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United States7483 Posts
On January 01 2013 10:26 Dynamitekid wrote:
Hydralisk are still garbage. Stalkers are way more efficient and they cost almost the same.
Stalkers trade with hydralisks at pretty much a 1-1 ratio, and hydralisks are 25 minerals and gas cheaper. With blink stalkers are a little better than hydras in a fight and a bit more mobile, but you can produce hydralisks way faster. If hydras were better than stalkers, I doubt you'd see protoss winning the matchup... ever.
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offtopic maybe, anyone know if the beta ladder is resetting today?? It says season ends 1/1/13..
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On January 01 2013 05:36 Yoshi Kirishima wrote:Show nested quote +On January 01 2013 01:07 Rabiator wrote:On January 01 2013 00:03 Whitewing wrote:On December 31 2012 16:49 Rabiator wrote:On December 31 2012 15:03 Whitewing wrote:On December 29 2012 00:11 Rabiator wrote:On December 28 2012 23:20 Big J wrote:On December 28 2012 23:05 Rabiator wrote:On December 28 2012 18:31 Serenity12 wrote:
Infestor play is simply making games where Zerg are involved less fun to watch. It is a unit for Zerg players that has too much versatility, so no wonder they build mass amounts of them. The best thing would be to nerf Infestors effectiveness while at the same time buffing other zerg units like hydras. Since that kind of "restructuring" would involve some pretty big changes to the stats I would think that adding some "bonus damage" to certain core Zerg units would be a good incentive to push players into building stuff like Hydralisks. In BW Hydralisks had "explosive" damage and were more effective against larger targets, but in SC2 neither the Roach nor the Hydralisk have any unit type they are weak against. Thus adding something like this would give an incentive to build Hydralisks more and thus build a possibly "less optimal" unit. Right now Zerg only build Roaches (unless they already have a crapton of them and can fill the second row with Hydralisks) when they want to build ranged units and that is an advantage over Terrans for example, who will probably have a mix of Marines and Marauders. Obviously such "bonus" damage should not be implemented as it is for the Hellion for example, where the bonus damage is so big that the base damage is insignificant ... which makes the unit pretty much useless against non-bonus-type-units. That is the perfect example of rock-paper-scissors gone wrong. The BW ratios of 100%/75%/50% are much better. SC2: Hellion: 100% vs light/ 57% else Hellion with BF: 100%vs light/ 42% else Marauder: 100% vs armored/50% else BW: Firebat: 100%/50%/25% Ghost: 100%/50%/25% Vulture: 100%/50%/25% Care to elaborate why the 57% or 42% are so much worse than the BW ratios of Firebat, Ghost or Vulture? Firebat, Ghost, Vulture - Who built that unit for its combat abilities? Of those three only the Vulture was built as a standard unit, but not primarily for its own combat abilities but rather for the Spider Mines. They are good against SMALL units ... and thus against MOST infantry (all except the Dragoon which is large and the Hydralisk which is medium), which makes up the majority of the units. Their primary role is worker harrass and scouting. Now look at the SC2 units: Hellions are pretty bad against everything that isnt Zerglings or Workers ... without the Spider Mines; Marauders are bad against light junk and only work due to their armor, Stimpack and being healed through Medivacs, but without the Medivac or Stimpack they dont really work against Zerglings ... just as Stalkers are going to die against them without either Blink or Forcefields. With the excessive number of units built in SC2 any form of scouting with units is going to be sacrificial and you dont want to use expensive bikes for that, but in BW that worked well enough. Its not only the percentages but also the meaning of them AND the lack of "bonus damage" on the Zerg side of the fence which makes the game badly balanced atm. Hellions aren't nearly as bad as you seem to think they are, in large numbers they actually trade cost efficiently vs. a lot of their supposed 'counters' since they all deal splash damage. Once you get to the point where a group of hellions can one shot, say, a stalker, you'll actually see them annihilate groups of stalkers that are way more expensive. It's not all that uncommon to see a bunch of hellions roasting roaches alive when the roaches don't heavily outnumber them once you get to your critical mass of hellions. With regards to your comments on the marauder, I can say only this: Will people PLEASE stop thinking about units in a vacuum? We're not playing under arbitrary mono-battle rules in the game unless we want to, nobody is forcing you to not make medivacs. Therefore, it is completely reasonable to assume medivacs. Marauders with medivacs are awesome. I don't really know what else to say. Maruaders are ridiculously good. You quite lost me at that point. You do realize that you need TWENTY Hellions to one-shot a Stalker? I dont think that you can even arrange them in such a way to make this happen and in any case both Protoss and Zerg have easy countermeasures of Forcefield and Banelings. Marauders are terribly boring and bad against light units. You might realize that if you would stop thinking in "dream compositions". On December 31 2012 12:02 Filter wrote:On December 31 2012 10:32 zJayy962 wrote:On December 31 2012 10:16 Serpico wrote:On December 31 2012 09:59 Zahir wrote:On December 31 2012 08:53 Xequecal wrote:On December 28 2012 23:20 Big J wrote:
SC2:
Hellion: 100% vs light/ 57% else
Hellion with BF: 100%vs light/ 42% else
Marauder: 100% vs armored/50% else
BW:
Firebat: 100%/50%/25%
Ghost: 100%/50%/25%
Vulture: 100%/50%/25%
Care to elaborate why the 57% or 42% are so much worse than the BW ratios of Firebat, Ghost or Vulture? In BW everything did full damage to shields. This is why mech was effective against P in BW but isn't in SC2. In BW, Archons were completely useless against Terran mech. In SC2, they annihilate Terran mech. Also because of the shield mechanics, in BW Dragoons were a very soft counter to Vultures, as opposed to Stalkers being a hilarious hard counter to Hellions in SC2. In fact I suspect that if it wasn't for the 12-unit selection limit, Vultures would have beaten Dragoons cost-for-cost in BW as you would have been able to surround with like 40 of them and drop 40 spidermines at once. Excellent point. If only blizzard had incorporated this mechanic into Sc2 there would have been no need to dick around with 1a units like warhounds or battle hellions. As things are, there is probably going to end up being some really wonky mechanic to make tank mech viable vs toss, something like buffed massable widow mines. Actually, I'm increasingly convinced that tank heavy play is just never going to be viable in this matchup. Congrats to whatever wiz on the devteam dreamed up immortals. Probably browder, because almost every unit needs a useless gimmick (well hardened shields are pretty useful at destroying any chance of mech play I guess) in order to make them SUPER COOL WITH TERRIBLE DAMAGE. This is a great point. SCBW units like marine, goliath, dragoon, etc were all fine even though they were all 1A units, they had their own unique pathing, range, attack animation, and micro capabilities they were still interesting to watch and play. Now every unit must have some sort of gimmick to be added into the game. The loss of the Goliath is what really kills mech in most mu's (Immortal aside). Thors are super expensive, super slow and take forever to build. There's also no real way to have a good mix of them, if Thors were smaller and 2 supply you could easily mix the right number for your opponents comp, with the current Thor you can't do that really. Supply heavy units/Power units really hurt strategic decisions. Since Blizzard reduced the size of the Thor and gave it a single target attack, maybe they are starting to realize this problem of the missing Goliath and the Thor being terrible at what it was designed to do. I'm sorry, I didn't realize it was all that unusual in a purely mech composition to have a lot of hellions. The point was that they have a critical mass because they deal splash damage where they actually just trade well with almost anything on the ground that doesn't also deal splash, it doesn't have to be light. Splash damage is pretty good. Banelings are easy to micro against with hellions until fungal is out (at which point zergs usually stop making banelings), and yeah, forcefield can help prevent hellion micro, but hellions actually just dominate protoss in the early game until splash damage is out due to how expensive everything toss has is and how lousy they are at actually killing hellions. Stalkers kinda do shit for damage. Your comment on dream compositions is laughable. People make compositions, period. What the composition is depends on the matchup and how it develops, but they are never pure marauder once you get out of silver league. I really wish people would stop with the negative hyperbole 'My opponent can just forcefield me, hellions are useless always!' The thing isnt that you could have 20 Hellions, but these have to be clumped up to hit that one Stalker and thats what is so ridiculous about it. Half of that number might work, but as I said no smart player should miss the obvious weak point of massive numbers of Hellions. Forcefield does ruin the day of Hellions and if they cant kill their opponents due to being "limited in numbers" then the whole idea of "Hellions could be used to kill Stalkers" is revealed as the pipe dream it is. The whole maneuverability and space required for those Hellions is a big problem you neglect to consider; it might work on an open space, but most maps arent that open ... Well you shouldn't have many sentries vs mech, especially since tanks can just snipe them, and you would probably prefer the gas for other stuff. (Well, at least according to the games I've seen, yea FFs work pretty well on sentries but it doesn't seem like it's a must have is what I mean). Just want to vouche though, in decently clumped situations, hellions actually beat stalkers for cost (of course not supply, and i'm considering that gas is worth roughly 1.5 its amount in minerals). For example, if you have 60 hellions vs 30 stalkers, you should have like 40 hellions left. Of course, they should have blink and be able to split up and such, but that example is just to show how much damage they can do if they get good shots off (like if blink is in cooldown for example, or if it's earlier game and they don't have blink but it's a 30 hellion vs 15 stalker situation and you're lucky enough to trap/surround them).
If your opponent builds LOTS of Hellions you should build a few Sentries just to counteract that mobility of the Hellions and to counteract this "critical number" problem for the Stalkers which I do not deny exists. The thing is that it is a more or less "theoretical thesis" which can be made to work only very very rarely and not on purpose, because there are too many things which counter it. Just a few Colossi would have a field day with such a clumped bunch of Hellions trying to kill Stalkers, Forcefield is the enemy of any ground based critical number, Psi Storms really like clumps of units, Archons deal some splash damage and have are really nice blockers and finally Blink can undo all the work if you are below the critical number.
In theory you can kill Colossi with Marines, but no one tries to do it on purpose because it is too much luck and skill based ... thats the whole point I was trying to make.
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On January 01 2013 13:28 Whitewing wrote:Show nested quote +On January 01 2013 10:26 Dynamitekid wrote:
Hydralisk are still garbage. Stalkers are way more efficient and they cost almost the same. Stalkers trade with hydralisks at pretty much a 1-1 ratio, and hydralisks are 25 minerals and gas cheaper. With blink stalkers are a little better than hydras in a fight and a bit more mobile, but you can produce hydralisks way faster. If hydras were better than stalkers, I doubt you'd see protoss winning the matchup... ever.
??? Stalkers are 25 minerals more expensive. They both cost 50 gas. Also, you have to upgrade the hydralisk speed and range to make it a half decent unit. Yes, you can produce hydralisk faster BUT you are just going to delay your tech where protoss will just annihilate them with colossus. There was no reason why the hydralisk had to be nerfed.
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On January 02 2013 09:16 Dynamitekid wrote:Show nested quote +On January 01 2013 13:28 Whitewing wrote:On January 01 2013 10:26 Dynamitekid wrote:
Hydralisk are still garbage. Stalkers are way more efficient and they cost almost the same. Stalkers trade with hydralisks at pretty much a 1-1 ratio, and hydralisks are 25 minerals and gas cheaper. With blink stalkers are a little better than hydras in a fight and a bit more mobile, but you can produce hydralisks way faster. If hydras were better than stalkers, I doubt you'd see protoss winning the matchup... ever. ??? Stalkers are 25 minerals more expensive. They both cost 50 gas. Also, you have to upgrade the hydralisk speed and range to make it a half decent unit. Yes, you can produce hydralisk faster BUT you are just going to delay your tech where protoss will just annihilate them with colossus. There was no reason why the hydralisk had to be nerfed.
The whole argument is too simplistic, they are completely different, and need units with different roles and different strengths. Many factors come to play, for example the fact that zergs will usually be on more bases than protoss (although that might change slightly in HotS).
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United States7483 Posts
On January 02 2013 09:16 Dynamitekid wrote:Show nested quote +On January 01 2013 13:28 Whitewing wrote:On January 01 2013 10:26 Dynamitekid wrote:
Hydralisk are still garbage. Stalkers are way more efficient and they cost almost the same. Stalkers trade with hydralisks at pretty much a 1-1 ratio, and hydralisks are 25 minerals and gas cheaper. With blink stalkers are a little better than hydras in a fight and a bit more mobile, but you can produce hydralisks way faster. If hydras were better than stalkers, I doubt you'd see protoss winning the matchup... ever. ??? Stalkers are 25 minerals more expensive. They both cost 50 gas. Also, you have to upgrade the hydralisk speed and range to make it a half decent unit. Yes, you can produce hydralisk faster BUT you are just going to delay your tech where protoss will just annihilate them with colossus. There was no reason why the hydralisk had to be nerfed.
Sorry, 25 gas off. Still, the comparison is very simplistic. Consider that zerg generally has more income and more bases in the midgame, which is when hydras start hitting the field. That means that, relatively speaking, hydralisks are cheaper (they are absolutely cheaper in terms of minerals but relatively cheaper in terms of minerals and gas). They can be produced in larger quantities in less time, and the zerg has different supporting units. They do different tasks for each army, so comparing them is kinda silly. Regardless, have a stalker and a hydralisk fight each other: they both die.
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Blink Stalkers absolutely decimate Hydralisks. Stalkers that lose their shields just get blinked to the back of the pack, while the Hydralisks just die. The DPS of the Zerg's army continually decreases while that of the Protoss army stays the same. Replacement Stalkers get warped in right next to the battle almost instantly, while Zerg has to gather replacement Hydras up from multiple hatcheries without rallying them through the Protoss army. Adding support units like Roaches or Zerglings just helps the Protoss, as now the Stalkers behind the concave that ordinarily would not be able to DPS anything until the front Stalkers were blinked away, now are able to shoot at the lower-ranged units you're adding to the table.
Zerg has absolutely no counter to mass blink Stalker without fungal root. Zerglings are the only other unit you have which can actually run down even blinking stalkers and continue to attack them. They are effective against like a 7-gate blink allin, but absolutely lose their effectiveness once a critical mass of Stalkers is reached and the ratio of attackable surface area to DPS of the Protoss army gets high enough. Roaches and Ultralisks can just be blink-kited to infinity.
Even if you could somehow beat Stalkers with Hydras, Protoss could just use them like Mutalisks and force you to split up your army if you don't want to lose expansions, allowing him to fight half your army with all of his. Without fungal, you have no way of ever trapping and killing the Stalkers. They can always just blink away from any unfavorable engagement. Ever tried to beat a 60-mutalisk Zerg as Protoss? It'd be kind of like that, except you don't have ANY trump like 6-range Phoenix or storm that you can ever tech to.
On top of all this, Protoss has the Mothership Core too, which means you can't go for a base trade and he always has high ground vision that he can use to blink his Stalkers up to.
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On January 02 2013 19:23 Xequecal wrote:
Blink Stalkers absolutely decimate Hydralisks. Stalkers that lose their shields just get blinked to the back of the pack, while the Hydralisks just die. The DPS of the Zerg's army continually decreases while that of the Protoss army stays the same. Replacement Stalkers get warped in right next to the battle almost instantly, while Zerg has to gather replacement Hydras up from multiple hatcheries without rallying them through the Protoss army. Adding support units like Roaches or Zerglings just helps the Protoss, as now the Stalkers behind the concave that ordinarily would not be able to DPS anything until the front Stalkers were blinked away, now are able to shoot at the lower-ranged units you're adding to the table.
Zerg has absolutely no counter to mass blink Stalker without fungal root. Zerglings are the only other unit you have which can actually run down even blinking stalkers and continue to attack them. They are effective against like a 7-gate blink allin, but absolutely lose their effectiveness once a critical mass of Stalkers is reached and the ratio of attackable surface area to DPS of the Protoss army gets high enough. Roaches and Ultralisks can just be blink-kited to infinity.
Even if you could somehow beat Stalkers with Hydras, Protoss could just use them like Mutalisks and force you to split up your army if you don't want to lose expansions, allowing him to fight half your army with all of his. Without fungal, you have no way of ever trapping and killing the Stalkers. They can always just blink away from any unfavorable engagement. Ever tried to beat a 60-mutalisk Zerg as Protoss? It'd be kind of like that, except you don't have ANY trump like 6-range Phoenix or storm that you can ever tech to.
On top of all this, Protoss has the Mothership Core too, which means you can't go for a base trade and he always has high ground vision that he can use to blink his Stalkers up to.
If we are going to assume that protoss is warping units in midfight, then we should also assume the zerg has the ability to control his reinforcements. Otherwise the protoss player was just better and deserves to win. If we are going to assume perfect blink micro from protoss, then we can also assume that zerg is setting up surrounds with lings and speed-hydras. Otherwise again, the protoss player was just better and deserves to win. In that case, we have found the counter to mass blink stalker: You surround/flank the army and abduct the MSC. If protoss is microing at 150-200 APM to do perfect blinks and warpins, then zerg better be at 150-200 APM setting up surrounds, rallying ling reinforcements, and injecting.
Blink stalkers are one of the worst lategame army compositions, they are only useful for finishing off the game AFTER you've killed the zerg army. Stalkers are way slower than mutas, so while they can harass, the zerg should have plenty of time to react to it. If you surround the blink stalker army with a hydra-ling army, and abduct the MSC, that blink stalker army dies with killing very few units. The counter to blink-stalkers is flanking them. Even if you can't kill the blink stalker army (because the MSC core was able to get a recall off), use your army to attack, send them to go destroy expansions (hint: Protoss is by far the worst base-trade race in the game without a recall, which they won't have for some time again). Ever try playing defensive with blink stalkers? It doesn't work.
Also, zerg does have a trump card: Ultras and broodlords. If you have a hydra/BL army, there is no way a blink stalker army will kill you. The only way stalkers can fight BLs is to blink underneath of them, but now the hydras rip apart the stalkers while they very slowly dps down the BLs. Also, a ling/ultra army will destroy a stalker army if you can catch it out of position just once. And again, if we assume that protoss has amazing micro, we better also assume the zerg can set up amazing surrounds. That's the point of the game afterall, that the one who can build AND control his army better wins.
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On January 01 2013 01:23 Big J wrote:
Then define good design and bad design.
For me it's something that that can work out balancewise and many people consider it fun to watch and play with it.
Okay, I’ll bite. This argument is going to go a little off topic at first, but hopefully when I’m finished you’ll see what I’m talking about.
So one of the biggest complaints that people have about SC2 is always the fact that it was nowhere near the quality that BW was in terms of balance, unit design, and overall spectator value, right? But what makes BW really different from SC2 in terms of unit design? Why is it that people always seem nostalgic for the units from BW but recoil at the sight of SC2 units? Let’s go through a few examples:
SC2 units:
THE ROACH
The roach is a 1.5 tier unit that has the utility to burrow, heal quickly while in burrow, and move while burrowing, potentially allowing the roach to be used for “hit-and-run” raids, sneaky harass or potential mind games. Logic would suggest that a unit like this would be fast, low-medium low hp with a medium high dps and a large amount of mobility, maybe some burst damage. Instead, what do we get? A slow, medium low dps tanky unit that hides under the ground to regain hp which only seems good when you mass large amount of them in a quick amount of time.
Verdict: Terrible, terrible design
THE CORRUPTOR
This is probably the worst unit in the game and it should be obvious how bad the corruptor is, but I guess it might be good to explain why. So the corrupter is the only air unit zerg has that is purely anti-air. What does the corruptor provide to justify its role as the “pure” anti-air? Low range, medium low-dps, medium-low mobility. I guess you can say it’s relatively tanky but the corruptor just feels slow, is hard to kill things with, and again like the roach, has to be massed in order to have any real use for the utility that is needed out of it. The corruptor is so bad that it has to have a tacked on “Corruption” ability that has no real use because of the limitations of the corruptor in the first place. An additional problem with the corruptor is once you make too many of them you essentially have “dead weight”, unless you can morph them into something with the complete OPPOSITE utility (from hitting air to hitting ground, plus low range to long range,).
Verdict: Terrible, terrible design
THE IMMORTAL
What’s wrong with the immortal you ask? It’s a staple of a lot of matchups, and it has a good utility to justify its use. My problem with the immortal is that in order to use all the utility that the immortal has, all you have to do….is make it. The immortal again, is another example of contradictory unit design. So I get that the immortal is supposed to be a unit to “help” against mech, right? So why does the immortal have hardened shields in the first place? If you want something to be a tank, you have to encourage players to target fire it to eliminate first (such as the ultralisk). However, focus firing on the immortal with units such as tanks is counter-intuitive because your damage is decreased, making your attacks weaker when you could be focusing other targets for full damage. Combine that with the high burst damage of the immortal and we basically have the most overpowered anti-armored ground unit of the game. The only way to stop the immortal is to hope that you can have enough hits in order to stop the immortal, or just don’t build high tech ground units in the first place. I guess you could emp or 250 mm strike cannons, but a player shouldn’t be forced to make a counter to stop a counter.
Verdict: Terrible, terrible design
BW units:
THE LURKER
The lurker is an amazing unit that provides great zone control and burst ability. Since the lurker has to be burrowed in order to attack, this provides many dynamics that both make the unit strong and balance the unit at the same time. Since the lurker has to burrow in place in order to attack, this limits the mobility of the lurker offensively, but since the lurker is burrow this means that you have to have a form of detection in order to kill the lurker. Also, this encourages good positioning when using the lurker, as well as allow for opportunities such as “hold position” lurker micro (basically a much better burrowed baneling). In the right hands the lurker can be extremely cost effective, yet also have to be used tentatively due to their high cost and immobility. All in all a brilliantly designed unit.
THE REAVER
Similar to the lurker, an immobile unit that provides burst damage. The difference is that the reaver has to “buy” it’s ammo, as well as need shuttles in order to mobile enough to be used for battles. This limits the reaver in many different areas, assuring that every shot from the reaver is not used liberally since they are limited, and that in order to maximize the utility of the reaver you have to compliment it with units that greatly improve its mobility. With such drastic drawbacks like these, it would seem that the reaver would be a terrible unit to use, but because the reaver is so strong in the utility it provides, namely aoe burst damage, that it justifies the use of the reaver. This also means that the greater the control you have (in terms of microing your shuttle and your reaver) the better you can make use of the utility the reaver provides.
After going through various units from both games, what is the pattern that seems to arise? First of all there are a lot of problems with the design of SC2, whether through contradiction in the design (roach), too much utility at the press of one button (colossus, immortal, infestor) or just plain bad (corruptor). Also, SC2 units are too “simple and obvious” to use especially when compared to many of the units in BW. One could literally write a book on each unit in BW based on just how to micro them alone, while the smart AI pathing and simple unit design of SC2, micro usually seems to just boil down to “a-move into range, and then when attacked, click out of range of the attacker”. I guarantee you that if units were as hard to micro in SC2 as they were in BW, that would help a lot in terms of eliminating deathballs, because deathballs would become a lot more difficult to control. Also, it is clear that BW units are much more limited in their utility, but more powerful in the utility that they provide. For example, when comparing the reaver and the colossus, it’s obvious that the colossus is tankier, more mobile and not limited by ammo like the reaver is. However, the reaver is clearly unmatched by the amount of damage and burst potential that it provides. The creators of BW clearly understood that if there was something that provided a great amount of utility whether in terms of burst damage, dps or just crowd control, that it was important to limit that utility, whether by limiting the mobility of the unit (ie the lurker and the reaver) or by making so that access to that utility was limited, whether by expensive tech or high spell cost/limited ammo (sometimes both). This ensured that even if you gained access to that form of utility, you still had to earn it through smart usage and cost efficiency.
So what’s the difference between “good and bad” design? Something that “works out balance-wise and many people consider it fun to watch and play with it” would probably work IF THIS WASN’T SUPPOSED TO BE A COMPETITIVE DYNAMIC REAL-TIME STRATEGY E-SPORT CALLED STARCRAFT. Starcraft design demands more than just gimmicks and crowd-pleasers. Part of the reason why BW was so successful was due to what I just mentioned above, the limitations in using something with great utility. This means that every spell, every ability was used sparingly and each one had a tremendous effect on the overall “flow” of the game. Thing could not be “spammed” like they are in SC2, and the limitations on the units with high utility actually encouraged more strategy and better execution. When you have every zerg player able to utilize the full utility of fungal by just clicking on a group of units, not only does this cheapens the concept of using “spells”, it also completely overshadows the use of any other unit. Why try to learn how to use other zerg units, when you can learn to aim a fungal and have a much greater effect when doing so? These are just a few of the many flaws that SC2 has right now.
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THE ROACH
The roach is a 1.5 tier unit that has the utility to burrow, heal quickly while in burrow, and move while burrowing, potentially allowing the roach to be used for “hit-and-run” raids, sneaky harass or potential mind games. Logic would suggest that a unit like this would be fast, low-medium low hp with a medium high dps and a large amount of mobility, maybe some burst damage. Instead, what do we get? A slow, medium low dps tanky unit that hides under the ground to regain hp which only seems good when you mass large amount of them in a quick amount of time.
Verdict: Terrible, terrible design
So you want an invisible unit, as fast as the gling and with the same dps ? And so what is so purpose of glings ? When you adress a problem in SC2, get ready to deal with them all.
THE CORRUPTOR
This is probably the worst unit in the game and it should be obvious how bad the corruptor is, but I guess it might be good to explain why. So the corrupter is the only air unit zerg has that is purely anti-air. What does the corruptor provide to justify its role as the “pure” anti-air? Low range, medium low-dps, medium-low mobility. I guess you can say it’s relatively tanky but the corruptor just feels slow, is hard to kill things with, and again like the roach, has to be massed in order to have any real use for the utility that is needed out of it. The corruptor is so bad that it has to have a tacked on “Corruption” ability that has no real use because of the limitations of the corruptor in the first place. An additional problem with the corruptor is once you make too many of them you essentially have “dead weight”, unless you can morph them into something with the complete OPPOSITE utility (from hitting air to hitting ground, plus low range to long range,).
Verdict: Terrible, terrible design
Yeah, the corruptor is bad...wait...wait...the corruptor is not a carrier ? It is not the most powerfull unit in the game ? Dude, this is the zerg race, their units are supposed to be less cost-effective and cheaper than terran and protoss counters.
Well yes corruptor is not as good as viking, but you can spam-produce 30 of them in 30 seconds.
If you overmake them, well, you played bad. Like if you would for other races, say, overmake zealots.
THE IMMORTAL
What’s wrong with the immortal you ask? It’s a staple of a lot of matchups, and it has a good utility to justify its use. My problem with the immortal is that in order to use all the utility that the immortal has, all you have to do….is make it. The immortal again, is another example of contradictory unit design. So I get that the immortal is supposed to be a unit to “help” against mech, right? So why does the immortal have hardened shields in the first place? If you want something to be a tank, you have to encourage players to target fire it to eliminate first (such as the ultralisk). However, focus firing on the immortal with units such as tanks is counter-intuitive because your damage is decreased, making your attacks weaker when you could be focusing other targets for full damage. Combine that with the high burst damage of the immortal and we basically have the most overpowered anti-armored ground unit of the game. The only way to stop the immortal is to hope that you can have enough hits in order to stop the immortal, or just don’t build high tech ground units in the first place. I guess you could emp or 250 mm strike cannons, but a player shouldn’t be forced to make a counter to stop a counter.
Verdict: Terrible, terrible design
Yeah you have to focus fire the immo indeed...yeah it's not cost-effective if you do it with tanks. Wait...wait...maybe if zerglings, or marines can do it. Maybe they could target fire it being optimal (not overkill hard. shield ?). Maybe...
Yeah they are really cost-effective against armored units...but wait...what is the essence of a toss army ? Cost-efficience ! So it's not really a surprise. Don't even forget that high dps of immo is to take into account if and only if you perfectly focus fire armored units in ennemy compo (nightmare vs zerg) and that you're opponent is stupid enough to repop in full armored or even build armor vs immo.
I get really pissed off when someone idealise so much BW units for the sake of doing it.
Yeah reaver micro is good with shuttle, it's really cool.
Yeah fighting a lurker with micro is good, it's really cool.
BUT and it's an important but, you must realise you did absolutely not judge the BW units with the same method as the ones of SC2.
For BW units, you speak of how those units promote micro and cool action
For SC2 units, you speak of balance.
But wait, are those units supposed to have the same role ? NO. Lurker is kinda baneling (and yes it's fun to watch those bomb explode when well placed and used) and Reaver kinda colossus (i agree, colossus is more a click, but only because people don't even ever colossus-prism since...it's too damn dangerous...since...i don't know !). Well, even this comparison goes too far, but let's try it.
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To analyse the design of a unit some thought needs to go into weighing up strengths and weaknesses and then how it works in various unit compositions and its uses versus an opponent.
trying to say the roach is a hit and run unit with low hp, high damage and high mobility, are you not just describing a speed hydra? so to try and talk to its strengths roaches are general purpose armoured ground units that can be obtained early, with the upgrades they are fast and they do have a variety of uses. Would having no basic ground armoured unit for zerg really be better design? zerg would most likely have a lot of trouble against early attacks without the roach.
Just to mention some of the other points. are devourers from bw really that much better designed than corrupters? or for that matter is morphing corrupters and brood lords from mutalisks a better idea?
The immortal, slow moving heavy hitter. hardened shield makes it strong against slow high damage attacks and weak against fast low damage. You could remove this and say increase its hit points and give it something like +2 bonus for shields making it like the ultralisk then it is just strong versus everything. maxed upgrades with a guardian shield it would reduce ranged damage by 7, so units like the infested terran will do next to no damage to it while the heavy hitting units like tanks/ultralisks are all stronger against it. this is the opposite of what hardened shields achieves.
Also a lot of spells carried over from bw and are still good as well as the new ones. If anything plague from the defiler is even simpler than fungal, one cast and all the units are at 1 hp. So perhaps there is something a bit mindless about massing infestors and spamming ITs and fungals though would replacing fungal with plague really be better design? or just different and more than likely require a whole host of other balance changes.
You do need to compare all sides when thinking about design. Although I would agree that the very high burst aoe damage of the reaver is more interesting than immortals and colossus.
Also here is a saying to think about: familiarity breeds contempt
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On January 04 2013 02:14 KamikazeDurrrp wrote:Show nested quote +On January 01 2013 01:23 Big J wrote:
Then define good design and bad design.
For me it's something that that can work out balancewise and many people consider it fun to watch and play with it.
Okay, I’ll bite. This argument is going to go a little off topic at first, but hopefully when I’m finished you’ll see what I’m talking about. So one of the biggest complaints that people have about SC2 is always the fact that it was nowhere near the quality that BW was in terms of balance, unit design, and overall spectator value, right? But what makes BW really different from SC2 in terms of unit design? Why is it that people always seem nostalgic for the units from BW but recoil at the sight of SC2 units? Let’s go through a few examples: SC2 units: THE ROACH The roach is a 1.5 tier unit that has the utility to burrow, heal quickly while in burrow, and move while burrowing, potentially allowing the roach to be used for “hit-and-run” raids, sneaky harass or potential mind games. Logic would suggest that a unit like this would be fast, low-medium low hp with a medium high dps and a large amount of mobility, maybe some burst damage. Instead, what do we get? A slow, medium low dps tanky unit that hides under the ground to regain hp which only seems good when you mass large amount of them in a quick amount of time. Verdict: Terrible, terrible design THE CORRUPTOR This is probably the worst unit in the game and it should be obvious how bad the corruptor is, but I guess it might be good to explain why. So the corrupter is the only air unit zerg has that is purely anti-air. What does the corruptor provide to justify its role as the “pure” anti-air? Low range, medium low-dps, medium-low mobility. I guess you can say it’s relatively tanky but the corruptor just feels slow, is hard to kill things with, and again like the roach, has to be massed in order to have any real use for the utility that is needed out of it. The corruptor is so bad that it has to have a tacked on “Corruption” ability that has no real use because of the limitations of the corruptor in the first place. An additional problem with the corruptor is once you make too many of them you essentially have “dead weight”, unless you can morph them into something with the complete OPPOSITE utility (from hitting air to hitting ground, plus low range to long range,). Verdict: Terrible, terrible design THE IMMORTAL What’s wrong with the immortal you ask? It’s a staple of a lot of matchups, and it has a good utility to justify its use. My problem with the immortal is that in order to use all the utility that the immortal has, all you have to do….is make it. The immortal again, is another example of contradictory unit design. So I get that the immortal is supposed to be a unit to “help” against mech, right? So why does the immortal have hardened shields in the first place? If you want something to be a tank, you have to encourage players to target fire it to eliminate first (such as the ultralisk). However, focus firing on the immortal with units such as tanks is counter-intuitive because your damage is decreased, making your attacks weaker when you could be focusing other targets for full damage. Combine that with the high burst damage of the immortal and we basically have the most overpowered anti-armored ground unit of the game. The only way to stop the immortal is to hope that you can have enough hits in order to stop the immortal, or just don’t build high tech ground units in the first place. I guess you could emp or 250 mm strike cannons, but a player shouldn’t be forced to make a counter to stop a counter. Verdict: Terrible, terrible design BW units: THE LURKER The lurker is an amazing unit that provides great zone control and burst ability. Since the lurker has to be burrowed in order to attack, this provides many dynamics that both make the unit strong and balance the unit at the same time. Since the lurker has to burrow in place in order to attack, this limits the mobility of the lurker offensively, but since the lurker is burrow this means that you have to have a form of detection in order to kill the lurker. Also, this encourages good positioning when using the lurker, as well as allow for opportunities such as “hold position” lurker micro (basically a much better burrowed baneling). In the right hands the lurker can be extremely cost effective, yet also have to be used tentatively due to their high cost and immobility. All in all a brilliantly designed unit. THE REAVER Similar to the lurker, an immobile unit that provides burst damage. The difference is that the reaver has to “buy” it’s ammo, as well as need shuttles in order to mobile enough to be used for battles. This limits the reaver in many different areas, assuring that every shot from the reaver is not used liberally since they are limited, and that in order to maximize the utility of the reaver you have to compliment it with units that greatly improve its mobility. With such drastic drawbacks like these, it would seem that the reaver would be a terrible unit to use, but because the reaver is so strong in the utility it provides, namely aoe burst damage, that it justifies the use of the reaver. This also means that the greater the control you have (in terms of microing your shuttle and your reaver) the better you can make use of the utility the reaver provides. After going through various units from both games, what is the pattern that seems to arise? First of all there are a lot of problems with the design of SC2, whether through contradiction in the design (roach), too much utility at the press of one button (colossus, immortal, infestor) or just plain bad (corruptor). Also, SC2 units are too “simple and obvious” to use especially when compared to many of the units in BW. One could literally write a book on each unit in BW based on just how to micro them alone, while the smart AI pathing and simple unit design of SC2, micro usually seems to just boil down to “a-move into range, and then when attacked, click out of range of the attacker”. I guarantee you that if units were as hard to micro in SC2 as they were in BW, that would help a lot in terms of eliminating deathballs, because deathballs would become a lot more difficult to control. Also, it is clear that BW units are much more limited in their utility, but more powerful in the utility that they provide. For example, when comparing the reaver and the colossus, it’s obvious that the colossus is tankier, more mobile and not limited by ammo like the reaver is. However, the reaver is clearly unmatched by the amount of damage and burst potential that it provides. The creators of BW clearly understood that if there was something that provided a great amount of utility whether in terms of burst damage, dps or just crowd control, that it was important to limit that utility, whether by limiting the mobility of the unit (ie the lurker and the reaver) or by making so that access to that utility was limited, whether by expensive tech or high spell cost/limited ammo (sometimes both). This ensured that even if you gained access to that form of utility, you still had to earn it through smart usage and cost efficiency. So what’s the difference between “good and bad” design? Something that “works out balance-wise and many people consider it fun to watch and play with it” would probably work IF THIS WASN’T SUPPOSED TO BE A COMPETITIVE DYNAMIC REAL-TIME STRATEGY E-SPORT CALLED STARCRAFT. Starcraft design demands more than just gimmicks and crowd-pleasers. Part of the reason why BW was so successful was due to what I just mentioned above, the limitations in using something with great utility. This means that every spell, every ability was used sparingly and each one had a tremendous effect on the overall “flow” of the game. Thing could not be “spammed” like they are in SC2, and the limitations on the units with high utility actually encouraged more strategy and better execution. When you have every zerg player able to utilize the full utility of fungal by just clicking on a group of units, not only does this cheapens the concept of using “spells”, it also completely overshadows the use of any other unit. Why try to learn how to use other zerg units, when you can learn to aim a fungal and have a much greater effect when doing so? These are just a few of the many flaws that SC2 has right now.
I would like to nominate you as president of the BW dogmatists. You satisfy all of the prequisites -- 1) Blind insistence that everything in BW was better than it is in SC2. 2) Asserting what amounts to little more than your unsupported opinion about what "good" design is as well accepted truth. 3) Turning what clearly is a flaw in BW into a positive -- preposterously poor pathing makes the micro in BW so much more meaningful! 4) Ignoring all of the "poorly designed" units in BW -- Devourers, e.g. 5) Asserting that everyone agrees that BW was so much more entertaining to play and watch than SC2 -- even though the former is no longer played competitively and was followed, outside Korea, by an extremely small and dedicated group of foreigners.
If someone wants to take a giant dump on BW it would be pretty easy to do. Watch: you celebrate the reaver as this great unit when it was programmed so poorly that its scarabs would often simply not hit the target, adding a bit of randomness that furthers no sensible aim at all. Whoever designed the reaver should be fired. It is the paradigm case of poor design and that's a fact. OK, is it a fact? No, of course not, because someone's asserting something as truth does not make it so. Now apply this important lesson to everything you write and say from now on and everyone will be better off.
Big J has set forth a sensible standard for assessing "design"; you have set forth a page full of nonsense opinions that cover no new ground and will never, thankfully, influence the design of HoTS in a million years.
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This is why I hate posting in forums. You guys completely twist my words and in the end misunderstand everything I say. Do you even pay attention to what I write? My point was:
a)units in SC2 offer too much utility
b)to access most of the utility that a SC2 unit has to offer most of the time you just push a button and you get the full utility
What do I mean by this? Let's say I was a protoss player in SC2 and I saw that the terran player was massing seige tanks. What would I do? All I have to do is drop a robotics bay, make immortals and immediately a-move them into seige tanks because by just making the immortal, I have created the sufficient counter to stop seige tanks, because by design, the immortal has been given all the utility it needs to counter seige tanks (hardened shields, high burst damage, decent mobility). This creates a "dynamic" where instead of making decisions that would reward you for your strategy, you are more or less rewarded for doing the obvious. Compare this to the lurker, which has the obvious utility of doing large amount of aoe burst damage. However, in order to DO that you have to position your lurkers in the ground where they have to expose themselves, and prevent themselves from moving. In the end this forces positioning and smart usage. This is what I mean when I say “dynamic”. You don’t instantly gain access to all the utility the lurker has by just making it, you are REWARDED that utility by using lurkers well.
This especially applies to fungal because as I have repeated again and again, fungal pretty much does everything for the zerg player. For just the price of landing it, you get crowd control, damage and immobility from your opponent. It's not the fact that fungal "restricts" micro, it's the fact that it's so easy to restrict micro with fungal WITH the free damage WITH the long range of fungal that just pushes the spell over the top in terms of design.
This was why I made a parallel when comparing SC2 to BW because when compared to the units in BW, SC2 have much more utility than the BW units had. BUT for what utility that the BW units had, they were much stronger, but also much more limited in accessing that utility. Let's just look plague when compared to fungal. As I've noted earlier, fungal provides much more utility than plague, since fungal can immobilize AND silence some units from using abilities (stalker blink, etc.). However, in terms of burst damage, plague does MUCH more damage. BUT you know how much plague costs? 150 ENERGY. Compare that to the cheap, spammable 75 energy fungal. Also consider plague is PURGABLE in BW. I don't see a purge in SC2 anytime soon.
And when did I say SC2 units were "all about the balance" when BW units had "cool micro"? I made the point BW was much MORE RESTRICTIVE in terms of the additional utility that their units had, making so that ACCESSING THAT UTILITY WAS POTENTIALLY GAME CHANGING. You never had the "make one unit completely counter options from the other race" in BW as much as you do in SC2. You especially see this mentality when you look at the various forums on how to deal with certain compositions. You lose to Broodlords or Colossus? Make more vikings. You lose to Ultralisks? Make more maruaders. You lose as zerg? MAKE MORE INFESTORS. And so on and so on.
And for you information, I NEVER EVEN PLAYED BROODWAR. I’m aware that many of the units in Broodwar were buggy, dumb pieces of crap that never worked all the time. BUT THAT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE DESIGN OF THE UNIT. Just because the reaver scarab didn’t work all the time make it so it completely invalidated the design of the unit, which included restricting the ammo and the mobility of the reaver.
Is it too much to ask for less a-move units with less ability to do everything and just be extremely strong in one aspect? Is it too much to ask for a game where you are rewarded for your execution rather than your ability to do the obvious? I know Starcraft 2 is not an easy game to master, but if we want to make a DYNAMIC COMPETITIVE E-SPORT there are more factors than just “something looks cool and as long as it works it should be in the game”. You could make rock paper scissors the most awesome graphically interesting jaw dropping animations into a video game, but it still wouldn’t take away from the fact that all the possibilities are obvious and not that dynamic.
As a spectator I don’t want to sit there and say it’s obvious that the protoss should have made more immortals to counter the siege tanks. I don’t want to sit there and say it’s obvious that the zerg should have made more fungals in order to tear the deathball into pieces. I want to learn to use marines like MKP in order to maximize the utility of marines like he does. I want to learn to use zerglings like Life does and abuse them in every stage of the game for runbys, counterattacks and small strike forces. But with the way blizzard is balancing the game it just doesn’t look possible. Just look at the tempest. You know why blizzard created the tempest in the first place? “Protoss is struggling too much with mutalisks, so let’s give the protoss a unit that completely counters mutalisks”. This then changed to “completely counters broodlord-infestor” when blizzard saw how much people were struggling with that ridiculous composition. I mean, just the thought of the tempest hurts my head. Out of all the races that needed a new capital ship, and Blizzard chose protoss? I don’t even know what’s real anymore.
One only has to look at the responses against me to see how much the “terrible terrible” design philosophy has seeped into the minds of people. The moment I try to compare BW design to SC2 design I am instantly turned into “that idiot BW elitist who doesn’t know what he’s talking about that’s ruining SC2 and only wants BW with better graphics”. Um…No? What I was trying to achieve was how we could just look at BW and learn how BW designed their units, and the successes that made BW great could be emulated in SC2. Contrary to what people believe, I don’t want another BW, I want a BETTER and MORE SUCCESSFUL THAN BW AS A GAME in every way. And can we really say at this point SC2 is better game than BW is? If your answer is no then you have no right calling me a BW elitist.
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This is why I hate posting in forums. You guys completely twist my words and in the end misunderstand everything I say. Do you even pay attention to what I write? My point was:
We do !
a)units in SC2 offer too much utility
b)to access most of the utility that a SC2 unit has to offer most of the time you just push a button and you get the full utility
Where was this even writen in the other post ?
What do I mean by this? Let's say I was a protoss player in SC2 and I saw that the terran player was massing seige tanks. What would I do? All I have to do is drop a robotics bay, make immortals and immediately a-move them into seige tanks because by just making the immortal, I have created the sufficient counter to stop seige tanks, because by design, the immortal has been given all the utility it needs to counter seige tanks (hardened shields, high burst damage, decent mobility). This creates a "dynamic" where instead of making decisions that would reward you for your strategy, you are more or less rewarded for doing the obvious. Compare this to the lurker, which has the obvious utility of doing large amount of aoe burst damage. However, in order to DO that you have to position your lurkers in the ground where they have to expose themselves, and prevent themselves from moving. In the end this forces positioning and smart usage. This is what I mean when I say “dynamic”. You don’t instantly gain access to all the utility the lurker has by just making it, you are REWARDED that utility by using lurkers well.
And please tell me where such a situation exists ? On only siege tank versus pure immo fight ? If you mean to tell that immo wins vs tank, same to say vcs loses to marine. If you think there are too much hard counter, ok.
This especially applies to fungal because as I have repeated again and again, fungal pretty much does everything for the zerg player. For just the price of landing it, you get crowd control, damage and immobility from your opponent. It's not the fact that fungal "restricts" micro, it's the fact that it's so easy to restrict micro with fungal WITH the free damage WITH the long range of fungal that just pushes the spell over the top in terms of design.
It's called a spell. Terran as EMP. It denies the shield, energy, grants vision.
Well fungal is complex.
Let's just look plague when compared to fungal. As I've noted earlier, fungal provides much more utility than plague, since fungal can immobilize AND silence some units from using abilities (stalker blink, etc.). However, in terms of burst damage, plague does MUCH more damage. BUT you know how much plague costs? 150 ENERGY. Compare that to the cheap, spammable 75 energy fungal. Also consider plague is PURGABLE in BW. I don't see a purge in SC2 anytime soon.
So basically, plague is a 50/50 spell ? You miss it you lose ? Don't forget there are always flaws to spells.
I made the point BW was much MORE RESTRICTIVE in terms of the additional utility that their units had, making so that ACCESSING THAT UTILITY WAS POTENTIALLY GAME CHANGING. You never had the "make one unit completely counter options from the other race" in BW as much as you do in SC2. You especially see this mentality when you look at the various forums on how to deal with certain compositions. You lose to Broodlords or Colossus? Make more vikings. You lose to Ultralisks? Make more maruaders. You lose as zerg? MAKE MORE INFESTORS. And so on and so on.
What are blink and speedling then ?
Is it too much to ask for less a-move units with less ability to do everything and just be extremely strong in one aspect? Is it too much to ask for a game where you are rewarded for your execution rather than your ability to do the obvious? I know Starcraft 2 is not an easy game to master, but if we want to make a DYNAMIC COMPETITIVE E-SPORT there are more factors than just “something looks cool and as long as it works it should be in the game”. You could make rock paper scissors the most awesome graphically interesting jaw dropping animations into a video game, but it still wouldn’t take away from the fact that all the possibilities are obvious and not that dynamic.
Yeah SC2 is so easy to execute. You don't even need 350 apm to win vs a korean GM. No you don't need those. You know SC2 is not rock/paper/scissors. It's just people building the most cost-efficient counters.
As a spectator I don’t want to sit there and say it’s obvious that the protoss should have made more immortals to counter the siege tanks. I don’t want to sit there and say it’s obvious that the zerg should have made more fungals in order to tear the deathball into pieces. I want to learn to use marines like MKP in order to maximize the utility of marines like he does.
So you want people win for no real reasons ?
I want to learn to use zerglings like Life does and abuse them in every stage of the game for runbys, counterattacks and small strike forces. But with the way blizzard is balancing the game it just doesn’t look possible.
Well. Like koreans don't master all the units to perfection ? If you can't do it, it doesn't mean it's impossible. You could imagine a flock of gling controlled one by one.
Just look at the tempest. You know why blizzard created the tempest in the first place? “Protoss is struggling too much with mutalisks, so let’s give the protoss a unit that completely counters mutalisks”. This then changed to “completely counters broodlord-infestor” when blizzard saw how much people were struggling with that ridiculous composition. I mean, just the thought of the tempest hurts my head. Out of all the races that needed a new capital ship, and Blizzard chose protoss? I don’t even know what’s real anymore.
Dude you know how it works. They have to think this way first. If they were doing it the other way, it would look like this : "hey dudes, we should add a total random unit, like we decide it's air, and then randomise stuff. We make a contest for the coolest spell, and we take it". They have to assume a role, then balance it. If not, they will be told they are amateurs...
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On January 04 2013 06:11 KamikazeDurrrp wrote:
This is why I hate posting in forums. You guys completely twist my words and in the end misunderstand everything I say. Do you even pay attention to what I write? My point was:
a)units in SC2 offer too much utility
b)to access most of the utility that a SC2 unit has to offer most of the time you just push a button and you get the full utility
What do I mean by this? Let's say I was a protoss player in SC2 and I saw that the terran player was massing seige tanks. What would I do? All I have to do is drop a robotics bay, make immortals and immediately a-move them into seige tanks because by just making the immortal, I have created the sufficient counter to stop seige tanks, because by design, the immortal has been given all the utility it needs to counter seige tanks (hardened shields, high burst damage, decent mobility). This creates a "dynamic" where instead of making decisions that would reward you for your strategy, you are more or less rewarded for doing the obvious. Compare this to the lurker, which has the obvious utility of doing large amount of aoe burst damage. However, in order to DO that you have to position your lurkers in the ground where they have to expose themselves, and prevent themselves from moving. In the end this forces positioning and smart usage. This is what I mean when I say “dynamic”. You don’t instantly gain access to all the utility the lurker has by just making it, you are REWARDED that utility by using lurkers well.
This especially applies to fungal because as I have repeated again and again, fungal pretty much does everything for the zerg player. For just the price of landing it, you get crowd control, damage and immobility from your opponent. It's not the fact that fungal "restricts" micro, it's the fact that it's so easy to restrict micro with fungal WITH the free damage WITH the long range of fungal that just pushes the spell over the top in terms of design.
This was why I made a parallel when comparing SC2 to BW because when compared to the units in BW, SC2 have much more utility than the BW units had. BUT for what utility that the BW units had, they were much stronger, but also much more limited in accessing that utility. Let's just look plague when compared to fungal. As I've noted earlier, fungal provides much more utility than plague, since fungal can immobilize AND silence some units from using abilities (stalker blink, etc.). However, in terms of burst damage, plague does MUCH more damage. BUT you know how much plague costs? 150 ENERGY. Compare that to the cheap, spammable 75 energy fungal. Also consider plague is PURGABLE in BW. I don't see a purge in SC2 anytime soon.
And when did I say SC2 units were "all about the balance" when BW units had "cool micro"? I made the point BW was much MORE RESTRICTIVE in terms of the additional utility that their units had, making so that ACCESSING THAT UTILITY WAS POTENTIALLY GAME CHANGING. You never had the "make one unit completely counter options from the other race" in BW as much as you do in SC2. You especially see this mentality when you look at the various forums on how to deal with certain compositions. You lose to Broodlords or Colossus? Make more vikings. You lose to Ultralisks? Make more maruaders. You lose as zerg? MAKE MORE INFESTORS. And so on and so on.
And for you information, I NEVER EVEN PLAYED BROODWAR. I’m aware that many of the units in Broodwar were buggy, dumb pieces of crap that never worked all the time. BUT THAT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE DESIGN OF THE UNIT. Just because the reaver scarab didn’t work all the time make it so it completely invalidated the design of the unit, which included restricting the ammo and the mobility of the reaver.
Is it too much to ask for less a-move units with less ability to do everything and just be extremely strong in one aspect? Is it too much to ask for a game where you are rewarded for your execution rather than your ability to do the obvious? I know Starcraft 2 is not an easy game to master, but if we want to make a DYNAMIC COMPETITIVE E-SPORT there are more factors than just “something looks cool and as long as it works it should be in the game”. You could make rock paper scissors the most awesome graphically interesting jaw dropping animations into a video game, but it still wouldn’t take away from the fact that all the possibilities are obvious and not that dynamic.
As a spectator I don’t want to sit there and say it’s obvious that the protoss should have made more immortals to counter the siege tanks. I don’t want to sit there and say it’s obvious that the zerg should have made more fungals in order to tear the deathball into pieces. I want to learn to use marines like MKP in order to maximize the utility of marines like he does. I want to learn to use zerglings like Life does and abuse them in every stage of the game for runbys, counterattacks and small strike forces. But with the way blizzard is balancing the game it just doesn’t look possible. Just look at the tempest. You know why blizzard created the tempest in the first place? “Protoss is struggling too much with mutalisks, so let’s give the protoss a unit that completely counters mutalisks”. This then changed to “completely counters broodlord-infestor” when blizzard saw how much people were struggling with that ridiculous composition. I mean, just the thought of the tempest hurts my head. Out of all the races that needed a new capital ship, and Blizzard chose protoss? I don’t even know what’s real anymore.
One only has to look at the responses against me to see how much the “terrible terrible” design philosophy has seeped into the minds of people. The moment I try to compare BW design to SC2 design I am instantly turned into “that idiot BW elitist who doesn’t know what he’s talking about that’s ruining SC2 and only wants BW with better graphics”. Um…No? What I was trying to achieve was how we could just look at BW and learn how BW designed their units, and the successes that made BW great could be emulated in SC2. Contrary to what people believe, I don’t want another BW, I want a BETTER and MORE SUCCESSFUL THAN BW AS A GAME in every way. And can we really say at this point SC2 is better game than BW is? If your answer is no then you have no right calling me a BW elitist.
You write, "You never had the "make one unit completely counter options from the other race" in BW as much as you do in SC2. " BW was probably the most refined game on the planet and it was very clear to the pros at almost all times, it seemed to me at least, what they should be doing, what they should be making and when they should be doing it. For example, mutas made it so that zvz always featured the exact same unit comp. Always. If you built something else you lost. End of story. How is that, in your book, so worthy of celebration? Also, e.g., didn't the presence of science vessels mean that you couldn't build mutas anymore (in mass)? These things were hard counters for that tech. How else should they be described? What aspect of the BW meta game was at all dynamic? That game was effectively solved. That's not a knock on BW. It's bound to happen to any game that is played for as long as BW and is not continuously patched.
You write, "As a spectator I don’t want to sit there and say it’s obvious that the protoss should have made more immortals to counter the siege tanks." Terran almost never mech in competitive tvps. When you have you been in a position to say this? I seriously doubt you watch SC2.
It's OK to think SC2 has problems but to think that you have some insight into what constitutes good game design is arrogant given that you do not appear to be very knowledgeable about SC2.
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thx for you two posting. you saved me a lot of time glorfindel21 and the_darkness.
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the difference between good and bad design is simple: is a unit used for what it is designed? no -> bad design; yes -> good design
example: infestor is designed as a caster support unit; is it used in this way? no -> bad design; it is used as a core army and sometimes main dps and much more
viper is a good designed unit, blinding cloud can be very very strong and balance-borderline BUT, it used as a support unit, you will not see more than ~4, because making more would be a waste of resources and supplies
even sentries can change the course of an engagement with force fields, but you'll never see more than ~6
infestors, on the other side, is massed in large numbers and do the job for everyone instead of helping the main army winning the battle, like a support should work
so, imo, the infestor is the worst designed unit, even worse than worhound and should be changed so that making more ~4-6 is an autolose for the zerg player
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On January 04 2013 08:15 The_Darkness wrote:Show nested quote +On January 04 2013 06:11 KamikazeDurrrp wrote:
This is why I hate posting in forums. You guys completely twist my words and in the end misunderstand everything I say. Do you even pay attention to what I write? My point was:
a)units in SC2 offer too much utility
b)to access most of the utility that a SC2 unit has to offer most of the time you just push a button and you get the full utility
What do I mean by this? Let's say I was a protoss player in SC2 and I saw that the terran player was massing seige tanks. What would I do? All I have to do is drop a robotics bay, make immortals and immediately a-move them into seige tanks because by just making the immortal, I have created the sufficient counter to stop seige tanks, because by design, the immortal has been given all the utility it needs to counter seige tanks (hardened shields, high burst damage, decent mobility). This creates a "dynamic" where instead of making decisions that would reward you for your strategy, you are more or less rewarded for doing the obvious. Compare this to the lurker, which has the obvious utility of doing large amount of aoe burst damage. However, in order to DO that you have to position your lurkers in the ground where they have to expose themselves, and prevent themselves from moving. In the end this forces positioning and smart usage. This is what I mean when I say “dynamic”. You don’t instantly gain access to all the utility the lurker has by just making it, you are REWARDED that utility by using lurkers well.
This especially applies to fungal because as I have repeated again and again, fungal pretty much does everything for the zerg player. For just the price of landing it, you get crowd control, damage and immobility from your opponent. It's not the fact that fungal "restricts" micro, it's the fact that it's so easy to restrict micro with fungal WITH the free damage WITH the long range of fungal that just pushes the spell over the top in terms of design.
This was why I made a parallel when comparing SC2 to BW because when compared to the units in BW, SC2 have much more utility than the BW units had. BUT for what utility that the BW units had, they were much stronger, but also much more limited in accessing that utility. Let's just look plague when compared to fungal. As I've noted earlier, fungal provides much more utility than plague, since fungal can immobilize AND silence some units from using abilities (stalker blink, etc.). However, in terms of burst damage, plague does MUCH more damage. BUT you know how much plague costs? 150 ENERGY. Compare that to the cheap, spammable 75 energy fungal. Also consider plague is PURGABLE in BW. I don't see a purge in SC2 anytime soon.
And when did I say SC2 units were "all about the balance" when BW units had "cool micro"? I made the point BW was much MORE RESTRICTIVE in terms of the additional utility that their units had, making so that ACCESSING THAT UTILITY WAS POTENTIALLY GAME CHANGING. You never had the "make one unit completely counter options from the other race" in BW as much as you do in SC2. You especially see this mentality when you look at the various forums on how to deal with certain compositions. You lose to Broodlords or Colossus? Make more vikings. You lose to Ultralisks? Make more maruaders. You lose as zerg? MAKE MORE INFESTORS. And so on and so on.
And for you information, I NEVER EVEN PLAYED BROODWAR. I’m aware that many of the units in Broodwar were buggy, dumb pieces of crap that never worked all the time. BUT THAT HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE DESIGN OF THE UNIT. Just because the reaver scarab didn’t work all the time make it so it completely invalidated the design of the unit, which included restricting the ammo and the mobility of the reaver.
Is it too much to ask for less a-move units with less ability to do everything and just be extremely strong in one aspect? Is it too much to ask for a game where you are rewarded for your execution rather than your ability to do the obvious? I know Starcraft 2 is not an easy game to master, but if we want to make a DYNAMIC COMPETITIVE E-SPORT there are more factors than just “something looks cool and as long as it works it should be in the game”. You could make rock paper scissors the most awesome graphically interesting jaw dropping animations into a video game, but it still wouldn’t take away from the fact that all the possibilities are obvious and not that dynamic.
As a spectator I don’t want to sit there and say it’s obvious that the protoss should have made more immortals to counter the siege tanks. I don’t want to sit there and say it’s obvious that the zerg should have made more fungals in order to tear the deathball into pieces. I want to learn to use marines like MKP in order to maximize the utility of marines like he does. I want to learn to use zerglings like Life does and abuse them in every stage of the game for runbys, counterattacks and small strike forces. But with the way blizzard is balancing the game it just doesn’t look possible. Just look at the tempest. You know why blizzard created the tempest in the first place? “Protoss is struggling too much with mutalisks, so let’s give the protoss a unit that completely counters mutalisks”. This then changed to “completely counters broodlord-infestor” when blizzard saw how much people were struggling with that ridiculous composition. I mean, just the thought of the tempest hurts my head. Out of all the races that needed a new capital ship, and Blizzard chose protoss? I don’t even know what’s real anymore.
One only has to look at the responses against me to see how much the “terrible terrible” design philosophy has seeped into the minds of people. The moment I try to compare BW design to SC2 design I am instantly turned into “that idiot BW elitist who doesn’t know what he’s talking about that’s ruining SC2 and only wants BW with better graphics”. Um…No? What I was trying to achieve was how we could just look at BW and learn how BW designed their units, and the successes that made BW great could be emulated in SC2. Contrary to what people believe, I don’t want another BW, I want a BETTER and MORE SUCCESSFUL THAN BW AS A GAME in every way. And can we really say at this point SC2 is better game than BW is? If your answer is no then you have no right calling me a BW elitist. You write, "You never had the "make one unit completely counter options from the other race" in BW as much as you do in SC2. " BW was probably the most refined game on the planet and it was very clear to the pros at almost all times, it seemed to me at least, what they should be doing, what they should be making and when they should be doing it. For example, mutas made it so that zvz always featured the exact same unit comp. Always. If you built something else you lost. End of story. How is that, in your book, so worthy of celebration? Also, e.g., didn't the presence of science vessels mean that you couldn't build mutas anymore (in mass)? These things were hard counters for that tech. How else should they be described? What aspect of the BW meta game was at all dynamic? That game was effectively solved. That's not a knock on BW. It's bound to happen to any game that is played for as long as BW and is not continuously patched. You write, "As a spectator I don’t want to sit there and say it’s obvious that the protoss should have made more immortals to counter the siege tanks." Terran almost never mech in competitive tvps. When you have you been in a position to say this? I seriously doubt you watch SC2. It's OK to think SC2 has problems but to think that you have some insight into what constitutes good game design is arrogant given that you do not appear to be very knowledgeable about SC2.
You completley misunderstand everything he says, which I honestly even doubt is intetionally. Its more likely that you are unnuanced in your understanding of game philosophy that you aren't capable of understanding his logic. This would be fine if you just wasn't so damn arrogant and offensive in all of your comments. You should consider being more humble and study game design/play the game at decent level before you start attacking other.
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On January 04 2013 08:26 Rider517 wrote:
the difference between good and bad design is simple: is a unit used for what it is designed? no -> bad design; yes -> good design
example: infestor is designed as a caster support unit; is it used in this way? no -> bad design; it is used as a core army and sometimes main dps and much more
viper is a good designed unit, blinding cloud can be very very strong and balance-borderline BUT, it used as a support unit, you will not see more than ~4, because making more would be a waste of resources and supplies
even sentries can change the course of an engagement with force fields, but you'll never see more than ~6
infestors, on the other side, is massed in large numbers and do the job for everyone instead of helping the main army winning the battle, like a support should work
so, imo, the infestor is the worst designed unit, even worse than worhound and should be changed so that making more ~4-6 is an autolose for the zerg player
I'm sorry, but your view on good unit design is way too simplistic. Just because rock is used to counter scissors doesn't mean it's good game design at all. There is much more to consider than that. The unit being used like the designer planned it to might be nice (or not), but it has nothin to do with how fun/interesting/dynamic that unit is.
Also I kind of agree with KamikazeDurrrp's general approach that the obvious and extreme countering relations between sc2 units are not that exciting. I'm kind of surprised to see that being shut down so hard. On the other hand praising BW at the same time might be problematic, after all as someone pointed out before, even in BW the games after some point probably followed a pretty stale logic which you could probably even put into a flow chart.
I think there are currently just not enough viable possibilities to handle certain situations because of how extreme relations between the units are and as a result of that, there will most of the time be the "correct" thing to do in most cases. Add to that the fact that in most games, there's just one huge army in one spot of the map at one time and the lack of dynamic gameplay and unique decisions made by the players just makes the games really stale and resemble each other far too much. TvT used to be a good example of how things could be. Positioning, drops, multipronged attacks etc are all things that the player decides in a creative and "on the spot" kind of way most of the times, and this always created the gameplay that was most exciting to watch.
(all personal opinion of course)
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