to be played. We want macro games, not timings. Edit: Just wanted to add that I find quite sad the fact that Blizzard is so arrogant towards its fanbase. This company has the biggest fan following, and it seems that in these recent years, all they've done was test their tolerance.. | ||
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Rumpus
United States136 Posts
On October 16 2012 05:55 ledarsi wrote: The problem with queens and larvae inject is that you don't actually build many hatcheries, which was an important focus of economic management in brood war for zerg. The queen's existence as an early game anti-air in a useless-hydralisk game makes sense. However it really does not need to produce larvae. Zergs would simply build more hatcheries to get more larvae. Similar to warp gate being strictly dominant over gateways, hatch plus queen for larvae production is strictly dominant over multiple hatcheries. And the problem with MULEs is that they add a lump sum of only minerals very quickly, making terran considerably better at making mineral-intensive units off low economy. Very few of SC2's new units or changes have improved the game. Removing the selection limit, better unit handling, multiple building select, engine improvements, etc. are all very well done. However most of the gameplay changes are ill-considered at best, and outright silly and gimmicky at worst. Such as destructible rocks as a "feature." Or Warp Gate as opposed to actually having gateway units be the strongest T1 units. The SC2 design team should have taken Brood War as a baseline, and only made changes where there was a concrete gameplay gain from doing so. Taking out pieces because they wanted to include something and there "wasn't room" should have sent up red flags that the new content was going to be a problem. I for one would be quite OK with having 15-20 units per race, rather than being set on a strict limit matching Brood War. This. Exactly what I wanted to say. The macro/race mechanics of Zerg and Protoss were so poorly designed with obviously zero thought put in. Orbital spells can be used in different situations for different types of game-play and that creates strategy and depth. Queens still are extremely one-dimensional and only of late have they "grown" and even still it is very hard to incorporate them and create new strategies with them. What do most of them do beyond act as a tumor on the side of a hatchery in most games? Same goes for warp-gate, where is the trade-off? Might as well just make Cybernetics Core cost 50 more minerals and gas and make it take an additional 160 in-game seconds to create. There would be no difference (ignoring the need for Sentries and Stalkers). This is disrupting to the game and it's flow, balance, and just sloppy design. | ||
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Patate
Canada441 Posts
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Big J
Austria16289 Posts
On October 16 2012 12:08 Rumpus wrote: This. Exactly what I wanted to say. The macro/race mechanics of Zerg and Protoss were so poorly designed with obviously zero thought put in. Orbital spells can be used in different situations for different types of game-play and that creates strategy and depth. Queens still are extremely one-dimensional and only of late have they "grown" and even still it is very hard to incorporate them and create new strategies with them. What do most of them do beyond act as a tumor on the side of a hatchery in most games? Same goes for warp-gate, where is the trade-off? Might as well just make Cybernetics Core cost 50 more minerals and gas and make it take an additional 160 in-game seconds to create. There would be no difference (ignoring the need for Sentries and Stalkers). This is disrupting to the game and it's flow, balance, and just sloppy design. Queens Heal is being used quite commonly and is a core ability when it comes to defending banshee/hellion early on and people make the tradeoff to pull their queens away from hatcheries a lot of times. And warpgate would not even be an upgrade, if it wasn't for early timings, blizzard has stated that more than once. It's simply not meant to be a tradeoff, gateways would have probably not even made it into the game, if there weren't early balance issues. I don't get why people want zerg to build more hatches than inject, apart from being too bad to inject constantly and rather prefer the attentionless larvaproduction. Balancewise it is absolutly needed that zerg gets +150% production from 150minerals instead of +100% from 350minerals. Outside of balance it is tomato - tomato. More hatches instead of more queens wouldn't make any difference if they were balanced to make the same amount of larva for the same money. If not, then all you do is nerf zerg into the ground. On October 16 2012 12:24 Patate wrote: I'm not sure the larvae inject by itself is a bad idea (it is a macro-heavy mechanic.. it differenciates the zerg who never misses his injects from the one who forgets them from time to time).. but the number of larvaes might be. It seems like the capacity of Zergs to drone in early to mid game (or commit to a ling bling all-in) is too high. that's not an inject issue, that's a general issue created by too many ressources per base. The high amount of larva, the production speed of warpgates and reactors and generally all unit production speeds are balanced around granting a certain amount of production per income and are only so high because of the high income. The ability of zergs droning is just slightly above a Terrans 3OC opening. Similarily for Protoss, just that we hardly ever see this in games because P can't place a third nexus early on. All races have those insane macro capabilities (due to how much income a base gives a player), it's just that with zerg those strategies are standard. | ||
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Cloak
United States816 Posts
On October 16 2012 05:40 SarcasmMonster wrote: I've seen lots of people say this. Is this pessimism or is there some strong reason to believe this. I just follow what Dayvie and DB have been saying. They've explicitly said a couple times that they don't believe Warpgate has made Gateway weaker, and they don't believe Gateway is weak to begin with. I partially agree in one sense, but their small scale viability could definitely use a facelift. | ||
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K_osss
United States113 Posts
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EllisA
United States6 Posts
Personally I enjoy how the sentry fits in. It makes protoss an interesting race. | ||
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rpgalon
Brazil1069 Posts
supply 1 stalker = 2 marines = 1 roach = 4 zerglings | ||
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babysimba
10466 Posts
Cost of queen (larva injects) has been internalised into zerg's production cost, just like how terran reactors require gas, etc. It's not really a big deal since zerg macro is just too easy with MBS and without injects. That being said, i would still prefer them to nerf zerg production (indirectly economy growth) and make zerg units stronger, so they can have a proper mid game instead of relying on gimmicky tech and spells. The heavy reliance on hive and infestor tech is due to weak zerg units + melee units not scaling well as they increase in numbers. But knowing Blizzard, if they hesitate on something like warp gates, they already show that they won't want to re-balance the entire race. The most crucial is still warpgate though. Reinforcing mechanics should never ever be touched in a rts game. I would expect sc2 to be a much better game if warpgate doesn't exist even if there are other game design flaws. | ||
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Skyro
United States1823 Posts
They can even make it so Immortals can't be warped-in to create an interesting game dynamic having to choose between constant immortal production from gateways or to change them to warpgates so you can reinforce with Zealots. 2) Having a warp mechanic doesn't necessarily mean you have to make gateway units weak, but then you have to give defenders more of a defender's advantage to compensate. It's bad game design though, no doubt about it. I would actually change the warp-gate mechanic so that you can only warp in near a nexus. This eliminates its offensive potential but keeps its defensive potential intact. | ||
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vman44
United States18 Posts
I recommended the following and no one provided any good arguments against it: -Stalker damage from 10 (+4 to armored) to 15 vs everything -Warp gate now requires twilight council and costs 100/100... the upgrade is still in the cyber core though. -Gateways and warpgates have the same build time, although i'm OK with having the built times switched so that gateways build faster. If the builds are the same, then the research is more of an "upgrade" and should cost 100/100 for allowing offensive warp ins. If the build time is actually INCREASED with warp gates, the upgrade should cost 50/50, but still require twilight council. -Require a twilight council upgrade for forcefield costing 150/150. This would compensate for the additional damage from stalkers in the early game. -Slight reduction of DPS for the colossus to keep the stalker / colossus composition having the same damage output in light of the new stalker damage vs light. -I also recommended reducing roach hit points without changing cost and making it a true 1 supply unit (reducing hit points from 145 down to 100 or so), with the power / cost of a true 1 supply unit. This nerf to early game roach (but buff late game b/c of reduced supply) would equalize the no early forcefield from toss. This would also increase the roach effectiveness in a maxed composition for hit and runs, and expansion snypes. I think its silly that zerg has a .5 supply unit, and 2 supply units, but no army 1 supply unit. Plus, I think it is horrible design to have a unit that is blatantly too high in supply cost, but blatantly too low in resource cost. I think this is one of the major contributing factors in the horribleness that is pvz. -Finally I recommended raising the hit points of hydras from 80 to 120. These units need to be used more. This will also help counteract the +5 damage buff vs them by the stalker. Hydras will remain a strong counter to any 2 base, or later (because of the twilight council requirement) 1 base warp gate allins. This is a solution that I'm 99.9% confident WOULD be close to balanced (I'm a masters protoss player that watches a ton of pro games too), whether you like the solution or not. I think it also addresses all the problems that people have about protoss, and pvz. The only thing that I think would maybe need a SLIGHT adjustment if something like this were tried would be blink stalker allins vs terran since stalkers would be better vs marines. Terran's may need a SLIGHT tweek to compensate for the +5 damage to marines from stalkers. However, the widow mine how it stands may be enough to combat blink stalker allins. | ||
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Rumpus
United States136 Posts
On October 16 2012 12:44 Big J wrote: Queens Heal is being used quite commonly and is a core ability when it comes to defending banshee/hellion early on and people make the tradeoff to pull their queens away from hatcheries a lot of times. I know, and I don't argue that at all, but unless you are making Queens that will be standing around and banking energy while doing NOTHING ELSE that is the only way you will have those heals. It adds nothing else to the game. As for dealing with early game situations, the Queen has simply been buffed into this position. And injections aren't constant so yeah, people can afford to pull them quickly. But neither of the things I mentioned above can hardly be considered "trade-offs." Look back at the Queen before it's last buff(s), they could have been replaced by an Orbital-like upgrade and not much about Zerg strategy and depth would've changed. This is an inherit issue with the design of the Queen. I think it should bring the same capabilities an Orbital does, which provides you options fitting to what strategy you decide to carry out. And warpgate would not even be an upgrade, if it wasn't for early timings, blizzard has stated that more than once. It's simply not meant to be a tradeoff, gateways would have probably not even made it into the game, if there weren't early balance issues. Then this directly supports what I said, what is even the point of the upgrade if you have to get it? To me that shows nothing but inability to properly design and balance a situation (in this case PvX early game). Warp-gate is nothing but a required band aid on top of an issue. I don't get why people want zerg to build more hatches than inject, apart from being too bad to inject constantly and rather prefer the attentionless larvaproduction. Balancewise it is absolutly needed that zerg gets +150% production from 150minerals instead of +100% from 350minerals. Outside of balance it is tomato - tomato. More hatches instead of more queens wouldn't make any difference if they were balanced to make the same amount of larva for the same money. If not, then all you do is nerf zerg into the ground I don't want to have to build more hatcheries, I never even said that. And for the record, my injections are pretty spot on ^_^ but the way interaction is carried out, and how it is forced between Queen and hatchery are very dull to me. Why not remove the energy cost, keep the cool down, and give the Queen the abilities to be a little more exciting? Other then that I completely agree with you, it is completely necessary that Zerg has those injections. | ||
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Twinkle Toes
United States3605 Posts
On October 13 2012 08:40 ledarsi wrote: Alright time for an essay. Why Warp Gate breaks Protoss early game + Show Spoiler + The Warp Gate is strictly dominant over the Gateway. It builds every unit more quickly, and allows them to be warped in anywhere, negating defender's advantage. Even if it did not allow the meat of the ability (the warp in anywhere) it would still be strictly dominant over the gateway simply because it reduces the build times of all gateway units by about 10 seconds. This is the reason why the 4gate, and other "fast Warp Gate" issues have appeared. As soon as that research finishes, Protoss has a HUGE surge in power. Gateway production cycle finishes, transform to Warp Gate, instantly warp in more units. Obviously conducive to strong all-in at this timing. Furthermore, the boost in production means that Protoss is also in an exceptionally good position to continue their all-in. The negation of defender's advantage regardless of the size of the map, and the ability to ignore ramps by warping in on the high ground together added up to an incredibly powerful early game that does directly result in the zealot and stalker being weaker than perhaps they should be. In terms of raw numbers, gateway units are weaker than they were in Brood War. The zealot has less shield than in BW, and is a melee unit which has been indirectly nerfed by the engine. The stalker has less HP and considerably less damage than the dragoon, not to mention its lack of a range upgrade. True, it has a higher movement speed, but in terms of actual combat power, it is considerably weaker. Warp Gate is the cause. This even applies to templar tech. High Templar with warp in was such a problem that they removed the energy upgrade. DT warp in would be an issue if it weren't delayed by the most expensive and useless tech structure in the game, with a tremendous build time. Warp Gate broke the gateway units by buffing their logistics so much their actual power had to be reduced. Protoss early game is thus weak. And they are dependent on Sentries, forcefield, and map design to stay alive. Why Warp Gate breaks Protoss macro + Show Spoiler + Alright now onto why the macro mechanic of warp-in is fundamentally flawed from an economic/industrial standpoint. Plain and simple, Warp Gate causes your unit production to be front-loaded to paying for it. Rather than spend money, wait for unit to be produced, and then receive unit, the warp gate is effectively "producing" the unit for no cost while you wait for its cooldown. You are paying for the unit at the END of its production cycle, rather than the beginning. This is a huge change. You only pay for the unit when you actually want or need it. If you are building constantly out of all your warp gates, this doesn't really matter that much. It certainly matters that warp gates build units considerably faster, meaning you need fewer warp gates than you would gateways. But if you always purchase when the cooldown is up, it does not really matter if the cost is at the beginning or the end. There is a small efficiency gain from getting to pay later, but it's not really a big deal. The big issue comes from warp gates with their cooldowns up, but which the player either cannot build from, or does not need to build from at that time. See the section on protoss endgame. Why Warp Gate breaks Protoss endgame + Show Spoiler + In the extreme late game, protoss has the option of building more warp gates. This is HUGE. With a large bank and 50 warp gates on standby, the Protoss now has 100 more supply available than they actually have in play. After, or even during a battle, the Protoss can immediately warp in more units. Every warp gate effectively builds a unit, and then keeps it in reserve. These units in the warpgates do not cost supply to maintain, and they don't even cost resources until you actually want to put the unit on the board. Which you can do in any location you please, including directly into the battlefield to reinforce your army. The effect of gateway units being "stored" in warpgates on top of your maxed army should not be underestimated. It gives protoss armies incredible momentum in maxed army confrontations. Even if Protoss and their opponent are both largely destroyed in the confrontation, the warped-in reinforcements hit immediately. For Terran and Zerg, you pay for your units and then wait for them to build. Zerg can massively parallelize their production across larvae and hatcheries, so this cost is not as great. But for Terran, production facilities simply cannot compete with warp gates. Both sides are maxed, armies clash, both sides suffer casualties. Terran BEGINS production of their new units, while Protoss warps new ones in immediately. This difference in production is the NUMBER ONE REASON why mech does not work against protoss- because losing units against a protoss is an immediate loss due to inability to replace those units fast enough, even if you have the bank and production facilities to do so. You simply cannot wait one or two tank or thor build times without losing the game. Essentially I am saying three things. Firstly, that the potential to abuse warpgates early game (warp into base, timing when warp gate research finishes, extra production after research finished) weakens gateway units. Secondly, Warp Gate production is front-loaded to actually paying for the unit. And thirdly, when Protoss is maxed, every Warp Gate they possess is effectively an extra unit that they haven't paid for yet, which can be actualized on the field anywhere, immediately. Agree mostly, but you have to consider the level of players also | ||
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The_Frozen_Inferno
Canada98 Posts
On October 16 2012 10:32 Cabinet Sanchez wrote: Someone should seriously make a custom map with the warp gates / gateway build times reversed, just that. You know, this should be like a rule for any thread that proposes these kinds of tweaks to the game. Why incite page after page of theorycrafting + raging + vitriol when you can simply be like "Here, I made these changes that I think would be good. Would any good players like to try it and offer feedback?" I'm sure there are a lot of adept data editors around TL other than myself (or, failing that, SC2mapster) that can implement just about every change mentioned in every balance thread I've read in a few minutes. Well, except for the 'build time scales by distance from warp gate'. That would actually be really complex to do, and involve triggers and scripts. | ||
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MachinimaToasty
Canada27 Posts
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Big J
Austria16289 Posts
On October 17 2012 09:37 Rumpus wrote: I know, and I don't argue that at all, but unless you are making Queens that will be standing around and banking energy while doing NOTHING ELSE that is the only way you will have those heals. It adds nothing else to the game. As for dealing with early game situations, the Queen has simply been buffed into this position. And injections aren't constant so yeah, people can afford to pull them quickly. But neither of the things I mentioned above can hardly be considered "trade-offs." Look back at the Queen before it's last buff(s), they could have been replaced by an Orbital-like upgrade and not much about Zerg strategy and depth would've changed. This is an inherit issue with the design of the Queen. I think it should bring the same capabilities an Orbital does, which provides you options fitting to what strategy you decide to carry out. Then this directly supports what I said, what is even the point of the upgrade if you have to get it? To me that shows nothing but inability to properly design and balance a situation (in this case PvX early game). Warp-gate is nothing but a required band aid on top of an issue. But that's the point of every energy unit there has ever been (apart from the defiler and the viper). They need to bank energy over time. The queen is even one of the more active ones, when it comes to constantly spending it. And I disagree that queens could have been "orbitals" before the last patch. They have always been important to block hellions and to fight hellions that are in your base, to fight early rushes and most importantly to fight air. You can't achieve their AA role in the same way with an upgrade, just look at how often blizzard has changed purify up to now. The only thing I would like to see changed with the queen in terms of "more active"abilities is that I think that heal should be remade to a "heals until the unit is full, or the queen is out of energy 2HP/energy"-spell to allow transfusion of small units early on and small/medium units during all of the game. For warpgates... that is how you balance such an ability. If something is meant to be in the game, but doesn't work out timingwise, you make it an upgrade. Like speedupgrades for roaches and zerglings. Those are not meant to be "you pay a fair prize and get something for it", those are "this is necessary if you want to play with that unit" upgrades. Warpgate is meant to be researched, yet not asap, but it turns out that for 50/50 everybody will research it asap, just like 95% of all zerg spend their first 100gas on zergling speed. That's what "figuering" is called and sometimes people will even try to skip such things. For warpgate this just never worked out. I don't want to have to build more hatcheries, I never even said that. And for the record, my injections are pretty spot on ^_^ but the way interaction is carried out, and how it is forced between Queen and hatchery are very dull to me. Why not remove the energy cost, keep the cool down, and give the Queen the abilities to be a little more exciting? Other then that I completely agree with you, it is completely necessary that Zerg has those injections. Sry, didn't declare that properly. It was meant to be a respond to ledarsi, ywho ou quoted originally. Yeah, injecting is a bit boring, but so is unit production for Terran imo. I think it would be better if you didn't have to click the hatcheries to inject, so that you could do it more quickly in the middle of doing something else | ||
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