EPTThe Colossus: Old Fires Rekindled - Page 7
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i)awn
United States189 Posts
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Zahir
United States947 Posts
Not sure if the answer is a "charge" time in the middle of battle or just making the sweep vertical instead of horizontal... Either way, I really like the idea of at least adding some way for opponents to dodge and micro against collosi. Edit: having said that, blizzard has recently proven unwilling to make core changes to how a unit actually works. So the best we could hope for is some tweak to make collosi less viable as a unit and shift emphasis to other, more interesting units. | ||
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Garmer
1286 Posts
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ItWhoSpeaks
United States362 Posts
On November 30 2012 01:58 i)awn wrote: People are trying to fix this the wrong way. Current colossus fits well in the deathball scheme of the game, adding some micro clicks for marines to dodge and colossus to aim won't change things much except maybe make the colossus weaker. If you don't like deathball you need to modify all of sc2 units, and maybe its economy a thing that Blizzard should seriously considered. We don't want to make this game warcraft III but at least some changes should be made to shift it from its extreme deathball play. The economy is something so fundamental to the game that we can't propose changes to that just yet, especially when units could be more fun to watch. | ||
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Honeybadger
United States821 Posts
The whole unit just isn't compatible with the game's checks and balances. I say get rid of it, give protoss a more supporting themed unit, and buff gateway units slightly, while making non-warp gate produced units (i.e. gateway zealots over WG zealots) faster to build. | ||
ledarsi
United States475 Posts
And worse still, it accomplishes nothing to have bigger units. Strength is relative, and cancels out if both sides are using bigger units. Roaches and Marauders could both be 1 supply, and both sides would be able to field twice as many. Why make them cost 2? Why make tanks 3? Why are immortals 4? Why are thors and ultralisks and colossi a whopping SIX? The only result is there are fewer pieces on the board, and less stuff to do with respect to building and using units. Back on the Colossus specifically, it's a shuttle and reaver in a single package. That requires no micro to drop and fire, and no time, cost, or micro to produce its projectile. Nevertheless it is even more powerful, especially in a big battle. Rather than being harder to use, but with great gains possible like mech or reavers or other BW units, the Colossus simply acts as the designers programmed it to act, and is strong. Big units are predictable, their properties are more definite than a group of smaller units, and the opportunity to micro to improve their performance is much lessened. As for solutions? Honestly the Colossus is going to be hard to save while keeping it as a 'colossus' size unit. Creative ideas may work, but fundamentally it is going to be a design-determined, A-move type unit almost no matter what. Could try making it blind- that might help as you would need to get vision for it with another unit- especially relevant for cliffs. Reducing its movement speed significantly might help also, but it will simply be a less effective deathball unit. | ||
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topsecret221
United States108 Posts
not a single unit has been removed yet. Our largest change has been, by far, the Void Ray, which has undergone a full redesign. There isn't too much we can do with the colossus right now that doesn't really mess with it's identity or making it a reaver that can be hit by air. Of course, we are always open to suggestions, but on principle we're taking care to tweak numbers first, redesign second, and scrap as a last resort. On November 30 2012 08:16 Honeybadger wrote:...making non-warp gate produced units (i.e. gateway zealots over WG zealots) faster to build. Already taken care of  | ||
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Honeybadger
United States821 Posts
On November 30 2012 10:06 topsecret221 wrote: Already taken care of oooh, fancy. I haven't been up to date on my beta updates. | ||
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HeavenResign
United States702 Posts
On November 30 2012 10:06 topsecret221 wrote: The colossus is inadvertently one of the most difficult units to redesign, because we can't change the unit's core mechanics without messing with it's identity. Our last resort to fix the game is to remove a unit, evident by the fact that not a single unit has been removed yet. Our largest change has been, by far, the Void Ray, which has undergone a full redesign. There isn't too much we can do with the colossus right now that doesn't really mess with it's identity or making it a reaver that can be hit by air. Of course, we are always open to suggestions, but on principle we're taking care to tweak numbers first, redesign second, and scrap as a last resort. Already taken care of Not to argue too much but casual tweaking of numbers IMO will not fix Colossus. There is still only one way to deal with them and that is as I said before. Vikings, Corrupters, more Colossus. And vikings and corrupters are already really boring units with little micro potential so I don't see how any casual redesign would really make the colossus work a lot better, it really seems like they'd just be nerfs which doesn't seem to be the issue. I've reread itwhospeak's redesign changes and I have to sit on how they feel with me, not that my opinion matters. I'm all about giving opponents new ways to deal with Colossus (neural parasite was op imo but man those were kind of fun times), but without seeing the unit in game it seems like it'd make Colossus a little too easy to deal with at high levels. Not sure. I don't think I can make a judgement without a test map being made/played. | ||
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ItWhoSpeaks
United States362 Posts
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Markwerf
Netherlands3728 Posts
Besides that I don't agree with you at all and think the colossus is the WORST designed unit of the game. The cliff walker mechanism is the coolest innovation they provided for sc2, in theory it's a really cool mobility in between flying and normal units. The colossus however is a cliffwalker that can also be hit by air which entirely mitigates the point of it being a cliffwalker, you rarely see the colossus being a cliffwalker actually being used because it's countered by units with equal or even greater mobility anyway.. The cliffwalking aspect is only used to make it a bit easier to micro now as it can walk over your own units and terrain but rarely in an interesting way. Even worse the colossus is a super strong unit which is entirely balanced around the fact it has super strong airborne counters. The viking and corruptor are basically tailor fit to be the counter to the colossus, if they were ground to air there would be some cool positioning at least but that was probably not easy to balance as the colossus would be able to hit them back. The result of the colossus is that basically all ways to counter air in this game are by making anti-air flying units yourself.. This is a TERRIBLE design because it takes away any interesting positional play. Air vs Air is the most boring scenario there is because it plays out the same way regardless of map plus it tends to be very chaotic since air units stack anyway. Even worse the super high damage air does against air makes the fight super short. Basically the colossus neccesitates the power of the viking and corruptor. This means that the cliffwalking ability of the colossus is never used AND capital air except the broodlord is never used.. Colossi also take away almost any action in the game because by making them your opponent will get anti-air which also stops any drop play.. At the same time it leads to deathball play because the colossus needs to be supported by the stalkers as it's actually really fragile on it's own. This game would have been MUCH better if they had never decided to go with the colossus, viking and corruptor because they are such bland units. Air to air are the most boring design in all of RTS and need to be unique in some way that prevents boring air battles, for example they should have AoE or interesting abilities at least. Even better is to design the game so that many air units need to be countered by ground units instead of air as that provides interesting positional play. The colossus design is responsible for the carrier and BC seeing almost no use and protoss using such deathball play. Yet they again decided to present an air unit to 'fix' the colossus problem in PvP.. Blizzard just doesn't learn from their mistakes.. | ||
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Ender985
Spain910 Posts
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i)awn
United States189 Posts
On November 30 2012 22:22 Markwerf wrote: Changes like this could make the colossus more exciting though you are definately overnerfing it reducing it's attack speed by that much. I think it's a shame they ever gave the colossus an attack of 15x2 instead of the 20x2 it had before because that made it useful for harass. Besides that I don't agree with you at all and think the colossus is the WORST designed unit of the game. The cliff walker mechanism is the coolest innovation they provided for sc2, in theory it's a really cool mobility in between flying and normal units. The colossus however is a cliffwalker that can also be hit by air which entirely mitigates the point of it being a cliffwalker, you rarely see the colossus being a cliffwalker actually being used because it's countered by units with equal or even greater mobility anyway.. The cliffwalking aspect is only used to make it a bit easier to micro now as it can walk over your own units and terrain but rarely in an interesting way. Even worse the colossus is a super strong unit which is entirely balanced around the fact it has super strong airborne counters. The viking and corruptor are basically tailor fit to be the counter to the colossus, if they were ground to air there would be some cool positioning at least but that was probably not easy to balance as the colossus would be able to hit them back. The result of the colossus is that basically all ways to counter air in this game are by making anti-air flying units yourself.. This is a TERRIBLE design because it takes away any interesting positional play. Air vs Air is the most boring scenario there is because it plays out the same way regardless of map plus it tends to be very chaotic since air units stack anyway. Even worse the super high damage air does against air makes the fight super short. Basically the colossus neccesitates the power of the viking and corruptor. This means that the cliffwalking ability of the colossus is never used AND capital air except the broodlord is never used.. Colossi also take away almost any action in the game because by making them your opponent will get anti-air which also stops any drop play.. At the same time it leads to deathball play because the colossus needs to be supported by the stalkers as it's actually really fragile on it's own. This game would have been MUCH better if they had never decided to go with the colossus, viking and corruptor because they are such bland units. Air to air are the most boring design in all of RTS and need to be unique in some way that prevents boring air battles, for example they should have AoE or interesting abilities at least. Even better is to design the game so that many air units need to be countered by ground units instead of air as that provides interesting positional play. The colossus design is responsible for the carrier and BC seeing almost no use and protoss using such deathball play. Yet they again decided to present an air unit to 'fix' the colossus problem in PvP.. Blizzard just doesn't learn from their mistakes.. Well said. This really sums it all up. Someone at Blizzard should get a clue already. | ||
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KookyMonster
United States311 Posts
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PVJ
Hungary5221 Posts
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admi_n
28 Posts
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ProfessionalNoob
United States75 Posts
On October 19 2012 07:57 Inquisitor1323 wrote: They are never really that weak unless you have like 30 vikings, in which case your ground army is going to get raped. Not true, in general, unless the protoss player has 4-5 collosi or more, a cloud of 10-15 vikings will make a purely collosus powered army melt. This is why a lot of high level protoss players in WoL prefer templar to collosi, because the collosus being effective is based on unit composition rather than micro (yes, there is stuff like shooting vikings with a small group of stalkers, or positioning vikings over a ledge, but at leagues lower than masters or diamond, micro involved in this is minimal), whereas 15+ vikings will basically make building collosus more or less a waste of money, templar can still be devastating even if there are a lot of ghosts. | ||
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topsecret221
United States108 Posts
On December 03 2012 07:15 PVJ wrote: Sorry, don't know where's the main hub of this project, so I'm gonna post here: Is this already published on EU? It isn't quite published yet, but we should have a version that is playable and ready for testing in the upcoming weeks. We're just down to the HotS units and the muthaf*ckin' Raven. Anyone have any good ideas for an autoturret replacement? | ||
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RFDaemoniac
United States544 Posts
Otherwise I would just make it cost less energy, or have more health, or make it last longer (i.e. make durable materials not an upgrade). This could allow them to actually force lost mining time, as well as work as temporary wall-offs while out on the field, in order to protect marines/marauders or tanks. I think you need to lower the barrier for one raven, but you could make each one still cost quite a bit so getting many ravens isn't feasible (make it cost more supply, for example). | ||
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PVJ
Hungary5221 Posts
On December 03 2012 14:11 topsecret221 wrote: It isn't quite published yet, but we should have a version that is playable and ready for testing in the upcoming weeks. We're just down to the HotS units and the muthaf*ckin' Raven. Anyone have any good ideas for an autoturret replacement? Irradiate, seriously. Such a fun spell. | ||
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