EPTThe MU is stagnate and needs to be reworked.
My take: "#SaveHOTS" - Page 2
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jcroisdale
United States1543 Posts
The MU is stagnate and needs to be reworked. | ||
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benzcity07
United States79 Posts
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SaintEx
United States1 Post
[On October 18 2012 09:24 Gretorp wrote: It's so frustrating seeing game after game after game of 9:30 pushes with 3 immortals and warp prisms working time after time. In these battles, we marvel when squirtle does some awesome warp prism micro and it works so well! But isn't that what we should expect? Isn't this what we want to push our progamers to actually master? Rather we watch progamers focusing of forcefielding, which let's be honest, it's how fast you can accurately left click. Don't get me wrong, that's a skill and it's hard to do sometimes, but that's very different than drop micro or even regular battle micro. I completely understand the frustration expressed in the post. However, the quoted section seems to clash with another issue that people have been talking about. One of the reasons that SC2 isn't attracting as many players as other games is because of how difficult it can be to play and/or master. Drop micro, while it looks amazing, is something that the average starcraft player either has huge difficulty doing or just can't do at all. It seems that forcefield was designed to accomodate for those players that weren't used to that kind of intense micro. I've talked to plenty of people who just don't feel like playing starcraft because of ladder anxiety and because of the skill it takes to play the game. In my view, there are two polar opposites. On one side, there are people who want to keep starcraft a game that takes great skill to play; they don't want the game to be so easy that it feels like they're not doing much of anything. On the other side, there are people who are just turned off by the steep learning curve and level of skill needed to play SC2. Does anyone else share the same view? disagree? | ||
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Jaaaaasper
United States10225 Posts
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BernabusStarcraft2
Scotland112 Posts
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MCXD
Australia2738 Posts
And are we sure this shouldn't go in the HotS forum? | ||
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prOpVikingBB2
Sweden273 Posts
On October 18 2012 10:00 MCXD wrote: What's this #SaveHOTS thing? I heard wolf mention it on twitter yesterday, and now this, but I haven't actually SEEN it. Go to /r/Starcraft  | ||
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Gnusnu
United States118 Posts
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mostevil
United Kingdom611 Posts
That aside more micro, fungal changed / broken up and the mothership to be replaced by something more arbitery are pretty much standard of anyones rational views of the balance/gameplay situation. Some suggestons are straight up "I want broodwar" as the justifications seem weak and make leaps. Lurkers would would be ridiculous vs the unit clumping in SC2. Spawn - fall back -burrow micro means theres more micro potential with the swarm host. Killing the sentry and buffing gateway units brings back the 4gate / 7gate issues with avengance. You need a core warp gate mechanic tweak to make warping in away from home expensive if you do that (personally I'm for that - but its a huge gap in the reasoning and you don't mention it). Excuse me if I'm being a little short, but the OP tone is talking down yet the analysis isn't all that deep. On October 18 2012 09:32 Glon wrote:Maybe some kind of weekly "meetings" with blizzard balancers and select people in the community? Pros/casters preferably I feel they're already a little over reliant on the opinions of popular folk from the NA scene. If they stuck to top pros more then maybe. | ||
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Gorlin
United States2753 Posts
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MattyClutch
United States711 Posts
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. I have no idea why you think anything about MoP is 'chasing dollars'. To me it is more like the first time WoW has been actually fun since TBC. + Show Spoiler + To be fair, I didn't give Wrath much of a chance and I didn't give Cata any. I got them because friends bugged me to get them then quickly decided they were boring and quit. I also am not sure what was so great about WC3 b.net unless people are just looking through rose tinted goggles. Anti-social? You clicked a button to join chat, just like now and then you were dumped in a lobby with mostly AFK people and spammers. I mean maybe I tried WC3 multiplayer too late, but I was never that impressed by that Battle.net. Custom games have been a mess for most of SC2, so I will give you that. Back towards the OP, I am not sure if slow on FF would work, but for the most part I agree with the writeup. Though I would be sad to see it go because it was a semi-unique ability as far as RTS games go, it may have to. | ||
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Dingobloo
Australia1903 Posts
On October 18 2012 09:58 BernabusStarcraft2 wrote: I think if you make forcefeild a slow it would be to similar to your slow fungal. Although i do agree that fungal should be a slow. I think is you buff the zealot and the stalker gateway allins would be a problem again. I think a new gateway unit is needed that requires an extra building. Like the Dragoon Den costing 300/200 that allows you to train dragoons out of gateways. (Example only, Dragoon should not be put into hots) Yeah this is the #1 thing not addressed in this post is that rearranging the power towards the gateway units is a tenuous balance and one they don't really want to fuck with, immortal sentry all-ins are good, but they're more likely to look at the strength of the immortal or zerg defensive options rather than mess with gateway units too much. I honestly think that the changes are too drastic, it seems like every man and his dog who isn't a protoss player wants to drastically redesign protoss but I think you'll find once their defensive options are in place and their stargate tech in a better position they'll be a lot better spot to start messing with their offense without messing it up. | ||
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Rainmansc
Netherlands216 Posts
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robopork
United States511 Posts
On October 18 2012 09:52 SaintEx wrote: I completely understand the frustration expressed in the post. However, the quoted section seems to clash with another issue that people have been talking about. One of the reasons that SC2 isn't attracting as many players as other games is because of how difficult it can be to play and/or master. Drop micro, while it looks amazing, is something that the average starcraft player either has huge difficulty doing or just can't do at all. It seems that forcefield was designed to accomodate for those players that weren't used to that kind of intense micro. I've talked to plenty of people who just don't feel like playing starcraft because of ladder anxiety and because of the skill it takes to play the game. In my view, there are two polar opposites. On one side, there are people who want to keep starcraft a game that takes great skill to play; they don't want the game to be so easy that it feels like they're not doing much of anything. On the other side, there are people who are just turned off by the steep learning curve and level of skill needed to play SC2. Does anyone else share the same view? disagree? I think it's a tradeoff. Some gamers will love a game if it's easy to learn but hard to master. Some gamers will like the challenge of a learning curve that looks like a cliff. The Art of Learning actually addresses that as two different learning styles. I fall in the latter group. I fell in love with bw because I saw shuttle micro that I wouldn't have ever thought of as possible in all the years I dicked around with the game before being introduced to the pro scene. I was god awful at bw, I made D+ for a few hours, but even I could imitate the basics of shuttle play enough to get butterflies in my stomach because it was so damn fun. Starcraft2 is really, really hard. But it's hard for substantially less exciting reasons. Fragile knife fights with boring spells and microing around powerful a move units isn't exciting. Microing around a powerful micro unit was, as was microing that unit. All of my bw buddies switched to sc2 with me, and non of them still play either, except for team games occasionally. We were all terrible at bw, but we didn't care. We had fun anyway. Being terrible at sc2 drove them all away while I stuck with it and decided to learn. I don't think a good, competitive rts will ever be easy enough to steal the casuals from League of Legends. There is a very real, very unique physical demand on the hands of an rts player that no other genre really creates, and you can't get rid of that without making the game literally play itself (e.g. Dawn of War). I think the rts community will always have a smaller player base, by comparison. I am 100% okay with that. I do think it's possible to redesign the learning curve so the things that are hard aren't so fucking frustrating, where the game ends based on the aiming of a few spells, not long, dramatic micro battles spread throughout a macro storm. A game should be fun and exciting enough to let a bad player forget how much he or she sucks and just play. The most fun I ever had playing bw was a pvp in a local LAN tournament that I lost. We had been sitting all day and when my friend drove us to get food after that game, I felt like a conquering champion. My reaver micro, dragoon dancing, macro, scouting- it was all better than it had ever been. I was ecstatic. The fact that I lost was the last thing on my mind. Edit: hella typos | ||
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ChaiNs
57 Posts
I wonder if Blizzard is picking up on the community unrest. I truly hope so. | ||
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NKexquisite
United States911 Posts
I've always thought it would be practical if there was an upgrade that made Viking into Valkyrie type attack. | ||
ZeromuS
Canada13406 Posts
On October 18 2012 10:09 Rainmansc wrote: Remove warpgate, remove collosi, increase strength of gateway units No. Gretorp has it right. Its the sentry. If you make gateway units stronger and remove warpgate that doesn't do enough. The sentry will still make fights stupid strong. Warpgate makes timing attacks good. And too good. It stunts protoss when we rely on timing attacks but the sentry is what makes these timings strong. Imagine an immortal push without sentries: it sucks. Even if you can warp in at the front lines it sucks. Why do you think protoss has stopped doing no sentry gate timings for the most part? They suck vs most standard play now a days. | ||
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thurst0n
United States611 Posts
What I would do? The process that I'd do it? Rebalance Protoss. Make forcefield a slow rather than an object. Empower the stalker and zealot a bit more. Along with the Immortal. Now you can actually incorpoarte a 3-4 range mid tier unit in HotS that can add to the ball since protoss needs a buff at larger supplies. Would it be a slow without damage? What if FF was just half the size? Obviously without forcefield you need to buff the zealot stalker. I don't think guardian shield forces the game to be balanced so much that it needs to be removed, i think guardian shield is a great and interesting spell. I think stim giving terran increased move speed is more impacting on overall game balance than guardian shield. I'm probably wrong on that. Make fungal growth a slow and non instant/slower than EMP. EMP is off of ghosts. It shouldn't be a standard, it should be a luxury at higher tier similar to Science Vessels. Remove HSM and put EMP on Raven. Therefore, rework Ghost to have slightly higher DPS or ability to plant widow mines. This will make Ghosts not such a pigeonhole unit where they just emp and die. Now they support with DPS and spacing/positioning. Slow down there lol. Fungal would still do damage right? Fungal is definitely the most OP spell and it literally removes micro. I think it's interesting to move tech around... but I still think ghosts should keep EMP, I just think it should maybe take more than 1 emp to remove all the energy from a full energy HT, or all the shields from a zealot/stalker. the radius seems good. Widowmines from ghosts.. that's ironic cause ya know.. lol Take out Mothership altogether. Replace back with unit that can do cloaking field. This will be a main way Protoss can defend expos since you can make multiple at high gas cost. Will be balanced based on new Protoss . You mean you can mass cloak toss at more than one location? Not sure how I feel about that and I play mostly toss. Remove mothership, then see if you need another unit to replace it, I think you don't, but I would understand if blizz wanted to at least add one for any unit removed. I think the mothership core is a nice unit to have late game, people don't use recall enough and that's an incredibly powerful spell that will buy time for toss, or let them deliver killing blow. It shouldn't be OP, it just allows toss a viable option to death drop, (zerg has OL, terran has medivac which cost supply but also provide huge support to army) I wish you talked more about HT. I think that without emp HT's and storm would be too powerful. Storm is a spell that can be micro against, unlike fungal, but for their supply late game, ht's are incredible versus terran. A simple solution, and a smallish buff to gateway units(hts) would be to give them back the khardyuin amulet (spelling?) energy upgrade. On October 18 2012 10:09 Rainmansc wrote: Remove warpgate, remove collosi, increase strength of gateway units I wish you would state the reasoning behind these proposed changes. I have heard people support these ideas, and I believe I know why they think this way. But if you want to convince anyone you should consider offering your reasoning.. On October 18 2012 10:24 soullogik wrote: blizzard needs to stop going down the path they are on then completely rebuild zerg & protoss and call it hots Same thing here, what are you even saying? I feel like I'm talking to my x-girlfriend where I"m just supposed to know what you're thinking and feeling, and by nature of association I will feel the same way and agree with you. Maybe you're trolling. I've had a long day. | ||
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soullogik
United States1171 Posts
then completely rebuild zerg & protoss and call it hots | ||
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ShatterZer0
United States1843 Posts
On October 18 2012 09:52 SaintEx wrote: I completely understand the frustration expressed in the post. However, the quoted section seems to clash with another issue that people have been talking about. One of the reasons that SC2 isn't attracting as many players as other games is because of how difficult it can be to play and/or master. Drop micro, while it looks amazing, is something that the average starcraft player either has huge difficulty doing or just can't do at all. It seems that forcefield was designed to accomodate for those players that weren't used to that kind of intense micro. I've talked to plenty of people who just don't feel like playing starcraft because of ladder anxiety and because of the skill it takes to play the game. In my view, there are two polar opposites. On one side, there are people who want to keep starcraft a game that takes great skill to play; they don't want the game to be so easy that it feels like they're not doing much of anything. On the other side, there are people who are just turned off by the steep learning curve and level of skill needed to play SC2. Does anyone else share the same view? disagree? Huh? Since when did people start thinking that lowering the basketball hoop would make Basketball a more popular sport? The point of the micro is that it IS easy in the grand scheme of things. Pro level micro can be created within dozens of hours of practice, game understanding and purveying skill take thousands of hours. They aren't polar opposites because with some practice a noob can achieve semi-pro level micro, but within that time period they likely lack the game understanding and mechanics to ever get to a point where that micro will be the thin edge they need to win. tl;dr Micro is icing. Hard micro has just about ZERO reason to stunt playerbase growth. Also, Gretorp should really be scouted by Blizzard as "Progamer Liaison Personnel" because of his extensive knowledge of the game itself as well as the proscene. He's just so.... I don't know... Crisp? He just has the air and mentality of someone who is mentally flexible enough to be able to both understand the harshest content while being able to refine that same content into cogent conquerable points of interest. The only unit change that I think would make a lots of sense is giving the Infestor much slower energy regen while also giving it Defiler-esque consume. My thinking is that giving the Infestor consume and a cap of 250 energy while taking away one of its three current spells removes a large portion of the all around strength of the Infestor while also giving the Zerg a choice at having a gigantic gas surplus to use on other units. The lower number of infestors over all also incentivizes/empowers the use of counter spell usage. Doing this allows for the Infestor to take a more backseat role in battle while also allowing for a passive buff to units like Mutalisks/Hydras/faster ultra tech. It's not about making zergs want the Infestor less per se, but wanting more of other units to benefit from the use of the Infestor at all. I thought of this because I always found it absolutely dreary to watch units die from 15-20 seconds of chain fungal with nothing else happening... Enemy units are afraid to come closer, Zerg units would rather just sit back and wait for their enemy's inevitable death... No more! Time to SaveHOTS#! | ||
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