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This thread represents everything that is wrong with the gaming scene nowadays. The consumers demand to be heard. It is this that destroys franchises, not the corporations wish to make money. You can whine and complain as much as you want about how Blizzard turned into an arrogant game developer that does not listen, and are completely ignorant to consumer feedback (which they are not). They still have MUCH more experience in designing, creating, and balancing games than anyone in this thread with MAYBE an exception or two. So for the love of God, cut them some slack. Blizzard has delivered so many times, it is revolting to see this lack of faith. Most of the mistakes they make are because of their attempt to please the masses, which will never achieve the best possible result, because the average person is actually not that bright.
Remember all those games that blew you away? That were so innovating and fresh they made your jaw drop in awe? Odds are you never tried to influence how that game would turn out. Odds are you TRUSTED the developer to deliver a good game. Odds are it took you by surprise, because you did not have a list of what YOU wanted in the game.
Now, I am not saying that the SC2 team at Blizzard is perfect, but they are damn far from as incompetent as many of you paint them out to be. In most cases Blizzard delivers, and sitting here reading post upon post about how broken SC2 is, is fucking infuriating. Many of you are so obscenely focused on finding something negative to point out that you are no longer capable of even enjoying the game, being caught up in your crusade to change the game into your own liking. Many of you are so obscenely focused on whining that in lack of something to actually complain about you just jump on the bandwagon, completely clueless as to what you are actually advocating. That being said, there are off course a lot of good ideas, and well thought through feedback. Sadly much of it disappears in the ocean of near aggressive complaints.
I am going to have to stop here. I could go on and on about the problems with forums, and consumer feedback, so I will leave you with this. Do not forget what brought you to the game to begin with. What made you spend hours playing. What gave you all the entertainment you undoubtedly have had. Do not forget that when it all boils down, every game designer and programmer do what they do because they love games, and because they want to create something that will be appreciated and enjoyed.
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On October 19 2012 00:05 DarkSeth wrote:
This thread represents everything that is wrong with the gaming scene nowadays. The consumers demand to be heard. It is this that destroys franchises, not the corporations wish to make money. You can whine and complain as much as you want about how Blizzard turned into an arrogant game developer that does not listen, and are completely ignorant to consumer feedback (which they are not). They still have MUCH more experience in designing, creating, and balancing games than anyone in this thread with MAYBE an exception or two. So for the love of God, cut them some slack. Blizzard has delivered so many times, it is revolting to see this lack of faith. Most of the mistakes they make are because of their attempt to please the masses, which will never achieve the best possible result, because the average person is actually not that bright.
Remember all those games that blew you away? That were so innovating and fresh they made your jaw drop in awe? Odds are you never tried to influence how that game would turn out. Odds are you TRUSTED the developer to deliver a good game. Odds are it took you by surprise, because you did not have a list of what YOU wanted in the game.
Now, I am not saying that the SC2 team at Blizzard is perfect, but they are damn far from as incompetent as many of you paint them out to be. In most cases Blizzard delivers, and sitting here reading post upon post about how broken SC2 is, is fucking infuriating. Many of you are so obscenely focused on finding something negative to point out that you are no longer capable of even enjoying the game, being caught up in your crusade to change the game into your own liking. Many of you are so obscenely focused on whining that in lack of something to actually complain about you just jump on the bandwagon, completely clueless as to what you are actually advocating. That being said, there are off course a lot of good ideas, and well thought through feedback. Sadly much of it disappears in the ocean of near aggressive complaints.
I am going to have to stop here. I could go on and on about the problems with forums, and consumer feedback, so I will leave you with this. Do not forget what brought you to the game to begin with. What made you spend hours playing. What gave you all the entertainment you undoubtedly have had. Do not forget that when it all boils down, every game designer and programmer do what they do because they love games, and because they want to create something that will be appreciated and enjoyed.
i agree that one of the major destructive forces in modern creative industries is the 'community relations' crap.
when in our history has a collective of people created anything actually innovative ?
the power of communities is what they do with an idea/tool once they are given it
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Wow, I would love to play your starcraft two, amazing post, hope they listen.I would love to hear a reply from them to you on this post. How can you not respond to a player/spectator of your caliber? If they respond can you please put it in original post, I'mso despritly want to hear their response to your thoughts
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As a Protoss I totally agree. I hate making sentries as I feel that force fields simply aren't fun. Being forced to sit in my base and use them to keep the enemy out is not really fun. When I first decided to play Protoss, I was told that Protoss was an aggressive race with expensive but powerful units. As an Orc player coming from WC3, I figured this would be a perfect match. By the time I realised that this was not the case, I had already invested too much time in learning Protoss to make me want to change.
I also agree that spells that take away from micro are terrible, such as fungal growth, where you simply cant move your units. I also feel that in HOTS it becomes completely rediculous as fungal, with broodlings, and locusts make it so if you get fungaled, you might as well leave the screen and go back to your base and macro. There is nothing you can do.
On the removal of the Mothership, there would have to be a lot more changes than what has been asked for. Protoss has no chance vs late game zerg without the Mothership imo.
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Small correction--the reason you see so many 2-base all-ins on Antiga and Shakuras isn't the narrow choke at the third making it easy for P to kill Z. It's the layouts of the third that make it difficult for P to take a third. On Antiga, there is actually too much space to defend a third base with sentries and roach drops are often unstoppable. On Shakuras, the pocket third is too open to defend with forcefields, and the choke third is too far away to defend. P all-ins on those maps because they have to. They're not actually that great for immortal-sentry because there are plenty of open areas that P has to cross to attack. Cloud Kingdom, on the other hand, is a good map for immortal-sentry all-in because it has tight chokes all the way across the map.
FWIW, this imposes an even more crippling design limitation on maps--they need a third base that's tucked right next to the natural without too much open space around the third or the natural. Otherwise, P can't take a third vs Z and they will have to 2-base all-in.
For the rest, yes, you're right that forcefields make the game worse. And the splash damage spells are too powerful because everything is balled up too tightly. If we could just moderately increase the collision radius (size) of units, splash spells wouldn't be so overpowered. Think about how much better EMP is against HT than against infestors. It's the same spell, but the target collision radius completely changes the power of the effect.
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Great analysis, really well written post, i completely agree, with everything.
I'm thinking, maybe giving Sentry/Ghosts attacks, was a wrong move.
You should feel be able to tell, that you're trading Damage output and Health Pools for supporting spells.
Also Hero units has to go, can't be said enough.
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forcefields are probably the best new gameplay idea that blizzard put in sc2 what are you talking about? they dont DAMAGE or HEAL or ADD BONUS etc etc - that shit is badass... so you actually have to think somewhat of how to micro and there are multiple ways to use them. cutting army in half/third, delaying, pushing units toward you. NOT just fungal as many as you can! or storm as many as you can! or emp as many as you can!
its one of the few things that as a caster observer player you dont know the outcome of the battle since its how well the player uses the ff's or the opponent baits them. so dont complain about some stupid pushes that you are sick of seeing - weve had these pushes from every race throught sc2s history.
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Fixing protoss involves. Making warpgate a late game tech option. Buffing gateway units, zealots and stalkers. Removing Immortals. Buffing Voidrays. Removing dark shrine.
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On October 19 2012 00:59 KingAce wrote:
Fixing protoss involves. Making warpgate a late game tech option. Buffing gateway units, zealots and stalkers. Removing Immortals. Buffing Voidrays. Removing dark shrine.
Looks good but why remove Immortals? They consistently rank as one of the most beloved unit amongst  players. The only change that's needed is to put an upper cap on Harden Shield (for example, each invocation negates AT MOST 20 damage so they don't hard-hard counter mech and weapons upgrades would actually be useful).
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I really enjoy forcefield micro, even if it's not always the most complex thing to do, it does reward those who pull them off.
Medivacs picking up units, or Burrow movement, are ways to dodge forcefields. Also theres always massive units.
I think the Sentry could be indirectly nerfed by giving another unit like the Oracle a support ability that competes with FF/Guardian Shield.
My suggestion is a Shield Battery that works on single units, which would be used to help expensive units like a colossus or a tempest make it out of the front lines if they're being focused down, or even on a building as well.
This provides more battle micro, which can make it harder to pull off clutch forcefields for some players.
It's also just not fun to watch slow expensive units die so quickly so often.. a support ability would make for really interesting micro, which would require players to be quick to catch their units with the shield battery before they die.
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On October 18 2012 16:04 Gremlin119 wrote:Show nested quote +On October 18 2012 09:45 Thaniri wrote:
Blizzard doesn't care. Starcraft can't turn the same profit that WoW did. Blizzard seems to be a company, more than a game producer. They care about maximizing profits, not necessarily making a good game.
Wrath of the lich, cataclysm, diablo 3, many aspects of sc2, and finally mists of pandaria all together combine to prove that blizzard is chasing dollars.
Blizzard needs to FIRST go back to WC3 style battle.net. With the same type of chat, customs games, and profiles, THEN BEGIN TO BALANCE. With the fundamental anti-social aspect of battle.net 0.2, it does not matter how good your game is, because people wont be playing with their friends. yeah - ever since activision bought blizzard they have just been looking for ways to make more money. Which is kind of ironic since they won't be making any more at the rate they are going. Anyway, great ideas gretorp very interesting read. thanks for taking the time to post this.
Activision never bought Blizzard. Both are owned by Vivendi and that was just merging them under one subdivision of Vivendi Games more or less.
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On October 19 2012 00:05 DarkSeth wrote:
This thread represents everything that is wrong with the gaming scene nowadays. The consumers demand to be heard. It is this that destroys franchises, not the corporations wish to make money. You can whine and complain as much as you want about how Blizzard turned into an arrogant game developer that does not listen, and are completely ignorant to consumer feedback (which they are not). They still have MUCH more experience in designing, creating, and balancing games than anyone in this thread with MAYBE an exception or two. So for the love of God, cut them some slack. Blizzard has delivered so many times, it is revolting to see this lack of faith. Most of the mistakes they make are because of their attempt to please the masses, which will never achieve the best possible result, because the average person is actually not that bright.
Remember all those games that blew you away? That were so innovating and fresh they made your jaw drop in awe? Odds are you never tried to influence how that game would turn out. Odds are you TRUSTED the developer to deliver a good game. Odds are it took you by surprise, because you did not have a list of what YOU wanted in the game.
Now, I am not saying that the SC2 team at Blizzard is perfect, but they are damn far from as incompetent as many of you paint them out to be. In most cases Blizzard delivers, and sitting here reading post upon post about how broken SC2 is, is fucking infuriating. Many of you are so obscenely focused on finding something negative to point out that you are no longer capable of even enjoying the game, being caught up in your crusade to change the game into your own liking. Many of you are so obscenely focused on whining that in lack of something to actually complain about you just jump on the bandwagon, completely clueless as to what you are actually advocating. That being said, there are off course a lot of good ideas, and well thought through feedback. Sadly much of it disappears in the ocean of near aggressive complaints.
I am going to have to stop here. I could go on and on about the problems with forums, and consumer feedback, so I will leave you with this. Do not forget what brought you to the game to begin with. What made you spend hours playing. What gave you all the entertainment you undoubtedly have had. Do not forget that when it all boils down, every game designer and programmer do what they do because they love games, and because they want to create something that will be appreciated and enjoyed.
100 % agree one of not many rly good posts on that thread.
besides that i think greetorp pointed out some flaws that should be adressed.
Please Blizzard make an awesome game (what sc2 is) more awesome
absolutly love the Game. Maybe someone with proper english can write a post about all the wonderfull and good things in SC2 would love to read that.
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Great post Gretorp, you're thinking in the right direction. The main T1/T2 and even some T3 units are basically just fodder/support once those powerful abilities come to the forefront of any engagement. Protoss is hilariously weak once you've killed off any archons/HT/Collosus and you're left with a big ball of stalkers/zealots. Just like a pure roach army is going to be destroyed by a high number of forefields.
As fun as it is to watch the occaisional brilliant come-from-behind victory due to a money storm/fungal/forcefield/EMP....they just don't feel like the correct way to balance the game.
+ Show Spoiler +I enjoy your casting on NASL. The whole team is a lot of fun, but you're the best caster there.
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@OP:
I agree with a lot of what you say, but there's something (dare I say an elephant in the room?) you're not taking into account: unit clumping.
Most of the problems with balancing SC2, especially in terms of spellcasters like Infestors and the all-or-nothing moments of drama they cause, arise because [b]large armies are too cohesive and mobile.
Draw an imaginary graph. Left to right is the amount of effect a spell can have (0 = a complete whiff, 1 = entirety of fungal hits something). Bottom to top is the frequency with which those events occur when a spell is used.
What do those graphs look like? Answer: they're pretty damn binary. Because armies slither around in big oily clumps, a huge proportion of fungal casts have the maximum imaginable effect. You can scale that up and down by adjusting the radius, but the point you're balancing around has to be the maximum, because it's so often attained.
Same with forcefield. How much of the enemy's army can you slice off and chew with forcefields? Answer: a devastatingly large chunk, because so much can get packed into that radius. How much damage can you do from behind a line of protective forcefields? Answer: a huge amount, because your units can instantly cram themselves together up against it and his units can all be crammed on the other side too.
Then there's defender's advantage. Watch how fast a maxed army can flow through a typical bit of terrain, and ask yourself how a smaller defensive force, even with high ground and a concave, can possibly hope to do a high enough rate of damage to stop the advance.
Even when armies are evenly matched, the number one reason why the game devolves into deathball vs deathball is that deathballs are so compact and conform so fluidly. Every unit either is or quickly comes in range of the enemy, so every unit can shoot at something. If armies didn't smoosh so fluidly into one another there would be more time for a pre-prepared concave to enjoy an advantage, and more incentive to fight in several places at once. So long as deathball is the most efficient formation, all we'll ever see are:
1. Deathballs
2. Complaints about how OP 'anti deathball' spells like Fungal are
On a related note is the unit density equivalent of the 'perfect fungal problem' I mentioned at the start. It's actually hard to make enough marines that they aren't all able to do damage at once, but let's say the practical limit is 100. Now suppose you're trying to design counters to marine armies. You need to incorporate counters that work vs 1 marine, 2 marines .... 99 marines and 100 marines. Lings and roaches work for a bit, and banelings and speed-banes - but sooner or later everything stops working and you have to reach for the fungal. Imagine if you could stop worrying about how many marines you needed to be able to counter before fungal was needed?
Then there's the negligible difference in concentrated DPS between a moving and stationary army. What happened to Mutas harrassing Terran armies on the move? It stopped, because an amoeba of marines is never less than utterly lethal to them.
TL;DR: SC2's unit movement is making it unnecessarily difficult for units to find a meaningful yet not overpowered role.
[/i]
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I don't see why you have hunter seeker missile in the list. Casting the spell generates micro as the player has to remove the target from its clump of units. Also the cast range is very short so it can hardly be done before a battle.
I also think feedback vs emp battles are pretty darn epic to watch.
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Didn't Blizzard recently say that they like force fields and warp gate? lol
DB even said gateway units are not weak as everyone suggested, THANKS to the sentry.
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Remove forcefield, emp, fungal, psi storm, hunter seeker missile. Replace the spells with some kind of aoe support or debuff that doesn't immobilize (ff, fungal) or damage (storm, emp, fungal, hunter seeker missile) units directly, OR just invent some new single target spells.
- Reduce size and unit collision of ultralisks
- Increase leash range on carriers
- Also buff gateway units so they trade more efficiently vs roachling and m&m, could potentially replace sentry with a protoss unit that buffs or debuffs allies and enemies. After FF is removed, gateway units have no exit strategy when engaging vs T or Z. To justify the cost of a stalker, unless you reach a critical mass where you start actually abusing the range and blink ability on it, a gateway army just cannot fight a straight up battle against similar tiered army in the early and mid game.
Just my opinion on how blizzard *should* fix sc2.
Battles will be decided by army control and positioning rather than split second aoe spell casting and dodging. The amount of effort for someone to cast an aoe spell vs the amount of apm and attention to dodge incoming spells is incredibly lobsided in favor of the caster.
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On October 19 2012 00:19 ImustnotfeaR wrote:
when in our history has a collective of people created anything actually innovative ?
the power of communities is what they do with an idea/tool once they are given it
And where exactly did those ideas come from? The sky?
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On October 19 2012 02:52 Crawdad wrote:Show nested quote +On October 19 2012 00:19 ImustnotfeaR wrote:
when in our history has a collective of people created anything actually innovative ?
the power of communities is what they do with an idea/tool once they are given it
And where exactly did those ideas come from? The sky?
an individual ignoring the shit everyone tells him/her
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It'd be cool if fungal was a projectile, like it was ages ago for a while on PTR until everyone QQd about it.
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EPT
