EPTThe Warhound: Did We Make a Mistake? - Page 14
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s3rp
Germany3192 Posts
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EsportsJohn
United States4883 Posts
On January 19 2013 10:45 s3rp wrote: I still don't understand why the Thor is still in the game though. I hated the Thor from Day 1 and was happy when it was to be removed and a smaller more mobile unit was to be introduced for a similar purpose.... . Ground Units should not be this slow and clunky . I agree. We can always cross our fingers for LotV! | ||
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Rabiator
Germany3948 Posts
On January 16 2013 09:55 SC2John wrote: Well, the LAST thing mech needs is another supply-heavy unit that deals "okay" damage. It's far easier to have a unit with a relatively low supply cost that has a risk/reward factor to it. Perhaps it would have been best to make haywire missiles deal damage in a straight line or give them some kind of drawback. And, of course, tone the attacks WAY DOWN. But anyway, I think that the hellbat is doing a good job of filling in the role the warhound left. The only things I think needs fixing now are terran's lategame space control issues, early-game fragility, and where the new hellbats leave >blue flame< hellions. The thing which made the Warhound quite "pointless" is the fact that it was anti-mech ... when there are already two units coming out of the factory which have bonus damage against armored. The fact that it was easier to use and more powerful than both the Siege Tank and the Thor just made that stupidity totally obvious. They have their internal "we MUST make our new stuff different from BW units no matter how stupid the units get" rule and followed it through. They should really abolish this arrogance / urge to prove their own superiority (to the BW design team) and get a boatload of common sense and humility instead to make a really great game. | ||
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shin ken
Germany612 Posts
or make it some kind of electronic warfare spellcaster as an alterative to the ghost. | ||
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EsportsJohn
United States4883 Posts
On January 21 2013 07:41 shin ken wrote: I would actually like, to see a melee warhound with battletech style fists to punch holes in the faces of other units. It would fill the gap while not being just another marauder or make it some kind of electronic warfare spellcaster as an alterative to the ghost. Well, mech no longer needs a mechanical melee unit now that they have the hellbat, which is as good as melee already. At this point, I'm actually fairly happy with how they changed the hellbat, and I think it fills the void of the warhound rather well. I honestly would consider this topic closed for further discussion. | ||
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Emuking
United States144 Posts
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Scrubwave
Poland1786 Posts
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ke_ivan
Singapore374 Posts
And the metagame is full of marauders now. mmm or marauder/ siege tank/ viking. bleah | ||
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Infernal_dream
United States2359 Posts
On January 21 2013 13:47 ke_ivan wrote: every race has a 1a unit except terran now. Mass oracle is in essence a 1a unit. Mass Swarm host is the same. Which unit does terran have? And the metagame is full of marauders now. mmm or marauder/ siege tank/ viking. bleah I see a terran user. Vikings are 1a. Marines are 1a. Marauders are 1a. Thors are 1a. Battlecruisers are 1a. The whole "stutter step blah blah" you have to do that with cols, stalkers, you have to find the fine line between your zealots getting too far from the army without having too many die thing. The entire point of 1a is that your army is so much better it doesn't matter. In which case every unit is 1a. | ||
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Goldfish
2230 Posts
On January 19 2013 12:39 Rabiator wrote: The thing which made the Warhound quite "pointless" is the fact that it was anti-mech ... when there are already two units coming out of the factory which have bonus damage against armored. The fact that it was easier to use and more powerful than both the Siege Tank and the Thor just made that stupidity totally obvious. They have their internal "we MUST make our new stuff different from BW units no matter how stupid the units get" rule and followed it through. They should really abolish this arrogance / urge to prove their own superiority (to the BW design team) and get a boatload of common sense and humility instead to make a really great game. I agree. Someone posted this in another thread but this really show cases why BW is better than SC2: (Fun highlight - At around 4:15 minutes... The Arbiter manages to dodge "TWO" EMPs and then Stasis both Science Vessels. In SC2, this is almost impossible because the SC2 is like 2x faster and 2x more chaotic and random than BW. Everything is clumped up, etc.) I posted this before (in that same thread) but here's why BW and WC3 are better than SC2 (IMO): One of the main problems is the deathball syndrome and the fact that game encourages the use of the deathball (for example, if you split your units to attack two places at once, that's a high risk and low reward, not encouraged at all in SC2 because if you get attacked by your opponent's death ball, while your own is split into 2 smaller groups, then you lose). Wasn't a problem in BW or WC3, you were actually encouraged to split up your units and the battles looked good from spectator point of view too. Watching that BW montage video, the game looks a lot nicer than SC2 in terms of gameplay (how the units are spread out and the wave of science vessels and air units and everything in general... epic game). (Also, cool stuff can happen in SC2 too but in BW, it's much less "luck based" and more skill and player factored. In SC2, everything is clumped up and everything happens much faster than in BW. It's much more chaotic and random and while there are times when epic stuff happens, it's really rare and most cases, it's players being caught in bad position or something.) Here's a follow up post I made: + Show Spoiler + Though not specific to deathballs in general, the way the pathing worked did play a huge role in battles in BW. I remember reading from the WC3's Project Revolution developers stating how one of the huge differences in the game would be the way pathing worked. (WC3 naturally has no deathballs due to how units grouped and always moved in a formation.) Anyway, SC2's battles and a lot of things in SC2 is a bit more random and more chaotic than both BW and WC3. If you're caught out of position one time (or screw up once), it can severely put you behind because of that one mistake. Due to the fog of war and not always knowing where the enemy is (even with a lot of scouting), this makes SC2 a lot more random in the sense that those types of random events are more costly. In both BW and WC3, there were much less potential for game changing mistakes. A lot of stuff is more gradual and slower (though while BW is *slower than SC2, it was still a relatively fast paced RTS). *Slower is good in some cases. I said before but in that BW montage video, the Arbiter at 4:15 managed to dodge two EMPs, then stasis two spread out Science Vessels. In SC2, a lot of stuff is faster and mistakes are more costly in general. Things like the deathball syndrome make the problem worse. Also when I say deathball syndrome, I don't just mean the pathing but how in general (in SC2), you're not encouraged to split up your main fighting force. In both BW and WC3, you had lots of opportunity to split up your army (for example, if you had 100 army supply, splitting them to 50 / 50 and attacking two places at once was viable). In SC2, it's very risky and generally not encouraged to split up your army (also I mean when both you and your opponent have relatively equal army supply), unless it's some weird base trade scenario. Generally, the player that keeps most of their army in one place, wins and lots of things in SC2 reinforce that with how fast armies die and how fast everything in general happens. In BW, the game was much more gradual so even if both you and your opponent had equal army supply, there were lots of moments and times where splitting up was viable with little risk. Also even if your attacking forces were destroyed, there were plenty of time to reproduce units. BW, bases and everything were spread out and maps feel a lot bigger than maps in SC2 (in SC2, even on a huge map like Whirlwind, you still want to keep your army in one place generally). So overall, I feel that one of the more understated (and the most important IMO) reasons that BW is better than SC2 is the fact that in BW, things were slower and more gradual, battles were all over the place, and the game was less random and chaotic. Here are SC2's problems (reasons why the game is still worse than BW): 1. Everything I said above on why the game is more random and chaotic (death ball syndrome, everything is much faster and all mistakes are much more costlier and makes things much more random overall and less based on actual player skill). (That's also my reasoning on why we rarely have consistent players in SC2. The overall game design is just leads to more randomness than needed. I mean, we may have players stay relatively close to the top 10, but they'll rarely do something crazy like win 2 GSLs in a row.) 2. Units are more boring. The Reaver should be added back to SC2 IMO. I'm not a BW elitist. Things were done better in BW but I want SC2 to succeed the things that made BW good. The Reaver is one of the best designed (in terms of gameplay) unit in any RTS and call it a day. Again, this isn't me being BW elitist, I like the Swarm Host over the Lurker. A lot of new units replaced the old units in terms of design or concept. Banelings are similar to Scourges, except on the ground. Lurkers, while a staple and one of reasons BW made SC1 good, is not that unique of a unit and is just a typical line splash damage unit. However... nothing in SC2 is like the Reaver. It needs to come back. I really dislike the new VR too. I posted this in the balance update thread but basically, the old Void Ray had an interesting mechanic which required micro (micro your VRs to prevent over attacking one unit, basically "cloning" your VRs to attack different units to have it charge up) and I felt that they could have better tuned that instead of what they have now with the manual activation (which doesn't require that much thought to use considering the duration, 20 seconds, is huge and the cooldown isn't that long either). | ||
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Cloak
United States816 Posts
On January 14 2013 05:23 Sigil2 wrote: I've been a long time lurker on TL and a long time Terran player as well. I decided to make an account and start posting specifically because of this issue. The Warhound was an extremely overpowered unit. It was so imbalanced that I don't think any reasonable person could expect the community's reaction to its introduction as anything but cataclysmic. That's exactly what it was. The GIGANTIC thread to remove the Warhound was one of the biggest, if not the biggest, I've ever seen in my time spent on Team Liquid. I think that this fervent outrage comes from the fact that the things that many people dislike about Starcraft 2 were all mashed together in the iteration of the Warhound that we saw. Players, viewers, and casters alike want to see awesome micro. We want to see insane multitasking and ridiculous holds. We want to see things that are impressive. The Warhound was not this. A seven colossi death ball is not this. A wall of Spinecrawlers with infestors and Broodlords slowly pushing forward is not this. The thing is though, that in my opinion Terran is the only race that has the potential to meet all of the criteria that the community has to find a match entertaining. Every race can do drops, but the medivac and the efficiency of marines and marauders in small squads means that Terran drops are the best. In a perfect world, the Terran army can set up a defensive position and split his army multiple times in order to harass his opponents expansions while simultaneously protecting his own. The frenetic and visceral play style available to Terran is what people want to see. Things like the Warhound keep this awesome hyper-active and aggresive playstyle from being the dominant playstyle Starcraft 2. I think it's important to note, however, that the other 2 races already have units that are "1a gg" such as the Colossus and Broodlord. Deathballs are bad. I personally would prefer it if the Warhound was changed into a very fast moving raider unit, and the Hellion removed in favor of only the Hellbat. This is not the point I wish to make with this post though. I don't think that my opinion on the optimal unit design in Starcraft is very important because I am only in platinum league. There is something that I think needs to be discussed, and it is directly related to the enjoyment of the game and to the success of the eSports scene in this game and others. Everyone always talks about balance. In every single game where people can compete, people will whine about things being imbalanced. Then, reasonable persons will inform the whiners that they are blowing things out of proportion. The complainers often are blowing things out of proportion, and at the absolute highest level of play where things actually matter Starcraft is impressively balanced for the number of units and the clever player base it has. When people respond with perfectly logical statements to complaints about imbalance they often overlook one thing that I think turns off a lot of players. To take the TvP match up for example, HT and Colossi are not overpowered because the Terran has counters to them. This may very well be, but (I must admit I feel this way as well) people feel cheated because of the amount of effort needed on the Terran side of the engagement is far greater than the amount of effort on the Protoss side. I'm sure such a comment will piss a lot of people off, but one only needs to look at the APM numbers for ultra high level Protoss and Terran players to see that the Terran needs to do a lot more than the Protoss to win. This isn't fun. It's balanced, but it certainly isn't fair. I shouldn't have to outplay my opponent by say a 60% margin to win. I should have to outplay my opponent by a 1% margin to win. When Terran players whine about how Protoss becomes nearly invincible late game (along with Zerg to a slightly lessened degree) we are greeted with a response that is absolutely insulting: "Don't let them get there." That's what everyone says. It is accepted that the Terran players need to constantly harass and delay Zerg and Protoss. There is no such need for the Protoss. No Protoss player is hanging out on three bases and thinking to himself, "Man I better go do some double drops to do economic damage, otherwise I won't be able to engage his tier 3." The warhound was not perfect by any means in the format that we saw. The fact remains though that many of my Terran friends and I think that it is absolutely absurd to remove the unit completely. Let Terran have a good late game unit. We want our late game to not be a joke. The Warhound was a midgame unit, true, but with a little reworking it could actually provide Terran some hope in the lategame of TvP. When I watch a cast of a TvP game and I see that the video is over 15-20 minutes long, I know that there is a 90% chance that the Protoss won. This needs to change. Maybe the Warhound is the way to change it, maybe it isn't. But, change is certainly needed and this expansion is the time to do it. I don't think APM is a fair way to justify that Terran is the skilled race and Protoss are drooling idiots. I just think Terran unit micro lends to faster alteration of simple commands. Like doing a beat at 150 bpm vs 250 bpm. Stutter frequency with Marines vs. Stalkers for example. I still think strategic depth on both sides is relatively equal, just that when Protoss gets a strategic advantage in lategame, they're rewarded a little more heavily, but that's been pretty obvious for most of WoL. We'll see where the dust settles for HotS. | ||
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rezoacken
Canada2719 Posts
On January 21 2013 14:07 Goldfish wrote: I agree. Someone posted this in another thread but this really show cases why BW is better than SC2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjkctj71-aU (Fun highlight - At around 4:15 minutes... The Arbiter manages to dodge "TWO" EMPs and then Stasis both Science Vessels. In SC2, this is almost impossible because the SC2 is like 2x faster and 2x more chaotic and random than BW. Everything is clumped up, etc.) I posted this before (in that same thread) but here's why BW and WC3 are better than SC2 (IMO): Here's a follow up post I made: + Show Spoiler + Though not specific to deathballs in general, the way the pathing worked did play a huge role in battles in BW. I remember reading from the WC3's Project Revolution developers stating how one of the huge differences in the game would be the way pathing worked. (WC3 naturally has no deathballs due to how units grouped and always moved in a formation.) Anyway, SC2's battles and a lot of things in SC2 is a bit more random and more chaotic than both BW and WC3. If you're caught out of position one time (or screw up once), it can severely put you behind because of that one mistake. Due to the fog of war and not always knowing where the enemy is (even with a lot of scouting), this makes SC2 a lot more random in the sense that those types of random events are more costly. In both BW and WC3, there were much less potential for game changing mistakes. A lot of stuff is more gradual and slower (though while BW is *slower than SC2, it was still a relatively fast paced RTS). *Slower is good in some cases. I said before but in that BW montage video, the Arbiter at 4:15 managed to dodge two EMPs, then stasis two spread out Science Vessels. In SC2, a lot of stuff is faster and mistakes are more costly in general. Things like the deathball syndrome make the problem worse. Also when I say deathball syndrome, I don't just mean the pathing but how in general (in SC2), you're not encouraged to split up your main fighting force. In both BW and WC3, you had lots of opportunity to split up your army (for example, if you had 100 army supply, splitting them to 50 / 50 and attacking two places at once was viable). In SC2, it's very risky and generally not encouraged to split up your army (also I mean when both you and your opponent have relatively equal army supply), unless it's some weird base trade scenario. Generally, the player that keeps most of their army in one place, wins and lots of things in SC2 reinforce that with how fast armies die and how fast everything in general happens. In BW, the game was much more gradual so even if both you and your opponent had equal army supply, there were lots of moments and times where splitting up was viable with little risk. Also even if your attacking forces were destroyed, there were plenty of time to reproduce units. BW, bases and everything were spread out and maps feel a lot bigger than maps in SC2 (in SC2, even on a huge map like Whirlwind, you still want to keep your army in one place generally). So overall, I feel that one of the more understated (and the most important IMO) reasons that BW is better than SC2 is the fact that in BW, things were slower and more gradual, battles were all over the place, and the game was less random and chaotic. Here are SC2's problems (reasons why the game is still worse than BW): 1. Everything I said above on why the game is more random and chaotic (death ball syndrome, everything is much faster and all mistakes are much more costlier and makes things much more random overall and less based on actual player skill). (That's also my reasoning on why we rarely have consistent players in SC2. The overall game design is just leads to more randomness than needed. I mean, we may have players stay relatively close to the top 10, but they'll rarely do something crazy like win 2 GSLs in a row.) 2. Units are more boring. The Reaver should be added back to SC2 IMO. I'm not a BW elitist. Things were done better in BW but I want SC2 to succeed the things that made BW good. The Reaver is one of the best designed (in terms of gameplay) unit in any RTS and call it a day. Again, this isn't me being BW elitist, I like the Swarm Host over the Lurker. A lot of new units replaced the old units in terms of design or concept. Banelings are similar to Scourges, except on the ground. Lurkers, while a staple and one of reasons BW made SC1 good, is not that unique of a unit and is just a typical line splash damage unit. However... nothing in SC2 is like the Reaver. It needs to come back. I really dislike the new VR too. I posted this in the balance update thread but basically, the old Void Ray had an interesting mechanic which required micro (micro your VRs to prevent over attacking one unit, basically "cloning" your VRs to attack different units to have it charge up) and I felt that they could have better tuned that instead of what they have now with the manual activation (which doesn't require that much thought to use considering the duration, 20 seconds, is huge and the cooldown isn't that long either). SC2:BW is the future ! I'd be so happy if it was to take over. | ||
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Sigil2
United States10 Posts
On January 19 2013 10:45 s3rp wrote: I still don't understand why the Thor is still in the game though. I hated the Thor from Day 1 and was happy when it was to be removed and a smaller more mobile unit was to be introduced for a similar purpose.... . Ground Units should not be this slow and clunky . I've always found the Thor a bit confusing. It's basically a capital ship that waddles around. It's like a BC/Carrier in cost, supply, and tier. It's similar thematically in that it is supposed to be a crowning achievement of the Terran war machine. In actuality it's a big stupid block that has a model constantly clipping with everything. Not to harp on the whole micro-issue but... Broodlords can be micro'd more than Thors. When a unit has less of an ability to be micro'd than BL's, that's a problem. Before anyone gets mad, I realize that BL's require significant attention in positioning and spreading to avoid seekers/toilets. Thors make BL's look like speedlings at 8x. On January 21 2013 16:40 Cloak wrote: I don't think APM is a fair way to justify that Terran is the skilled race and Protoss are drooling idiots. I just think Terran unit micro lends to faster alteration of simple commands. Like doing a beat at 150 bpm vs 250 bpm. Stutter frequency with Marines vs. Stalkers for example. I still think strategic depth on both sides is relatively equal, just that when Protoss gets a strategic advantage in lategame, they're rewarded a little more heavily, but that's been pretty obvious for most of WoL. We'll see where the dust settles for HotS. I let a little bit of "protoss imba" whining into my post when I really didn't mean to. I don't actually attend the Terran universal and apparently mandatory religion, 'Our Lady of The Stutterstep'. Positioning, pulling back weakened units, and managing multiple fronts are all things that every single race must do, and they are all valid forms of micro. Your point about the speed of the movements being different is quite accurate. That is not the difference in APM I am talking about. In my personal experience the Terran needs to damage the Protoss economically in the early to mid game and get favorable trades in skirmishes. If the Protoss is not damaged repeatedly, to the point of being crippled really, the strength of their army in a head on battle is too much for Terrans. Perhaps if you are Bomber or Thorzain you can just use your incredible and consistent micro and 300 apm to win these maxed engagements without the aforementioned damage dealing, but it seems to me that all but the best of the best T have trouble at this point. Now here is where I think the core of terran's/the whole community's discontent comes from: There once was a game called Starcraft: Brood War. In that game there were many skirmishes and small exchanges spread out over a large fronts. Defending multiple positions was necessitated because many bases were needed. Terran was pretty good at defending multiple things. The game was extremely balanced. We've had fourteen years of awesome competition. In case you are reading this and don't lurk on TL ever, Brood War was actually a 100% perfect divine gift from the heaven's that we mortals can not possibly understand the majesty of. The Brood War extends life. The Brood War is key to space travel. The Brood War must flow. Brood War is an awesome game, and let me tell you, SC2's Terran is an insanely awesome race. In Brood War. Terran units (well, bio units) function extremely well in skirmishes and squad sized engagements. Unfortunately, often times a Terran player can be being quite fancy with his multiple packs of units around the map dealing large portions of damage through great multitasking, and then they get curbstomped by a P or Z deathball. Terran needs to function in the reality of Starcraft 2, not this made up world where SC2 is actually played exactly like BW and Terran is totally overpowered and they only ever lose because they are bad The lategame of SC2 is head on army vs. army. That's just how it is. Until the other races must break up their death balls, the reality is that Terran needs something more in the late game in head on fights. This is why Terran needs a late game army: 1. Terran's strategies are limited by our late-game weakness. To use the absolute broadest of terms, all strategies can be classified into two categories in SC2: passive and aggresive. Passive can be interchanged with 'macro' oriented. 'Passive' play, ironically, is in my opinion the more strategically ACTIVE option. A macro-oriented player is putting the burden of aggression on their opponent. Then, the passive player can defend well until his macro pays off and he finds a significant strategic advantage. Terran has pretty awesome defensive tools. Unfortunately, playing a passive style of Terran is suicide. I realize that active styles of play are more fun to spectate. I think they are more fun to play. That's why I play Terran. However, it is not acceptable to have 1/2 of the spectrum of strategies to be unavailable to Terran. 2. Transitions are interesting. People whine quite a lot about how MMM for 40 minutes is boring. I agree. Unfortunately, Terran late game tech is just not good. Terran needs higher tech that is actually worthwhile to transition into so that we can stop getting carpal tunnel pressing A (and occasionally D) repeatedly. Transitions are fun for the player and spectator and at least help change up the game for the enemy. 3. TvP is stale. TvT and TvZ have a number of different ways and styles that they can be played. You can play a number of styles in TvP as well. All of them just suck aside from a highly standardized style of bio. I think it is really telling that Bomber uses the same build in every TvP he plays as far as I can tell. It's not fun to watch and it's not fun to play. 4. A strong late game Terran means P and Z's mid game abilities can be changed up. Every race currently needs something to deal with the MMM ball. Not only does Terran's reliance on "MMM+Vikings/Ghosts/Whatever Counter You Need To Not Insanely Lose" mean the Terran is effectively forced into minimally diversified builds, but it means that the other races must HAVE and USE the builds//tools they have to destroy MMM. The opposing race in TvP/vZ must always be defensive. The midgame for protoss especially can not be buffed because Terran needs to eek out an advantage in that time period. Wow. I didn't realize how much I was text-walling it up. | ||
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The_Darkness
United States910 Posts
On January 21 2013 14:07 Goldfish wrote: I agree. Someone posted this in another thread but this really show cases why BW is better than SC2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zjkctj71-aU (Fun highlight - At around 4:15 minutes... The Arbiter manages to dodge "TWO" EMPs and then Stasis both Science Vessels. In SC2, this is almost impossible because the SC2 is like 2x faster and 2x more chaotic and random than BW. Everything is clumped up, etc.) I posted this before (in that same thread) but here's why BW and WC3 are better than SC2 (IMO): Here's a follow up post I made: + Show Spoiler + Though not specific to deathballs in general, the way the pathing worked did play a huge role in battles in BW. I remember reading from the WC3's Project Revolution developers stating how one of the huge differences in the game would be the way pathing worked. (WC3 naturally has no deathballs due to how units grouped and always moved in a formation.) Anyway, SC2's battles and a lot of things in SC2 is a bit more random and more chaotic than both BW and WC3. If you're caught out of position one time (or screw up once), it can severely put you behind because of that one mistake. Due to the fog of war and not always knowing where the enemy is (even with a lot of scouting), this makes SC2 a lot more random in the sense that those types of random events are more costly. In both BW and WC3, there were much less potential for game changing mistakes. A lot of stuff is more gradual and slower (though while BW is *slower than SC2, it was still a relatively fast paced RTS). *Slower is good in some cases. I said before but in that BW montage video, the Arbiter at 4:15 managed to dodge two EMPs, then stasis two spread out Science Vessels. In SC2, a lot of stuff is faster and mistakes are more costly in general. Things like the deathball syndrome make the problem worse. Also when I say deathball syndrome, I don't just mean the pathing but how in general (in SC2), you're not encouraged to split up your main fighting force. In both BW and WC3, you had lots of opportunity to split up your army (for example, if you had 100 army supply, splitting them to 50 / 50 and attacking two places at once was viable). In SC2, it's very risky and generally not encouraged to split up your army (also I mean when both you and your opponent have relatively equal army supply), unless it's some weird base trade scenario. Generally, the player that keeps most of their army in one place, wins and lots of things in SC2 reinforce that with how fast armies die and how fast everything in general happens. In BW, the game was much more gradual so even if both you and your opponent had equal army supply, there were lots of moments and times where splitting up was viable with little risk. Also even if your attacking forces were destroyed, there were plenty of time to reproduce units. BW, bases and everything were spread out and maps feel a lot bigger than maps in SC2 (in SC2, even on a huge map like Whirlwind, you still want to keep your army in one place generally). So overall, I feel that one of the more understated (and the most important IMO) reasons that BW is better than SC2 is the fact that in BW, things were slower and more gradual, battles were all over the place, and the game was less random and chaotic. Here are SC2's problems (reasons why the game is still worse than BW): 1. Everything I said above on why the game is more random and chaotic (death ball syndrome, everything is much faster and all mistakes are much more costlier and makes things much more random overall and less based on actual player skill). (That's also my reasoning on why we rarely have consistent players in SC2. The overall game design is just leads to more randomness than needed. I mean, we may have players stay relatively close to the top 10, but they'll rarely do something crazy like win 2 GSLs in a row.) 2. Units are more boring. The Reaver should be added back to SC2 IMO. I'm not a BW elitist. Things were done better in BW but I want SC2 to succeed the things that made BW good. The Reaver is one of the best designed (in terms of gameplay) unit in any RTS and call it a day. Again, this isn't me being BW elitist, I like the Swarm Host over the Lurker. A lot of new units replaced the old units in terms of design or concept. Banelings are similar to Scourges, except on the ground. Lurkers, while a staple and one of reasons BW made SC1 good, is not that unique of a unit and is just a typical line splash damage unit. However... nothing in SC2 is like the Reaver. It needs to come back. I really dislike the new VR too. I posted this in the balance update thread but basically, the old Void Ray had an interesting mechanic which required micro (micro your VRs to prevent over attacking one unit, basically "cloning" your VRs to attack different units to have it charge up) and I felt that they could have better tuned that instead of what they have now with the manual activation (which doesn't require that much thought to use considering the duration, 20 seconds, is huge and the cooldown isn't that long either). Why not qualify everything you say with, "in my opinion and in my opinion only"? I got into SC by watching BW games and really liked watching the very best players go at it, but found games where the best players weren't playing pretty dull and generally like SC2 way better. I found the lack of variety in unit compositions in BW, especially in certain match ups, extremely boring as well. I also played BW and SC2 and like SC2 way, way more. I don't find most of the units in BW to be interesting (although I agree the Reaver is pretty cool) and the game looks and feels extraordinarily clunky to me. Given the number of people on these fora posting about how great BW is and how there's so much action everywhere, I started watching "snipealot2" stream a bit and did not find the game that interesting (putting aside differences in graphics). This is all just my opinion. Also I don't understand the whining about the game being much faster and all mistakes being much costlier. What's the issue? Do you want to lower the skill cap? The very best players in SC2 win at a 60% + and in some cases 70% + clip, which means they've figured the game out and can generally avoid the mistakes you're complaining about (which I assume are things like, "banelings are hard to split against and your army might get fungaled and then you can't micro and you lose because of one engagement" etc.). SC2 games played at the very highest levels are quite often back and forth affairs. It can be turtly and death ball-y, no doubt, but it can also be very dynamic with more action on the field than in BW, because in SC2 unlike BW you don't have to spend so much APM and attention on making units, fighting your own units' stupid pathing, moving your army, etc. Whether an SC2 game is dynamic or a turtlefest will depend on the players, the map and the matchup. | ||
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Disengaged
United States6994 Posts
Can't produce a Warhound without an armory. The haywire missiles have to be researched. The missiles do not fire automatically but require manual targeting on units to fire. They could've tweaked the Warhound a whole lot more before they decided that it was unfit to be in the game anymore. I do believe the decision to remove the Warhound was made a bit too hastily. | ||
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HumpingHydra
Canada97 Posts
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labbe
Sweden1456 Posts
Unfortunately this probably won't happen, but maybe if they just improve the custom game system we might as least be able to play Brood war within sc2 with our own ladder ^^ | ||
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rezoacken
Canada2719 Posts
Also I don't understand the whining about the game being much faster and all mistakes being much costlier. What's the issue? Do you want to lower the skill cap? The very best players in SC2 win at a 60% + and in some cases 70% + clip, which means they've figured the game out and can generally avoid the mistakes you're complaining about (which I assume are things like, "banelings are hard to split against and your army might get fungaled and then you can't micro and you lose because of one engagement" etc.). SC2 games played at the very highest levels are quite often back and forth affairs. It can be turtly and death ball-y, no doubt, but it can also be very dynamic with more action on the field than in BW, because in SC2 unlike BW you don't have to spend so much APM and attention on making units, fighting your own units' stupid pathing, moving your army, etc. Whether an SC2 game is dynamic or a turtlefest will depend on the players, the map and the matchup. The issue is from a viewer perspective. It sucks to have some matches be resolved in 20s in a big ball vs ball battle and one player not being to ever comeback (not all matches obviously). Battles are shorter and less impressive when it comes to unit movements, and losing a battle is very unforgiving. I'm not saying SC2 never provides some good matches, it certainly do. But sadly, there are many that disappoint. It's not like SC2 has nothing good, it certainly does some good stuff but it seems blizzard isn't willing to put an end to the death ball syndrome and that's a shame. I disagree with goldfish that SC2 units are boring. Maybe some of them should be replaced by more skill-sensitive units like Colossi vs Reaver but verall I'm pretty ok with the unit design. What I don't like is the whole quick 200/200-units move in a ball- crazy dps in battle due to the whole ball firing thing. | ||
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Aton
Germany1 Post
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Avicularia
540 Posts
On January 22 2013 06:14 Aton wrote: I think they should give Vikings a mid/lategame upgrade to allow them to land. In addition buff their dmg and hp in ground mode to make them a viable counter to immortals. It would also help against TvZ bl ultra switches and makes tempests and voidray easier to deal with. I'm not sure if vikings is good way to counter immortals, but terran really needs some fast shooting mech unit to deal with them. (Or maybe blizzard will fix that stupid unit, that's so lame in both PvMech and PvZ) | ||
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