EPTWhile I'm a huge SC2 fan, there are a few broken mechanics the game that hurt gameplay and make myself and presumably thousands of others less interested in playing and watching an otherwise wonderful game. As I see it, the three mechanics that are the most problematic are forcefield, fungal growth and vortex. Judging by the contents of and responses to Gretorp's great SaveHOTS post which discusses each of these spells at length, there seems to be a community consensus that these mechanics may be problematic. In this post, I'll talk about forcefield, fungal growth and vortex, explain how they hurt gameplay, and then I'll attempt to provide simple solutions to those problems and explain my reasoning for those solutions.
Forcefield:
Forcefield was kind of cool for a while because it allowed a lot of creative uses and its power is so dependent on the Protoss player's micro. But three years into gameplay, we've figured out how to use forcefields and when they're powerful. What was initially creative is now standard. We've also reached the point that you can expect good micro from the Protoss player as long as they're looking at their army at the time of the fight. In other words, everyone Masters+ can forcefield well, and dumb luck over whether you happen to be looking at your base macroing at a critical moment is now as big a determinant in forcefield's power as player skill is.
Depending on your opponent's level of tech, forcefield can either be an invincibility button or it can be utterly useless. If your opponent only has roaches and lings and you make it across the map with 10 sentries and an immortal/stalker force, congratulations, you've won. Your army shoots at 5+ range and Zerg's army shoots at 4 range, so unless you screw up your forcefields, you will never take damage.
Now imagine that same fight but give Zerg some infestors or some baneling bombs. Now Zerg has a way to hit your sentries, and since you can't hide behind forcefields to make your army invincible, his 200 food army is going to rock your 120 food army no matter what you do. Whoops, Zerg made 4 infestors, you lose.
Forcefield is incredibly frustrating for both sides of the match-up in PvZ, and it produces stale, boring games. Roaches counter zealots so hard that Protoss has no reasonable tanking option against roach-based armies except forcefield. If Zerg gets roaches, Protoss has to get a bunch of sentries. And if Protoss gets a bunch of sentries, Protoss has to play passively until they have a big deathball or else they'll lose their sentries to a surround in the middle of the map. And if Protoss builds a bunch of sentries and plays defensively, Zerg has to play passively and tech to infestors and broodlords or else they'll get their attacking army trapped and killed by forcefields, and then they'll die to Protoss's counter-attack with forcefields and colossi.
Thanks in large part to forcefields, PvZ has evovled into a No Rush 20 snoozefest.
Worse, because forcefields are so critical for dealing with roaches, every map needs a third base tucked right next to the natural. See monk's thread on third base design in the map-making forum for an extended explanation. The result is that every competitive map has 3 bases that can be held and defended from harass relatively easily, and you generally don't see much action for the first 10-15 minutes of a game.
The problems in PvT aren't as bad, but it's worth noting that forcefields blocking retreats prevents Terran from being aggressive with bio before they have medivacs, and forcefields blocking repairing SCVs isn't very fun.
In summary, forcefields are auto-win in some situations, auto-loss in other situations (because the high gas cost is totally wasted), and their influence on the game makes play more passive and boring. It's cool that they're micro dependent, but they also deny the opponent's ability to micro. On balance, they hurt gameplay far more than they help.
Fungal Growth:
Just thinking about fungal growth makes my blood pressure rise. It's by far and away the most powerful ability in the game. Fungal growth deals the damage of a typical psionic storm (players step out of storm before it completes), but its true power lies in its 4 second root which is easily spammable to act as a permanent root. If your opponent has infestors, you don't get to micro. You don't get to alter your positioning. You don't get to pull damaged units back to save them. You don't get to focus fire key units unless they're right next to you. You don't get to split against AoE damage. You don't get to kite. You can't hit broodlords with anything that doesn't have a siege range anti-air attack.
Against an infestor army, if you aren't perfectly positioned before the fight starts, you might as well look back at your base and start macroing up a new army because (1) your army is dead, and (2) you don't even get a chance to micro to save it.
And if mass micro denial wasn't bad enough, fungal growth compensates for the immobility of the Zerg's super-poweful lategame infestor-broodlord composition, giving Zerg a composition that has no real weaknesses. As a general principle in Starcraft, the most powerful units need to be slow in order to allow the opponent some avenue to combat the more powerful army. Against a slow, powerful army, a fast army can use drops and hit and run tactics while spreading their own bases across the map to gain an advantage.
But infestors and fungal growth cover the weaknesses of a slow broodlord army because (1) infestors are actually pretty fast on creep, and (2) the opponent's fast army ain't so fast when it's fungaled. You can't do hit-and-run tactics against infestor-broodlord because fungal eliminates the run part. Hell, it often eliminates the hit part as well.
The result is that if your opponent has infestors, you can only attack if (1) you can kill Zerg's full army head-on, or (2) you're 100% okay with losing the attacking units.
So fungal growth denies micro, covers the only weakness in Zerg's unbeatable lategame composition (giving Zerg no reason to do anything but turtle), and prevents the opponent from being active with hit-and-run tactics. Fungal makes SC2 boring.
Vortex:
This one is easy. We've already covered how in PvZ forcefield and fungal growth compel both sides to sit in their base doing nothing but passively building an army for the first 20 minutes of the game. Now add to this that Zerg's lategame army is far more powerful than Protoss's lategame army unless Protoss lands a spell that instantly kills every Zerg unit in a large area of effect. If Protoss lands this spell on a clump of units, Protoss wins easily. If Zerg denies or limits this spell, Zerg wins easily. To make matters worse, the unit that casts this super-spell can't cast while it's moving, and it takes about a month to come to a stop, so the Protoss player clicks to cast the spell and then just sits and hopes that the spell will actually happen before something prevents the cast.
By this point, both players have spent 20 minutes bored out of their minds doing nothing but building their race's versions of the perfect army, and now the game will be decided by 3 seconds of Protoss hoping the mothership executes the vortex command before it runs out of HP or succumbs to a neural parasite. Meanwhile, Zerg does his best to spread his army, queues up a couple neural parasite commands, and hopes for the opposite result.
This isn't Starcraft. And it sure as hell isn't e-sports.
Solutions:
Protoss
- Forcefield removed
- New sentry spell 'Fortify' added. Fortify surrounds a target friendly building with a field of energy, making the building invulnerable to damage for 30 seconds and discharging a blast of energy that damages enemy targets every 5 seconds for the duration of the effect. The energy blasts deal 10 damage in a small radius of effect at 7 range. Can be cast on any friendly building including buildings that have not yet completed. Costs 50 energy.
- Low-ground pylons no longer provide power to high-ground areas. High-ground warp-ins thus removed.
- Vortex removed. Replaced with new spell 'Stasis Field.' Stasis Field targets an area of effect, preventing all units in that area from acting for 15 seconds, but also making those units invulnerable to damage for the duration.
- Carrier build time reduced from 120 seconds to 90 seconds.
- Range upgrade for void ray added to fleet beacon. Increases void ray range from 6 to 8. Costs 150/150. 60 second research time.
Zerg
- Fungal growth changed from complete root to 40% movement speed slow and 30% attack speed slow. Damage unchanged. Still prevents blink.
- Roach cost increased to 100/25 from 75/25.
Terran
- Marine model size increased 30%.
- Stimmed marine attack speed reduced 5%. Unstimmed marined DPS unchanged.
Changes Explained:
The core changes here are removing forcefield, swapping vortex for stasis field, changing fungal from a root to a movement and attack speed slow. The rest of the changes follow logically from those core changes to attempt to deal with some of the problems that the core changes would produce.
The simplest changes to explain are the carrier and void ray buffs. Swapping vortex for stasis field is a flat nerf for the mothership since stasis field won't allow for archon toilets to kill large clumps of Zerg units. To help Protoss deal with infestor broodlord by alternative means, carrier build time is reduced, making a carrier transition more feasible. Void rays are also given a range upgrade so that they can help deal with broodlords before a carrier transition is complete. At 6 range, they are rendered useless by fungal growth and infested terrans, but at 8 range, it is hoped that they will help enable an air transition.
The fungal growth changes are also quite simple. The 100% root effect is replaced by a movement speed and attack speed debuff. Zerg will still be able to slow and kill enemy units, but the opponent will now have increased options to micro against fungal. They'll be able to split fungaled units, saving some of them from chained fungals. They'll be able to pull back weakened units, although the retreat will be slowed. And they'll be able to escape with their drops more often if Z doesn't have AA in the area by crawling out of fungal and infested Terran range.
Since fungal growth will not be quite as powerful against Terran, the marine model size is increased 30% and stimmed marine attack speed is reduced 5%. The reduced attack speed is a straight DPS nerf. The increased model size makes marines balls pack less tightly, making them more exposed to melee damage from zerglings, ultras and zealots. Meanwhile, the increased size will make unsplit marines slightly more robust against AoE damage from fungal, banelings, storm and colossi. On balance, WoL marines die too easily to splash, but are too powerful if the enemy does not have splash, so these changes seem fair.
Finally, we'll take a look at the forcefield-associated changes. Without forcefield, Protoss early-game defense takes a big hit. To cover this weakness, the fortify spell is added which makes a target building temporarily invulnerable while giving it a low-DPS AoE attack. This spell will be useful for deflecting early Zerg all-ins with zerglings, banelings or roaches by blocking the attacker's path with invulnerable buildings.
Similarly, this spell will be useful in deflecting PvP 4-gates. High-ground warp-ins are removed, so if you wall off the top of your ramp leaving just a 1-hex choke, enemies have to clump up on the ramp and through the choke in order to attack. Fortify casts in this situation will be very powerful by making the walling buildings invulnerable and dealing splash damage in the narrow choke. The defender will also have the option to complete the wall with an invulnerable pylon to further delay the attack.
Fortify will also aid Protoss defense against early Terran attacks or Zerg attacks on the Protoss's third base by making buildings invulnerable and temporarily boosting defensive DPS. It's also noted that the building invulnerability and small splash damage would make sentries+cannons an effective defense against mass mutalisk. Light mutalisk harass would be largely unchanged, but the days of bull-rushing heavy cannon defenses with 40 mutas would be over.
Without forcefield, however, roaches will be incredibly powerful in ZvP. For this reason, the roach's cost is increased to 100/25. The roach's stats are essentially a zealot with 4 range, so it seems reasonable that their cost would be equal to a zealot's cost plus 25 gas. This change would not hurt Zerg too badly in ZvT where roaches are not used much unless the Terran goes heavy on thors and hellions. In these cases, roaches are a powerful response until Terran approaches a maxed army, at which point Zerg needs higher-tech units. At a cost of 100/25, Zerg will still be able to produce plenty of roaches to handle mid-game thors, and since the gas cost is not increased, they will still be able to reach hive-tech units in a timely manner. It's also worth noting that marines have been slightly nerfed against most Zerg units.
We'll also see more zergling-muta play in ZvZ due to the increased mineral cost of the roach and the reduced dominance of the infestor over mutas. This strikes me as a good thing, and we don't have to worry about it spiraling too far out of control like ling-muta did in BW. Queens, roaches and hydras will all still have a place in ZvZ. With less dominance from infestor-roach, I suspect we'd even see more ultralisk play. Cool.
Conclusion:
I think these changes would go a long way toward improving gameplay in both WoL and HoTS. Maps could be more open and spread out as Protoss wouldn't be dependent on forcefields against roach attacks, and mass mutalisk wouldn't be so crippling. Lategame PvZ would be less awful with the removal of vortex and the addition of fleet beacon buffs to better deal with broodlords through channels other than vortex. The primary micro and retreat denial skills (forcefield and fungal growth) would be removed or reconfigured, allowing players to be more active and aggressive on the map. And you'd actually be able to move your army a little against fungal growth in the big fights. The game would simply be more active and fun to play and to watch.
If you agree that these issues could use a closer look from Blizzard, let them know in the corresponding bnet thread found here:
http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/6934186078
You might not agree with my specific suggestions, but I think it's important to provide detailed, reasoned explanations about the issues we experience in gameplay, so that Blizzard better understands what the community would like to be improved. If we work together, we can get a better game.
