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We are working on mech TvP this week and we are working a little on Reapers. We feel like mech TvP still isn't where we want it to be and Reapers are now a better early rusher but we would like to see if we can find a way to make it more generally useful.
But TvP mech is the real focus. We are looking at some buffs to mech units but we have to be careful because mech units can be very strong in other matchups (TvT, TvZ).
With many players getting upset over difficulty opening mech or the amount of ways protoss can abuse it with the mothership core and air units. Many players have recently taken to the blizzard forums have been blowing up with complaints regarding the usage of mech against protoss.
One post that blizzard has responded to is this.
+ Show Spoiler +
After playing several games on all matchups post patch 10 (and 100+ pre patch), here are my thoughts on the terran side of things.
On Units:
Reapers: Get shutdown pretty easily in TvZ/TvP matchups while becoming much more deadlier in TvT. The player with the reaper who gets hit first loses which seems very frustrating.
I think their damage against light units need to be toned down alittle here to give marines or even hellions some chance. Would be great if there were ways to overcome armoured foes e.g marauders/roaches/stalkers instead of 1~2 of them shutting down all of them unless massed.
Widow Mines: I think they are a nice addition to someone who mechs in the TvZ/TvT matchups (more on this later) and give some useful defense utility. The 1 second burrow time makes them very good offensive units. Seems abit too supply heavy for lots of board control. Itd be nice if hi-sec auto tracking could increase their range or something that makes them alittle more usable late game when detectors are plenty.
Given their build time (from factories that are expensive in early/mid game) and supply cost they can countered far too easily though or microed around. Also why do they trigger on free hallucinations e.g. pheonixes which effectively make all that resources/supply spent on WMs redundant. reason why they are literally useless in TvP.
Medivacs: Love the speed boost as it creates really interesting scenarios (frustration for the enemy) but the ability should have a longer cool down or an energy cost or takes extra damage in return for speed so that it is really for emergency only.
Healing upgrade is far too good. Taking out small drops or small contingent of the MMM bio force is far too difficult e.g. mech vs bio as more damage is required or a presence of a large large force.
Thors: I do like the HEP option and I think the thor in terms of the 3d model/design is "cool" yet reality is that its still too costly/clunky. It still feels too cumbersome. I think the original idea of the warhound being half the thor would fix this with the HEP option. So a warhound with lower cost/size/supply with similiar GtA range attack as the thor (fires 2 rockets instead of 4 in ExpP? and a weaker HEP?).
Hellions/Hellbats/BattleHellions: Ive always liked battle hellions and their ability to transform. Ive never tried Hellbat + MMM but in terms of "mech" and the hellions role, they do well e.g. providing a beefy layer for your mech composition or hold position hellbat drops with medivacs.
However instead of being even moreso effective against light units, I think that they need either an upgrade to either make alittle bit more durable (take less FF? in battle mode?) or be a little more effective against anti light foes (a little higher flat base damage?).
Ravens: I really do think that the seeker missiles need to have some sort of splash back. The current ability seems useful in say sniping tanks or pre-engagement harass but during actual engagements they're becoming quite awkward and less effective to use compared to the old.
Either the old seeker makes its return or a new ability that involves splash (duration or direct etc) is a must. Also some attention to auto turrets would be nice.
General thoughts on other units/upgrades/misc stuff: I think battle cruisers are fine as they are contrary to what others thinks atm even in TvP that doesn't involve tempests. Tanks on the otherhand should be given a buff given all these new threats posed by the other races + maps (no more steppes) + the redundancy of 1/1/1 in TvP. Whether its a damage buff or cost/supply buff Im not sure but it definitely needs one. Tech reactors would be a nice macro buff for T which lacks severely in that department in the late game.
Lastly I feel as if vikings should have a late game upgrade to make them deal or atleast be more durable against all these new air threats that has cropped up in HOTS + durable ground mode.
On Matchups:
TvT: Outside of reaper wars, I think the matchup is generally similiar to WoL with few minor differences like bio drops becoming abit too nasty.
TvZ: In terms of mech, I think they are in a pretty good spot. A combination of WMs/hellbats/thors/tanks with later air support has a very interesting relationship with whats happening over at the zerg camp e.g. roach/hydra, vipers, new ultralisks etc. The widow mines help out against the remaxes and air threats e.g. mutas overpowering thors.
However because of the new raven ability, the air war seems harder than it was to begin with. Need the splash back. Lastly, swarmhost's locusts do far too much damage hence why when they reach a number like 10+, it becomes very difficult to deal with them. I think more locust/less damage would be better option.
TvP: This one in terms of mech has far too many problems. The tempests seem to really kill off the viability all together. MsC/hallucinations makes WM redundant and archons eat through hellbats.
I think hallucinations either aren't free or are similiar to the BW counterparts (so no flying scanner ala phoenix) or ob build time goes back to what it was originally since scouting is essentially all so easy now. Im thinking hallucinations need another look.
The dreaded 1/1/1 seems not so effective anymore due to the MsC and the MsC poses some early game threat (fly straight into T mineral line along with a stalker/zealot poke) that puts T into defensive mode most of the time. The threat of oracles (I didn't know but 2~3 of them can ignore a turret or two and clear out mineral lines or take out key buildings in matter of seconds).
I think instead of looking at Terran balance, the immortal and tempests need to be looked at because if they are toned down in a way that they dont hard counter things, I think mech could be viable. Immortals which also pose problems in PvZ ala immortal sentry all in should be toned down so that tanks can exploit some weakeness instead of relying SO much on ghosts. EMPs should "support" the units not decide their viability. Whether hardened shield is an ability or damage is nerfed or some other rework Im not sure. What im thinking is a nice balance so that immortals aren't so susceptible to burst damage dealers like marines while not being too specialised as an anti-armoured sniper.
With regards to tempests, I think they are a fine unit except that they need some sort of a weakness to compensate for the massive range/hitpoints and dareisay movement speed (same as thor/BCs etC). Dealing with tempests means you really have to commit say your vikings hence why this weakness is required. An interesting concept of a flying space controlling unit that reduces its speed and AOE damage in return for a focused long range attack would be interesting..
Just my thoughts for now.
With blizzards response being,
Thanks for the post. I am NOT endorsing Protoss nerfs by posting on this thread. =) I tend to agree with his comments on the heal beam, the need for changes on the Tank and the Battle Hellion, his concerns on the Raven and the Thor.
I also think he has good comments about TvP Mech. I don't know that nerfing the Protoss units are the answer because of the need for those units to be useful in other match ups but the original poster does (I think) identify the correct threats that are making mech not as viable as we would like.
Personally this has me a little pumped, I can't wait for mech to be more viable after playing many games and being demolished to players who I have a winning track record against as bio.
So to I ask all of you, what would be the best buffs to mech units that wouldn't break other matchups?
Please remember that the battlecruiser most likely won't be one of them.
We were discussing this internally today and reminded ourselves that the BC actually received a buff recently via the combining of mech armor upgrades. We're not altogether opposed to looking at this kind of idea again should the Cruiser prove in need of more, but as of right now we do not have it as a top priority.
I know that's not the sexiest news in the world, but we really do appreciate all of your enthusiasm and the activity that has surrounded this post. We love the Cruiser too! (I've got my Megabloks Cruiser at arms reach on my desk - the coolest Christmas gift of 2012!)
Poll: What unit should be buffed?Siege tank (252) 63% Add a new mech unit to factory (107) 27% battlecruiser (14) 4% raven (6) 2% Thor (5) 1% Add a new mech unit to starport (5) 1% Viking (5) 1% banshee (3) 1% Hellion (2) 1% 399 total votes Your vote: What unit should be buffed? (Vote): Hellion
(Vote): Siege tank
(Vote): Thor
(Vote): Add a new mech unit to factory
(Vote): Add a new mech unit to starport
(Vote): Viking
(Vote): banshee
(Vote): raven
(Vote): battlecruiser
Sources:
http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/7592240150#4
http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/7592240133#4
http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/7416267260?page=18#357
Edit: Blizzard with more information.
I want to be very clear about what are goals for using Factory units in Terran vs. Protoss.
We are not trying to create a "Factory Only" option for Terrans in this match up that works in every game on every map all the time. We want all Factory to be useful sometimes and all Barracks to be useful sometimes and a mix to also have a place. We are looking to unlock options, not remove Barracks play as a choice for Terran players against Protoss.
We think that Air units or Barracks units (or both) will often be necessary to support the Factory units. Ghosts alone will mean that the Barracks units always have some use, and Tempests will (probably) often pull the Terrans towards some air.
There are many times where a Terran player in Wings will build a Factory and use it only as a scout or will use it just a tech structure on their way to multiple Starports. We want the Factory to not be that useless. We want it to unlock some of those units for our Terran players when fighting Protoss.
At least that's our current thinking. If we get that to work but it's not that fun to play then we may not continue in this direction. Or if we simply can't make it work and remain balanced we may abandon this goal.
http://us.battle.net/sc2/en/forum/topic/7593400327?page=1#9
Edit2:
Terran
Barracks
Train Reaper no longer requires a Tech Lab Addon.
Hellbat
Attack speed changed from 1.9 to 2.The Infernal Pre-Igniter upgrade no longer increases Hellbat weapon damage.Napalm Spray weapon damage increased from 10 +9 vs. light to 18 +12 vs. light.Splash damage radius decreased from 110 to 45.
Medivac
Caduceus ReactorNo longer improves the healing rate of Medivacs.Upgrade cost decreased from 150/150 and 110 seconds to 100/100 and 80 seconds.Emergency Thrusters ability renamed Ignite Afterburners
Raven
Seeker missile Energy cost decreased from 125 to 75.Primary target damage reverted from 300 to 100.Seeker Missile once again deals splash damage.The delay time prior to firing has been increased from 3 to 5 seconds.
Reaper
The Battlefield Awareness passive ability has been removed from the game.Movement speed increased from 3.38 to 3.75.The Nitro Packs upgrade has been removed from the game.P-45 Gauss Pistol weapon damage decreased from 4 +5 vs. Light to 4.
Siege Tank
Siege Tanks no longer require an upgrade in order to enter Siege Mode.
Protoss
Mothership
The Vortex ability has been removed from the game.
Mothership Core
The Envision ability has been moved to Oracle.
Oracle
The Time Warp ability has been moved to the Mothership Core and the Mothership.
Zerg
Infestor
Fungal Growth damage decreased from 30 +10 vs. Armored to 30.
Mutalisk
Mutalisk Regeneration passive ability renamed Tissue Regeneration and its tooltip has been updated to improve clarity.
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I love it when Blizzard gives feedback. That's literally the most important thing to do. So that we 'know' that they are doing 'something'.
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Looking so much forward to do the day where i dont have to 1a-toss's, because I don't have 500 battle apm.
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Yes, finally, this seems like something might happen after all..
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Did 3 minutes before your post, can't catch me! xD
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And Dustin Browder does it again --> demonstrates a terrible understanding of game design. He apparantly doesn't realize that as long as ghosts becomes a neccesity to do mech then this will require too much defensive turtling from the terran for the game to ever come interesting.
Pure mech needs to be viable against pure toss ground. The game will never be interesting before that.
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I think mech + air should be doable.. I'm not convinced bio+mech+air will ever be "viable", since all the infrastructure, upgrades and everything you need to have for all three tech paths is a little too much I think..
I think they should go either back to separated upgrades completely/make them cheaper, or merge them, but up cost/research time..
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They need to buff tanks. Buffing everything else is pointless if we want real mech to be viable.
I don't want to play Thor battlehellion, that's NOT mech.
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United Kingdom14464 Posts
Why isnt the widow mine an option in the poll?
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But I guess this edit from Dustin means we should not expect BW tank-based mech to be viable.. They seems to really like this concept of Terran as a whole race (hellbat bio flag), so I guess, we just have to take, what they give us.. Hopefully, they won't scrap TvP mech idea completely.
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On January 09 2013 05:08 Hider wrote:
And Dustin Browder does it again --> demonstrates a terrible understanding of game design. He apparantly doesn't realize that as long as ghosts becomes a neccesity to do mech then this will require too much defensive turtling from the terran for the game to ever come interesting.
Pure mech needs to be viable against pure toss ground. The game will never be interesting before that.
OMG YOU MENTIONED GAME DESIGN! YOU SHOULD BE BANNED FROM TALKING IN THIS FORUM!!! HISSSSS!!!! HISSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!
/bitterness off
The thing about this "patch" that worries me is that every time Dustin Browder comes out and actually says something reasonable and that I agree with, they end up releasing a patch that doesn't fix the problem or make the game even more broken in it's current form. I can't really get excited like most of these people are because I've basically been tricked by blizzard tons of times before, but I can knock on wood and say it can't get worse, right? :D
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On January 09 2013 05:08 Hider wrote:
He apparantly doesn't realize that as long as ghosts becomes a neccesity to do mech then this will require too much defensive turtling from the terran for the game to ever come interesting.
He never said they intended to make ghosts a necessity, but rather to keep them as a useful unit with a support role even when you were meching. And even if he had said that, I fail to see how that implies that you need "too much defensive turtling for the game to ever become interesting".
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On January 09 2013 05:15 KamikazeDurrrp wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2013 05:08 Hider wrote:
And Dustin Browder does it again --> demonstrates a terrible understanding of game design. He apparantly doesn't realize that as long as ghosts becomes a neccesity to do mech then this will require too much defensive turtling from the terran for the game to ever come interesting.
Pure mech needs to be viable against pure toss ground. The game will never be interesting before that. OMG YOU MENTIONED GAME DESIGN! YOU SHOULD BE BANNED FROM TALKING IN THIS FORUM!!! HISSSSS!!!! HISSSSSSSSSSS!!!!! /bitterness off The thing about this "patch" that worries me is that every time Dustin Browder comes out and actually says something reasonable and that I agree with, they end up releasing a patch that doesn't fix the problem or make the game even more broken in it's current form. I can't really get excited like most of these people are because I've basically been tricked by blizzard tons of times before, but I can knock on wood and say it can't get worse, right? :D
Yeh I have the same feeling. They make one posts or one patch which shows that they are capable of identying some of the problems, but then they just make the wrong kind of fixes. It's honestly so frustrating.
It seems to me that though (after careful observations) that they are only capable of identifying the problems after reading enough complaints from players and/or watching their units in action. If they actually understood proper game design, they would be capable of making well designed units before testing them in the beta, which would save us a lot of time as we wouldn't test stupid stuff such as the "root-infestor", the warhound, entomb etc.
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We are not trying to create a "Factory Only" option for Terrans in this match up that works in every game on every map all the time
So they are fine with 'barracks only' bio solution on all maps, but they won't allow 'factory only'. The hell?
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On January 09 2013 04:40 HTOMario wrote:
Thors: I do like the HEP option and I think the thor in terms of the 3d model/design is "cool" yet reality is that its still too costly/clunky. It still feels too cumbersome. I think the original idea of the warhound being half the thor would fix this with the HEP option. So a warhound with lower cost/size/supply with similiar GtA range attack as the thor (fires 2 rockets instead of 4 in ExpP? and a weaker HEP?)
Please don't remove a factory unit to replace it with another one... Thor is okay like that, however if the model is too clunky just fix the model.
If we get that to work but it's not that fun to play then we may not continue in this direction. Or if we simply can't make it work and remain balanced we may abandon this goal.
I'm pretty sure this will all end like that... I don't expect a lot from Blizzard... Maybe 2.5 years of terran nerfs make me think like this.
Btw every problem is clearly exposed.
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Heh to be honest BC's don't need a buff anyway. I am hoping that mech can be viable TvP cause I like mech tvp  .
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On January 09 2013 05:08 Hider wrote:
And Dustin Browder does it again --> demonstrates a terrible understanding of game design. He apparantly doesn't realize that as long as ghosts becomes a neccesity to do mech then this will require too much defensive turtling from the terran for the game to ever come interesting.
Pure mech needs to be viable against pure toss ground. The game will never be interesting before that.
Ah, the classic design post, taking personal opinion and raising it to a level where the skills of the people making the game are called into question. It is clear that some people will always take issue with everything blizzard says.
Edit: grammer is key.
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On January 09 2013 05:18 Deckard.666 wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2013 05:08 Hider wrote:
He apparantly doesn't realize that as long as ghosts becomes a neccesity to do mech then this will require too much defensive turtling from the terran for the game to ever come interesting. He never said they intended to make ghosts a necessity, but rather to keep them as a useful unit with a support role even when you were meching. And even if he had said that, I fail to see how that implies that you need "too much defensive turtling for the game to ever become interesting".
Im pretty sure that what he implies is that he still wants immortals to counter pure mech (which shouldn't happen as it just make for boring games). As a counter to that he wants terrans to add a few ghosts to emp the immortals. According to Dustin Browder's simplistic game design philosophy he would probably call this dynamic/micro intensive etc.
But the thing is, that it actually takes a lot of time for a terran to get both mech units and ghosts out, and untill he does that he has to turtle hardcore. He needs suply depots to wall of his bases and go for uber turtle. If he plays correctly there is also nothing the toss can do, as he can't harass a turtling terran on 3 bases efficiently. Instead, he will just take bases him self and add a few cannons to nullify hellion harass.
To sum up, these games are uber uber boring. Also late late game we will never see scenarios where the terran can spread out his tanks and defend multiple locations at once efficiently. Instead he needs to have his whole army together (along with all of the ghosts). Also the terran will never be abel to move out before he has planetaries and has scv's (replaced them by orbituals) so he can safely defend against counterattacks.
This will just create these huge deathball scenarios and games like these are the reason why people (and probably dustin browder as well) thinks mech is kinda boring.
Indeed, the games are boring, but that is because blizzard hasn't designed mech correctly. If they were competent they would attempt to fix some of these flaws.
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On January 09 2013 05:26 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2013 05:08 Hider wrote:
And Dustin Browder does it again --> demonstrates a terrible understanding of game design. He apparantly doesn't realize that as long as ghosts becomes a neccesity to do mech then this will require too much defensive turtling from the terran for the game to ever come interesting.
Pure mech needs to be viable against pure toss ground. The game will never be interesting before that. Ah, the classic design post, taking personal opinion and raising it to a level where the skills of the people making the game are called into question. It is clear that some people will always take issue with everything blizzard says. Edit: grammer is key.
Ah, the classic ignorant post. Please study game design and read my posts. Then you will probably realize how clueless you (and DB) are.
I was clueless once as well. Those BW guys for some (weird) reason just disliked Sc2. I didn't get it back then, but I didn't make posts like you did at least because (indeed) I was clueless.
User was temp banned for this post.
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On January 09 2013 05:28 Hider wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2013 05:18 Deckard.666 wrote:On January 09 2013 05:08 Hider wrote:
He apparantly doesn't realize that as long as ghosts becomes a neccesity to do mech then this will require too much defensive turtling from the terran for the game to ever come interesting. He never said they intended to make ghosts a necessity, but rather to keep them as a useful unit with a support role even when you were meching. And even if he had said that, I fail to see how that implies that you need "too much defensive turtling for the game to ever become interesting". Im pretty sure that what he implies is that he still wants immortals to counter pure mech (which shouldn't happen as it just make for boring games). As a counter to that he wants terrans to add a few ghosts to emp the immortals. According to Dustin Browder's simplistic game design philosophy he would probably call this dynamic/micro intensive etc. But the thing is, that it actually takes a lot of time for a terran to get both mech units and ghosts out, and untill he does that he has to turtle hardcore. He needs suply depots to wall of his bases and go for uber turtle. If he plays correctly there is also nothing the toss can do, as he can't harass a turtling terran on 3 bases efficiently. Instead, he will just take bases him self and add a few cannons to nullify hellion harass. To sum up, these games are uber uber boring. Also late late game we will never see scenarios where the terran can spread out his tanks and defend multiple locations at once efficiently. Instead he needs to have his whole army together (along with all of the ghosts). Also the terran will never be abel to move out before he has planetaries and has scv's (replaced them by orbituals) so he can safely defend against counterattacks. This will just create these huge deathball scenarios and games like these are the reason why people (and probably dustin browder as well) thinks mech is kinda boring. Indeed, the games are boring, but that is because blizzard hasn't designed mech correctly. If they were competent they would attempt to fix some of these flaws.
You can tell all that from three posts on the B.net forums without seeing the patch notes or having any other information at all? Have you considered a career in the stock market?
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On January 09 2013 05:32 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2013 05:28 Hider wrote:On January 09 2013 05:18 Deckard.666 wrote:On January 09 2013 05:08 Hider wrote:
He apparantly doesn't realize that as long as ghosts becomes a neccesity to do mech then this will require too much defensive turtling from the terran for the game to ever come interesting. He never said they intended to make ghosts a necessity, but rather to keep them as a useful unit with a support role even when you were meching. And even if he had said that, I fail to see how that implies that you need "too much defensive turtling for the game to ever become interesting". Im pretty sure that what he implies is that he still wants immortals to counter pure mech (which shouldn't happen as it just make for boring games). As a counter to that he wants terrans to add a few ghosts to emp the immortals. According to Dustin Browder's simplistic game design philosophy he would probably call this dynamic/micro intensive etc. But the thing is, that it actually takes a lot of time for a terran to get both mech units and ghosts out, and untill he does that he has to turtle hardcore. He needs suply depots to wall of his bases and go for uber turtle. If he plays correctly there is also nothing the toss can do, as he can't harass a turtling terran on 3 bases efficiently. Instead, he will just take bases him self and add a few cannons to nullify hellion harass. To sum up, these games are uber uber boring. Also late late game we will never see scenarios where the terran can spread out his tanks and defend multiple locations at once efficiently. Instead he needs to have his whole army together (along with all of the ghosts). Also the terran will never be abel to move out before he has planetaries and has scv's (replaced them by orbituals) so he can safely defend against counterattacks. This will just create these huge deathball scenarios and games like these are the reason why people (and probably dustin browder as well) thinks mech is kinda boring. Indeed, the games are boring, but that is because blizzard hasn't designed mech correctly. If they were competent they would attempt to fix some of these flaws. You can tell all that from three posts on the B.net forums without seeing the patch notes or having any other information at all? Have you considered a career in the stock market?
I think it's pretty clear that there's a huge difference between what blizzard says, and what ends up being reality. We're just making the point that even though blizzard always promises us to fix things, the reality never ends up being that way. Hell, DB has said things I've agreed with before (such as making fungal a slow would not solve the infestor problem) but then ends up buffing the infestor anyway. We just want some damn consistency.
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On January 09 2013 05:32 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2013 05:28 Hider wrote:On January 09 2013 05:18 Deckard.666 wrote:On January 09 2013 05:08 Hider wrote:
He apparantly doesn't realize that as long as ghosts becomes a neccesity to do mech then this will require too much defensive turtling from the terran for the game to ever come interesting. He never said they intended to make ghosts a necessity, but rather to keep them as a useful unit with a support role even when you were meching. And even if he had said that, I fail to see how that implies that you need "too much defensive turtling for the game to ever become interesting". Im pretty sure that what he implies is that he still wants immortals to counter pure mech (which shouldn't happen as it just make for boring games). As a counter to that he wants terrans to add a few ghosts to emp the immortals. According to Dustin Browder's simplistic game design philosophy he would probably call this dynamic/micro intensive etc. But the thing is, that it actually takes a lot of time for a terran to get both mech units and ghosts out, and untill he does that he has to turtle hardcore. He needs suply depots to wall of his bases and go for uber turtle. If he plays correctly there is also nothing the toss can do, as he can't harass a turtling terran on 3 bases efficiently. Instead, he will just take bases him self and add a few cannons to nullify hellion harass. To sum up, these games are uber uber boring. Also late late game we will never see scenarios where the terran can spread out his tanks and defend multiple locations at once efficiently. Instead he needs to have his whole army together (along with all of the ghosts). Also the terran will never be abel to move out before he has planetaries and has scv's (replaced them by orbituals) so he can safely defend against counterattacks. This will just create these huge deathball scenarios and games like these are the reason why people (and probably dustin browder as well) thinks mech is kinda boring. Indeed, the games are boring, but that is because blizzard hasn't designed mech correctly. If they were competent they would attempt to fix some of these flaws. You can tell all that from three posts on the B.net forums without seeing the patch notes or having any other information at all? Have you considered a career in the stock market?
I do indeed get paid to analyze stocks, but the stock market is filled with a lot of other analytical guys as well so its not as simple as you make it out to be.
Actually the only assumption I made was the immortal thing which is very very obvious.
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I say yeha, buff tanks. Steppes is so far in the past and photon overcharge with range 13 means no more 1/1/1, hell, even early banshees will die to photon overcharge. Tanks should get their seige damage adjusted, or have their unseiged attack mode changed a little bit to make it good vs light or something.
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Long story short they will try to make mech (with starport/barracks support) work, but if they fail they'll be ok with it. Motivational lol
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On January 09 2013 05:26 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2013 05:08 Hider wrote:
And Dustin Browder does it again --> demonstrates a terrible understanding of game design. He apparantly doesn't realize that as long as ghosts becomes a neccesity to do mech then this will require too much defensive turtling from the terran for the game to ever come interesting.
Pure mech needs to be viable against pure toss ground. The game will never be interesting before that. Ah, the classic design post, taking personal opinion and raising it to a level where the skills of the people making the game are called into question. It is clear that some people will always take issue with everything blizzard says. Edit: grammer is key.
If only you (and DB) were students of good game and unit design like the estimable Hider, then perhaps we wouldn't see such ignorant posts from you! You're not even able to predict the precise ways in which the next patch will fail, lol! Not only will the next patch (the content of which we do not know, of course) be an epic failure at promoting mech in tvp, but it will also serve to drive home the unavoidable truth that DB and Blizzard do not understand good unit or game design.
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On January 09 2013 05:42 The_Darkness wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2013 05:26 Plansix wrote:On January 09 2013 05:08 Hider wrote:
And Dustin Browder does it again --> demonstrates a terrible understanding of game design. He apparantly doesn't realize that as long as ghosts becomes a neccesity to do mech then this will require too much defensive turtling from the terran for the game to ever come interesting.
Pure mech needs to be viable against pure toss ground. The game will never be interesting before that. Ah, the classic design post, taking personal opinion and raising it to a level where the skills of the people making the game are called into question. It is clear that some people will always take issue with everything blizzard says. Edit: grammer is key. If only you (and DB) were students of good game and unit design like the estimable Hider, then perhaps we wouldn't see such ignorant posts from you! You're not even able to predict the precise ways in which the next patch will fail, lol! Not only will the next patch (the content of which we do not know, of course) be an epic failure at promoting mech in tvp, but it will also serve to drive home the unavoidable truth that DB and Blizzard do not understand good unit or game design.
Methinks the lady doth protest too much
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Widow Mine should really have been on the poll.
Tank damage versus Light is sitting at a very particular spot, where if you change it up or down it ruins the dynamic with Lings... and if you make it good enough to survive Chargelots, you completely slaughter Marines, lings, and several other units.
I posted this thread on Reddit a while ago. It explains pretty well why the only smart and easy way to make Mech work is to actually give the Widow Mine some version of Concussive Shells, while playing around with the damage numbers.
Read the thread, you'll probably agree with me that it's the only/best option short of a huge game redesign.
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On January 09 2013 05:08 Hider wrote:
And Dustin Browder does it again --> demonstrates a terrible understanding of game design. He apparantly doesn't realize that as long as ghosts becomes a neccesity to do mech then this will require too much defensive turtling from the terran for the game to ever come interesting.
Welcome to WoL PvT for Protoss -.-
Mech is already very strong, the only question is how much easier should it be able to get?
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On January 09 2013 05:42 The_Darkness wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2013 05:26 Plansix wrote:On January 09 2013 05:08 Hider wrote:
And Dustin Browder does it again --> demonstrates a terrible understanding of game design. He apparantly doesn't realize that as long as ghosts becomes a neccesity to do mech then this will require too much defensive turtling from the terran for the game to ever come interesting.
Pure mech needs to be viable against pure toss ground. The game will never be interesting before that. Ah, the classic design post, taking personal opinion and raising it to a level where the skills of the people making the game are called into question. It is clear that some people will always take issue with everything blizzard says. Edit: grammer is key. If only you (and DB) were students of good game and unit design like the estimable Hider, then perhaps we wouldn't see such ignorant posts from you! You're not even able to predict the precise ways in which the next patch will fail, lol! Not only will the next patch (the content of which we do not know, of course) be an epic failure at promoting mech in tvp, but it will also serve to drive home the unavoidable truth that DB and Blizzard do not understand good unit or game design.
thank you. Couldn't have said it better. Glad we agree now.
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On January 09 2013 05:49 freetgy wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2013 05:08 Hider wrote:
And Dustin Browder does it again --> demonstrates a terrible understanding of game design. He apparantly doesn't realize that as long as ghosts becomes a neccesity to do mech then this will require too much defensive turtling from the terran for the game to ever come interesting.
Welcome to WoL PvT for Protoss -.- Mech is already very strong, the only question is how much easier should it be able to get?
I think tvp (terran goes bio) this at least has the threat of drop play. In wol, however, this got figured out (and terrans weren't capable of doing a lot of damage with drops) which made the early mid game kinda boring.
However, Hots has created a new dynamic as the toss gets ahead early game (as they can safely chrono probes). Terran now has to do damage with bio drops, which is more difficult to defend against due to speed medivacs.
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On January 09 2013 05:42 The_Darkness wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2013 05:26 Plansix wrote:On January 09 2013 05:08 Hider wrote:
And Dustin Browder does it again --> demonstrates a terrible understanding of game design. He apparantly doesn't realize that as long as ghosts becomes a neccesity to do mech then this will require too much defensive turtling from the terran for the game to ever come interesting.
Pure mech needs to be viable against pure toss ground. The game will never be interesting before that. Ah, the classic design post, taking personal opinion and raising it to a level where the skills of the people making the game are called into question. It is clear that some people will always take issue with everything blizzard says. Edit: grammer is key. If only you (and DB) were students of good game and unit design like the estimable Hider, then perhaps we wouldn't see such ignorant posts from you! You're not even able to predict the precise ways in which the next patch will fail, lol! Not only will the next patch (the content of which we do not know, of course) be an epic failure at promoting mech in tvp, but it will also serve to drive home the unavoidable truth that DB and Blizzard do not understand good unit or game design.
And to think we were complaining earlier how a small group of posters fill every thread with negative posts about "game design". And now someone is focusing on a single line posted by DB and complaining it is terrible game design.
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On January 09 2013 05:49 freetgy wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2013 05:08 Hider wrote:
And Dustin Browder does it again --> demonstrates a terrible understanding of game design. He apparantly doesn't realize that as long as ghosts becomes a neccesity to do mech then this will require too much defensive turtling from the terran for the game to ever come interesting.
Welcome to WoL PvT for Protoss -.- Mech is already very strong, the only question is how much easier should it be able to get?
Mech is hard to get, very weak to air, lacks any kind of mobility, and is at best average against a frontal assault from toss.
You see barely mech in WoL, then they heavily nerf it in HotS, so I think it is safe to assume without serious boosts you wont see it in HotS.
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On January 09 2013 05:53 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2013 05:42 The_Darkness wrote:On January 09 2013 05:26 Plansix wrote:On January 09 2013 05:08 Hider wrote:
And Dustin Browder does it again --> demonstrates a terrible understanding of game design. He apparantly doesn't realize that as long as ghosts becomes a neccesity to do mech then this will require too much defensive turtling from the terran for the game to ever come interesting.
Pure mech needs to be viable against pure toss ground. The game will never be interesting before that. Ah, the classic design post, taking personal opinion and raising it to a level where the skills of the people making the game are called into question. It is clear that some people will always take issue with everything blizzard says. Edit: grammer is key. If only you (and DB) were students of good game and unit design like the estimable Hider, then perhaps we wouldn't see such ignorant posts from you! You're not even able to predict the precise ways in which the next patch will fail, lol! Not only will the next patch (the content of which we do not know, of course) be an epic failure at promoting mech in tvp, but it will also serve to drive home the unavoidable truth that DB and Blizzard do not understand good unit or game design. And to think we were complaining earlier how a small group of posters fill every thread with negative posts about "game design". And now someone is focusing on a single line posted by DB and complaining it is terrible game design.
You keep making these posts, yet still haven't tried to come up with an argument for why I am wrong?
If you can't follow my logic, that is fine, but then don't make these kind of posts.
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On January 09 2013 05:28 Hider wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2013 05:18 Deckard.666 wrote:On January 09 2013 05:08 Hider wrote:
He apparantly doesn't realize that as long as ghosts becomes a neccesity to do mech then this will require too much defensive turtling from the terran for the game to ever come interesting. He never said they intended to make ghosts a necessity, but rather to keep them as a useful unit with a support role even when you were meching. And even if he had said that, I fail to see how that implies that you need "too much defensive turtling for the game to ever become interesting". Im pretty sure that what he implies is that he still wants immortals to counter pure mech (which shouldn't happen as it just make for boring games). As a counter to that he wants terrans to add a few ghosts to emp the immortals. According to Dustin Browder's simplistic game design philosophy he would probably call this dynamic/micro intensive etc. But the thing is, that it actually takes a lot of time for a terran to get both mech units and ghosts out, and untill he does that he has to turtle hardcore. He needs suply depots to wall of his bases and go for uber turtle. If he plays correctly there is also nothing the toss can do, as he can't harass a turtling terran on 3 bases efficiently. Instead, he will just take bases him self and add a few cannons to nullify hellion harass. To sum up, these games are uber uber boring. Also late late game we will never see scenarios where the terran can spread out his tanks and defend multiple locations at once efficiently. Instead he needs to have his whole army together (along with all of the ghosts). Also the terran will never be abel to move out before he has planetaries and has scv's (replaced them by orbituals) so he can safely defend against counterattacks. This will just create these huge deathball scenarios and games like these are the reason why people (and probably dustin browder as well) thinks mech is kinda boring. Indeed, the games are boring, but that is because blizzard hasn't designed mech correctly. If they were competent they would attempt to fix some of these flaws.
Very good analysis of why Ghosts should not be a necessity against Immortals. Immortals>factory = boring games
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On January 09 2013 05:49 LavaLava wrote:Widow Mine should really have been on the poll. Tank damage versus Light is sitting at a very particular spot, where if you change it up or down it ruins the dynamic with Lings... and if you make it good enough to survive Chargelots, you completely slaughter Marines, lings, and several other units. I posted this thread on Reddit a while ago. It explains pretty well why the only smart and easy way to make Mech work is to actually give the Widow Mine some version of Concussive Shells, while playing around with the damage numbers. Read the thread, you'll probably agree with me that it's the only/best option short of a huge game redesign.
Tanks full damage to shield
It's pretty simple really
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On January 09 2013 06:00 Noocta wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2013 05:49 LavaLava wrote:Widow Mine should really have been on the poll. Tank damage versus Light is sitting at a very particular spot, where if you change it up or down it ruins the dynamic with Lings... and if you make it good enough to survive Chargelots, you completely slaughter Marines, lings, and several other units. I posted this thread on Reddit a while ago. It explains pretty well why the only smart and easy way to make Mech work is to actually give the Widow Mine some version of Concussive Shells, while playing around with the damage numbers. Read the thread, you'll probably agree with me that it's the only/best option short of a huge game redesign. Tanks full damage to shield It's pretty simple really
Actually, the most important thing to add to mech is a good anti air. Killing ground with mech is kinda easy actually
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On January 09 2013 06:03 Lyyna wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2013 06:00 Noocta wrote:On January 09 2013 05:49 LavaLava wrote:Widow Mine should really have been on the poll. Tank damage versus Light is sitting at a very particular spot, where if you change it up or down it ruins the dynamic with Lings... and if you make it good enough to survive Chargelots, you completely slaughter Marines, lings, and several other units. I posted this thread on Reddit a while ago. It explains pretty well why the only smart and easy way to make Mech work is to actually give the Widow Mine some version of Concussive Shells, while playing around with the damage numbers. Read the thread, you'll probably agree with me that it's the only/best option short of a huge game redesign. Tanks full damage to shield It's pretty simple really Actually, the most important thing to add to mech is a good anti air. Killing ground with mech is kinda easy actually
I just argued why ghost-mech shouldn't be a neccessity. Pure mech needs to be viable for the game to be entertaining and pure mech doesn't kill ground efficiently.
But yeh, terrans also needs something to counter protoss air. Not sure how Blizzard will attempt to fix this.
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On January 09 2013 06:00 Noocta wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2013 05:49 LavaLava wrote:Widow Mine should really have been on the poll. Tank damage versus Light is sitting at a very particular spot, where if you change it up or down it ruins the dynamic with Lings... and if you make it good enough to survive Chargelots, you completely slaughter Marines, lings, and several other units. I posted this thread on Reddit a while ago. It explains pretty well why the only smart and easy way to make Mech work is to actually give the Widow Mine some version of Concussive Shells, while playing around with the damage numbers. Read the thread, you'll probably agree with me that it's the only/best option short of a huge game redesign. Tanks full damage to shield It's pretty simple really
Except I'm not sure if that's the type of change Blizzard will ever make. I'm sure that would be filed under "unintuitive" and they may have even stated that in the past.
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I don't get why most of people loves BW TvP so much...
I personally find it most boring MU. Scenarios were very limited compared to others. Long positional play with terran trying to get a perfect siege line and toss pursuing to find a hole in it is quite fun once in a while, but not every single game...
I like DB's view that pure factory play should never be viable. Starting with bio, slowly adding mech units and pursuing a full mech army, but never actually reaching it until very very late would be the perfect design for me.
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On January 09 2013 06:08 LavaLava wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2013 06:00 Noocta wrote:On January 09 2013 05:49 LavaLava wrote:Widow Mine should really have been on the poll. Tank damage versus Light is sitting at a very particular spot, where if you change it up or down it ruins the dynamic with Lings... and if you make it good enough to survive Chargelots, you completely slaughter Marines, lings, and several other units. I posted this thread on Reddit a while ago. It explains pretty well why the only smart and easy way to make Mech work is to actually give the Widow Mine some version of Concussive Shells, while playing around with the damage numbers. Read the thread, you'll probably agree with me that it's the only/best option short of a huge game redesign. Tanks full damage to shield It's pretty simple really Except I'm not sure if that's the type of change Blizzard will ever make. I'm sure that would be filed under "unintuitive" and they may have even stated that in the past.
The Hellion transforms in to a unit with more HP and changes from mechanical to mechanical-biological, the Void Ray in Wing has like 3 attack types, Snipe is the only attack with +to psionic . So cumbersome solutions are a core part of Blizzard balance.
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On January 09 2013 06:14 Sapphire.lux wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2013 06:08 LavaLava wrote:On January 09 2013 06:00 Noocta wrote:On January 09 2013 05:49 LavaLava wrote:Widow Mine should really have been on the poll. Tank damage versus Light is sitting at a very particular spot, where if you change it up or down it ruins the dynamic with Lings... and if you make it good enough to survive Chargelots, you completely slaughter Marines, lings, and several other units. I posted this thread on Reddit a while ago. It explains pretty well why the only smart and easy way to make Mech work is to actually give the Widow Mine some version of Concussive Shells, while playing around with the damage numbers. Read the thread, you'll probably agree with me that it's the only/best option short of a huge game redesign. Tanks full damage to shield It's pretty simple really Except I'm not sure if that's the type of change Blizzard will ever make. I'm sure that would be filed under "unintuitive" and they may have even stated that in the past. The Hellion transforms in to a unit with more HP and changes from mechanical to mechanical-biological, the Void Ray in Wing has like 3 attack types, Snipe is the only attack with +to psionic . So cumbersome solutions are a core part of Blizzard balance.
Blizzard won't make the "full damage to shield" though, because that wouldn't make sense with DB's comments that ghosts should be a neccesity along with mech. (emp would kinda be semi-useless then).
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On January 09 2013 05:22 a176 wrote:Show nested quote +We are not trying to create a "Factory Only" option for Terrans in this match up that works in every game on every map all the time So they are fine with 'barracks only' bio solution on all maps, but they won't allow 'factory only'. The hell?
"We want all Factory to be useful sometimes and all Barracks to be useful sometimes and a mix to also have a place. "
So in the next sentence they say they want all of either to be useful "sometimes" they don't seem to like the prevalence of bio either. Sometimes it helps to keep reading.
On January 09 2013 05:28 Hider wrote:
Im pretty sure that what he implies is that he still wants immortals to counter pure mech (which shouldn't happen as it just make for boring games). As a counter to that he wants terrans to add a few ghosts to emp the immortals. According to Dustin Browder's simplistic game design philosophy he would probably call this dynamic/micro intensive etc.
"We want all Factory to be useful sometimes"
Good read on that implication. Also, way to ignore a high masters player who has more experience playing mech in TvP than 99.9% of people on this forum.
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=323003
Advice for fighting immortals that explicitly says not to use EMPs against them from the thread: + Show Spoiler +Hellions work perfectly against Immortals. They don't take the increased damage from Immortals (which means they only do ~13 DPS, which makes them an expensive Zealot). Hellions also do 8/9/10/11 damage, so they are almost always completely unaffected by Hardened Shield. If you have 10-13 Hellions, you can take down 2-3 Immortal Shields in one shot with focus fire. WOW. Who needs EMP? Save the EMP's for Archons, and after that I find it's best to ignore them. They really do horrible damage against Mech (for 300 gas), especially with no splash. They are only good for soaking up Siege Tank shots, so make sure your Siege Tanks are focus firing the Immortals and basically anything else first!
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siege tanks from 35+15 to 50+10
splash damage from 50%/25% to 33% (/33) or 33/20 (whatever is needed)
In words: increase main target damage to get a better snipe effect vs high HP Units = Protoss Units and Ultralisks (also good vs Infestors, Thors)
decrease splash damage so that tank vs bio and tank vs baneling/zergling ratios stay similar.
Mech solved
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On January 09 2013 06:18 TheFrankOne wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2013 05:22 a176 wrote:We are not trying to create a "Factory Only" option for Terrans in this match up that works in every game on every map all the time So they are fine with 'barracks only' bio solution on all maps, but they won't allow 'factory only'. The hell? "We want all Factory to be useful sometimes and all Barracks to be useful sometimes and a mix to also have a place. " So in the next sentence they say they want all of either to be useful "sometimes" they don't seem to like the prevalence of bio either. Sometimes it helps to keep reading. Show nested quote +On January 09 2013 05:28 Hider wrote:
Im pretty sure that what he implies is that he still wants immortals to counter pure mech (which shouldn't happen as it just make for boring games). As a counter to that he wants terrans to add a few ghosts to emp the immortals. According to Dustin Browder's simplistic game design philosophy he would probably call this dynamic/micro intensive etc.
"We want all Factory to be useful sometimes" Good read on that implication. Also, way to ignore a high masters player who has more experience playing mech in TvP than 99.9% of people on this forum. http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=323003Advice for fighting immortals that explicitly says not to use EMPs against them from the thread: + Show Spoiler +Hellions work perfectly against Immortals. They don't take the increased damage from Immortals (which means they only do ~13 DPS, which makes them an expensive Zealot). Hellions also do 8/9/10/11 damage, so they are almost always completely unaffected by Hardened Shield. If you have 10-13 Hellions, you can take down 2-3 Immortal Shields in one shot with focus fire. WOW. Who needs EMP? Save the EMP's for Archons, and after that I find it's best to ignore them. They really do horrible damage against Mech (for 300 gas), especially with no splash. They are only good for soaking up Siege Tank shots, so make sure your Siege Tanks are focus firing the Immortals and basically anything else first!
Maybe you should read the thread your self and then you would realize that I have posted in it previously.
Also you will probably realize that Lyyna has never agued that pure mech is viable (in fact he has argued the opposite). Lyyna's style is just super boring from a spectator POV (even though I kinda enjoy playing it), because its basically deathball vs deathball and it has nothing to do with the multitaskbased bw mech.
So please don't make offensive comments untill you make sure you fully understand my POV.
That factory comment (btw) is easily interpreted as; We want tanks to be usefull in tvp (but they don't want pure mech unfortunately).
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On January 09 2013 05:58 Hider wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2013 05:53 Plansix wrote:On January 09 2013 05:42 The_Darkness wrote:On January 09 2013 05:26 Plansix wrote:On January 09 2013 05:08 Hider wrote:
And Dustin Browder does it again --> demonstrates a terrible understanding of game design. He apparantly doesn't realize that as long as ghosts becomes a neccesity to do mech then this will require too much defensive turtling from the terran for the game to ever come interesting.
Pure mech needs to be viable against pure toss ground. The game will never be interesting before that. Ah, the classic design post, taking personal opinion and raising it to a level where the skills of the people making the game are called into question. It is clear that some people will always take issue with everything blizzard says. Edit: grammer is key. If only you (and DB) were students of good game and unit design like the estimable Hider, then perhaps we wouldn't see such ignorant posts from you! You're not even able to predict the precise ways in which the next patch will fail, lol! Not only will the next patch (the content of which we do not know, of course) be an epic failure at promoting mech in tvp, but it will also serve to drive home the unavoidable truth that DB and Blizzard do not understand good unit or game design. And to think we were complaining earlier how a small group of posters fill every thread with negative posts about "game design". And now someone is focusing on a single line posted by DB and complaining it is terrible game design. You keep making these posts, yet still haven't tried to come up with an argument for why I am wrong? If you can't follow my logic, that is fine, but then don't make these kind of posts.
I think that Ghosts in a factory based army is fine, as they are primarily spell casters anyways. I don’t think that terrans should be able to deal every form of the protoss ground army with factory based units alone. A reasonable number of starports and barracks is fine. Claiming that the game will only be well designed when terrans can beat every protoss ground army with only factory units is simply saying that the game will only be good when they do it your way.
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or simply reduce tanks supply to 2 from 3 so that Terran can get 20+ tanks - i love this
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On January 09 2013 06:25 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2013 05:58 Hider wrote:On January 09 2013 05:53 Plansix wrote:On January 09 2013 05:42 The_Darkness wrote:On January 09 2013 05:26 Plansix wrote:On January 09 2013 05:08 Hider wrote:
And Dustin Browder does it again --> demonstrates a terrible understanding of game design. He apparantly doesn't realize that as long as ghosts becomes a neccesity to do mech then this will require too much defensive turtling from the terran for the game to ever come interesting.
Pure mech needs to be viable against pure toss ground. The game will never be interesting before that. Ah, the classic design post, taking personal opinion and raising it to a level where the skills of the people making the game are called into question. It is clear that some people will always take issue with everything blizzard says. Edit: grammer is key. If only you (and DB) were students of good game and unit design like the estimable Hider, then perhaps we wouldn't see such ignorant posts from you! You're not even able to predict the precise ways in which the next patch will fail, lol! Not only will the next patch (the content of which we do not know, of course) be an epic failure at promoting mech in tvp, but it will also serve to drive home the unavoidable truth that DB and Blizzard do not understand good unit or game design. And to think we were complaining earlier how a small group of posters fill every thread with negative posts about "game design". And now someone is focusing on a single line posted by DB and complaining it is terrible game design. You keep making these posts, yet still haven't tried to come up with an argument for why I am wrong? If you can't follow my logic, that is fine, but then don't make these kind of posts. I think that Ghosts in a factory based army is fine, as they are primarily spell casters anyways. I don’t think that terrans should be able to deal every form of the protoss ground army with factory based units alone. A reasonable number of starports and barracks is fine. Claiming that the game will only be well designed when terrans can beat every protoss ground army with only factory units is simply saying that the game will only be good when they do it your way.
If Ghost were needed to deal with high tech groudn army, it would be fine.
But as of now, standard mech don't trade well enough against simple gateway armies.
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On January 09 2013 06:25 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2013 05:58 Hider wrote:On January 09 2013 05:53 Plansix wrote:On January 09 2013 05:42 The_Darkness wrote:On January 09 2013 05:26 Plansix wrote:On January 09 2013 05:08 Hider wrote:
And Dustin Browder does it again --> demonstrates a terrible understanding of game design. He apparantly doesn't realize that as long as ghosts becomes a neccesity to do mech then this will require too much defensive turtling from the terran for the game to ever come interesting.
Pure mech needs to be viable against pure toss ground. The game will never be interesting before that. Ah, the classic design post, taking personal opinion and raising it to a level where the skills of the people making the game are called into question. It is clear that some people will always take issue with everything blizzard says. Edit: grammer is key. If only you (and DB) were students of good game and unit design like the estimable Hider, then perhaps we wouldn't see such ignorant posts from you! You're not even able to predict the precise ways in which the next patch will fail, lol! Not only will the next patch (the content of which we do not know, of course) be an epic failure at promoting mech in tvp, but it will also serve to drive home the unavoidable truth that DB and Blizzard do not understand good unit or game design. And to think we were complaining earlier how a small group of posters fill every thread with negative posts about "game design". And now someone is focusing on a single line posted by DB and complaining it is terrible game design. You keep making these posts, yet still haven't tried to come up with an argument for why I am wrong? If you can't follow my logic, that is fine, but then don't make these kind of posts. I think that Ghosts in a factory based army is fine, as they are primarily spell casters anyways. I don’t think that terrans should be able to deal every form of the protoss ground army with factory based units alone. A reasonable number of starports and barracks is fine. Claiming that the game will only be well designed when terrans can beat every protoss ground army with only factory units is simply saying that the game will only be good when they do it your way.
Did you read my post about how this forces the terran to turtle up and how this will make the terran unable to defend multiple locations at once by spreading his tanks out?
Also, I never argued that starports shouldn't be a neccessity to deal with late game toss air, but ghosts shouldn't be a neccesity to deal with a core protoss army as it just creates boring turtling + deathball games.
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On January 09 2013 06:14 Tommyth wrote:
I don't get why most of people loves BW TvP so much...
I personally find it most boring MU. Scenarios were very limited compared to others. Long positional play with terran trying to get a perfect siege line and toss pursuing to find a hole in it is quite fun once in a while, but not every single game...
I like DB's view that pure factory play should never be viable. Starting with bio, slowly adding mech units and pursuing a full mech army, but never actually reaching it until very very late would be the perfect design for me.
Something like this is never going to be viable, due to how Terran is designed, how production works, how upgrades are separated, how you unlock tech, etc..
Once you research stim, you are not going into heavy mech production and upgrades..
So I guess the right question for Dustin would be, could you make "mech" viable as a mix of all tech paths without stim being researched? Like you might use Reapers/Marines early game, Ghosts mid/late game, but the core of your army will be mech..
Or, you go bio, so core of your army will be MMM, and you build few Tanks, Thors, or Hellbats, according to situation.
But I think there will never be absolutely combined army, where you would constantly producing units from rax/factory/starport..
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On January 09 2013 06:26 foxj wrote:
or simply reduce tanks supply to 2 from 3 so that Terran can get 20+ tanks - i love this
i think this will make bio useless in tvt (and probably mess up tvz as well). Blizzard likely won't implement this change.
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On January 09 2013 06:28 Everlong wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2013 06:14 Tommyth wrote:
I don't get why most of people loves BW TvP so much...
I personally find it most boring MU. Scenarios were very limited compared to others. Long positional play with terran trying to get a perfect siege line and toss pursuing to find a hole in it is quite fun once in a while, but not every single game...
I like DB's view that pure factory play should never be viable. Starting with bio, slowly adding mech units and pursuing a full mech army, but never actually reaching it until very very late would be the perfect design for me. Something like this is never going to be viable, due to how Terran is designed, how production works, how upgrades are separated, how you unlock tech, etc.. Once you research stim, you are not going into heavy mech production and upgrades.. So I guess the right question for Dustin would be, could you make "mech" viable as a mix of all tech paths without stim being researched? Like you might use Reapers/Marines early game, Ghosts mid/late game, but the core of your army will be mech.. Or, you go bio, so core of your army will be MMM, and you build few Tanks, Thors, or Hellbats, according to situation. But I think there will never be absolutely combined army, where you would constantly producing units from rax/factory/starport..
Hmm not sure I completely agree. I actually think a bio opening (with stim no other upgrades + a couple of medis) into mech is just an awesome (theoretical way of playing) the game, and if tanks were balanced I believe this opening could be viable as you know can do quite a bit of damage with your drops (both indirect and direct).
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On January 09 2013 04:42 AdrianHealey wrote:
I love it when Blizzard gives feedback. That's literally the most important thing to do. So that we 'know' that they are doing 'something'.
Apollo ,a wise man, a wise man once said "always do something with something".
I figured it fitted
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I generally try to stay positive about the future of SC2, and trust in blizzard as much as I can (and more than is smart), but I have to admit, things don't look good to me for TvP mech. I mean, it already had enough trouble against toss ground in WoL, and even though I really really love the new air toss, it just dug that hole way deeper. Even if Blizzard had proven itself as the king of good game design, and Browder was being hailed as the guru of balance I would have some doubts about how they could pull this of. As it stands now...even my purposefully naive trust in Blizzard can't really believe this is ever gonna work out 
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On January 09 2013 06:27 Hider wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2013 06:25 Plansix wrote:On January 09 2013 05:58 Hider wrote:On January 09 2013 05:53 Plansix wrote:On January 09 2013 05:42 The_Darkness wrote:On January 09 2013 05:26 Plansix wrote:On January 09 2013 05:08 Hider wrote:
And Dustin Browder does it again --> demonstrates a terrible understanding of game design. He apparantly doesn't realize that as long as ghosts becomes a neccesity to do mech then this will require too much defensive turtling from the terran for the game to ever come interesting.
Pure mech needs to be viable against pure toss ground. The game will never be interesting before that. Ah, the classic design post, taking personal opinion and raising it to a level where the skills of the people making the game are called into question. It is clear that some people will always take issue with everything blizzard says. Edit: grammer is key. If only you (and DB) were students of good game and unit design like the estimable Hider, then perhaps we wouldn't see such ignorant posts from you! You're not even able to predict the precise ways in which the next patch will fail, lol! Not only will the next patch (the content of which we do not know, of course) be an epic failure at promoting mech in tvp, but it will also serve to drive home the unavoidable truth that DB and Blizzard do not understand good unit or game design. And to think we were complaining earlier how a small group of posters fill every thread with negative posts about "game design". And now someone is focusing on a single line posted by DB and complaining it is terrible game design. You keep making these posts, yet still haven't tried to come up with an argument for why I am wrong? If you can't follow my logic, that is fine, but then don't make these kind of posts. I think that Ghosts in a factory based army is fine, as they are primarily spell casters anyways. I don’t think that terrans should be able to deal every form of the protoss ground army with factory based units alone. A reasonable number of starports and barracks is fine. Claiming that the game will only be well designed when terrans can beat every protoss ground army with only factory units is simply saying that the game will only be good when they do it your way. Did you read my post about how this forces the terran to turtle up and how this will make the terran unable to defend multiple locations at once by spreading his tanks out? Also, I never argued that starports shouldn't be a neccessity to deal with late game toss air, but ghosts shouldn't be a neccesity to deal with a core protoss army as it just creates boring turtling + deathball games.
You basically have charted out a 15-25 minute game based on a single line that terrans may have to use ghost in some way, and then assume the game is poorly designed because of that. You have no idea how the game will be changed or what will happen due to those changes. You just assume that the game will go the way you claim based on the limited information you have and challenge others to disprove you. But you lack sufficient information to even back up your claim.
So I don't agree and I think you lack enough information to back up your claims. I find your evidence to be poor.
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On January 09 2013 06:22 Hider wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2013 06:18 TheFrankOne wrote:On January 09 2013 05:22 a176 wrote:We are not trying to create a "Factory Only" option for Terrans in this match up that works in every game on every map all the time So they are fine with 'barracks only' bio solution on all maps, but they won't allow 'factory only'. The hell? "We want all Factory to be useful sometimes and all Barracks to be useful sometimes and a mix to also have a place. " So in the next sentence they say they want all of either to be useful "sometimes" they don't seem to like the prevalence of bio either. Sometimes it helps to keep reading. On January 09 2013 05:28 Hider wrote:
Im pretty sure that what he implies is that he still wants immortals to counter pure mech (which shouldn't happen as it just make for boring games). As a counter to that he wants terrans to add a few ghosts to emp the immortals. According to Dustin Browder's simplistic game design philosophy he would probably call this dynamic/micro intensive etc.
"We want all Factory to be useful sometimes" Good read on that implication. Also, way to ignore a high masters player who has more experience playing mech in TvP than 99.9% of people on this forum. http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=323003Advice for fighting immortals that explicitly says not to use EMPs against them from the thread: + Show Spoiler +Hellions work perfectly against Immortals. They don't take the increased damage from Immortals (which means they only do ~13 DPS, which makes them an expensive Zealot). Hellions also do 8/9/10/11 damage, so they are almost always completely unaffected by Hardened Shield. If you have 10-13 Hellions, you can take down 2-3 Immortal Shields in one shot with focus fire. WOW. Who needs EMP? Save the EMP's for Archons, and after that I find it's best to ignore them. They really do horrible damage against Mech (for 300 gas), especially with no splash. They are only good for soaking up Siege Tank shots, so make sure your Siege Tanks are focus firing the Immortals and basically anything else first! Maybe you should read the thread your self and then you would realize that I have posted in it previously. Also you will probably realize that Lyyna has never agued that pure mech is viable (in fact he has argued the opposite). Lyyna's style is just super boring from a spectator POV (even though I kinda enjoy playing it), because its basically deathball vs deathball and it has nothing to do with the multitaskbased bw mech. So please don't make offensive comments untill you make sure you fully understand my POV. That factory comment (btw) is easily interpreted as; We want tanks to be usefull in tvp (but they don't want pure mech unfortunately).
To exactly tell my advice about ghostless mech, it's just that it's so much harder to play this compared to ghostmech that it's not worth it imo. Ghostmech can easily crush a protoss army, pure mech will have a really harder time, but it can too.
Imo the fact my play ends up being deathball vs deathball isn't a consequence of the play itself : multitask/position based play (aka bw tvp mech) is basically non-existant in sc2 overall. if i could, i would tweak my play to play a more bw-ish style (and in fact i already tried to do so).
Imo what they need to do is
-Tank back to 50 damage
-New unit (as they probably wouldnt replace the thor) .. a goliath. or the 1st version of the warhound. low/average ground damage, good air damage with long range, ability to be produced relatively fast and in good number.
-Bring back the old HSM (may not be a "mech only" thing, but well, as someone who abused HSM in WoL to fight sky toss, the new HSM makes me feel... hee... dead)
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On January 09 2013 06:17 Hider wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2013 06:14 Sapphire.lux wrote:On January 09 2013 06:08 LavaLava wrote:On January 09 2013 06:00 Noocta wrote:On January 09 2013 05:49 LavaLava wrote:Widow Mine should really have been on the poll. Tank damage versus Light is sitting at a very particular spot, where if you change it up or down it ruins the dynamic with Lings... and if you make it good enough to survive Chargelots, you completely slaughter Marines, lings, and several other units. I posted this thread on Reddit a while ago. It explains pretty well why the only smart and easy way to make Mech work is to actually give the Widow Mine some version of Concussive Shells, while playing around with the damage numbers. Read the thread, you'll probably agree with me that it's the only/best option short of a huge game redesign. Tanks full damage to shield It's pretty simple really Except I'm not sure if that's the type of change Blizzard will ever make. I'm sure that would be filed under "unintuitive" and they may have even stated that in the past. The Hellion transforms in to a unit with more HP and changes from mechanical to mechanical-biological, the Void Ray in Wing has like 3 attack types, Snipe is the only attack with +to psionic . So cumbersome solutions are a core part of Blizzard balance. Blizzard won't make the "full damage to shield" though, because that wouldn't make sense with DB's comments that ghosts should be a neccesity along with mech. (emp would kinda be semi-useless then).
Oh i don't think they'l do it, i'm just saying no change is to "unintuitive" for them.
The problems are IMO: Tanks do to little dmg against high HP units; Immortals are way to good against Siege Tanks; anti air is not good enough. And the mother of all problems: DB is not convinced the game actually needs Tank based mech in TvP (apparently he is at least willing to try to test it).
Basically, Tanks in good position need to be able to hold ground against superior Protoss ground forces. If they can not, you only get death ball "Lyyna" style. That is boring i agree with DB, but that is not what mech should be. If i wanted a death ball of expensive and slow'ish units i would play Protoss.
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On January 09 2013 06:39 Lyyna wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2013 06:22 Hider wrote:On January 09 2013 06:18 TheFrankOne wrote:On January 09 2013 05:22 a176 wrote:We are not trying to create a "Factory Only" option for Terrans in this match up that works in every game on every map all the time So they are fine with 'barracks only' bio solution on all maps, but they won't allow 'factory only'. The hell? "We want all Factory to be useful sometimes and all Barracks to be useful sometimes and a mix to also have a place. " So in the next sentence they say they want all of either to be useful "sometimes" they don't seem to like the prevalence of bio either. Sometimes it helps to keep reading. On January 09 2013 05:28 Hider wrote:
Im pretty sure that what he implies is that he still wants immortals to counter pure mech (which shouldn't happen as it just make for boring games). As a counter to that he wants terrans to add a few ghosts to emp the immortals. According to Dustin Browder's simplistic game design philosophy he would probably call this dynamic/micro intensive etc.
"We want all Factory to be useful sometimes" Good read on that implication. Also, way to ignore a high masters player who has more experience playing mech in TvP than 99.9% of people on this forum. http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=323003Advice for fighting immortals that explicitly says not to use EMPs against them from the thread: + Show Spoiler +Hellions work perfectly against Immortals. They don't take the increased damage from Immortals (which means they only do ~13 DPS, which makes them an expensive Zealot). Hellions also do 8/9/10/11 damage, so they are almost always completely unaffected by Hardened Shield. If you have 10-13 Hellions, you can take down 2-3 Immortal Shields in one shot with focus fire. WOW. Who needs EMP? Save the EMP's for Archons, and after that I find it's best to ignore them. They really do horrible damage against Mech (for 300 gas), especially with no splash. They are only good for soaking up Siege Tank shots, so make sure your Siege Tanks are focus firing the Immortals and basically anything else first! Maybe you should read the thread your self and then you would realize that I have posted in it previously. Also you will probably realize that Lyyna has never agued that pure mech is viable (in fact he has argued the opposite). Lyyna's style is just super boring from a spectator POV (even though I kinda enjoy playing it), because its basically deathball vs deathball and it has nothing to do with the multitaskbased bw mech. So please don't make offensive comments untill you make sure you fully understand my POV. That factory comment (btw) is easily interpreted as; We want tanks to be usefull in tvp (but they don't want pure mech unfortunately). To exactly tell my advice about ghostless mech, it's just that it's so much harder to play this compared to ghostmech that it's not worth it imo. Ghostmech can easily crush a protoss army, pure mech will have a really harder time, but it can too. Imo the fact my play ends up being deathball vs deathball isn't a consequence of the play itself : multitask/position based play (aka bw tvp mech) is basically non-existant in sc2 overall. if i could, i would tweak my play to play a more bw-ish style (and in fact i already tried to do so)
Yeh I kinda agree. I also don't think ghosts-necessity is the biggest cause of deathballs. Rather its more related to the economy-system, and I believe these two things needs to happen before we can get rid of the deathball:
1) Reduce mining efficiency per base.
2) Buff immobile units (to compensate).
The latter would include a buff to the tanks.
But do you agree with me (or at least can you follow my logic) that it's kinda bad for the game that terrans needs ghosts to be effective against a "core-protoss ground army". Wouldn't it be better for the game if pure mech was viable (against a protoss ground army) so that terrans quicker could take a 4th and turtle less (which would make it easier for the protoss to harass?).
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"We want all Factory to be useful sometimes"
Sometimes I fly my Factory over the Protoss base to see what he's doing. It's also great for making reactors.
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On January 09 2013 06:40 Sapphire.lux wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2013 06:17 Hider wrote:On January 09 2013 06:14 Sapphire.lux wrote:On January 09 2013 06:08 LavaLava wrote:On January 09 2013 06:00 Noocta wrote:On January 09 2013 05:49 LavaLava wrote:Widow Mine should really have been on the poll. Tank damage versus Light is sitting at a very particular spot, where if you change it up or down it ruins the dynamic with Lings... and if you make it good enough to survive Chargelots, you completely slaughter Marines, lings, and several other units. I posted this thread on Reddit a while ago. It explains pretty well why the only smart and easy way to make Mech work is to actually give the Widow Mine some version of Concussive Shells, while playing around with the damage numbers. Read the thread, you'll probably agree with me that it's the only/best option short of a huge game redesign. Tanks full damage to shield It's pretty simple really Except I'm not sure if that's the type of change Blizzard will ever make. I'm sure that would be filed under "unintuitive" and they may have even stated that in the past. The Hellion transforms in to a unit with more HP and changes from mechanical to mechanical-biological, the Void Ray in Wing has like 3 attack types, Snipe is the only attack with +to psionic . So cumbersome solutions are a core part of Blizzard balance. Blizzard won't make the "full damage to shield" though, because that wouldn't make sense with DB's comments that ghosts should be a neccesity along with mech. (emp would kinda be semi-useless then). Oh i don't think they'l do it, i'm just saying no change is to "unintuitive" for them. The problems are IMO: Tanks do to little dmg against high HP units; Immortals are way to good against Siege Tanks; anti air is not good enough. And the mother of all problems: DB is not convinced the game actually needs Tank based mech in TvP (apparently he is at least willing to try to test it). Basically, Tanks in good position need to be able to hold ground against superior Protoss ground forces. If they can not, you only get death ball "Lyyna" style. That is boring i agree with DB, but that is not what mech should be. If i wanted a death ball of expensive and slow'ish units i would play Protoss.
I fully agree.
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On January 09 2013 06:45 Hider wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2013 06:39 Lyyna wrote:On January 09 2013 06:22 Hider wrote:On January 09 2013 06:18 TheFrankOne wrote:On January 09 2013 05:22 a176 wrote:We are not trying to create a "Factory Only" option for Terrans in this match up that works in every game on every map all the time So they are fine with 'barracks only' bio solution on all maps, but they won't allow 'factory only'. The hell? "We want all Factory to be useful sometimes and all Barracks to be useful sometimes and a mix to also have a place. " So in the next sentence they say they want all of either to be useful "sometimes" they don't seem to like the prevalence of bio either. Sometimes it helps to keep reading. On January 09 2013 05:28 Hider wrote:
Im pretty sure that what he implies is that he still wants immortals to counter pure mech (which shouldn't happen as it just make for boring games). As a counter to that he wants terrans to add a few ghosts to emp the immortals. According to Dustin Browder's simplistic game design philosophy he would probably call this dynamic/micro intensive etc.
"We want all Factory to be useful sometimes" Good read on that implication. Also, way to ignore a high masters player who has more experience playing mech in TvP than 99.9% of people on this forum. http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=323003Advice for fighting immortals that explicitly says not to use EMPs against them from the thread: + Show Spoiler +Hellions work perfectly against Immortals. They don't take the increased damage from Immortals (which means they only do ~13 DPS, which makes them an expensive Zealot). Hellions also do 8/9/10/11 damage, so they are almost always completely unaffected by Hardened Shield. If you have 10-13 Hellions, you can take down 2-3 Immortal Shields in one shot with focus fire. WOW. Who needs EMP? Save the EMP's for Archons, and after that I find it's best to ignore them. They really do horrible damage against Mech (for 300 gas), especially with no splash. They are only good for soaking up Siege Tank shots, so make sure your Siege Tanks are focus firing the Immortals and basically anything else first! Maybe you should read the thread your self and then you would realize that I have posted in it previously. Also you will probably realize that Lyyna has never agued that pure mech is viable (in fact he has argued the opposite). Lyyna's style is just super boring from a spectator POV (even though I kinda enjoy playing it), because its basically deathball vs deathball and it has nothing to do with the multitaskbased bw mech. So please don't make offensive comments untill you make sure you fully understand my POV. That factory comment (btw) is easily interpreted as; We want tanks to be usefull in tvp (but they don't want pure mech unfortunately). To exactly tell my advice about ghostless mech, it's just that it's so much harder to play this compared to ghostmech that it's not worth it imo. Ghostmech can easily crush a protoss army, pure mech will have a really harder time, but it can too. Imo the fact my play ends up being deathball vs deathball isn't a consequence of the play itself : multitask/position based play (aka bw tvp mech) is basically non-existant in sc2 overall. if i could, i would tweak my play to play a more bw-ish style (and in fact i already tried to do so) Yeh I kinda agree. I also don't think ghosts-necessity is the biggest cause of deathballs. Rather its more related to the economy-system, and I believe these two things needs to happen before we can get rid of the deathball: 1) Reduce mining efficiency per base. 2) Buff immobile units (to compensate). The latter would include a buff to the tanks. But do you agree with me (or at least can you follow my logic) that it's kinda bad for the game that terrans needs ghosts to be effective against a "core-protoss ground army". Wouldn't it be better for the game if pure mech was viable (against a protoss ground army) so that terrans quicker could take a 4th and turtle less (which would make it easier for the protoss to harass?).
a ghostless army can handle a protoss ground army. the problem is that it can't do so cost-effectively enough versus different compositions, as you have to adapt way more than with a ghost mech army.
But yeah, i agree that it would be way better if a ghostless army could handle protoss ground by itself in a staple way, and for that it needs (i'm not going to talk about economy and stuff, because blizz isn't going to change this ever) :
-A goliath , in order to have a "buffer unit" that is OK on the ground and that can fight air , especially endgame armoured capital ships
-a buffed tank, not even a big buff, juste going back to 50 damage would be way enough
-old HSM --'
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On January 09 2013 07:05 Lyyna wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2013 06:45 Hider wrote:On January 09 2013 06:39 Lyyna wrote:On January 09 2013 06:22 Hider wrote:On January 09 2013 06:18 TheFrankOne wrote:On January 09 2013 05:22 a176 wrote:We are not trying to create a "Factory Only" option for Terrans in this match up that works in every game on every map all the time So they are fine with 'barracks only' bio solution on all maps, but they won't allow 'factory only'. The hell? "We want all Factory to be useful sometimes and all Barracks to be useful sometimes and a mix to also have a place. " So in the next sentence they say they want all of either to be useful "sometimes" they don't seem to like the prevalence of bio either. Sometimes it helps to keep reading. On January 09 2013 05:28 Hider wrote:
Im pretty sure that what he implies is that he still wants immortals to counter pure mech (which shouldn't happen as it just make for boring games). As a counter to that he wants terrans to add a few ghosts to emp the immortals. According to Dustin Browder's simplistic game design philosophy he would probably call this dynamic/micro intensive etc.
"We want all Factory to be useful sometimes" Good read on that implication. Also, way to ignore a high masters player who has more experience playing mech in TvP than 99.9% of people on this forum. http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=323003Advice for fighting immortals that explicitly says not to use EMPs against them from the thread: + Show Spoiler +Hellions work perfectly against Immortals. They don't take the increased damage from Immortals (which means they only do ~13 DPS, which makes them an expensive Zealot). Hellions also do 8/9/10/11 damage, so they are almost always completely unaffected by Hardened Shield. If you have 10-13 Hellions, you can take down 2-3 Immortal Shields in one shot with focus fire. WOW. Who needs EMP? Save the EMP's for Archons, and after that I find it's best to ignore them. They really do horrible damage against Mech (for 300 gas), especially with no splash. They are only good for soaking up Siege Tank shots, so make sure your Siege Tanks are focus firing the Immortals and basically anything else first! Maybe you should read the thread your self and then you would realize that I have posted in it previously. Also you will probably realize that Lyyna has never agued that pure mech is viable (in fact he has argued the opposite). Lyyna's style is just super boring from a spectator POV (even though I kinda enjoy playing it), because its basically deathball vs deathball and it has nothing to do with the multitaskbased bw mech. So please don't make offensive comments untill you make sure you fully understand my POV. That factory comment (btw) is easily interpreted as; We want tanks to be usefull in tvp (but they don't want pure mech unfortunately). To exactly tell my advice about ghostless mech, it's just that it's so much harder to play this compared to ghostmech that it's not worth it imo. Ghostmech can easily crush a protoss army, pure mech will have a really harder time, but it can too. Imo the fact my play ends up being deathball vs deathball isn't a consequence of the play itself : multitask/position based play (aka bw tvp mech) is basically non-existant in sc2 overall. if i could, i would tweak my play to play a more bw-ish style (and in fact i already tried to do so) Yeh I kinda agree. I also don't think ghosts-necessity is the biggest cause of deathballs. Rather its more related to the economy-system, and I believe these two things needs to happen before we can get rid of the deathball: 1) Reduce mining efficiency per base. 2) Buff immobile units (to compensate). The latter would include a buff to the tanks. But do you agree with me (or at least can you follow my logic) that it's kinda bad for the game that terrans needs ghosts to be effective against a "core-protoss ground army". Wouldn't it be better for the game if pure mech was viable (against a protoss ground army) so that terrans quicker could take a 4th and turtle less (which would make it easier for the protoss to harass?). a ghostless army can handle a protoss ground army. the problem is that it can't do so cost-effectively enough versus different compositions, as you have to adapt way more than with a ghost mech army. But yeah, i agree that it would be way better if a ghostless army could handle protoss ground by itself in a staple way, and for that it needs (i'm not going to talk about economy and stuff, because blizz isn't going to change this ever) : -A goliath , in order to have a "buffer unit" that is OK on the ground and that can fight air , especially endgame armoured capital ships -a buffed tank, not even a big buff, juste going back to 50 damage would be way enough -old HSM --'
Assuming they won’t remove the Thor, I hope they buff damage from the new direct damage cannon. With it’s long range, it would be reasonable anti air for single targets. As for the siege tanks, I hope they make them do more damage to harden shield. Immortals get pretty mauled by siege tanks if their shields drop, but it takes 10 shots do bring down the shields, which is unreasonable. If it was 5, 4 or 3 shots, the immortals would still have time to close the ground, but would be on the clock. It would make focus fire better for tanks and make the immortal push more risky, while keeping the unit unchanged for other match ups.
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On January 09 2013 06:18 TheFrankOne wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2013 05:22 a176 wrote:We are not trying to create a "Factory Only" option for Terrans in this match up that works in every game on every map all the time So they are fine with 'barracks only' bio solution on all maps, but they won't allow 'factory only'. The hell? "We want all Factory to be useful sometimes and all Barracks to be useful sometimes and a mix to also have a place. " So in the next sentence they say they want all of either to be useful "sometimes" they don't seem to like the prevalence of bio either. Sometimes it helps to keep reading.
the point was that bio is already perfectly viable on all maps. therefor mech should be as well.
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On January 09 2013 07:37 a176 wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2013 06:18 TheFrankOne wrote:On January 09 2013 05:22 a176 wrote:We are not trying to create a "Factory Only" option for Terrans in this match up that works in every game on every map all the time So they are fine with 'barracks only' bio solution on all maps, but they won't allow 'factory only'. The hell? "We want all Factory to be useful sometimes and all Barracks to be useful sometimes and a mix to also have a place. " So in the next sentence they say they want all of either to be useful "sometimes" they don't seem to like the prevalence of bio either. Sometimes it helps to keep reading. the point was that bio is already perfectly viable on all maps. therefor mech should be as well.
Nah Dustin Browder prefers bio over these stupid tank siege wars.
BW is a great game - go play it.
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On January 09 2013 05:58 Hider wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2013 05:53 Plansix wrote:On January 09 2013 05:42 The_Darkness wrote:On January 09 2013 05:26 Plansix wrote:On January 09 2013 05:08 Hider wrote:
And Dustin Browder does it again --> demonstrates a terrible understanding of game design. He apparantly doesn't realize that as long as ghosts becomes a neccesity to do mech then this will require too much defensive turtling from the terran for the game to ever come interesting.
Pure mech needs to be viable against pure toss ground. The game will never be interesting before that. Ah, the classic design post, taking personal opinion and raising it to a level where the skills of the people making the game are called into question. It is clear that some people will always take issue with everything blizzard says. Edit: grammer is key. If only you (and DB) were students of good game and unit design like the estimable Hider, then perhaps we wouldn't see such ignorant posts from you! You're not even able to predict the precise ways in which the next patch will fail, lol! Not only will the next patch (the content of which we do not know, of course) be an epic failure at promoting mech in tvp, but it will also serve to drive home the unavoidable truth that DB and Blizzard do not understand good unit or game design. And to think we were complaining earlier how a small group of posters fill every thread with negative posts about "game design". And now someone is focusing on a single line posted by DB and complaining it is terrible game design. You keep making these posts, yet still haven't tried to come up with an argument for why I am wrong? If you can't follow my logic, that is fine, but then don't make these kind of posts.
Here is a nice argument for you: medivacs are required to make bio viable, they require similar things to acquire as a ghost does for a meching player. Bio doesn't turtle, therefore mech doesn't need to either, at least not because of the ghost
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United Kingdom12023 Posts
On January 09 2013 07:44 DBS wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2013 05:58 Hider wrote:On January 09 2013 05:53 Plansix wrote:On January 09 2013 05:42 The_Darkness wrote:On January 09 2013 05:26 Plansix wrote:On January 09 2013 05:08 Hider wrote:
And Dustin Browder does it again --> demonstrates a terrible understanding of game design. He apparantly doesn't realize that as long as ghosts becomes a neccesity to do mech then this will require too much defensive turtling from the terran for the game to ever come interesting.
Pure mech needs to be viable against pure toss ground. The game will never be interesting before that. Ah, the classic design post, taking personal opinion and raising it to a level where the skills of the people making the game are called into question. It is clear that some people will always take issue with everything blizzard says. Edit: grammer is key. If only you (and DB) were students of good game and unit design like the estimable Hider, then perhaps we wouldn't see such ignorant posts from you! You're not even able to predict the precise ways in which the next patch will fail, lol! Not only will the next patch (the content of which we do not know, of course) be an epic failure at promoting mech in tvp, but it will also serve to drive home the unavoidable truth that DB and Blizzard do not understand good unit or game design. And to think we were complaining earlier how a small group of posters fill every thread with negative posts about "game design". And now someone is focusing on a single line posted by DB and complaining it is terrible game design. You keep making these posts, yet still haven't tried to come up with an argument for why I am wrong? If you can't follow my logic, that is fine, but then don't make these kind of posts. Here is a nice argument for you: medivacs are required to make bio viable, they require similar things to acquire as a ghost does for a meching player. Bio doesn't turtle, therefore mech doesn't need to either, at least not because of the ghost
Mech needs to turtle as a mech army is useless against toss without either a massive advantage or ghosts.
Ghosts cannot be reactored either unlike medivacs,.
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heres my idea for TvP mech
gives thors a "haywire" mode which causes them to lose their normal attack (and lose their anti-air attack) but opens up missile pods that fire the haywire missiles as the thors new normal attack
the haywire missiles will launch 5 attacks of 10 damage from 9range and its attackspeed will be modified to give it the same DPS as normal mode but instead using haywire missiles for the attack
the haywire missiles will deal ability-damage meaning it goes through armor, but at the same time this isnt too overpowered because the haywire attacks will also not benefit from attack upgrades either
the haywire missiles will be coded to have a flight-time and behave like stalker attacks. If anyone knows how stalkers attack, stalkers actually "shoot" their missile and it leads to extreme cases of over-kill. Siege tanks and marines are coded to basically never over-kill, however stalker shots have flight time so there is lots of over-kill. This means the thor haywire attack will be weaker as you stack tons of thors but strong if you just stay at around 6 thors to deplete immortal shields
because haywire thors will no longer need +attack upgrades to deal full haywire damage to protoss, this means thors will become a viable option for a terran that is going MMM because thors will come out of the gate dealing full haywire DPS to ground mech (stalkers/sentries/immortal/collossi) with zero mech attack upgrades against +3 armor protoss armies.
thors will be given a 10 second transformation time between modes. This makes is so thor rushes wont be as powerful against protoss because if you put them in haywire mode to counter immortals they are still weak to zealot/voidray and cannot switch modes fast enough to deal with the voidrays. haywire missiles CANNOT target zealots so the thors will naturally be weak to zealots but they will soft-counter immortals and beat collossi.
or possibly make thors haywire mode some 100/100 upgrade to make thor rushes slower
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I agree with DB( as I always have) that Terran shouldn't be able to go pure factory and destroy everything. I hated it in BW(no wonder Terrans are caught up in that mentality) and I'm glad they're not repeating that bullshit for SC2. Thumbs up.
Really? Is it so difficult to make facts as your primary production buildings and make a barracks and a few starports for ravens, banshees,and such? You're only spending upgrades on just the factory units.
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On January 09 2013 07:53 Phoenix2003 wrote:
I agree with DB( as I always have) that Terran shouldn't be able to go pure factory and destroy everything. I hated it in BW(no wonder Terrans are caught up in that mentality) and I'm glad they're not repeating that bullshit for SC2. Thumbs up.
Really? Is it so difficult to make facts as your primary production buildings and make a barracks and a few starports for ravens and such?
yes. also what DB (apparently wants) is that you should be able to build ghosts and factory units and destroy everything (besides air). Not sure why you believe that is much better.
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On January 09 2013 07:53 Phoenix2003 wrote:
I agree with DB( as I always have) that Terran shouldn't be able to go pure factory and destroy everything. I hated it in BW(no wonder Terrans are caught up in that mentality) and I'm glad they're not repeating that bullshit for SC2. Thumbs up.
Really? Is it so difficult to make facts as your primary production buildings and make a barracks and a few starports for ravens, banshees,and such? You're only spending upgrades on just the factory units.
I agree with you so much
Actually, in WoL, the best way to play mech is to add banshees and to be ready to transition on ravens. Only factory often dies in stupid ways (BL rush, muta, mass infested terrans...) and that's a cool fact.
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I actually think that Blizzard should do 4 things.
1. Rework the Thor to be a more late game unit. The HEP is great but more look into the Thor is needed.
2. The Siege Tank also needs a buff not in supply/cost but in damage and armor.
3. In relations to the Siege Tank, another tank should be added into HOTS. If you look at TvT in Dustin's own words TvT: Outside of reaper wars, I think the matchup is generally similiar to WoL with few minor differences like bio drops becoming abit too nasty. If Blizzard looks at implementing another type of tank I think it would bring fresh life into not only TvT but also TvP. Options are endless. A faster tank with a higher DPS versus Light would make early game much more interesting in TvT and TvZ. In addition, another idea is having a tank with say haywire missles ready to be deployed in the case that you need cheap anti air quick. The possibilities are infinite.
4. As for Widow Mines it feels like a very clunky unit. Work definitely has to be done. It feels very iffy with the Siege Tank.
Thanks for reading !
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On January 09 2013 07:59 Insoleet wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2013 07:53 Phoenix2003 wrote:
I agree with DB( as I always have) that Terran shouldn't be able to go pure factory and destroy everything. I hated it in BW(no wonder Terrans are caught up in that mentality) and I'm glad they're not repeating that bullshit for SC2. Thumbs up.
Really? Is it so difficult to make facts as your primary production buildings and make a barracks and a few starports for ravens, banshees,and such? You're only spending upgrades on just the factory units. I agree with you so much Actually, in WoL, the best way to play mech is to add banshees and to be ready to transition on ravens. Only factory often dies in stupid ways (BL rush, muta, mass infested terrans...) and that's a cool fact.
I strong disagree that mech is weaker than Protoss in a 1v1 scenario, what Mech is weak at is mobility. No sane protoss opponent will attack into a positioned mech army because they will get slaughtered already in WoL balance status. So Whats increased Tank damage gonna do?
Also both Zerg and Protoss die to all kind of bullshit while going for their ultimate t2/t3 armies, why should terran be any different? Terran has already the best defense in the game. This would only make Terran become slowly mine out and build up your ultimate deathball army.
Why are Ghosts supposed to be some kind of burden? It is the best unit to build in every PvT. Also it goes quite well with Mech because it costs more minerals than gas.
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Because bringing back the Warhound with extra damage vs mechanical is too damn difficult.
It's hilarious to me that they ever release it with a base 23 dmg vs all units rather than mechanical when it was specifically touted about as "anti-mech" unit.
^ Might be a bit off topic. Hell if nothing else, at least try it. The Warhound was scraped so early on they never even gave it a chance meanwhile Widow-Mines and Tempests get changes at least every-other patch.
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On January 09 2013 08:19 freetgy wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2013 07:59 Insoleet wrote:On January 09 2013 07:53 Phoenix2003 wrote:
I agree with DB( as I always have) that Terran shouldn't be able to go pure factory and destroy everything. I hated it in BW(no wonder Terrans are caught up in that mentality) and I'm glad they're not repeating that bullshit for SC2. Thumbs up.
Really? Is it so difficult to make facts as your primary production buildings and make a barracks and a few starports for ravens, banshees,and such? You're only spending upgrades on just the factory units. I agree with you so much Actually, in WoL, the best way to play mech is to add banshees and to be ready to transition on ravens. Only factory often dies in stupid ways (BL rush, muta, mass infested terrans...) and that's a cool fact. I strong disagree that mech is weaker than Protoss in a 1v1 scenario, what Mech is weak at is mobility. No sane protoss opponent will attack into a positioned mech army because they will get slaughtered already in WoL balance status. So Whats increased Tank damage gonna do? Also both Zerg and Protoss die to all kind of bullshit while going for their ultimate t2/t3 armies, why should terran be any different? Terran has already the best defense in the game. This would only make Terran become slowly mine out and build up your ultimate deathball army. Why are Ghosts supposed to be some kind of burden? It is the best unit to build in every PvT. Also it goes quite well with Mech because it costs more minerals than gas.
Protoss player can definitely charge into a terran seiged up and come out on top perfectly fine. Seige or unseige, protoss player will come out on top if they have enough archon and immortals. Sadly, you dont even need that much immortal or archon to achieve this. This is why more terran are favoring massing thors and hellbat because tank sucks. Even then, immortal still do pretty damn good against thors.
Now I know Avilo has a little bad of reputation but he had a video of him having 4 tanks in his natural and 1 on the high, all behind a wall AND a bunker and the protoss just 1-A in with a few immortal and archon chargelot army. Did I mention he had 1-2 and killed quiet a few probe with hellion runby. He even pulled all his scv to defend this knowing that if he defend this push he would be ahead but he lost over 50 SCV and barely put a dent in a 0-0-0 protoss all-in. You can find the video in the Mech is Not viable thread if you dig deep enough. There was quiet a few discussion on it. Some peopel were saying that he threw away too much hellion but there is no way in hell should a protoss be able to break a wall with a bunker, hellbat, and 4 tanks and 1 tanks on the high ground and over 50 SCV.
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Russian Federation4235 Posts
There's a short but efficient RTS design principle: "mobility should always come at a price". Half the game's problems are already coming from the violations of this principle (warp gates and dont even get me started on the medivac which might not be evident at the moment but I promise will become a worse and worse problem later on), and it also has a direct consequence: "air units should never be core units". Every time this principle is broken, the game suffers. This phenomenon is directly responsible for the ZvZ matchup in BW (which is mutalisk micro wars 90% of the time) and Blizzard makes this mistake again and again. Air units should be casters, harassers or timing-window effective general purpose units, but you should be able to build a more-or-less viable late-game army that is 100% ground. Having an air unit as a core anti-air option is a very bad thing. Especially if the enemy's air options are balanced around an air unit with 9 range. I hated the air mode of the viking with a passion from day one, and hated it even more when I realized that the sole reason for it's existence is a hastily-scrapped answer to the colossus.
The problem is that solving this problem correctly requires a level of confidence and readiness for change far surpassed by what Blizzard has shown to be ready to undertake. Too many changes have to be made (reworking colossi, reworking vikings, reworking units currently countered by vikings and finally adding another AA option for the terran) for the game to not fall apart like a tower made of playing cards.
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There should be an option:
Replace widow mine with new mech unit
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On January 09 2013 05:55 Sissors wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2013 05:49 freetgy wrote:On January 09 2013 05:08 Hider wrote:
And Dustin Browder does it again --> demonstrates a terrible understanding of game design. He apparantly doesn't realize that as long as ghosts becomes a neccesity to do mech then this will require too much defensive turtling from the terran for the game to ever come interesting.
Welcome to WoL PvT for Protoss -.- Mech is already very strong, the only question is how much easier should it be able to get? Mech is hard to get, very weak to air, lacks any kind of mobility, and is at worst incredible against a frontal assault from toss. You see barely mech in WoL, then they heavily nerf it in HotS, so I think it is safe to assume without serious boosts you wont see it in HotS.
Fixed that for you.
Mech is brutal as shit in WoL, it's worse in HotS though (as in totally not viable in my opinion). Protoss cannot approach a well-composed mech army without being completely destroyed. Of course they don't need to as they have blink-stalkers which can do enough damage that a couple of 200/200 zealot-archon armies will clear out most of the Terran.
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Can someone explain to me why the siege tank is so blatantly the favorite for receiving change? Is it just lackluster as a unit, or is the matchup that forces this kind of necessity? Because I can't see why a new unit wouldn't function just as well and be more interesting at the same time.
I feel bad that terran got a little screwed out of a new unit
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On January 09 2013 08:56 NonameAI wrote:
There should be an option:
Replace widow mine with new mech unit
But then they'd be admitting their pet project sucked.
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On January 09 2013 09:21 Emzeeshady wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2013 05:12 MCDayC wrote:
Why isnt the widow mine an option in the poll? because buffing Widow mines would be stupid. Unless they could find a way to somehow buff it vs Protoss only.
i also dislike the poll; the correct question should be; which unit do you want the most to be redesigned/buffed. Because its highly unlikely that tanks will be buffed without any kind of drawback in any way.
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On January 09 2013 09:09 TALegion wrote:Can someone explain to me why the siege tank is so blatantly the favorite for receiving change? Is it just lackluster as a unit, or is the matchup that forces this kind of necessity? Because I can't see why a new unit wouldn't function just as well and be more interesting at the same time. I feel bad that terran got a little screwed out of a new unit
2 reasons:
-Making the tank more powerful and at the core of mech would encourage positional play based on controlling and zoning out sections of terrain, which is a very strategic and interesting to watch style of play.
-Currently tanks just flat out suck vs protoss - they get stomped by chargelots, immortals, and archons. They don't do bonus damage to any of those, plus immortal shields absorb tons of damage and the charge ability nullifies tanks' range advantage.
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On January 09 2013 09:09 TALegion wrote:Can someone explain to me why the siege tank is so blatantly the favorite for receiving change? Is it just lackluster as a unit, or is the matchup that forces this kind of necessity? Because I can't see why a new unit wouldn't function just as well and be more interesting at the same time. I feel bad that terran got a little screwed out of a new unit
Because buffing tanks would go a long way to encourage mech play. A new unit isn't needed. The tank is what makes positional mech possible. Without tanks, terran mech is just a beefier, slower version of bio. And I could play protoss if I wanted to do that.
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There are too many issues with SC2 at the moment for making mech work in TvP by just buffing or nerfing things. Doing so would just break things that are already relatively balanced. It is much more complex than bandaid fixes. Blizzard must change SC2 fundamentally in order to address this issue and so many others.
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On January 09 2013 09:36 purakushi wrote:
There are too many issues with SC2 at the moment for making mech work in TvP by just buffing or nerfing things. Doing so would just break things that are already relatively balanced. It is much more complex than bandaid fixes. Blizzard must change SC2 fundamentally in order to address this issue and so many others.
no its not and i just listed 2 ways they could do that (sure there are other ways as well).
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United Kingdom14103 Posts
Please, please oh please buff the tank!
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On January 09 2013 07:44 DBS wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2013 05:58 Hider wrote:On January 09 2013 05:53 Plansix wrote:On January 09 2013 05:42 The_Darkness wrote:On January 09 2013 05:26 Plansix wrote:On January 09 2013 05:08 Hider wrote:
And Dustin Browder does it again --> demonstrates a terrible understanding of game design. He apparantly doesn't realize that as long as ghosts becomes a neccesity to do mech then this will require too much defensive turtling from the terran for the game to ever come interesting.
Pure mech needs to be viable against pure toss ground. The game will never be interesting before that. Ah, the classic design post, taking personal opinion and raising it to a level where the skills of the people making the game are called into question. It is clear that some people will always take issue with everything blizzard says. Edit: grammer is key. If only you (and DB) were students of good game and unit design like the estimable Hider, then perhaps we wouldn't see such ignorant posts from you! You're not even able to predict the precise ways in which the next patch will fail, lol! Not only will the next patch (the content of which we do not know, of course) be an epic failure at promoting mech in tvp, but it will also serve to drive home the unavoidable truth that DB and Blizzard do not understand good unit or game design. And to think we were complaining earlier how a small group of posters fill every thread with negative posts about "game design". And now someone is focusing on a single line posted by DB and complaining it is terrible game design. You keep making these posts, yet still haven't tried to come up with an argument for why I am wrong? If you can't follow my logic, that is fine, but then don't make these kind of posts. Here is a nice argument for you: medivacs are required to make bio viable, they require similar things to acquire as a ghost does for a meching player. Bio doesn't turtle, therefore mech doesn't need to either, at least not because of the ghost
The resource requirements for mech and bio are very different (mineral intensive vs gas intensive).
Also, bio is much more mobile and you can be aggressive and put on pressure with 50 supply of bio vs similar supply Protoss. You cannot do it as mech at all.
It is like telling Protoss players that they need void rays to support their colossi/stalker army.
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GG earlier Mario i was "LegendofBert" if you remember me. I thought you were in Grandmasters? i didnt lose many points for losing to you but i looked at your ladder and you were only in low masters :oX
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This is great!
To me this seems like the dev team went on christmas vacation, came back yesterday, saw the s***-storm, and got testing.
Welcome back blizz  !
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whatever they do
just dont buff tanks
buff tanks means even more tank chess in tvt
i rather play mech vs p
then a even more boring tvt
not every terran like tank chess
the idea of warhound was not bad to break siege lines ect
but in the end it was too good vs everything
the only change they could try with tanks would be less dmg on siege mode more dmg on tank mode
or almost 0 dmg vs light unit but more dmg against amored unit
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Just change the immortal already...
What point is there is in trying to force mech through buffs as long as protoss has a unit specifically designed to counter mech... The only result of terran buffs will be that TvZ and TvT get pigeonholed into boring mech matchups..
Tank could use a very little buff but it won't make mech viable in TvP and will only offset the other matchups more...
Remove hardened shield and just give immortals +50 shields, they will practically be the same in PvP/PvZ and against marine/marauder but they will be much weaker against tanks! I guess they could let siege tank shots bypass the immortal shield as well for the same effect but that would be ugly from an aesthetic point of view.
At the same time widow needs need to do more single target damage and less aoe, so they become useful against protoss again. Preferrably i'd see detection gone from the MsC too so protoss is forced to actually scout and get some tech before it can deal with widow mines.
Finally I'd love to see the thor replaced by a mini-thor (goliath clone basically) as they had initially intended for HotS. Thors are just completely uninteresting and the high initial cost for the first thor plus low mobility make them pretty much terrible for stopping oracle harass. Just use the warhound visuals they have and make it half a thor for half the cost with some better mobility, much more interesting. Not really a neccesary change but Thor like units are just dreadful for gameplay.
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Immortal + 50 shields?
Immortal/Sentry all in says hi.
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Siege tanks need more Damage. Widow Mines damage does not warrant 2 supply. Thor HIP mode DPS is way too low for such an expensive unit. Seeker Missile needs to be aoe or MUCH cheaper energy.
And Immortals need to not exist
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On January 09 2013 09:50 perser84 wrote:
whatever they do
just dont buff tanks
buff tanks means even more tank chess in tvt
i rather play mech vs p
then a even more boring tvt
not every terran like tank chess
the idea of warhound was not bad to break siege lines ect
but in the end it was too good vs everything
the only change they could try with tanks would be less dmg on siege mode more dmg on tank mode
or almost 0 dmg vs light unit but more dmg against amored unit
new heal and boost doom drop are good vs mech
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On January 09 2013 09:47 Pookie Monster wrote:
GG earlier Mario i was "LegendofBert" if you remember me. I thought you were in Grandmasters? i didnt lose many points for losing to you but i looked at your ladder and you were only in low masters :oX
I reset my ladder ^^
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United Kingdom12023 Posts
the only change they could try with tanks would be less dmg on siege mode more dmg on tank mode
or almost 0 dmg vs light unit but more dmg against amored unit
You have to be joking, right?
Surely you mean less damage tank mode more damage siege mode?
Also if the tank did no damage to light at all, marines would just destroy mech in TvT.
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On January 09 2013 09:50 perser84 wrote:
whatever they do
just dont buff tanks
buff tanks means even more tank chess in tvt
i rather play mech vs p
then a even more boring tvt
not every terran like tank chess
the idea of warhound was not bad to break siege lines ect
but in the end it was too good vs everything
the only change they could try with tanks would be less dmg on siege mode more dmg on tank mode
or almost 0 dmg vs light unit but more dmg against amored unit
Doubt even with a buff to seige tank TvT, mech wont dominate it completely. I mean bio got super medivacs now so what wrong with buff mech? You have no real evidence to state why tank shouldnt be buff rather your bias opinion that you dont like chess like TvT. I understand not everyone like chess like TvT but you arent force to go tanks at all. Bio vs mech is already really really good as it is. Tanks number can definitely be tweak as long as they dont make bio TvT unplayable it is fine. Dont forget, if mech become too strong, it can easily be balance my map.
Like it or not, tanks are what define TvT. It what make TvT the most dynamic mirror match up. Which is why your propose change to the tank is terrible.
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On January 09 2013 05:53 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2013 05:42 The_Darkness wrote:On January 09 2013 05:26 Plansix wrote:On January 09 2013 05:08 Hider wrote:
And Dustin Browder does it again --> demonstrates a terrible understanding of game design. He apparantly doesn't realize that as long as ghosts becomes a neccesity to do mech then this will require too much defensive turtling from the terran for the game to ever come interesting.
Pure mech needs to be viable against pure toss ground. The game will never be interesting before that. Ah, the classic design post, taking personal opinion and raising it to a level where the skills of the people making the game are called into question. It is clear that some people will always take issue with everything blizzard says. Edit: grammer is key. If only you (and DB) were students of good game and unit design like the estimable Hider, then perhaps we wouldn't see such ignorant posts from you! You're not even able to predict the precise ways in which the next patch will fail, lol! Not only will the next patch (the content of which we do not know, of course) be an epic failure at promoting mech in tvp, but it will also serve to drive home the unavoidable truth that DB and Blizzard do not understand good unit or game design. And to think we were complaining earlier how a small group of posters fill every thread with negative posts about "game design". And now someone is focusing on a single line posted by DB and complaining it is terrible game design.
I actually thought he was trying to parody himself for a while. I see now he's serious but he's somewhat toned down his posts so I'm ok with that.
As to the upcoming balance changes, I've never been the biggest fan of tank based play but since this is the beta I think they should really crank up the tank's damage (+15 all around) and see what happens. Would doing so upset the tvz matchup? As far as I can tell the tank is weaker than it's ever been in that matchup. Even if the buff destroys the current damage balance in that matchup (where if you're zerg and you get +1 carapace your zerglings survive the splash damage from an unupgraded tank shot), I don't think it will matter all that much given not many zerg appear to be playing upgraded ling strategies (probably because of the threat of hellbats among other things). As to tvt, it's not clear how much of an impact a serious buff would have (say +15 against light). If it forced everyone to go mech in tvt I don't think that would be a good development and I'd be in favor of figuring out a different solution.
If I had to guess I do think they'll buff the tank in the next patch.
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On January 09 2013 09:53 AdrianHealey wrote:Immortal + 50 shields? Immortal/Sentry all in says hi.
I actually like this ideia, it addresses 2 problems at once.
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Hopefully we'll see what their really up to in patch 11.
Btw that was my post DB responded too Good too see some of those blue posts being posted. Guess they are back from their holidays.
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I'll restate an idea I had a while ago regarding this:
Give siege tanks, and possibly thors, an upgrade which increases their damage to mechanical targets. This would have zero effect on TvZ, and probably very little in TvT, since it won't be any harder than now to go Bio vs Mech. In TvP, this will mean that siege tanks be even better vs sentries, stalkers, and colossi, while thors in addition will deal with all protoss air units (all Protoss air is mechanical, including Tempests and Oracles). It being an upgrade will prevent 1/1/1 from becoming the bread and butter of Terran players again. It would probably be for the best that the upgrade doesn't affect the damage to immortals while their shields are up, considering Protoss has next to nothing left to deal with a Tank/Thor/Hellbat combo with this change.
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On January 09 2013 09:53 AdrianHealey wrote:Immortal + 50 shields? Immortal/Sentry all in says hi.
hardly matters.. Against roaches the hardened shield is worth 60-80 shields as it reduces the 16-18 roach damage to 10 on it. With lings it might be worth a bit less therefore 50 shields pretty much leave immortals the same against zerg.
All in all a bit of extra shield or hardened shield pretty much comes out the same against MM, roach/ling or stalkers. Only against tanks, thors and ultralisks is that hardened shield really good..
Because of this I definately think hardened shield is the thing to tinker with to 'buff' tanks in TvP. Mech can work then without having the perfect emps but doesn't get stronger when it does land the emps which is good imo.
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On January 09 2013 11:01 Odecey wrote:
I'll restate an idea I had a while ago regarding this:
Give siege tanks, and possibly thors, an upgrade which increases their damage to mechanical targets. This would have zero effect on TvZ, and probably very little in TvT, since it won't be any harder than now to go Bio vs Mech. In TvP, this will mean that siege tanks be even better vs sentries, stalkers, and colossi, while thors in addition will deal with all protoss air units (all Protoss air is mechanical, including Tempests and Oracles). It being an upgrade will prevent 1/1/1 from becoming the bread and butter of Terran players again. It would probably be for the best that the upgrade doesn't affect the damage to immortals while their shields are up, considering Protoss has next to nothing left to deal with a Tank/Thor/Hellbat combo with this change.
bonus to mechanical was basically what the warhound was. It can work as a fix for TvP but it would also have the nasty effect that mech vs mech becomes really stale in TvT.. Afterall tanks would start to do more damage to eachother so getting the first shot becomes more crucial. You could rarely break a sieged up tank line anymore even if you had a numerical advantage because the first free volley the defender get would be so damn strong.
Perhaps bonus to mechanical on the widow mine is good though.
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I don't like the idea of bonus damage to Mechanical. In fact I would prefer it if Archons' bonus damage to Biological were removed from an abstract design perspective. Increase their damage if you must, but those flags are terrible for balancing damage because of how obviously disproportionate they are between the races.
Lockdown on ghosts, though. Nothing unusual about limiting the target profile of Ghost abilities. Snipe is Biological only, Lockdown as Mechanical only.
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On January 09 2013 11:01 Odecey wrote:
I'll restate an idea I had a while ago regarding this:
Give siege tanks, and possibly thors, an upgrade which increases their damage to mechanical targets.
How is a player supposed to know this has been upgraded and to potentially switch to bio? And if they do tech switch to bio, now mech upgraded units are at a disadvantage.
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United States4883 Posts
On January 09 2013 11:35 vesicular wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2013 11:01 Odecey wrote:
I'll restate an idea I had a while ago regarding this:
Give siege tanks, and possibly thors, an upgrade which increases their damage to mechanical targets. How is a player supposed to know this has been upgraded and to potentially switch to bio? And if they do tech switch to bio, now mech upgraded units are at a disadvantage.
If you're talking about TvT and lategame situations, both players should be starting on air tech. If one player decides to go heavy on the mech, the other player can just tech to air faster. Why on earth would you tech DOWN to bio? If you mean that both players are going marine/tank, you would just match the upgrade and continue to play as normal. (If you're playing marine/tank against mech, you should have switched to bio a long time ago).
Sorry, this was just a nitpick. I'll try to be more constructive in the future, lol.
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United States4883 Posts
On January 09 2013 11:28 ledarsi wrote:
I don't like the idea of bonus damage to Mechanical. In fact I would prefer it if Archons' bonus damage to Biological were removed from an abstract design perspective. Increase their damage if you must, but those flags are terrible for balancing damage because of how obviously disproportionate they are between the races.
Lockdown on ghosts, though. Nothing unusual about limiting the target profile of Ghost abilities. Snipe is Biological only, Lockdown as Mechanical only.
I think that this whole "bonus to x" system that Blizzard has worked out in SC2 is really one of the most problematic things with the game. The fact that half of SC2 units do extra damage to armored, light, or massive shows that Blizzard cannot seem to find an elegant, simple design. The Ultralisk flat 35 damage was the best thing Blizzard's done in a long time for making the game better, and I hope they try some solution like that for tanks (like 60-70 flat damage) or immortals (40 flat damage).
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Canada11371 Posts
I hope they can pull something off. Mech is fun to play against and unique to Starcraft from any other RTS and so I would really like to see the return of the tank (but that probably requires the phase out of the immortal.)
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United States4883 Posts
On January 09 2013 12:24 Falling wrote:
I hope they can pull something off. Mech is fun to play against and unique to Starcraft from any other RTS and so I would really like to see the return of the tank (but that probably requires the phase out of the immortal.)
Well, if Blizzard ever plans on "phasing out" the immortal, we'll know as soon as hardened shield becomes a 200 mana ability and they increase the unit size by 5000%, allowing you to only build 1.
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On January 09 2013 12:24 Falling wrote:
I hope they can pull something off. Mech is fun to play against and unique to Starcraft from any other RTS and so I would really like to see the return of the tank (but that probably requires the phase out of the immortal.)
If u phase out the immortal, toss won't be able to handle new ultras. Roaches will be a pain in the ass ,too.
Mech could use a walker with marine like low-damage high attack speed. Viking's ground form could be tweaked and become available at factory, with transformation to air mode enabled after getting starport. Also making them use different upgrades could work too.
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On January 09 2013 12:47 Tommyth wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2013 12:24 Falling wrote:
I hope they can pull something off. Mech is fun to play against and unique to Starcraft from any other RTS and so I would really like to see the return of the tank (but that probably requires the phase out of the immortal.) If u phase out the immortal, toss won't be able to handle new ultras. Roaches will be a pain in the ass ,too. Mech could use a walker with marine like low-damage high attack speed. Viking's ground form could be tweaked and become available at factory, with transformation to air mode enabled after getting starport. Also making them use different upgrades could work too.
Not when Immortals can 2 shot them after upgrades. Immortals aren't the problem, EMP+anything rapes them. The biggest problem with mech is the lack of better anti-air, especially against Tempest.
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This feels like another scenario where Blizzard is too afraid to make something too powerful, and we're going to end up with something that just isn't worth it. Some players will use it for novelty value, and they'll be used as examples of "See?! It works! Mech is viable!"
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On January 09 2013 12:24 Falling wrote:
I hope they can pull something off. Mech is fun to play against and unique to Starcraft from any other RTS and so I would really like to see the return of the tank (but that probably requires the phase out of the immortal.)
I really hope they do not do that. I like the Immortal a lot and really don't want to see it go. If anything, I want to build more of them. Making it a more all around good unit, rather than the unit that mauls tanks, would be in my book. Or just make tanks ruin them when the shields drop.
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On January 09 2013 12:53 mannerless wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2013 12:47 Tommyth wrote:On January 09 2013 12:24 Falling wrote:
I hope they can pull something off. Mech is fun to play against and unique to Starcraft from any other RTS and so I would really like to see the return of the tank (but that probably requires the phase out of the immortal.) If u phase out the immortal, toss won't be able to handle new ultras. Roaches will be a pain in the ass ,too. Mech could use a walker with marine like low-damage high attack speed. Viking's ground form could be tweaked and become available at factory, with transformation to air mode enabled after getting starport. Also making them use different upgrades could work too. Not when Immortals can 2 shot them after upgrades. Immortals aren't the problem, EMP+anything rapes them. The biggest problem with mech is the lack of better anti-air, especially against Tempest.
I'm not confident that's true - was lack of anti air a true reason of mech being not viable in WoL? Toss didn't have tempests, in theory could go carriers, but vikings were quite capable of handling them.
Also I believe that there hasn't been enough time to prove that vikings aren't able to handle tempests. I don't know how many people are trying to play mech in hots, but the truth is the best of the best are still playing WoL. Saying that tempests counter mech at this point is just theorycrafting, imho.
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On January 09 2013 13:09 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2013 12:24 Falling wrote:
I hope they can pull something off. Mech is fun to play against and unique to Starcraft from any other RTS and so I would really like to see the return of the tank (but that probably requires the phase out of the immortal.) I really hope they do not do that. I like the Immortal a lot and really don't want to see it go. If anything, I want to build more of them. Making it a more all around good unit, rather than the unit that mauls tanks, would be in my book. Or just make tanks ruin them when the shields drop.
Yeah basically this. Instead of being an anti-armoured sniper they should be maybe a general purpose damage dealer that the toss gateway army so desperately needs at times? They're effectiveness exponentially goes up against high burst damage dealers like tanks where as the hardened shields dont do much against rapid damage dealers or just against alot of foes.
Im sure blizzard is aware of the relationships between immortals and these units. Its just a matter of what "solutions" to implement to this issue or it could very well be a non issue.
Also those saying emps rape immortal, well just because hardened shield is down doesn't mean they going to fall like flies. If it was the case mech would actually be viable.. but reality is that it isn't. Its quite saddening when a bunch of stimmed MM could kill immortals faster/cheaper more efficiently than ghost emp/tank focus fire hence why immortals aren't used much against bio even if the terran is going marauder heavy.
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On January 09 2013 13:14 Tommyth wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2013 12:53 mannerless wrote:On January 09 2013 12:47 Tommyth wrote:On January 09 2013 12:24 Falling wrote:
I hope they can pull something off. Mech is fun to play against and unique to Starcraft from any other RTS and so I would really like to see the return of the tank (but that probably requires the phase out of the immortal.) If u phase out the immortal, toss won't be able to handle new ultras. Roaches will be a pain in the ass ,too. Mech could use a walker with marine like low-damage high attack speed. Viking's ground form could be tweaked and become available at factory, with transformation to air mode enabled after getting starport. Also making them use different upgrades could work too. Not when Immortals can 2 shot them after upgrades. Immortals aren't the problem, EMP+anything rapes them. The biggest problem with mech is the lack of better anti-air, especially against Tempest. I'm not confident that's true - was lack of anti air a true reason of mech being not viable in WoL? Toss didn't have tempests, in theory could go carriers, but vikings were quite capable of handling them. Also I believe that there hasn't been enough time to prove that vikings aren't able to handle tempests. I don't know how many people are trying to play mech in hots, but the truth is the best of the best are still playing WoL. Saying that tempests counter mech at this point is just theorycrafting, imho.
Yes. Think of the production cost and the limited amount of gas from early to mid game. A single void ray could pose a threat to a hellion/tank army. Thors don't cut it due to being so expensive and cumbersome (getting marines wont cut it either). So now you have to atleast get a single starport along with a ghost academy for immortals/archons. You can already see just how hard it is to mech looking at the required tech/investment just to survive.
And do you play HOTS? I do. Morrow does and a whole bunch of Terrans that I think are pretty good. Tempests are like the final nail in the coffin to mech and I wouldn't surprised if those who have witnessed what they do agree with me on this one.
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the extra note sounds to me is that they are giving up the pure mech option in TvP.
Pure mech nowadays work, it's just not that viable because it's hard to have consistent wins with it. It's also much more constrained by map design etc
They really should add in another unit in. It may imbalanced but they will have an extra tool to tweak for further patch to patch up mech.
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i dont know if ive said this already but i want to see defense matrix make a return
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3 possible tank buffs that would be good:
1) buff thier single target dmg, nerf their splash damage (single target dmg is much more effective against toss, while splash is better against zerg, so this would make the tank more effective against toss while keeping zerg balanced)
2) give tanks a bonus vs mech (most mech units are toss without effecting tvt much as they would be just as good against bio as current)
3) give tank a bonus vs shields
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I don't like the sound of "if its not fun then we'll have to abandon this". Coming from the same people that thought TvT tank play is not fun and killing workers is not fun really worries me.
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Also, the fact that they think mech is "fine" in TvZ should send up red flags about their approach to making mech viable in TvP. If they're too afraid to "break" mech and watch it too carefully, we're likely to see a repeat of the swift and over-reactive nerfs or worse, never getting it viable in the first place while possibly leaving another matchup in a very uncomfortable position (a la HotS reapers).
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On January 09 2013 09:43 vthree wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2013 07:44 DBS wrote:On January 09 2013 05:58 Hider wrote:On January 09 2013 05:53 Plansix wrote:On January 09 2013 05:42 The_Darkness wrote:On January 09 2013 05:26 Plansix wrote:On January 09 2013 05:08 Hider wrote:
And Dustin Browder does it again --> demonstrates a terrible understanding of game design. He apparantly doesn't realize that as long as ghosts becomes a neccesity to do mech then this will require too much defensive turtling from the terran for the game to ever come interesting.
Pure mech needs to be viable against pure toss ground. The game will never be interesting before that. Ah, the classic design post, taking personal opinion and raising it to a level where the skills of the people making the game are called into question. It is clear that some people will always take issue with everything blizzard says. Edit: grammer is key. If only you (and DB) were students of good game and unit design like the estimable Hider, then perhaps we wouldn't see such ignorant posts from you! You're not even able to predict the precise ways in which the next patch will fail, lol! Not only will the next patch (the content of which we do not know, of course) be an epic failure at promoting mech in tvp, but it will also serve to drive home the unavoidable truth that DB and Blizzard do not understand good unit or game design. And to think we were complaining earlier how a small group of posters fill every thread with negative posts about "game design". And now someone is focusing on a single line posted by DB and complaining it is terrible game design. You keep making these posts, yet still haven't tried to come up with an argument for why I am wrong? If you can't follow my logic, that is fine, but then don't make these kind of posts. Here is a nice argument for you: medivacs are required to make bio viable, they require similar things to acquire as a ghost does for a meching player. Bio doesn't turtle, therefore mech doesn't need to either, at least not because of the ghost The resource requirements for mech and bio are very different (mineral intensive vs gas intensive). Also, bio is much more mobile and you can be aggressive and put on pressure with 50 supply of bio vs similar supply Protoss. You cannot do it as mech at all. It is like telling Protoss players that they need void rays to support their colossi/stalker army.
Very similar in fact. Protoss goes Colossi-Stalker they will lose to basically anything that Terran builds (Colossi Stalker gets raped by mech in straight-up engagements and by bio in all ways, excepting a couple of risky timing attacks).
So Protoss has to add Templar and Archons (both a LOT more expensive than ghosts, Templar don't benefit from upgrades at all, btw and Archons don't benefit from armour, which is the most important upgrade in PvT).
Mech HAS to include ghosts (and vikings depending on the Protoss composition).
Just like Protoss gateway units HAS to include Colossi and Templar (one or the other or even Archons with lots of upgrades can do ok for a while, but will eventually be overrun).
On January 09 2013 09:50 Markwerf wrote:
Just change the immortal already...
What point is there is in trying to force mech through buffs as long as protoss has a unit specifically designed to counter mech... The only result of terran buffs will be that TvZ and TvT get pigeonholed into boring mech matchups..
Tank could use a very little buff but it won't make mech viable in TvP and will only offset the other matchups more...
Remove hardened shield and just give immortals +50 shields, they will practically be the same in PvP/PvZ and against marine/marauder but they will be much weaker against tanks! I guess they could let siege tank shots bypass the immortal shield as well for the same effect but that would be ugly from an aesthetic point of view.
At the same time widow needs need to do more single target damage and less aoe, so they become useful against protoss again. Preferrably i'd see detection gone from the MsC too so protoss is forced to actually scout and get some tech before it can deal with widow mines.
Immortals by themselves are NOT a problem for mech (not even a little bit). Maxed armies of immortals and tanks favour TANKS, despite hardened shield. Immortals are amazing against small numbers of tanks (which is good because the 1-1-1 is still pretty strong, even with immortals), but terribad against tanks supported by ghosts, especially in large numbers.
EDIT:
To be clear I'm not saying mech is awesome (in fact it kinda sucks in HotS, but was good but hard in WoL) and I firmly believe the tank needs a buff (slightly higher damage or larger splash, 100 gas and 2 supply would be good, plus the addition to the Terran army of the Goliath).
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On January 09 2013 04:42 AdrianHealey wrote:
I love it when Blizzard gives feedback. That's literally the most important thing to do. So that we 'know' that they are doing 'something'.
The sad part is that you will see things you DONT want to see too, stuff like this for example:
We are not trying to create a "Factory Only" option for Terrans in this match up that works in every game on every map all the time. We want all Factory to be useful sometimes
Since they moved the "healer" from the barracks to the Starport it is obvious that you need Medivacs for bio play (except rush strategies), but why is it good to force such diversity? Due to the separated buffs it is a terrible idea and merging them isnt a good thing, because it means they simplify the game to make their own vision work. That is the wrong way.
I fear this might mean we will NOT see a viable AA unit for mech because they dont want to let their pants down and say something like "yep, we screwed up, the Thor stinks as AA and the Goliath is better and needed" and instead get a buff to Vikings instead.
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What I'm guessing they want is something like what ZvT used to be, before Infestors became incredibly strong. You could go Mutas, or you could go Infestors. Some maps were better for Mutas, some for Infestors, and it was good for a Zerg to know both styles for this reason.
I would adore if TvP mech became like this. Some maps are good for bio, some for mech.
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On January 09 2013 16:05 Salivanth wrote:
What I'm guessing they want is something like what ZvT used to be, before Infestors became incredibly strong. You could go Mutas, or you could go Infestors. Some maps were better for Mutas, some for Infestors, and it was good for a Zerg to know both styles for this reason.
I would adore if TvP mech became like this. Some maps are good for bio, some for mech.
Believe it or not but most map are pretty good for mech. Atleast in the current map pool. This is because there has to always be an easy to access third other wise ZvP is imbalance due to the stephano 200 roach because protoss need an easy accessable third. This also help mech quiet a bit because an easy accessable/defendable third help mech secure a third more easily because of their immobility.
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A Tank buff alone will not cut it.
The reason Bio is standard is that it works in 99% of the standard metagame. Its ok for early pressure its ok against allins its kind of avarage in the lategame. Bio is viable in almost all situations that can occure that is the reason why its standard in tvp and tvz (i count Marine Tank as bio).
Some people say Mech is working in Wol and here is my opinion why they think that: It works !only! because its not standard and not "the metagame".
Lets play a little bit "what if". Imagine for a moment Mech would be standard. There would be holes bigger than the grand canyon in the terran strategies because Z and P would figure out really fast the weaknesses that can be exploitet. It´s a design problem that makes mech weak not just numbers. Terran need to react what the others are doing and with the enormous costs of the infrasture and the upgrades Mech is very bad by design.
Terran will always the race that fight against the clock because it has no late game macro mechanic. Thats not bad it makes it the most entertaining race. But it makes "mech" impossible to play as "standard".
In my opinion there are 2 options that could help:
Give Mech a lategame macro mechanic like a Factory only techreactor (very expensive, needs fusion core)
Redesign Thors or Battlecruiser to a "force a reaction" unit. Like Colossus, HT or Broodlords work. I´m thinking of "ok he builds BC´s i have to do something against them or they will destroy me in x minutes"
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The tank needs a drastic buff, and a look into the issue of "force vikings and tech switch to beat Terran for free" needs to considered.
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On January 09 2013 11:49 SC2John wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2013 11:28 ledarsi wrote:
I don't like the idea of bonus damage to Mechanical. In fact I would prefer it if Archons' bonus damage to Biological were removed from an abstract design perspective. Increase their damage if you must, but those flags are terrible for balancing damage because of how obviously disproportionate they are between the races.
Lockdown on ghosts, though. Nothing unusual about limiting the target profile of Ghost abilities. Snipe is Biological only, Lockdown as Mechanical only. I think that this whole "bonus to x" system that Blizzard has worked out in SC2 is really one of the most problematic things with the game. The fact that half of SC2 units do extra damage to armored, light, or massive shows that Blizzard cannot seem to find an elegant, simple design. The Ultralisk flat 35 damage was the best thing Blizzard's done in a long time for making the game better, and I hope they try some solution like that for tanks (like 60-70 flat damage) or immortals (40 flat damage).
Are you aware that BW was exactly the same? Tanks did 70 damage there, but did only 50% vs light and 75% damage vs Medium armored units. That's exactly the same as giving it bonus damage.
Differences are though, that versus shields, damage always did the full amount, and that there was no such thing as the immortal.
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Well, sort of exactly the same. They do 35 (+15 Armored) which means 50 against targets that would have been categorized as Large in BW instead of 70. In addition, Protoss shields match their unit's type profile instead of always taking the maximum amount. These two things combined are quite a considerable reduction in damage. And the tank's cost has been increased to 125 gas and 3 supply, despite this sharply reduced damage.
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On January 09 2013 15:21 Rabiator wrote:The sad part is that you will see things you DONT want to see too, stuff like this for example: Show nested quote +We are not trying to create a "Factory Only" option for Terrans in this match up that works in every game on every map all the time. We want all Factory to be useful sometimes
Apart from "it is awesome in Brood War", why is that a terrible thing? There is no building in the game that can make you win games on its own, even barracks need medevacs. You would hate the game if mass stargates could stand against every composition, so why do you want pure factories to do that?
The core of mech is the positionnal play + harassing with faster unit. Something isn't mech just because it comes from the factory, but on the other hand, it can still be mech even if all units don't come from the same building.
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Pandemona
Charlie Sheens House51493 Posts
Good way to make mech a bit strong would be to add range to siege tank? (Non siege mode ofc) I mean the ability to have them in a kit-able army would make chargelots a bit easier to handle, along with immortals too due to their range?
Doing that also should not effect the other match ups either? TvT might make it less of a turtle match up if anything, but tank vs tank so not much different. And banelings will still have the same effect vs non siege mode tanks. Thinking about it, it might effect tank vs roach battles, but normally the only reason that is happening is if the zerg player is rushing roaches and hitting an early timing attack to punish helion expand builds?
Would like to see that implemented rather than a buff to a unit dps wise, or another added.
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On January 09 2013 17:56 Telenil wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2013 15:21 Rabiator wrote:The sad part is that you will see things you DONT want to see too, stuff like this for example: We are not trying to create a "Factory Only" option for Terrans in this match up that works in every game on every map all the time. We want all Factory to be useful sometimes Apart from "it is awesome in Brood War", why is that a terrible thing? There is no building in the game that can make you win games on its own, even barracks need medevacs. You would hate the game if mass stargates could stand against every composition, so why do you want pure factories to do that? The core of mech is the positionnal play + harassing with faster unit. Something isn't mech just because it comes from the factory, but on the other hand, it can still be mech even if all units don't come from the same building.
well thats not completely the truth... in some cases it works for a spedific timing window... for example 4 or 7 gate all ins...
or mass roach... i remember when adelscott played really good with gateway units only...
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so they already state they are looking into mech this week
there is absolutely no excuse whatsoever for blizzard if they do not buff the tank
thor anti-air could also need buffing
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God I hate the blizard forums, it is rampant with cumrag league discussion and QQ.
Mech openings work, it's called widow mines. They are cheap and as you approach your maxed army phase them out (they are horribly supply inefficient like a roach, yes). Put them in your enemy's mineral line or just kill them yourself.
One thing that sucks across all openings however is that terran is forced to put two turrets in each mineral line and a turrets at the natural entrnace next to the bunker, because protoss early game is like a coinflip, DTs, oracles might be on the map and you're fucked if you don't prepare. It can be nearly impossible to scan these buildings, you need to judge based on the amount of gas the protoss is mining.
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On January 09 2013 19:43 Duncaaaaaan wrote:
God I hate the blizard forums, it is rampant with cumrag league discussion and QQ.
Mech openings work, it's called widow mines. They are cheap and as you approach your maxed army phase them out (they are horribly supply inefficient like a roach, yes). Put them in your enemy's mineral line or just kill them yourself.
One thing that sucks across all openings however is that terran is forced to put two turrets in each mineral line and a turrets at the natural entrnace next to the bunker, because protoss early game is like a coinflip, DTs, oracles might be on the map and you're fucked if you don't prepare. It can be nearly impossible to scan these buildings, you need to judge based on the amount of gas the protoss is mining.
How do you place your widow mines in TvP opening mech? In my experience, they are very easy to snipe with stalkers.. I've also died to 2 base colossus timing using widow mines few times.
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On January 09 2013 17:56 Telenil wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2013 15:21 Rabiator wrote:The sad part is that you will see things you DONT want to see too, stuff like this for example: We are not trying to create a "Factory Only" option for Terrans in this match up that works in every game on every map all the time. We want all Factory to be useful sometimes Apart from "it is awesome in Brood War", why is that a terrible thing? There is no building in the game that can make you win games on its own, even barracks need medevacs. You would hate the game if mass stargates could stand against every composition, so why do you want pure factories to do that? The core of mech is the positionnal play + harassing with faster unit. Something isn't mech just because it comes from the factory, but on the other hand, it can still be mech even if all units don't come from the same building.
The "factory style" you describe has enough difficulty on its own due to the immobility, but "forcing" this style to rely upon units from other buildings too much is a terrible thing, because it makes it too complicated and in the end not worthwile. Against the Tempest you basically NEED the Viking, but WHY should it be necessary?
Blizzard dont want to admit that they screwed up with the Tempest (and the Broodlord/Infestor combo) and change these units and so they are falling back to the "we dont intend to do this" option and just tell us to build other stuff too to make it work.
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The last sentence Dustin said made it pretty clear whats 90% going to happen: Nothing will actually change.
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On January 09 2013 05:22 a176 wrote:Show nested quote +We are not trying to create a "Factory Only" option for Terrans in this match up that works in every game on every map all the time So they are fine with 'barracks only' bio solution on all maps, but they won't allow 'factory only'. The hell?
How often do you win with/lose against bio with no medivac/viking support?
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I'm all for mech with support of Ghosts and/or Starport units.. I mean, anything more in TvP at this point I think is too much to ask Blizzard for.
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On January 09 2013 14:57 althaz wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2013 09:50 Markwerf wrote:
Just change the immortal already...
What point is there is in trying to force mech through buffs as long as protoss has a unit specifically designed to counter mech... The only result of terran buffs will be that TvZ and TvT get pigeonholed into boring mech matchups..
Tank could use a very little buff but it won't make mech viable in TvP and will only offset the other matchups more...
Remove hardened shield and just give immortals +50 shields, they will practically be the same in PvP/PvZ and against marine/marauder but they will be much weaker against tanks! I guess they could let siege tank shots bypass the immortal shield as well for the same effect but that would be ugly from an aesthetic point of view.
At the same time widow needs need to do more single target damage and less aoe, so they become useful against protoss again. Preferrably i'd see detection gone from the MsC too so protoss is forced to actually scout and get some tech before it can deal with widow mines. Immortals by themselves are NOT a problem for mech (not even a little bit). Maxed armies of immortals and tanks favour TANKS, despite hardened shield. Immortals are amazing against small numbers of tanks (which is good because the 1-1-1 is still pretty strong, even with immortals), but terribad against tanks supported by ghosts, especially in large numbers. EDIT: To be clear I'm not saying mech is awesome (in fact it kinda sucks in HotS, but was good but hard in WoL) and I firmly believe the tank needs a buff (slightly higher damage or larger splash, 100 gas and 2 supply would be good, plus the addition to the Terran army of the Goliath).
Lol you tested immortals against siege tanks in the unit tester and found that at some high number of supply on both sides tanks actually beat immortals?? That means really little.. There are a few problems with mech in TvP two of which are:
- you need a very high mass of units to be safe, even if you're in great defensive positioning. This makes it very difficult to open with mech or to defend a more open map. This is mostly because the immortal is so rediculously good against tanks
- 200/200 battles usually end up with the terran only winning by a small margin at which point a round of warp-ins crushes the terran, this is also because zealot/archon/immortal is so damn effective.
That there exists some theoretical point at which point siege tanks beat immortals if immortals are just a-moved into tanks is completely irrelevant. Siege tanks are just not effective enough at all against protoss which is largely a result of the immortal, a siege tank expand or small groups of well placed siege tanks are not even reliable as defense since high ground advantage is pretty much moot in the days of the MsC and immortals can easily walk in.
It's bad to let mech be too reliant on EMP, first of all it's really hard to get ghosts with mech in a decent timeframe. Secondly it just makes EMP the vortex of TvP then, either you hit it and roll over or you die completely. It's not really fun gameplay that way. Besides it's really hard to use EMPs to remove hardened shields effectively as siege tanks outrange your ghost.. If P moves in immortals first your tanks already waste a volley or 2 on the hardened shield before the EMP hits and P get's to close in with his zealots/archons..
A simple hardened shield removal wouldn't affect any matchup really except mech v P, it's just a straightforward solution to the exact problem they want to solve..
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-buff tank when in sieged mode (higher burst damage or longer range, maybe bigger splash?)
-buff ghost (longer range for nuke, maybe shorter build time for nuke)
-buff hunter-seeker missile (give back splash damage)
-buff yamato (increase range)
-buff thor anti-air range and damage
that should prevent tanks from becoming too good in tvt while making them viable in other matchups
also, id like to see hydras buffed in return, and fungal range decreased again
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On January 09 2013 22:29 Markwerf wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2013 14:57 althaz wrote:On January 09 2013 09:50 Markwerf wrote:
Just change the immortal already...
What point is there is in trying to force mech through buffs as long as protoss has a unit specifically designed to counter mech... The only result of terran buffs will be that TvZ and TvT get pigeonholed into boring mech matchups..
Tank could use a very little buff but it won't make mech viable in TvP and will only offset the other matchups more...
Remove hardened shield and just give immortals +50 shields, they will practically be the same in PvP/PvZ and against marine/marauder but they will be much weaker against tanks! I guess they could let siege tank shots bypass the immortal shield as well for the same effect but that would be ugly from an aesthetic point of view.
At the same time widow needs need to do more single target damage and less aoe, so they become useful against protoss again. Preferrably i'd see detection gone from the MsC too so protoss is forced to actually scout and get some tech before it can deal with widow mines. Immortals by themselves are NOT a problem for mech (not even a little bit). Maxed armies of immortals and tanks favour TANKS, despite hardened shield. Immortals are amazing against small numbers of tanks (which is good because the 1-1-1 is still pretty strong, even with immortals), but terribad against tanks supported by ghosts, especially in large numbers. EDIT: To be clear I'm not saying mech is awesome (in fact it kinda sucks in HotS, but was good but hard in WoL) and I firmly believe the tank needs a buff (slightly higher damage or larger splash, 100 gas and 2 supply would be good, plus the addition to the Terran army of the Goliath). Lol you tested immortals against siege tanks in the unit tester and found that at some high number of supply on both sides tanks actually beat immortals?? That means really little.. There are a few problems with mech in TvP two of which are: - you need a very high mass of units to be safe, even if you're in great defensive positioning. This makes it very difficult to open with mech or to defend a more open map. This is mostly because the immortal is so rediculously good against tanks - 200/200 battles usually end up with the terran only winning by a small margin at which point a round of warp-ins crushes the terran, this is also because zealot/archon/immortal is so damn effective. That there exists some theoretical point at which point siege tanks beat immortals if immortals are just a-moved into tanks is completely irrelevant. Siege tanks are just not effective enough at all against protoss which is largely a result of the immortal, a siege tank expand or small groups of well placed siege tanks are not even reliable as defense since high ground advantage is pretty much moot in the days of the MsC and immortals can easily walk in. It's bad to let mech be too reliant on EMP, first of all it's really hard to get ghosts with mech in a decent timeframe. Secondly it just makes EMP the vortex of TvP then, either you hit it and roll over or you die completely. It's not really fun gameplay that way. Besides it's really hard to use EMPs to remove hardened shields effectively as siege tanks outrange your ghost.. If P moves in immortals first your tanks already waste a volley or 2 on the hardened shield before the EMP hits and P get's to close in with his zealots/archons.. A simple hardened shield removal wouldn't affect any matchup really except mech v P, it's just a straightforward solution to the exact problem they want to solve..
I do believe that the immortal should be tuned down slightly, but a -40(tank)/-25(ultra)/-20(thor)/-10(marauder)/-6(roach) etc downgrade on its armor sounds very extreme.
+ Show Spoiler +A small damage adjustment 25(+20 or 15) would be nice imo
I dont think immortals in particular are "the" problem for tanks in TvP. Their problem is their low dps/cost when they are fighting bigger units (immortals, colossi, archons; and in general everything protoss is statistically bigger than T/Z).
What tanks need is a reasonable damage increase on their maintarget:
Vs armored big units it is borderline fine (colossi, ultra, thor, immortal after shields are down) but could be better imo, vs other armored it is quite good. It's the unarmored health-focused units (zealot, archon) that really shine in tanking siege damage. Smaller unarmored are fine again, due to the splash.
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I think a lot people don't realize that the immortal is not an anti-mech unit - it's an anti high burst-damage unit. The problem with mech is that both the tank and the thor have high burst-damage with low attack speed. All units with high attack speed and low burst-damage do perfectly fine against immortals.
So the easiest fix is reduce the damage of thors to a half and double their attack speed, we just doubled the dps of thors vs immortals.
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On January 09 2013 16:08 SheaR619 wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2013 16:05 Salivanth wrote:
What I'm guessing they want is something like what ZvT used to be, before Infestors became incredibly strong. You could go Mutas, or you could go Infestors. Some maps were better for Mutas, some for Infestors, and it was good for a Zerg to know both styles for this reason.
I would adore if TvP mech became like this. Some maps are good for bio, some for mech. Believe it or not but most map are pretty good for mech. Atleast in the current map pool. This is because there has to always be an easy to access third other wise ZvP is imbalance due to the stephano 200 roach because protoss need an easy accessable third. This also help mech quiet a bit because an easy accessable/defendable third help mech secure a third more easily because of their immobility.
I disagree. The maps are huge and just keep growing. Huge maps are very bad for mech.
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On January 09 2013 23:08 Duncaaaaaan wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2013 16:08 SheaR619 wrote:On January 09 2013 16:05 Salivanth wrote:
What I'm guessing they want is something like what ZvT used to be, before Infestors became incredibly strong. You could go Mutas, or you could go Infestors. Some maps were better for Mutas, some for Infestors, and it was good for a Zerg to know both styles for this reason.
I would adore if TvP mech became like this. Some maps are good for bio, some for mech. Believe it or not but most map are pretty good for mech. Atleast in the current map pool. This is because there has to always be an easy to access third other wise ZvP is imbalance due to the stephano 200 roach because protoss need an easy accessable third. This also help mech quiet a bit because an easy accessable/defendable third help mech secure a third more easily because of their immobility. I disagree. The maps are huge and just keep growing. Huge maps are very bad for mech.
I disagree. Many of the bigger maps have been quite good for mech, f.e. Metropolis, daybreak.
It really "just" depends on the exact layout. And quite frankly, i don't think maps are growing these days.
Sizes have been quite stable with the occasional huge (whirlwind) and small (ohana) map strayed in.
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On January 09 2013 23:04 rollAdice wrote:
I think a lot people don't realize that the immortal is not an anti-mech unit - it's an anti high burst-damage unit. The problem with mech is that both the tank and the thor have high burst-damage with low attack speed. All units with high attack speed and low burst-damage do perfectly fine against immortals.
So the easiest fix is reduce the damage of thors to a half and double their attack speed, we just doubled the dps of thors vs immortals.
Practically the only units with high burst damage are mech... The only other units doing much are the tempest and the ultralisk..
Why make ugly fixes to mech units just to bypass the problem of the immortal if you can fix the problem directly.. Not even mentioning that just making the thor do half damage at double speed is a huge buff against zerg because it won't overkill as much anymore... Lings are quite effective against thors because a thor wastes nearly 50% on every shot for example..
It would probably look ugly to if the thor fires so quickly and constantly turns to acquire new targets
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On January 09 2013 23:15 Markwerf wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2013 23:04 rollAdice wrote:
I think a lot people don't realize that the immortal is not an anti-mech unit - it's an anti high burst-damage unit. The problem with mech is that both the tank and the thor have high burst-damage with low attack speed. All units with high attack speed and low burst-damage do perfectly fine against immortals.
So the easiest fix is reduce the damage of thors to a half and double their attack speed, we just doubled the dps of thors vs immortals. Practically the only units with high burst damage are mech... The only other units doing much are the tempest and the ultralisk.. Why make ugly fixes to mech units just to bypass the problem of the immortal if you can fix the problem directly.. Not even mentioning that just making the thor do half damage at double speed is a huge buff against zerg because it won't overkill as much anymore... Lings are quite effective against thors because a thor wastes nearly 50% on every shot for example.. It would probably look ugly to if the thor fires so quickly and constantly turns to acquire new targets
Well this was just a suggestion but the same could be accomplished by leaving the attack speed as is and increasing the shot count to 4. Also fixes the ling problem.
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United Kingdom20321 Posts
-buff ghost (longer range for nuke
nooooooooooooooooooooooo00000000000000OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
You want to buff mech? How about NOT extending the range of nuke which is already extremely extremely powerful with godlike potential for a 100/100 cost when it can already oneshot a tank from outside of the tanks sieged range.
You can oneshot Larvae and workers from 16 range with nuke.
Do you really want to extend this and make them build faster? Did you not see that IdrA game like a year and a half ago on Lost Temple where terran turtled and built half a dozen or more ghost academies and launched 10-15 nukes in the space of a minute or two? =P
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I believe that Blizzard will try to mech work in TvP, release the game in order that all the frustrated terran buy it and 3 months later heavily nerf terran mech. I have no trust in Blizzard/DB/DK.
I'll wait for a long time before POSSIBLY buying HOTS.
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I think they should try a cost decrease on factories and maybe a supply decrease on tanks first. That way marines don't get slaughtered if they buff anything from the tank until the lategame, where tanks slaughter Marines anyway. Talking about the Marine because they were the reason for the tank damage nerf to remove viking tank wars from TvT.
Mech is by far the most expensive build order production building wise. And with the increased defenders abilities the other races got I doubt it would create rush problems, when the production buildings are out abit faster.
For the Immortal problem, they can make the Groundviking in one way or the other useful against the Immortal. Either the GroundViking massacres the shield with a haywire like missile, while the Viking gets melted by the Immortal cannons. Or the Viking does an Archon/Queen and loses their armor flag on the ground. That way they can peel of the Immortal shields with normal focus fire, as their attack seems to be optimized for taking down those shields.
With the now shared armor upgrades, the ground Viking would also be good at tanking Zealots/Archons. And you already have some anti air with you.
The Viking was supposed to harass, but they do a pretty bad job at this due to their slow morph phase. And it would really fit well as an tanking unit, without the armored flag. On the other hand it would be just a better Hellbat.
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Do siege tanks really need a buff? i mean i play T and i think 13 range and splash damage is pretty strong already
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On January 09 2013 23:49 mcmizzler wrote:
Do siege tanks really need a buff? i mean i play T and i think 13 range and splash damage is pretty strong already
I was originally off the idea that a range change shouldn't be on the table, but when you consider that everything in SC2 moves faster, and Blizzard has already introduced units with higher range than the tank (bad design choice IMO as having units with longer range than the seige tank is akin to not having marines/zealots/zerglings in that some rules shouldn't be broken) then there's kind of a power creep, however a range change is still debatable.
On the other-hand the tank definitely needs a drastic damage buff (damage is absolutely pitiful given that it incurs extreme drawbacks solely to fire), and possibly some supply adjustments too. The reasoning for this is that tanks were already subpar in WoL, and HotS has introduced 3-4 new tank soft/hard counters alone. It's current state is laughable.
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It's a little disheartening to see them still tweaking unit values to balance the late-game. It would be far more effective to tweak the macro mechanics and mining rates so that the "over-powered" units you get late-game actually has a heavy upkeep associated which would require continuous expanding (and therefore takes longer to mass and would allow skill-based board control to matter more).
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Imo.
Tanks:
They should be reverted back to their state before patch 1.1.0. Meaning 50 damage in siege mode to all targets. With the bigger maps and the other Terran nerfs over the years, I think it's worth it to at least test this.
BC:
Remove the energy bar. Put Yamato on a timer or remove it. An ability is supposed to make a unit better, not worse (HT Feedback..)
Raven:
-Turrets should work like Infested Terrans, meaning you can put them down anywhere. Right now, 9 out of 10 times you can't put them down because enemy units are blocking the ground. The current Turret mechanic is just silly.
-Seeker Missile: Keep the HotS range but change it back to the WoL splash missile. Also, the energy cost is too high. I'd be more than happy to see a splash missile that does less damage but is 75 or 100 energy. (60 damage for 75 energy, or 80 damage for 100 energy, for example).
Reaper:
The current role of the Reaper is impossible to balance, as it will always be a rush unit. It will either be too good (see early WoL and current HotS), or not good at all and it will not be used (see WoL now).
The only way to give them more general use is to make them better against non-light units. I don't see any way in doing this without making them overpowered. Unless the Cliffjump ability is removed, but that really takes away the essence of the Reaper.
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One option I've seen a few times:
Tanks do full damage to Shields, regardless of unit type.
Increases damage to Zealots and Archons but does not affect much of anything else.
Tanks to 150/100/2 from 150/125/3, allowing for more tanks to be fielded or more support be provided for the same tank count.
It might still have trouble dealing with the same armies but it might be a good place to start.
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On January 09 2013 20:26 Rabiator wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2013 17:56 Telenil wrote:
Apart from "it is awesome in Brood War", why is that a terrible thing? There is no building in the game that can make you win games on its own, even barracks need medevacs. You would hate the game if mass stargates could stand against every composition, so why do you want pure factories to do that?
The core of mech is the positionnal play + harassing with faster unit. Something isn't mech just because it comes from the factory, but on the other hand, it can still be mech even if all units don't come from the same building. The "factory style" you describe has enough difficulty on its own due to the immobility, but "forcing" this style to rely upon units from other buildings too much is a terrible thing, because it makes it too complicated and in the end not worthwile. Against the Tempest you basically NEED the Viking, but WHY should it be necessary? Blizzard dont want to admit that they screwed up with the Tempest (and the Broodlord/Infestor combo) and change these units and so they are falling back to the "we dont intend to do this" option and just tell us to build other stuff too to make it work. If I remove the usual "I would design this game better than Blizzard" crap (sorry but that's what it is), the actual argument is "mech shouldn't have to rely on other buildings because, combined with its lack of mobility, it would make it too complicated". That sounds a bit... flimsy. Bio use barracks + vikings + medevacs, PvT protoss use gateway + robo, and if you want tanks involved, the compositions required to face zerglings/banelings/mutas were even more diverse. Factory + vikings is not more complicated than those strategies.
In other words, why shouldn't players have to build vikings when TvZ involving marine/tank/medevacs/thors into vikings were considered fine?
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Well, I think one of the core issues with mech is tank balance. If you look at TvZ on WoL (where tank balance is relevant to racial balance, TvT is mirror, tanks don't see much use in TvP), seems like the current balance is done using tanks in siege mode. Basically, if the terran is caught unsieged, he is dead. But if he is sieged, the engagement is 50/50 (depending on creep and micro from both sides).
That is a hugh issue because the terran takes a huge risk to unsieged. Yet, even if they get tanks sieged and in position, it is still 50/50. I think this is mainly due to maps. All the GSL maps have hugh open areas in the middle which means that tanks simply cannot trade cost effectively even when they get in position (except for 3 base turtle). If you look at PL maps, there are much more areas where tanks can siege where they will at least trade decently vs Z. This also plays out in TvT as well where a smaller number of tanks at a choke can hold position vs a larger number of enemy units.
That is the entire point of the tank. You sacrifice mobility for zone control. Otherwise, they are like a colossus which needs to siege in order to fire their lasers.
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Why dont they just buff tanks? Have they ever gave a stance on ST or ST buffs?
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On January 10 2013 00:14 Telenil wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2013 20:26 Rabiator wrote:On January 09 2013 17:56 Telenil wrote:
Apart from "it is awesome in Brood War", why is that a terrible thing? There is no building in the game that can make you win games on its own, even barracks need medevacs. You would hate the game if mass stargates could stand against every composition, so why do you want pure factories to do that?
The core of mech is the positionnal play + harassing with faster unit. Something isn't mech just because it comes from the factory, but on the other hand, it can still be mech even if all units don't come from the same building. The "factory style" you describe has enough difficulty on its own due to the immobility, but "forcing" this style to rely upon units from other buildings too much is a terrible thing, because it makes it too complicated and in the end not worthwile. Against the Tempest you basically NEED the Viking, but WHY should it be necessary? Blizzard dont want to admit that they screwed up with the Tempest (and the Broodlord/Infestor combo) and change these units and so they are falling back to the "we dont intend to do this" option and just tell us to build other stuff too to make it work. If I remove the usual "I would design this game better than Blizzard" crap (sorry but that's what it is), the actual argument is "mech shouldn't have to rely on other buildings because, combined with its lack of mobility, it would make it too complicated". That sounds a bit... flimsy. Bio use barracks + vikings + medevacs, PvT protoss use gateway + robo, and if you want tanks involved, the compositions required to face zerglings/banelings/mutas were even more diverse. Factory + vikings is not more complicated than those strategies. In other words, why shouldn't players have to build vikings when TvZ involving marine/tank/medevacs/thors into vikings were considered fine?
I agree somewhat. But then I think they need to look at the gas cost of tanks/thors/vikings. Because all 3 units are very gas intensive per supply.
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On January 10 2013 00:14 Telenil wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2013 20:26 Rabiator wrote:On January 09 2013 17:56 Telenil wrote:
Apart from "it is awesome in Brood War", why is that a terrible thing? There is no building in the game that can make you win games on its own, even barracks need medevacs. You would hate the game if mass stargates could stand against every composition, so why do you want pure factories to do that?
The core of mech is the positionnal play + harassing with faster unit. Something isn't mech just because it comes from the factory, but on the other hand, it can still be mech even if all units don't come from the same building. The "factory style" you describe has enough difficulty on its own due to the immobility, but "forcing" this style to rely upon units from other buildings too much is a terrible thing, because it makes it too complicated and in the end not worthwile. Against the Tempest you basically NEED the Viking, but WHY should it be necessary? Blizzard dont want to admit that they screwed up with the Tempest (and the Broodlord/Infestor combo) and change these units and so they are falling back to the "we dont intend to do this" option and just tell us to build other stuff too to make it work. If I remove the usual "I would design this game better than Blizzard" crap (sorry but that's what it is), the actual argument is "mech shouldn't have to rely on other buildings because, combined with its lack of mobility, it would make it too complicated". That sounds a bit... flimsy. Bio use barracks + vikings + medevacs, PvT protoss use gateway + robo, and if you want tanks involved, the compositions required to face zerglings/banelings/mutas were even more diverse. Factory + vikings is not more complicated than those strategies. In other words, why shouldn't players have to build vikings when TvZ involving marine/tank/medevacs/thors into vikings were considered fine?
Mech - IMMOBILITY
Bio - MOBILITY
You notice the difference? Adding "mobile" units to get around the fact that mech is immobile is stupid, because it simply shows that mobility is too important in SC2 because the developers make these decisions. Its basically cheating and the merging of one upgrade for mech and air already blurs the lines between the races, because you are basically down to three upgrades to do it all ... just like Zerg and Protoss have it. Thats not good.
Its all about the additional option of being able to play a "static" game of positioning and slowly creeping ahead. Sadly SC2 is all about mobility and thats a big part of the reason why mech doesnt work / works badly. The only solution to this - in Blizzards framework - is to buff the Siege Tank in such a way to make them SCARY to any kind of infantry; both other races have sufficient numbers of "tricks" to deal with static big targets that cant shoot air ...
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On January 09 2013 05:22 a176 wrote:Show nested quote +We are not trying to create a "Factory Only" option for Terrans in this match up that works in every game on every map all the time So they are fine with 'barracks only' bio solution on all maps, but they won't allow 'factory only'. The hell?
Well.I suppose that if we use Starport for Medivacs and Vikings,this mean we are not going only Barrack in TvP,but I disagree.
Is Blizz trying to create mixture of units in TvP? I cant see this happen because of upgrades.I wonder what kind of mixture,because Hellbats need Medivacs,but Tanks,Hellions,Thors and Vikings not.Ghosts are nice support and a must for me vs Protoss,but they wont make me build two ebays for upgrades.
Changing tank supply into 2 is too much for TvT and TvZ.I think only buffing tank damage vs mech units,as well as Viking ground attack to try counter immortals will be fine.Widow mine as well need 1 supply and more range.
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On January 09 2013 23:54 DemigodcelpH wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2013 23:49 mcmizzler wrote:
Do siege tanks really need a buff? i mean i play T and i think 13 range and splash damage is pretty strong already I was originally off the idea that a range change shouldn't be on the table, but when you consider that everything in SC2 moves faster, and Blizzard has already introduced units with higher range than the tank (bad design choice IMO as having units with longer range than the seige tank is akin to not having marines/zealots/zerglings in that some rules shouldn't be broken) then there's kind of a power creep, however a range change is still debatable. On the other-hand the tank definitely needs a drastic damage buff (damage is absolutely pitiful given that it incurs extreme drawbacks solely to fire), and possibly some supply adjustments too. The reasoning for this is that tanks were already subpar in WoL, and HotS has introduced 3-4 new tank soft/hard counters alone. It's current state is laughable.
Stop claiming tanks are crap, they are used nonstop for god's sake in WoL. Only not in TvP but they are a core unit in TvT and TvZ....
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On January 10 2013 00:28 Rabiator wrote:Show nested quote +On January 10 2013 00:14 Telenil wrote:On January 09 2013 20:26 Rabiator wrote:On January 09 2013 17:56 Telenil wrote:
Apart from "it is awesome in Brood War", why is that a terrible thing? There is no building in the game that can make you win games on its own, even barracks need medevacs. You would hate the game if mass stargates could stand against every composition, so why do you want pure factories to do that?
The core of mech is the positionnal play + harassing with faster unit. Something isn't mech just because it comes from the factory, but on the other hand, it can still be mech even if all units don't come from the same building. The "factory style" you describe has enough difficulty on its own due to the immobility, but "forcing" this style to rely upon units from other buildings too much is a terrible thing, because it makes it too complicated and in the end not worthwile. Against the Tempest you basically NEED the Viking, but WHY should it be necessary? Blizzard dont want to admit that they screwed up with the Tempest (and the Broodlord/Infestor combo) and change these units and so they are falling back to the "we dont intend to do this" option and just tell us to build other stuff too to make it work. If I remove the usual "I would design this game better than Blizzard" crap (sorry but that's what it is), the actual argument is "mech shouldn't have to rely on other buildings because, combined with its lack of mobility, it would make it too complicated". That sounds a bit... flimsy. Bio use barracks + vikings + medevacs, PvT protoss use gateway + robo, and if you want tanks involved, the compositions required to face zerglings/banelings/mutas were even more diverse. Factory + vikings is not more complicated than those strategies. In other words, why shouldn't players have to build vikings when TvZ involving marine/tank/medevacs/thors into vikings were considered fine? Mech - IMMOBILITY Bio - MOBILITY You notice the difference? Adding "mobile" units to get around the fact that mech is immobile is stupid, because it simply shows that mobility is too important in SC2 because the developers make these decisions. Its basically cheating and the merging of one upgrade for mech and air already blurs the lines between the races, because you are basically down to three upgrades to do it all ... just like Zerg and Protoss have it. Thats not good. Its all about the additional option of being able to play a "static" game of positioning and slowly creeping ahead. Sadly SC2 is all about mobility and thats a big part of the reason why mech doesnt work / works badly. The only solution to this - in Blizzards framework - is to buff the Siege Tank in such a way to make them SCARY to any kind of infantry; both other races have sufficient numbers of "tricks" to deal with static big targets that cant shoot air ...
This.
A mech army is immobile because tanks need to siege and thors are slow.
A protoss army is very mobile because of a higher average movement speed than mech, colossus cliff walk, stalker blink and warp in mechanics.
As long as a more mobile protoss army is even barely just weaker than an immobile mech army we have a huge design problem. A well positioned mech army should absolutely stomp a protoss army in a head on engagement.
As long as this is not the case TvP mech will not be a solid playstyle.
Besides this, a lot of other issues will need to be solved.
For instance it should be possible to use a few carefully placed mech units to defend harass on multiple fronts etc.
Blizzard trying to improve mech sounds promising, but I would not be surprised if the changes they make actually ends up hurting mech in TvP. That is how much i confide in their abilities.
edit:
And please Plansix, spare me your comments about me complaining about game design.
You clearly have no clue, and I'm tired of you.
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On January 10 2013 00:27 vthree wrote:Show nested quote +On January 10 2013 00:14 Telenil wrote:On January 09 2013 20:26 Rabiator wrote:On January 09 2013 17:56 Telenil wrote:
Apart from "it is awesome in Brood War", why is that a terrible thing? There is no building in the game that can make you win games on its own, even barracks need medevacs. You would hate the game if mass stargates could stand against every composition, so why do you want pure factories to do that?
The core of mech is the positionnal play + harassing with faster unit. Something isn't mech just because it comes from the factory, but on the other hand, it can still be mech even if all units don't come from the same building. The "factory style" you describe has enough difficulty on its own due to the immobility, but "forcing" this style to rely upon units from other buildings too much is a terrible thing, because it makes it too complicated and in the end not worthwile. Against the Tempest you basically NEED the Viking, but WHY should it be necessary? Blizzard dont want to admit that they screwed up with the Tempest (and the Broodlord/Infestor combo) and change these units and so they are falling back to the "we dont intend to do this" option and just tell us to build other stuff too to make it work. If I remove the usual "I would design this game better than Blizzard" crap (sorry but that's what it is), the actual argument is "mech shouldn't have to rely on other buildings because, combined with its lack of mobility, it would make it too complicated". That sounds a bit... flimsy. Bio use barracks + vikings + medevacs, PvT protoss use gateway + robo, and if you want tanks involved, the compositions required to face zerglings/banelings/mutas were even more diverse. Factory + vikings is not more complicated than those strategies. In other words, why shouldn't players have to build vikings when TvZ involving marine/tank/medevacs/thors into vikings were considered fine? I agree somewhat. But then I think they need to look at the gas cost of tanks/thors/vikings. Because all 3 units are very gas intensive per supply.
The other races lategame units all have similar gas costs and the mineral units are even countered by the mech minerals (at least after hellbat introduction).
So if, according to Telenil's post, a powerratio can be found that makes mech+support playable compositionwise, the cost will be OK.
But yeah, you can tweak the costs to achieve that ratio.
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On January 10 2013 00:03 dicedicerevolution wrote:
It's a little disheartening to see them still tweaking unit values to balance the late-game. It would be far more effective to tweak the macro mechanics and mining rates so that the "over-powered" units you get late-game actually has a heavy upkeep associated which would require continuous expanding (and therefore takes longer to mass and would allow skill-based board control to matter more).
I agree, T3 units should need more investment and be more powerful so they could be more valuable with less numbers. But right now or they come in great numbers (example: brood lords) or they almost never used because they cant be cost-efective (expample: BC).
Mixing factory+rax gameplay or factory+starport its not a big deal, but I think that factory+starport is not viable: enougth void rays can counter everything (vikings, tanks, thors, etc...) and mixed with tempest makes mech TvP useless. Or they nerf skytoss against T or terran needs better armored AA.
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I think Blizzard has to realise that Mech vs Protoss isn't going to work if they don't either nerf the immortal or introduce a unit specialised at killing immortals.
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![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/rpnle.jpg?1)
In DB we trust
User was temp banned for this post.
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On January 09 2013 14:14 MasterCynical wrote:
I don't like the sound of "if its not fun then we'll have to abandon this". Coming from the same people that thought TvT tank play is not fun and killing workers is not fun really worries me.
I would love to see how Blizzard would apply that philosophy to Tempests. Balanced or not, that unit makes the Colossus look like a master piece in terms of design.
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On January 10 2013 00:39 one-one-one wrote:Show nested quote +On January 10 2013 00:28 Rabiator wrote:On January 10 2013 00:14 Telenil wrote:On January 09 2013 20:26 Rabiator wrote:On January 09 2013 17:56 Telenil wrote:
Apart from "it is awesome in Brood War", why is that a terrible thing? There is no building in the game that can make you win games on its own, even barracks need medevacs. You would hate the game if mass stargates could stand against every composition, so why do you want pure factories to do that?
The core of mech is the positionnal play + harassing with faster unit. Something isn't mech just because it comes from the factory, but on the other hand, it can still be mech even if all units don't come from the same building. The "factory style" you describe has enough difficulty on its own due to the immobility, but "forcing" this style to rely upon units from other buildings too much is a terrible thing, because it makes it too complicated and in the end not worthwile. Against the Tempest you basically NEED the Viking, but WHY should it be necessary? Blizzard dont want to admit that they screwed up with the Tempest (and the Broodlord/Infestor combo) and change these units and so they are falling back to the "we dont intend to do this" option and just tell us to build other stuff too to make it work. If I remove the usual "I would design this game better than Blizzard" crap (sorry but that's what it is), the actual argument is "mech shouldn't have to rely on other buildings because, combined with its lack of mobility, it would make it too complicated". That sounds a bit... flimsy. Bio use barracks + vikings + medevacs, PvT protoss use gateway + robo, and if you want tanks involved, the compositions required to face zerglings/banelings/mutas were even more diverse. Factory + vikings is not more complicated than those strategies. In other words, why shouldn't players have to build vikings when TvZ involving marine/tank/medevacs/thors into vikings were considered fine? Mech - IMMOBILITY Bio - MOBILITY You notice the difference? Adding "mobile" units to get around the fact that mech is immobile is stupid, because it simply shows that mobility is too important in SC2 because the developers make these decisions. Its basically cheating and the merging of one upgrade for mech and air already blurs the lines between the races, because you are basically down to three upgrades to do it all ... just like Zerg and Protoss have it. Thats not good. Its all about the additional option of being able to play a "static" game of positioning and slowly creeping ahead. Sadly SC2 is all about mobility and thats a big part of the reason why mech doesnt work / works badly. The only solution to this - in Blizzards framework - is to buff the Siege Tank in such a way to make them SCARY to any kind of infantry; both other races have sufficient numbers of "tricks" to deal with static big targets that cant shoot air ... This. A mech army is immobile because tanks need to siege and thors are slow. A protoss army is very mobile because of a higher average movement speed than mech, colossus cliff walk, stalker blink and warp in mechanics. As long as a more mobile protoss army is even barely just weaker than an immobile mech army we have a huge design problem. A well positioned mech army should absolutely stomp a protoss army in a head on engagement. As long as this is not the case TvP mech will not be a solid playstyle. Besides this, a lot of other issues will need to be solved. For instance it should be possible to use a few carefully placed mech units to defend harass on multiple fronts etc. Blizzard trying to improve mech sounds promising, but I would not be surprised if the changes they make actually ends up hurting mech in TvP. That is how much i confide in their abilities. edit: And please Plansix, spare me your comments about me complaining about game design. You clearly have no clue, and I'm tired of you.
This is very true. I still don't understand why the design team fails to see the cost effectiveness of tanks specifically against most protoss units. As you pointed out correctly, an immobile, established tank link of mech units should be able to trade favourable against a protoss army, but this is not the case. Now go back to brood war and see where the design strength of that is; powerful space control tanks. Now observe the tank we have in sc2. Pitiful damage and must be deathballed to be marginally effective. Since both Z and P have further gained units that deal well with tanks, why is there still no mention in improving the tank? Keep in mind that tanks are the reason why mech works in ALL matchups.
The new medivacs also make mech alot weaker, so it doesn't affect bio V mech and infact, it's a clear indication that tanks are in need of improvement. As a closing note; i also share the same sentiment with Blizzard's ability to balance games, as evidenced by their inability to balance accordingly. I mean, surely they play the game to right? Are tanks really that strong for it to be untouched in light of hots? I SINCERELY HOPE they'll see this thread, look at the poll and see where mech is currently lacking (SIEGE TANKS). Someone should just throw a piece of brick through their main office window which states the word; BUFF TANKS incase things aren't clear enough.
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Excuse my oblivousness but why is a 'slow pushing mech army' not the same as 'a deathball'?
Could someone explain the difference to me? I am really not trying to be sarcastic: I just don't really see the difference.
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On January 10 2013 01:50 AdrianHealey wrote:
Excuse my oblivousness but why is a 'slow pushing mech army' not the same as 'a deathball'?
Could someone explain the difference to me? I am really not trying to be sarcastic: I just don't really see the difference.
Deathball is, like you've observed, just a matter of massing powerful T3 units with the intention of simply walking over there and killing them with your entire army in a single control group. Slow pushing mech on the otherhand, is more of a matter of spreading tanks (and not T3 end game units) in a defensive fashion, with the intent of covering areas for the purpose of defending and establishing a front defensive line to a point where you either, force your opponent to engage, gain map control. Meching, unlike deathballs, needs a good amount of spacing in between tanks (tank hopping) and good positioning to avoid overlaps to maximise damage like what you see in brood war.
Meching requires consideration of map awareness, unit positioning backed with strategic army movement and solid line of BASE defenses (turrets, sensor towers) built to further enhance offense. Meching isn't simply about defending and massing to 200/200 because of it's relative ineffectiveness as a deathball vs other races like broodlord infestor in WoL, and killing players was actually possible without reaching 200/200 with meticulous pushes. In simple terms, it follows the philosophy of defense is the best offense. Watch some SPL Proleague from 09-12 to see how strategic mech was. The player i recommend watching is Fantasy. His strategic mind for tank positioning and TvT is like no other. While i regard Flash as the best player in BW, fantasy's TvT is better than Flash.
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United States4883 Posts
On January 10 2013 01:50 AdrianHealey wrote:
Excuse my oblivousness but why is a 'slow pushing mech army' not the same as 'a deathball'?
Could someone explain the difference to me? I am really not trying to be sarcastic: I just don't really see the difference.
The difference is that, (in theory), a mech army caught out of position or unsieged is likely to lose large chunk or be crushed whereas a deathball engages at any angle with full efficiency. Example: colossus/immortal/archon; all units stack on top of each other and engage pretty much evenly in any direction. A mech army needs to engage with hellions tanking damage for tanks, tanks need to be sieged for the whole engagement, and any ghosts or vikings need to sit behind the tank line unless engaging or casting EMP.
And to comment on "slow pushing mech armies" in WoL...I think we have an issue that mech can't move at all because it can't control any space at all except for where all units are. The best you can do in terms of "gaining map space" is slowly leapfrogging your tanks, which is hardly moving; the result is that the time spent on leapfrogging the tanks is not equal to the time it takes for an army to run in, pick off a few tanks, and remacro an army. Therefore, if you even somehow manage to slowly secure space on the map, you end up with the difficulty of just running out of money, and the game has gone on for 60 minutes on 4 bases already.....
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On January 10 2013 02:03 SC2John wrote:Show nested quote +On January 10 2013 01:50 AdrianHealey wrote:
Excuse my oblivousness but why is a 'slow pushing mech army' not the same as 'a deathball'?
Could someone explain the difference to me? I am really not trying to be sarcastic: I just don't really see the difference.
The difference is that, (in theory), a mech army caught out of position or unsieged is likely to lose large chunk or be crushed whereas a deathball engages at any angle with full efficiency. Example: colossus/immortal/archon; all units stack on top of each other and engage pretty much evenly in any direction. And to comment on "slow pushing mech armies" in WoL...I think we have an issue that mech can't move at all because it can't control any space at all except for where all units are. The best you can do in terms of "gaining map space" is slowly leapfrogging your tanks, which is hardly moving; the result is that the time spent on leapfrogging the tanks is not equal to the time it takes for an army to run in, pick off a few tanks, and remacro an army. Therefore, if you even somehow manage to slowly secure space on the map, you end up with the difficulty of just running out of money, and the game has gone on for 60 minutes on 4 bases already.....
Agreed, and not to mention, every race in sc2 has units that can deal with a few tanks spread out with high efficiency, which means, clumping tanks are often the only solution for a cost effective trade. It can also be seen that the tank in sc2 is laughably weak for it's cost, which is why slow mech push is never a good option or rarely seen in this game.
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On January 10 2013 00:39 one-one-one wrote:Show nested quote +On January 10 2013 00:28 Rabiator wrote:On January 10 2013 00:14 Telenil wrote:On January 09 2013 20:26 Rabiator wrote:On January 09 2013 17:56 Telenil wrote:
Apart from "it is awesome in Brood War", why is that a terrible thing? There is no building in the game that can make you win games on its own, even barracks need medevacs. You would hate the game if mass stargates could stand against every composition, so why do you want pure factories to do that?
The core of mech is the positionnal play + harassing with faster unit. Something isn't mech just because it comes from the factory, but on the other hand, it can still be mech even if all units don't come from the same building. The "factory style" you describe has enough difficulty on its own due to the immobility, but "forcing" this style to rely upon units from other buildings too much is a terrible thing, because it makes it too complicated and in the end not worthwile. Against the Tempest you basically NEED the Viking, but WHY should it be necessary? Blizzard dont want to admit that they screwed up with the Tempest (and the Broodlord/Infestor combo) and change these units and so they are falling back to the "we dont intend to do this" option and just tell us to build other stuff too to make it work. If I remove the usual "I would design this game better than Blizzard" crap (sorry but that's what it is), the actual argument is "mech shouldn't have to rely on other buildings because, combined with its lack of mobility, it would make it too complicated". That sounds a bit... flimsy. Bio use barracks + vikings + medevacs, PvT protoss use gateway + robo, and if you want tanks involved, the compositions required to face zerglings/banelings/mutas were even more diverse. Factory + vikings is not more complicated than those strategies. In other words, why shouldn't players have to build vikings when TvZ involving marine/tank/medevacs/thors into vikings were considered fine? Mech - IMMOBILITY Bio - MOBILITY You notice the difference? Adding "mobile" units to get around the fact that mech is immobile is stupid, because it simply shows that mobility is too important in SC2 because the developers make these decisions. Its basically cheating and the merging of one upgrade for mech and air already blurs the lines between the races, because you are basically down to three upgrades to do it all ... just like Zerg and Protoss have it. Thats not good. Its all about the additional option of being able to play a "static" game of positioning and slowly creeping ahead. Sadly SC2 is all about mobility and thats a big part of the reason why mech doesnt work / works badly. The only solution to this - in Blizzards framework - is to buff the Siege Tank in such a way to make them SCARY to any kind of infantry; both other races have sufficient numbers of "tricks" to deal with static big targets that cant shoot air ... This. A mech army is immobile because tanks need to siege and thors are slow. A protoss army is very mobile because of a higher average movement speed than mech, colossus cliff walk, stalker blink and warp in mechanics. As long as a more mobile protoss army is even barely just weaker than an immobile mech army we have a huge design problem. A well positioned mech army should absolutely stomp a protoss army in a head on engagement. As long as this is not the case TvP mech will not be a solid playstyle. Besides this, a lot of other issues will need to be solved. For instance it should be possible to use a few carefully placed mech units to defend harass on multiple fronts etc. Blizzard trying to improve mech sounds promising, but I would not be surprised if the changes they make actually ends up hurting mech in TvP. That is how much i confide in their abilities. edit: And please Plansix, spare me your comments about me complaining about game design. You clearly have no clue, and I'm tired of you.
Actually, I have no problem with your comments and they mostly make sense, and you don't use the words "game design" as some vague value judgment to enhance your argument. You make points that make sense.
I totally agree that a mech army should be able to trade efficently with a protoss a mobile protoss army if attacked head on or at a bad angle. Right now, it is very hard to get that form of engagement with a protoss against a standard protoss army and impossible if the protoss has focused on immortals over colossi. A protoss should really be forced to tech switch to air to directly engage a mech army or hope for a really good engagement.
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On January 10 2013 02:27 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On January 10 2013 00:39 one-one-one wrote:On January 10 2013 00:28 Rabiator wrote:On January 10 2013 00:14 Telenil wrote:On January 09 2013 20:26 Rabiator wrote:On January 09 2013 17:56 Telenil wrote:
Apart from "it is awesome in Brood War", why is that a terrible thing? There is no building in the game that can make you win games on its own, even barracks need medevacs. You would hate the game if mass stargates could stand against every composition, so why do you want pure factories to do that?
The core of mech is the positionnal play + harassing with faster unit. Something isn't mech just because it comes from the factory, but on the other hand, it can still be mech even if all units don't come from the same building. The "factory style" you describe has enough difficulty on its own due to the immobility, but "forcing" this style to rely upon units from other buildings too much is a terrible thing, because it makes it too complicated and in the end not worthwile. Against the Tempest you basically NEED the Viking, but WHY should it be necessary? Blizzard dont want to admit that they screwed up with the Tempest (and the Broodlord/Infestor combo) and change these units and so they are falling back to the "we dont intend to do this" option and just tell us to build other stuff too to make it work. If I remove the usual "I would design this game better than Blizzard" crap (sorry but that's what it is), the actual argument is "mech shouldn't have to rely on other buildings because, combined with its lack of mobility, it would make it too complicated". That sounds a bit... flimsy. Bio use barracks + vikings + medevacs, PvT protoss use gateway + robo, and if you want tanks involved, the compositions required to face zerglings/banelings/mutas were even more diverse. Factory + vikings is not more complicated than those strategies. In other words, why shouldn't players have to build vikings when TvZ involving marine/tank/medevacs/thors into vikings were considered fine? Mech - IMMOBILITY Bio - MOBILITY You notice the difference? Adding "mobile" units to get around the fact that mech is immobile is stupid, because it simply shows that mobility is too important in SC2 because the developers make these decisions. Its basically cheating and the merging of one upgrade for mech and air already blurs the lines between the races, because you are basically down to three upgrades to do it all ... just like Zerg and Protoss have it. Thats not good. Its all about the additional option of being able to play a "static" game of positioning and slowly creeping ahead. Sadly SC2 is all about mobility and thats a big part of the reason why mech doesnt work / works badly. The only solution to this - in Blizzards framework - is to buff the Siege Tank in such a way to make them SCARY to any kind of infantry; both other races have sufficient numbers of "tricks" to deal with static big targets that cant shoot air ... This. A mech army is immobile because tanks need to siege and thors are slow. A protoss army is very mobile because of a higher average movement speed than mech, colossus cliff walk, stalker blink and warp in mechanics. As long as a more mobile protoss army is even barely just weaker than an immobile mech army we have a huge design problem. A well positioned mech army should absolutely stomp a protoss army in a head on engagement. As long as this is not the case TvP mech will not be a solid playstyle. Besides this, a lot of other issues will need to be solved. For instance it should be possible to use a few carefully placed mech units to defend harass on multiple fronts etc. Blizzard trying to improve mech sounds promising, but I would not be surprised if the changes they make actually ends up hurting mech in TvP. That is how much i confide in their abilities. edit: And please Plansix, spare me your comments about me complaining about game design. You clearly have no clue, and I'm tired of you. Actually, I have no problem with your comments and they mostly make sense, and you don't use the words "game design" as some vague value judgment to enhance your argument. You make points that make sense. I totally agree that a mech army should be able to trade efficently with a protoss a mobile protoss army if attacked head on or at a bad angle. Right now, it is very hard to get that form of engagement with a protoss against a standard protoss army and impossible if the protoss has focused on immortals over colossi. A protoss should really be forced to tech switch to air to directly engage a mech army or hope for a really good engagement.
Thank you!
That was really nice said 
Or do multi pronged harass abusing immobility of mech while avoiding direct engagements.
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On January 10 2013 00:38 Markwerf wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2013 23:54 DemigodcelpH wrote:On January 09 2013 23:49 mcmizzler wrote:
Do siege tanks really need a buff? i mean i play T and i think 13 range and splash damage is pretty strong already I was originally off the idea that a range change shouldn't be on the table, but when you consider that everything in SC2 moves faster, and Blizzard has already introduced units with higher range than the tank (bad design choice IMO as having units with longer range than the seige tank is akin to not having marines/zealots/zerglings in that some rules shouldn't be broken) then there's kind of a power creep, however a range change is still debatable. On the other-hand the tank definitely needs a drastic damage buff (damage is absolutely pitiful given that it incurs extreme drawbacks solely to fire), and possibly some supply adjustments too. The reasoning for this is that tanks were already subpar in WoL, and HotS has introduced 3-4 new tank soft/hard counters alone. It's current state is laughable. Stop claiming tanks are crap, they are used nonstop for god's sake in WoL. Only not in TvP but they are a core unit in TvT and TvZ....
As long as you can take on a siege line head on and come out on top, tanks are too weak.
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On January 10 2013 02:41 one-one-one wrote:Show nested quote +On January 10 2013 02:27 Plansix wrote:On January 10 2013 00:39 one-one-one wrote:On January 10 2013 00:28 Rabiator wrote:On January 10 2013 00:14 Telenil wrote:On January 09 2013 20:26 Rabiator wrote:On January 09 2013 17:56 Telenil wrote:
Apart from "it is awesome in Brood War", why is that a terrible thing? There is no building in the game that can make you win games on its own, even barracks need medevacs. You would hate the game if mass stargates could stand against every composition, so why do you want pure factories to do that?
The core of mech is the positionnal play + harassing with faster unit. Something isn't mech just because it comes from the factory, but on the other hand, it can still be mech even if all units don't come from the same building. The "factory style" you describe has enough difficulty on its own due to the immobility, but "forcing" this style to rely upon units from other buildings too much is a terrible thing, because it makes it too complicated and in the end not worthwile. Against the Tempest you basically NEED the Viking, but WHY should it be necessary? Blizzard dont want to admit that they screwed up with the Tempest (and the Broodlord/Infestor combo) and change these units and so they are falling back to the "we dont intend to do this" option and just tell us to build other stuff too to make it work. If I remove the usual "I would design this game better than Blizzard" crap (sorry but that's what it is), the actual argument is "mech shouldn't have to rely on other buildings because, combined with its lack of mobility, it would make it too complicated". That sounds a bit... flimsy. Bio use barracks + vikings + medevacs, PvT protoss use gateway + robo, and if you want tanks involved, the compositions required to face zerglings/banelings/mutas were even more diverse. Factory + vikings is not more complicated than those strategies. In other words, why shouldn't players have to build vikings when TvZ involving marine/tank/medevacs/thors into vikings were considered fine? Mech - IMMOBILITY Bio - MOBILITY You notice the difference? Adding "mobile" units to get around the fact that mech is immobile is stupid, because it simply shows that mobility is too important in SC2 because the developers make these decisions. Its basically cheating and the merging of one upgrade for mech and air already blurs the lines between the races, because you are basically down to three upgrades to do it all ... just like Zerg and Protoss have it. Thats not good. Its all about the additional option of being able to play a "static" game of positioning and slowly creeping ahead. Sadly SC2 is all about mobility and thats a big part of the reason why mech doesnt work / works badly. The only solution to this - in Blizzards framework - is to buff the Siege Tank in such a way to make them SCARY to any kind of infantry; both other races have sufficient numbers of "tricks" to deal with static big targets that cant shoot air ... This. A mech army is immobile because tanks need to siege and thors are slow. A protoss army is very mobile because of a higher average movement speed than mech, colossus cliff walk, stalker blink and warp in mechanics. As long as a more mobile protoss army is even barely just weaker than an immobile mech army we have a huge design problem. A well positioned mech army should absolutely stomp a protoss army in a head on engagement. As long as this is not the case TvP mech will not be a solid playstyle. Besides this, a lot of other issues will need to be solved. For instance it should be possible to use a few carefully placed mech units to defend harass on multiple fronts etc. Blizzard trying to improve mech sounds promising, but I would not be surprised if the changes they make actually ends up hurting mech in TvP. That is how much i confide in their abilities. edit: And please Plansix, spare me your comments about me complaining about game design. You clearly have no clue, and I'm tired of you. Actually, I have no problem with your comments and they mostly make sense, and you don't use the words "game design" as some vague value judgment to enhance your argument. You make points that make sense. I totally agree that a mech army should be able to trade efficently with a protoss a mobile protoss army if attacked head on or at a bad angle. Right now, it is very hard to get that form of engagement with a protoss against a standard protoss army and impossible if the protoss has focused on immortals over colossi. A protoss should really be forced to tech switch to air to directly engage a mech army or hope for a really good engagement. Thank you! That was really nice said Or do multi pronged harass abusing immobility of mech while avoiding direct engagements.
Yeah, that is the key though, is to make it so multi pronged attacking is still viable while making entrenched positions powerful. The stronger they make entrenched poistions, the more difficult harassment becomes. They run the risk of making the game more static and slow paced. Right now, the first 6 minutes of most SC2 games are pretty dull, so it is a reasonable concern that this could slow the game down further, which no one wants.
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I seriously can't wait to mech tvp! Down with bio up with MECH! MECH PRIDE!
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It's great they say this...but uh, they're not ok with factory only (also known as mech) being playable, but perfectly fine with barracks only being playable...? wat?
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On January 10 2013 03:22 avilo wrote:
It's great they say this...but uh, they're not ok with factory only (also known as mech) being playable, but perfectly fine with barracks only being playable...? wat?
Barracks still require the usage of medivacs / vikings and in their eyes battle hellions. There is always a situation where you could use either the factory or starport to help counter the enemies army. They wish to do the same with the main army as mech however with support from starport and barracks.
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On January 10 2013 03:22 avilo wrote:
It's great they say this...but uh, they're not ok with factory only (also known as mech) being playable, but perfectly fine with barracks only being playable...? wat?
I was like that at first but having looked back at it again I think Blizz are trying to say they want their to be times for Mech and Times for Bio and times for a Mix rather than one purely better style. I could be wrong though?.
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On January 10 2013 03:22 avilo wrote:
It's great they say this...but uh, they're not ok with factory only (also known as mech) being playable, but perfectly fine with barracks only being playable...? wat?
I assume they are saying that we will not be able to win every game against every unit type protoss has, by just building units out of the factory(ie, the starport for vikings, BC, ravens and medivacs when necessary). I think everyone can accept that this is fine and having other, non-factory buildings is acceptable.
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On January 10 2013 02:27 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On January 10 2013 00:39 one-one-one wrote:On January 10 2013 00:28 Rabiator wrote:On January 10 2013 00:14 Telenil wrote:On January 09 2013 20:26 Rabiator wrote:On January 09 2013 17:56 Telenil wrote:
Apart from "it is awesome in Brood War", why is that a terrible thing? There is no building in the game that can make you win games on its own, even barracks need medevacs. You would hate the game if mass stargates could stand against every composition, so why do you want pure factories to do that?
The core of mech is the positionnal play + harassing with faster unit. Something isn't mech just because it comes from the factory, but on the other hand, it can still be mech even if all units don't come from the same building. The "factory style" you describe has enough difficulty on its own due to the immobility, but "forcing" this style to rely upon units from other buildings too much is a terrible thing, because it makes it too complicated and in the end not worthwile. Against the Tempest you basically NEED the Viking, but WHY should it be necessary? Blizzard dont want to admit that they screwed up with the Tempest (and the Broodlord/Infestor combo) and change these units and so they are falling back to the "we dont intend to do this" option and just tell us to build other stuff too to make it work. If I remove the usual "I would design this game better than Blizzard" crap (sorry but that's what it is), the actual argument is "mech shouldn't have to rely on other buildings because, combined with its lack of mobility, it would make it too complicated". That sounds a bit... flimsy. Bio use barracks + vikings + medevacs, PvT protoss use gateway + robo, and if you want tanks involved, the compositions required to face zerglings/banelings/mutas were even more diverse. Factory + vikings is not more complicated than those strategies. In other words, why shouldn't players have to build vikings when TvZ involving marine/tank/medevacs/thors into vikings were considered fine? Mech - IMMOBILITY Bio - MOBILITY You notice the difference? Adding "mobile" units to get around the fact that mech is immobile is stupid, because it simply shows that mobility is too important in SC2 because the developers make these decisions. Its basically cheating and the merging of one upgrade for mech and air already blurs the lines between the races, because you are basically down to three upgrades to do it all ... just like Zerg and Protoss have it. Thats not good. Its all about the additional option of being able to play a "static" game of positioning and slowly creeping ahead. Sadly SC2 is all about mobility and thats a big part of the reason why mech doesnt work / works badly. The only solution to this - in Blizzards framework - is to buff the Siege Tank in such a way to make them SCARY to any kind of infantry; both other races have sufficient numbers of "tricks" to deal with static big targets that cant shoot air ... This. A mech army is immobile because tanks need to siege and thors are slow. A protoss army is very mobile because of a higher average movement speed than mech, colossus cliff walk, stalker blink and warp in mechanics. As long as a more mobile protoss army is even barely just weaker than an immobile mech army we have a huge design problem. A well positioned mech army should absolutely stomp a protoss army in a head on engagement. As long as this is not the case TvP mech will not be a solid playstyle. Besides this, a lot of other issues will need to be solved. For instance it should be possible to use a few carefully placed mech units to defend harass on multiple fronts etc. Blizzard trying to improve mech sounds promising, but I would not be surprised if the changes they make actually ends up hurting mech in TvP. That is how much i confide in their abilities. edit: And please Plansix, spare me your comments about me complaining about game design. You clearly have no clue, and I'm tired of you. Actually, I have no problem with your comments and they mostly make sense, and you don't use the words "game design" as some vague value judgment to enhance your argument. You make points that make sense. I totally agree that a mech army should be able to trade efficently with a protoss a mobile protoss army if attacked head on or at a bad angle. Right now, it is very hard to get that form of engagement with a protoss against a standard protoss army and impossible if the protoss has focused on immortals over colossi. A protoss should really be forced to tech switch to air to directly engage a mech army or hope for a really good engagement.
That is another important point you make there ... the angle of attack ... and since the OTHER SIDE chooses that angle there is only one way of making an immobile style worthwile: making the units (the Tank) really scary. Adding bunkers and turrets to enhance the tanks or cover some of their weaknesses has to be a necessity, but that is good, because you wont want to unsiege and leave your really immobile hardware to be chewed up by a single Zergling. This will prevent the ridiculously ineffective and risky "mechball dance" where the Terran keeps sieging and unsieging his tanks every 30 seconds.
There is just one bad bean I have and it sadly has to do with game design and the Zerg. Due to the mechanic of creep spreading and the lack of an ability to speed up receding creep it still takes AGES to get the surface of the map clean enough to build supporting structures on it again. This isnt good for both non-Zerg races, but Protoss can somewhat get around it through the use of Warp Prisms ... but Terrans cant.
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They mean that u will need support units from barracks like ghost or vinkings/ raven from starport.
I think thats ok, i mean in tvt mech or tvz mech u also build Vikings/Raven/Banshee.
it would be realy stupid if Tank, Thor, Hellbat wins vs all Protoss can throw at you^^
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On January 10 2013 03:27 HTOMario wrote:Show nested quote +On January 10 2013 03:22 avilo wrote:
It's great they say this...but uh, they're not ok with factory only (also known as mech) being playable, but perfectly fine with barracks only being playable...? wat? Barracks still require the usage of medivacs / vikings and in their eyes battle hellions. There is always a situation where you could use either the factory or starport to help counter the enemies army. They wish to do the same with the main army as mech however with support from starport and barracks.
I'm perfectly fine with that as long as they don't want me to research stim.
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as long as the majority of the units are built from the factory, it's ok, i don't want to be forced to make marine to counter immo, or banshee to make my mech better, all these shit do not belong in a mech play, just factory units plus ghost\raven and it's super fine for me.
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On January 10 2013 00:28 Rabiator wrote:Show nested quote +On January 10 2013 00:14 Telenil wrote:On January 09 2013 20:26 Rabiator wrote:On January 09 2013 17:56 Telenil wrote:
Apart from "it is awesome in Brood War", why is that a terrible thing? There is no building in the game that can make you win games on its own, even barracks need medevacs. You would hate the game if mass stargates could stand against every composition, so why do you want pure factories to do that?
The core of mech is the positionnal play + harassing with faster unit. Something isn't mech just because it comes from the factory, but on the other hand, it can still be mech even if all units don't come from the same building. The "factory style" you describe has enough difficulty on its own due to the immobility, but "forcing" this style to rely upon units from other buildings too much is a terrible thing, because it makes it too complicated and in the end not worthwile. Against the Tempest you basically NEED the Viking, but WHY should it be necessary? Blizzard dont want to admit that they screwed up with the Tempest (and the Broodlord/Infestor combo) and change these units and so they are falling back to the "we dont intend to do this" option and just tell us to build other stuff too to make it work. If I remove the usual "I would design this game better than Blizzard" crap (sorry but that's what it is), the actual argument is "mech shouldn't have to rely on other buildings because, combined with its lack of mobility, it would make it too complicated". That sounds a bit... flimsy. Bio use barracks + vikings + medevacs, PvT protoss use gateway + robo, and if you want tanks involved, the compositions required to face zerglings/banelings/mutas were even more diverse. Factory + vikings is not more complicated than those strategies. In other words, why shouldn't players have to build vikings when TvZ involving marine/tank/medevacs/thors into vikings were considered fine? Mech - IMMOBILITY Bio - MOBILITY You notice the difference? Adding "mobile" units to get around the fact that mech is immobile is stupid, because it simply shows that mobility is too important in SC2 because the developers make these decisions. Its basically cheating and the merging of one upgrade for mech and air already blurs the lines between the races, because you are basically down to three upgrades to do it all ... just like Zerg and Protoss have it. Thats not good. Its all about the additional option of being able to play a "static" game of positioning and slowly creeping ahead. Sadly SC2 is all about mobility and thats a big part of the reason why mech doesnt work / works badly. The only solution to this - in Blizzards framework - is to buff the Siege Tank in such a way to make them SCARY to any kind of infantry; both other races have sufficient numbers of "tricks" to deal with static big targets that cant shoot air ...
How do you explain BL/Infestor then? Mobile static defenses compensate for slow moving death ball? Sase made a case for that a while back. Both his and your arguments aren't necessarily invalid, especially pertaining to the existing framework of SC2, but the bigger issue is mining. Having more bases vs. an immobile composition is a standard RTS strategy but SC2 doesn't work that way. Mining is simply too efficient and being up 6 base to 3 is near meaningless in terms of mineral economy and the additional gas economy simply means "I'll get my shinier gas units to create my own, better, death ball than yours".
Positional play and board control which everyone recognizes is important (including Blizzard, but it seems only superficially) simply isn't THAT important when the whole REASON you're jockeying for such control isn't additional income in an ECONOMY-BASED RTS (as you would hope, and expect) but THE (singular) decisive engagement. This is why Infestors are hard to balance (Zerg needs strong AoE because having more income and units isn't that effective when despite having more bases, they're not mining much more than their T and P counter-parts) and everything from the Protoss race (FF, gateway units, WG, etc.) to map size (there was a reason why early maps were so small, because mining maxed out so early, it made sense to position players in close proximity of each other to "fight for board control").
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Looks like once again, blizzard has correctly identified the problem, but let's hope they don't throw some "solutions" like some of the ones we've seen recently (raven hsm change comes to mind).
I'm glad the community feedback has been having a positive influence on the development direction, mech TvP is probably worse now than in WoL, it desperately needs some kind of boost.
I'm actually surprised that DB was able to acknowledge so many of the existing problems though, because he mentioned like 7+ units that he agreed needed fixing. Perhaps the balance team is taking the long view and planning to patch everything but very slowly, just like BW took years to get right.
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On January 10 2013 00:48 Jerom wrote:
I think Blizzard has to realise that Mech vs Protoss isn't going to work if they don't either nerf the immortal or introduce a unit specialised at killing immortals.
I think Blizzard has to realise that Air vs. Terran isn't going to work if they don't either nerf the marine or introduce a unit specialised at killing marines (from stargate).
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United States7483 Posts
On January 10 2013 03:29 MarcH wrote:Show nested quote +On January 10 2013 03:22 avilo wrote:
It's great they say this...but uh, they're not ok with factory only (also known as mech) being playable, but perfectly fine with barracks only being playable...? wat? I was like that at first but having looked back at it again I think Blizz are trying to say they want their to be times for Mech and Times for Bio and times for a Mix rather than one purely better style. I could be wrong though?.
Bio only isn't playable, you need to add starport units (medivacs, vikings).
That was what they were saying: they don't want to make it so you can make units from a factory only and make your barracks and starport completely unused the entire game. They might have it so you need ghosts and thus have to add on a few barracks units, but it seems to me that they meant that you should have to use vikings to support your army and they aren't going to invalidate starport play by putting every single type of unit you need for every situation on the factory. Given that air units and mech units share armor upgrades, this really isn't that big of a deal.
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After reading a lot of the posts in this topic I'm getting the feeling people still don't know what mech is really about. Mech is not about "immobility", it's about positional play and calculated risks. The best example I can give of true "mech" is the old school "marine, tank, viking" TvT days, where you used tanks to control spaces, marines as your main form of mobile dps and vikings for air control and vision. Anybody who remember the "marine, tank, viking" days can say for sure it was never about "deathball versus deathball" or a "slow push of death" (of course, unless you were a ignorant zerg or protoss). Tanks are just a way to buy time, and make it so that you don't just blindly run into a position without taking damage in the process, thus the matchup depended on circumventing the tanks and trading against the tanks cost efficiently. The concept of marine tank also works in TvZ, which is why I believe TvZ was such an exciting matchup during the ling, baneling, muta days.
So why is mech can work in TvT and TvZ, but not in TvP? It's not that the protoss army is more mobile, zerg units are much more mobile than protoss is and mech is still possible versus zerg. The difference between zerg and protoss is the protoss deathball. The "mech" style that people want is inherently weak against protoss. It's just impossible to use mech against protoss because protoss units are just so cost efficient versus mech. The only way that you can do large amounts of damage versus a protoss deathball is IF you play defensive and put all your tanks together in order to stop the protoss deathball, which is why it seems that people get the wrong idea about mech "immobility" versus protoss "mobility". Compare this to TvT where if you tried to use a "deathball" to push into your opponent's base your army would eventually be whittled away until you only had tatters left while you opponent had the benefit of a shorter reinforcement time, plus the ability to regain map control due to you overextending your main army in order to push into his base. In TvP, if you tried to spread out your mech against protoss it'd be easy for protoss to 1a into your spread out mech army and it still wouldn't make a dent in the power of the protoss deathball as long as the protoss didn't mess his engagement. On a side note, this is also why you don't see that much multi-pronged harass as terran against protoss because it would be easy for protoss to take his deathball and 1a into your base (since you would have a vastly weaker army to defend it) while freeing up supply to warp-in to defend against the harass.
This is why the widow mine is so important for mech to work in TvP. The widow mine essentially chips away at the protoss deatball, and makes the protoss more hesitant to move his deathball, buying you time to move your mech army into position and allowing you to spread out your mech army. What we should be asking for is to allow to mech units to be spread out, not make the mech "deathball" even stronger. Once a mech player is able to split his army comfortably against protoss, then the "multi pronged harass abusing immoblity" from protoss will come naturally. This is also why it's important to have a mobile, relatively tanky unit, that with a few tanks, can take on a protoss deathball. If marine tank viking was good enough versus protoss then I bet that we wouldn't have as much demand for mech as there is right now.
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On January 10 2013 04:13 dicedicerevolution wrote:Show nested quote +On January 10 2013 00:28 Rabiator wrote:On January 10 2013 00:14 Telenil wrote:On January 09 2013 20:26 Rabiator wrote:On January 09 2013 17:56 Telenil wrote:
Apart from "it is awesome in Brood War", why is that a terrible thing? There is no building in the game that can make you win games on its own, even barracks need medevacs. You would hate the game if mass stargates could stand against every composition, so why do you want pure factories to do that?
The core of mech is the positionnal play + harassing with faster unit. Something isn't mech just because it comes from the factory, but on the other hand, it can still be mech even if all units don't come from the same building. The "factory style" you describe has enough difficulty on its own due to the immobility, but "forcing" this style to rely upon units from other buildings too much is a terrible thing, because it makes it too complicated and in the end not worthwile. Against the Tempest you basically NEED the Viking, but WHY should it be necessary? Blizzard dont want to admit that they screwed up with the Tempest (and the Broodlord/Infestor combo) and change these units and so they are falling back to the "we dont intend to do this" option and just tell us to build other stuff too to make it work. If I remove the usual "I would design this game better than Blizzard" crap (sorry but that's what it is), the actual argument is "mech shouldn't have to rely on other buildings because, combined with its lack of mobility, it would make it too complicated". That sounds a bit... flimsy. Bio use barracks + vikings + medevacs, PvT protoss use gateway + robo, and if you want tanks involved, the compositions required to face zerglings/banelings/mutas were even more diverse. Factory + vikings is not more complicated than those strategies. In other words, why shouldn't players have to build vikings when TvZ involving marine/tank/medevacs/thors into vikings were considered fine? Mech - IMMOBILITY Bio - MOBILITY You notice the difference? Adding "mobile" units to get around the fact that mech is immobile is stupid, because it simply shows that mobility is too important in SC2 because the developers make these decisions. Its basically cheating and the merging of one upgrade for mech and air already blurs the lines between the races, because you are basically down to three upgrades to do it all ... just like Zerg and Protoss have it. Thats not good. Its all about the additional option of being able to play a "static" game of positioning and slowly creeping ahead. Sadly SC2 is all about mobility and thats a big part of the reason why mech doesnt work / works badly. The only solution to this - in Blizzards framework - is to buff the Siege Tank in such a way to make them SCARY to any kind of infantry; both other races have sufficient numbers of "tricks" to deal with static big targets that cant shoot air ... How do you explain BL/Infestor then? Mobile static defenses compensate for slow moving death ball? Sase made a case for that a while back. Both his and your arguments aren't necessarily invalid, especially pertaining to the existing framework of SC2, but the bigger issue is mining. Having more bases vs. an immobile composition is a standard RTS strategy but SC2 doesn't work that way. Mining is simply too efficient and being up 6 base to 3 is near meaningless in terms of mineral economy and the additional gas economy simply means "I'll get my shinier gas units to create my own, better, death ball than yours". Positional play and board control which everyone recognizes is important (including Blizzard, but it seems only superficially) simply isn't THAT important when the whole REASON you're jockeying for such control isn't additional income in an ECONOMY-BASED RTS (as you would hope, and expect) but THE (singular) decisive engagement. This is why Infestors are hard to balance (Zerg needs strong AoE because having more income and units isn't that effective when despite having more bases, they're not mining much more than their T and P counter-parts) and everything from the Protoss race (FF, gateway units, WG, etc.) to map size (there was a reason why early maps were so small, because mining maxed out so early, it made sense to position players in close proximity of each other to "fight for board control").
Mobile static bases do one thing: anchor the units on something and protecting the units (which cost gas) with something that doesnt and is cheap to repair. They do have a "downside" of being immobile and taking a long time to get up.
The economy point you raise is sadly true ... and it is valid, because a Zerg on 6 bases basically have unlimited resources to recreate their army as much as they like and due to the larvae inject mechanic that isnt even too hard. So there still is an advantage from that and the Terrans will run out eventually ... and without scary space control units they cant even secure new bases easily after those first three. SC2 does have too many resources to produce units, but sadly Blizzard thinks that "more is better" and they are wrong.
The Broodlord is a badly designed unit, because it creates its own "protective screen against ground units", because they have a range of 9.5 which then can even extend because the Broodlings have a decent lifetime and can walk a bit more. No ground unit has a range to beat that, so the only solution to kill these is air with a long range or super mobility in the form of Blink. Couple that with Fungal and you have a terrible unit design. A much better design for the BL would be to change the range to 3 and the mobility to something close to Mutalisk speed. That way you could use them as "bombers" but would have to endanger them while using them. "Invulnerable" units are bad design. Obviously there will be experts who will claim I have no clue to design a game or something like that, but at least I argue the point.
Since the Thor is soooooooo sluggish and only has half a range increment over the Broodlord in its AA range it cant ever deal with that threat. You would need a *somewhat mobile* unit like the Goliath, but then you still have Fungal to sort out. The Thor really doesnt cut it and the only way to make it work would be to increase the damage of the new single target attack SIGNIFICANTLY, but then they would be a bit too good against all the smaller early air units, so that sounds like a "no go".
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On January 10 2013 05:10 Rabiator wrote:
...
Obviously there will be experts who will claim I have no clue to design a game or something like that, but at least I argue the point.
No, that's the basic problem that, at least I have with your opinions.
You just describe something and then say that something is bad or badly designed. Arguing means that you have a definition or some set of criteria or something of that kind. And after that is established, the point of arguing is to identify why something does or does not fulfill that.
Taking your Broodlord example, the way you put it your one and only criteria is that a unit should not be able to create its own protective screen against ground units
I disagree. I could easily make up a unit with the sole design purpose of doing that. For example a kind of "pioneer" unit that builds barricades and can't attack. At least for me that sounds like it could make for awesome situations and could fullfill my definition of good design (which is something along the lines of fun+balanceable+challenging).
Or take some tank with a smoke screen like in World in Conflict, if you prefer an actual example from a strategy game.
I mean, I can easily get what you really mean to say: It's bad design that the Broodlord as a mighty, longrange unit that is hard to beat by ground - even if it did not have broodlings and was balanced otherwise - has this extra lair of selfprotection vs ground. (or something like that)
But then again, this is a completely different arguement, because then the question is not about "good/bad design" but about "how powerful should the broodlord be with such a kind of design - all of that, in the enviroment of SC2".
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What if Medivacs could transport sieged tanks?
Maybe adding a small delay before they can fire when dropped off. It would encourage making medivacs when meching, which synergize well with hellbats.
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Imo no, the entire idea of siege tanks is that they are immobile when deployed. And adding this option opens a whole can of worms of possible ways to abuse it.
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What if reapers could load into a siege tank and doubling its damage? I would be cool and the downside is supply cost.
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On January 10 2013 06:16 archonOOid wrote:
What if reapers could load into a siege tank and doubling its damage? I would be cool and the downside is supply cost.
Quick somebody mod this. It'll be the new Hydraroach!
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Blizzard should fix immortals, not mech.
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On January 10 2013 06:16 archonOOid wrote:
What if reapers could load into a siege tank and doubling its damage? I would be cool and the downside is supply cost.
make autoturrets able to be attached to mechanical ground units. Dustin Browder can't say no to that
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/492rp.jpg)
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On January 10 2013 05:49 Cartacea wrote:
What if Medivacs could transport sieged tanks?
Maybe adding a small delay before they can fire when dropped off. It would encourage making medivacs when meching, which synergize well with hellbats.
I actually really like this idea. Players with really good micro probably could exploit it in interesting ways. Perhaps in siege mode a tank should take up six supply so that only one would fit in a medivac (and perhaps there should be a really short delay before it could fire -- 1 second or so). This would allow mech to be more mobile and to be more cost efficient (since you don't have to necessarily lose your siege tanks if you lose an engagement, and as you mention promoting medivac use synergizes well with hell bats. It could also make drops a lot scarier. I think this is something that definitely should be tried in the beta, regardless of whether it makes mech viable.
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On January 10 2013 06:29 The_Darkness wrote:Show nested quote +On January 10 2013 05:49 Cartacea wrote:
What if Medivacs could transport sieged tanks?
Maybe adding a small delay before they can fire when dropped off. It would encourage making medivacs when meching, which synergize well with hellbats. I actually really like this idea. Players with really good micro probably could exploit it in interesting ways. Perhaps in siege mode a tank should take up six supply so that only one would fit in a medivac (and perhaps there should be a really short delay before it could fire -- 1 second or so). This would allow mech to be more mobile and to be more cost efficient (since you don't have to necessarily lose your siege tanks if you lose an engagement, and as you mention promoting medivac use synergizes well with hell bats. It could also make drops a lot scarier. At the very least I think this change would make bio mech a lot more viable in tvp, which would be nice to see. I think this is something that definitely should be tried in the beta, regardless of whether it makes mech viable.
I agree, with six supply and visual of Tank underneath the Medivac, this could be really interesting. Not only would it provide synergy with Hellbats, but also Vikings (to protect the Medivac while it's moving with expensive cargo). It seems like there are SO many micro opportunities here, like in TvT dropping an entire line of tanks into position so they only take one volley (and that's only if it's with delay; if no delay, it'd be an even exchange). The more drops you can manage at the same time, the more cost-effective your army will be. Very, very high skill ceiling.
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So much trolling.
If you guys aren't careful, Browder will bite on one of these.
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On January 10 2013 06:29 The_Darkness wrote:Show nested quote +On January 10 2013 05:49 Cartacea wrote:
What if Medivacs could transport sieged tanks?
Maybe adding a small delay before they can fire when dropped off. It would encourage making medivacs when meching, which synergize well with hellbats. I actually really like this idea. Players with really good micro probably could exploit it in interesting ways. Perhaps in siege mode a tank should take up six supply so that only one would fit in a medivac (and perhaps there should be a really short delay before it could fire -- 1 second or so). This would allow mech to be more mobile and to be more cost efficient (since you don't have to necessarily lose your siege tanks if you lose an engagement, and as you mention promoting medivac use synergizes well with hell bats. It could also make drops a lot scarier. I think this is something that definitely should be tried in the beta, regardless of whether it makes mech viable.
And as a plus, it would look awesome. If anyone has ever seen when MKP drop microed a set of 4 thors against zerglings, it was a joy to watch. I think everyone would love to see medivacs pick up siege tanks seconds before a wave of zerglings hit. For further awesome, it should be a single siege tank per medivac, just like the thor, for the visual. That with a reasonable buff to siege tanks, it would make watching mech that much more exciting.
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On January 10 2013 06:43 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On January 10 2013 06:29 The_Darkness wrote:On January 10 2013 05:49 Cartacea wrote:
What if Medivacs could transport sieged tanks?
Maybe adding a small delay before they can fire when dropped off. It would encourage making medivacs when meching, which synergize well with hellbats. I actually really like this idea. Players with really good micro probably could exploit it in interesting ways. Perhaps in siege mode a tank should take up six supply so that only one would fit in a medivac (and perhaps there should be a really short delay before it could fire -- 1 second or so). This would allow mech to be more mobile and to be more cost efficient (since you don't have to necessarily lose your siege tanks if you lose an engagement, and as you mention promoting medivac use synergizes well with hell bats. It could also make drops a lot scarier. I think this is something that definitely should be tried in the beta, regardless of whether it makes mech viable. And as a plus, it would look awesome. If anyone has ever seen when MKP drop microed a set of 4 thors against zerglings, it was a joy to watch. I think everyone would love to see medivacs pick up siege tanks seconds before a wave of zerglings hit. For further awesome, it should be a single siege tank per medivac, just like the thor, for the visual. That with a reasonable buff to siege tanks, it would make watching mech that much more exciting.
Ooooooooooooh i want to say yes.
Let's hope Dustin Browder read this !
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On January 10 2013 06:43 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On January 10 2013 06:29 The_Darkness wrote:On January 10 2013 05:49 Cartacea wrote:
What if Medivacs could transport sieged tanks?
Maybe adding a small delay before they can fire when dropped off. It would encourage making medivacs when meching, which synergize well with hellbats. I actually really like this idea. Players with really good micro probably could exploit it in interesting ways. Perhaps in siege mode a tank should take up six supply so that only one would fit in a medivac (and perhaps there should be a really short delay before it could fire -- 1 second or so). This would allow mech to be more mobile and to be more cost efficient (since you don't have to necessarily lose your siege tanks if you lose an engagement, and as you mention promoting medivac use synergizes well with hell bats. It could also make drops a lot scarier. I think this is something that definitely should be tried in the beta, regardless of whether it makes mech viable. And as a plus, it would look awesome. If anyone has ever seen when MKP drop microed a set of 4 thors against zerglings, it was a joy to watch. I think everyone would love to see medivacs pick up siege tanks seconds before a wave of zerglings hit. For further awesome, it should be a single siege tank per medivac, just like the thor, for the visual. That with a reasonable buff to siege tanks, it would make watching mech that much more exciting.
a 6supply tank would need a new name. Like, "Apocalypse Siege Tank". Sold, DB will implement this tomorrow.
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New patch is up!
Free Siege mode.
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On January 10 2013 07:05 Big J wrote:Show nested quote +On January 10 2013 06:43 Plansix wrote:On January 10 2013 06:29 The_Darkness wrote:On January 10 2013 05:49 Cartacea wrote:
What if Medivacs could transport sieged tanks?
Maybe adding a small delay before they can fire when dropped off. It would encourage making medivacs when meching, which synergize well with hellbats. I actually really like this idea. Players with really good micro probably could exploit it in interesting ways. Perhaps in siege mode a tank should take up six supply so that only one would fit in a medivac (and perhaps there should be a really short delay before it could fire -- 1 second or so). This would allow mech to be more mobile and to be more cost efficient (since you don't have to necessarily lose your siege tanks if you lose an engagement, and as you mention promoting medivac use synergizes well with hell bats. It could also make drops a lot scarier. I think this is something that definitely should be tried in the beta, regardless of whether it makes mech viable. And as a plus, it would look awesome. If anyone has ever seen when MKP drop microed a set of 4 thors against zerglings, it was a joy to watch. I think everyone would love to see medivacs pick up siege tanks seconds before a wave of zerglings hit. For further awesome, it should be a single siege tank per medivac, just like the thor, for the visual. That with a reasonable buff to siege tanks, it would make watching mech that much more exciting. a 6supply tank would need a new name. Like, "Apocalypse Siege Tank". Sold, DB will implement this tomorrow.
Sounds about right. After all, a normal medivac can only carry 2 tanks, but they have to be bigger when seiged.
But we would need something to tell it apart from other, normal tanks. Like....two barrels. Wait....I see that before.
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On January 10 2013 07:05 Big J wrote:Show nested quote +On January 10 2013 06:43 Plansix wrote:On January 10 2013 06:29 The_Darkness wrote:On January 10 2013 05:49 Cartacea wrote:
What if Medivacs could transport sieged tanks?
Maybe adding a small delay before they can fire when dropped off. It would encourage making medivacs when meching, which synergize well with hellbats. I actually really like this idea. Players with really good micro probably could exploit it in interesting ways. Perhaps in siege mode a tank should take up six supply so that only one would fit in a medivac (and perhaps there should be a really short delay before it could fire -- 1 second or so). This would allow mech to be more mobile and to be more cost efficient (since you don't have to necessarily lose your siege tanks if you lose an engagement, and as you mention promoting medivac use synergizes well with hell bats. It could also make drops a lot scarier. I think this is something that definitely should be tried in the beta, regardless of whether it makes mech viable. And as a plus, it would look awesome. If anyone has ever seen when MKP drop microed a set of 4 thors against zerglings, it was a joy to watch. I think everyone would love to see medivacs pick up siege tanks seconds before a wave of zerglings hit. For further awesome, it should be a single siege tank per medivac, just like the thor, for the visual. That with a reasonable buff to siege tanks, it would make watching mech that much more exciting. a 6supply tank would need a new name. Like, "Apocalypse Siege Tank". Sold, DB will implement this tomorrow.
Not sure if joking or serious, so I'll clarify, the 6-supply is only for Medivac purposes. Lifting a tank in Siege Mode would take up an entire Medivac.
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Holy crap the patch notes are no joke. The Hellbat does 18 damage straight up, 30 vs light, no upgrade required. Thats pure non-sense.
And the HSM is not a range 10, AOE py-storm with a 5 second delay. 100 damage straight to your face for 75 E-straight up. Welcome to the club terrans! As a protoss, I feel you will enjoy these new long range AOE dealing machines.
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On January 10 2013 05:10 Rabiator wrote:Show nested quote +On January 10 2013 04:13 dicedicerevolution wrote:On January 10 2013 00:28 Rabiator wrote:On January 10 2013 00:14 Telenil wrote:On January 09 2013 20:26 Rabiator wrote:On January 09 2013 17:56 Telenil wrote:
Apart from "it is awesome in Brood War", why is that a terrible thing? There is no building in the game that can make you win games on its own, even barracks need medevacs. You would hate the game if mass stargates could stand against every composition, so why do you want pure factories to do that?
The core of mech is the positionnal play + harassing with faster unit. Something isn't mech just because it comes from the factory, but on the other hand, it can still be mech even if all units don't come from the same building. The "factory style" you describe has enough difficulty on its own due to the immobility, but "forcing" this style to rely upon units from other buildings too much is a terrible thing, because it makes it too complicated and in the end not worthwile. Against the Tempest you basically NEED the Viking, but WHY should it be necessary? Blizzard dont want to admit that they screwed up with the Tempest (and the Broodlord/Infestor combo) and change these units and so they are falling back to the "we dont intend to do this" option and just tell us to build other stuff too to make it work. If I remove the usual "I would design this game better than Blizzard" crap (sorry but that's what it is), the actual argument is "mech shouldn't have to rely on other buildings because, combined with its lack of mobility, it would make it too complicated". That sounds a bit... flimsy. Bio use barracks + vikings + medevacs, PvT protoss use gateway + robo, and if you want tanks involved, the compositions required to face zerglings/banelings/mutas were even more diverse. Factory + vikings is not more complicated than those strategies. In other words, why shouldn't players have to build vikings when TvZ involving marine/tank/medevacs/thors into vikings were considered fine? Mech - IMMOBILITY Bio - MOBILITY You notice the difference? Adding "mobile" units to get around the fact that mech is immobile is stupid, because it simply shows that mobility is too important in SC2 because the developers make these decisions. Its basically cheating and the merging of one upgrade for mech and air already blurs the lines between the races, because you are basically down to three upgrades to do it all ... just like Zerg and Protoss have it. Thats not good. Its all about the additional option of being able to play a "static" game of positioning and slowly creeping ahead. Sadly SC2 is all about mobility and thats a big part of the reason why mech doesnt work / works badly. The only solution to this - in Blizzards framework - is to buff the Siege Tank in such a way to make them SCARY to any kind of infantry; both other races have sufficient numbers of "tricks" to deal with static big targets that cant shoot air ... How do you explain BL/Infestor then? Mobile static defenses compensate for slow moving death ball? Sase made a case for that a while back. Both his and your arguments aren't necessarily invalid, especially pertaining to the existing framework of SC2, but the bigger issue is mining. Having more bases vs. an immobile composition is a standard RTS strategy but SC2 doesn't work that way. Mining is simply too efficient and being up 6 base to 3 is near meaningless in terms of mineral economy and the additional gas economy simply means "I'll get my shinier gas units to create my own, better, death ball than yours". Positional play and board control which everyone recognizes is important (including Blizzard, but it seems only superficially) simply isn't THAT important when the whole REASON you're jockeying for such control isn't additional income in an ECONOMY-BASED RTS (as you would hope, and expect) but THE (singular) decisive engagement. This is why Infestors are hard to balance (Zerg needs strong AoE because having more income and units isn't that effective when despite having more bases, they're not mining much more than their T and P counter-parts) and everything from the Protoss race (FF, gateway units, WG, etc.) to map size (there was a reason why early maps were so small, because mining maxed out so early, it made sense to position players in close proximity of each other to "fight for board control"). Mobile static bases do one thing: anchor the units on something and protecting the units (which cost gas) with something that doesnt and is cheap to repair. They do have a "downside" of being immobile and taking a long time to get up. The economy point you raise is sadly true ... and it is valid, because a Zerg on 6 bases basically have unlimited resources to recreate their army as much as they like and due to the larvae inject mechanic that isnt even too hard. So there still is an advantage from that and the Terrans will run out eventually ... and without scary space control units they cant even secure new bases easily after those first three. SC2 does have too many resources to produce units, but sadly Blizzard thinks that "more is better" and they are wrong. The Broodlord is a badly designed unit, because it creates its own "protective screen against ground units", because they have a range of 9.5 which then can even extend because the Broodlings have a decent lifetime and can walk a bit more. No ground unit has a range to beat that, so the only solution to kill these is air with a long range or super mobility in the form of Blink. Couple that with Fungal and you have a terrible unit design. A much better design for the BL would be to change the range to 3 and the mobility to something close to Mutalisk speed. That way you could use them as "bombers" but would have to endanger them while using them. "Invulnerable" units are bad design. Obviously there will be experts who will claim I have no clue to design a game or something like that, but at least I argue the point. Since the Thor is soooooooo sluggish and only has half a range increment over the Broodlord in its AA range it cant ever deal with that threat. You would need a *somewhat mobile* unit like the Goliath, but then you still have Fungal to sort out. The Thor really doesnt cut it and the only way to make it work would be to increase the damage of the new single target attack SIGNIFICANTLY, but then they would be a bit too good against all the smaller early air units, so that sounds like a "no go".
On January 09 2013 20:26 Rabiator wrote:
Mobile static bases do one thing: anchor the units on something and protecting the units (which cost gas) with something that doesnt and is cheap to repair. They do have a "downside" of being immobile and taking a long time to get up.
I don't understand what you mean by "mobile static bases". Maybe you mean "mobile static-defenses" like spine/spore crawlers? Looking back, I should've cleaned up my own terminology so there would be less confusion. The bit about anchoring units is incomprehensible, please clarify
On January 09 2013 20:26 Rabiator wrote:
The economy point you raise is sadly true ... and it is valid, because a Zerg on 6 bases basically have unlimited resources to recreate their army as much as they like and due to the larvae inject mechanic that isnt even too hard. So there still is an advantage from that and the Terrans will run out eventually ... and without scary space control units they cant even secure new bases easily after those first three. SC2 does have too many resources to produce units, but sadly Blizzard thinks that "more is better" and they are wrong.
No, you misunderstand me. I believe that a player (any race) being ahead on bases does not confer enough of a mineral advantage. There's the illusion of a Zerg on 6 bases having unlimited resources because the additional income is primarily gas and it's simply just massing gas heavy units (typically hive tech, and typically BL/Infestor). I'm referring to one of LaLush's posts. That brings us to the crux of the issue. All this whining about Zerg late-game being OP is generic. If Terran had the best end-game composition then you could easily replace Zerg with Terran and keep the rest of the whine the same. The core issue is the mining system where having more income than 3bases (e.g. "a 6 base Zerg") only serves to bolster a gas-heavy army (for which something like mech would benefit more from than bio and why you don't see people massing 20 OC's late-game and mule-bombing expansions). The mineral advantage should help secure more bases or to trade reasonably with the gas units that a player on lesser bases may be massing. "Reasonably" would mean not completely obliterated, and for free, like with fungal, otherwise it's annihilation and not attrition.
On January 09 2013 20:26 Rabiator wrote:
The Broodlord is a badly designed unit, because it creates its own "protective screen against ground units", because they have a range of 9.5 which then can even extend because the Broodlings have a decent lifetime and can walk a bit more. No ground unit has a range to beat that, so the only solution to kill these is air with a long range or super mobility in the form of Blink. Couple that with Fungal and you have a terrible unit design. A much better design for the BL would be to change the range to 3 and the mobility to something close to Mutalisk speed. That way you could use them as "bombers" but would have to endanger them while using them. "Invulnerable" units are bad design. Obviously there will be experts who will claim I have no clue to design a game or something like that, but at least I argue the point.
Since the Thor is soooooooo sluggish and only has half a range increment over the Broodlord in its AA range it cant ever deal with that threat. You would need a *somewhat mobile* unit like the Goliath, but then you still have Fungal to sort out. The Thor really doesnt cut it and the only way to make it work would be to increase the damage of the new single target attack SIGNIFICANTLY, but then they would be a bit too good against all the smaller early air units, so that sounds like a "no go".
That sort of argument is secondary to the real issues at hand, I'll break it down for you:
1.) There must be an increase in the skill ceiling for individual and group unit control for a game that uses mechanics as a subset for strategy
2.) Mining efficiency must be reworked to make board control actually matter for securing income and maintaining a late-game composition instead of the current, "fish for a decisive engagement" function
Tweaking unit values and debating the role of a unit are secondary to those 2 issues because the former provides the framework for the latter.
I know partially you mentioned a reworking of how the unit works rather than a simply tweaking of numbers, but it's still not quite right. The focus should be on making actually getting to and maintaining BLs to be difficult (because you need those bases). If a game like BW could have units that make BL/Infestor seem quaint in comparison yet still be better balanced due to how mining worked, then this should be the way to approach things (assuming the game emphasizes resource management rather than decisive engagements).
Consider this, not too long ago (mid-late 2011), Zergs were struggling to fight Terran and Protoss armies and even the though of increasing the supply cap to 300 was being bandied about. Well we found the answer and it was abusing units like BL/Infestor and mobile static-defenses to make free units (basically having that additional supply). The core issue still remained, which was how mining worked and it's been glossed over by the red herring that is "Who has the ultimate late-game army and how can we nerf it so there are more viable allins to prevent them from getting there?"
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Well that "focus on mech" didnt go as expected lol
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On January 10 2013 08:25 ch4ppi wrote:
Well that "focus on mech" didnt go as expected lol
yeaaaa,
well ****
i guess they want the hellbat to be the core mech unit? maybe? i don't know....
ummmm i guess you can 1/1/1 a bit better now, ravens to kill the msc and then no siege mode research needed...i guess....
I honestly cannot think of a timing from protoss that could come before true meching player would have siege mode up (7:00-8:00) and really get messed up by the presence of siege tanks.
well, maybe we'll at least see some tank contains.......then it'll get nerfed or something....
damn I'm dissapointed
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On January 09 2013 23:22 rollAdice wrote:Show nested quote +On January 09 2013 23:15 Markwerf wrote:On January 09 2013 23:04 rollAdice wrote:
I think a lot people don't realize that the immortal is not an anti-mech unit - it's an anti high burst-damage unit. The problem with mech is that both the tank and the thor have high burst-damage with low attack speed. All units with high attack speed and low burst-damage do perfectly fine against immortals.
So the easiest fix is reduce the damage of thors to a half and double their attack speed, we just doubled the dps of thors vs immortals. Practically the only units with high burst damage are mech... The only other units doing much are the tempest and the ultralisk.. Why make ugly fixes to mech units just to bypass the problem of the immortal if you can fix the problem directly.. Not even mentioning that just making the thor do half damage at double speed is a huge buff against zerg because it won't overkill as much anymore... Lings are quite effective against thors because a thor wastes nearly 50% on every shot for example.. It would probably look ugly to if the thor fires so quickly and constantly turns to acquire new targets Well this was just a suggestion but the same could be accomplished by leaving the attack speed as is and increasing the shot count to 4. Also fixes the ling problem.
I like this idea, although changing Viking ground damage from 12 to 6x2 would also get you in the same area of having a mech unit doing multiple hits to the Immortal without triggering the shield. I fear that a 4 shot Thor might drop an Immortal's shield too quick. Alternatively, what of nerfing Hardened Shield by raising the limit to 15 from 10. This changes from 10 shots to 7 shots to drop the shield so that less damage is being wasted. The Immortal should still be strong and fulfilling its role, but it should be a bit easier to counter it then.
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On January 10 2013 07:05 Big J wrote:Show nested quote +On January 10 2013 06:43 Plansix wrote:On January 10 2013 06:29 The_Darkness wrote:On January 10 2013 05:49 Cartacea wrote:
What if Medivacs could transport sieged tanks?
Maybe adding a small delay before they can fire when dropped off. It would encourage making medivacs when meching, which synergize well with hellbats. I actually really like this idea. Players with really good micro probably could exploit it in interesting ways. Perhaps in siege mode a tank should take up six supply so that only one would fit in a medivac (and perhaps there should be a really short delay before it could fire -- 1 second or so). This would allow mech to be more mobile and to be more cost efficient (since you don't have to necessarily lose your siege tanks if you lose an engagement, and as you mention promoting medivac use synergizes well with hell bats. It could also make drops a lot scarier. I think this is something that definitely should be tried in the beta, regardless of whether it makes mech viable. And as a plus, it would look awesome. If anyone has ever seen when MKP drop microed a set of 4 thors against zerglings, it was a joy to watch. I think everyone would love to see medivacs pick up siege tanks seconds before a wave of zerglings hit. For further awesome, it should be a single siege tank per medivac, just like the thor, for the visual. That with a reasonable buff to siege tanks, it would make watching mech that much more exciting. a 6supply tank would need a new name. Like, "Apocalypse Siege Tank". Sold, DB will implement this tomorrow.
Nonono HellTank.
Ontopic: Free siege mode is the solution to a problem we dont exactly have IMO.
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Bwahahahaha! We got trolled So. Freaking. Hard! It's so sad it's funny! Sorry Mario, guess you'll be playing DOTA2.
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I just played a few games. and the hellbat now feels awesome and actually pretty mechy. i didn't get a chance to play any tvp but in the other matchups it just felt very mechy. Its slow, tough and hits hard. I think they have totally made mech way more viable. In my TvTs the other player would just lose every straight up engagement that was about even in terms of positioning. However, keeping my hellions in hellbat mode does cost you mobility. The one TvT I lost today to a bio player he did a three pronged drop and i couldn't move quickly enough w/ my hellbats. Having that choice to make is really great. It really is now a choice because there is a significant advantange to having them in hellbat mode.
When I first read the patch notes I thought this was a lousy patch but I loved the hellbat changes. they feel and function great
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On January 10 2013 07:25 dicedicerevolution wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On January 10 2013 05:10 Rabiator wrote:Show nested quote +On January 10 2013 04:13 dicedicerevolution wrote:On January 10 2013 00:28 Rabiator wrote:On January 10 2013 00:14 Telenil wrote:On January 09 2013 20:26 Rabiator wrote:On January 09 2013 17:56 Telenil wrote:
Apart from "it is awesome in Brood War", why is that a terrible thing? There is no building in the game that can make you win games on its own, even barracks need medevacs. You would hate the game if mass stargates could stand against every composition, so why do you want pure factories to do that?
The core of mech is the positionnal play + harassing with faster unit. Something isn't mech just because it comes from the factory, but on the other hand, it can still be mech even if all units don't come from the same building. The "factory style" you describe has enough difficulty on its own due to the immobility, but "forcing" this style to rely upon units from other buildings too much is a terrible thing, because it makes it too complicated and in the end not worthwile. Against the Tempest you basically NEED the Viking, but WHY should it be necessary? Blizzard dont want to admit that they screwed up with the Tempest (and the Broodlord/Infestor combo) and change these units and so they are falling back to the "we dont intend to do this" option and just tell us to build other stuff too to make it work. If I remove the usual "I would design this game better than Blizzard" crap (sorry but that's what it is), the actual argument is "mech shouldn't have to rely on other buildings because, combined with its lack of mobility, it would make it too complicated". That sounds a bit... flimsy. Bio use barracks + vikings + medevacs, PvT protoss use gateway + robo, and if you want tanks involved, the compositions required to face zerglings/banelings/mutas were even more diverse. Factory + vikings is not more complicated than those strategies. In other words, why shouldn't players have to build vikings when TvZ involving marine/tank/medevacs/thors into vikings were considered fine? Mech - IMMOBILITY Bio - MOBILITY You notice the difference? Adding "mobile" units to get around the fact that mech is immobile is stupid, because it simply shows that mobility is too important in SC2 because the developers make these decisions. Its basically cheating and the merging of one upgrade for mech and air already blurs the lines between the races, because you are basically down to three upgrades to do it all ... just like Zerg and Protoss have it. Thats not good. Its all about the additional option of being able to play a "static" game of positioning and slowly creeping ahead. Sadly SC2 is all about mobility and thats a big part of the reason why mech doesnt work / works badly. The only solution to this - in Blizzards framework - is to buff the Siege Tank in such a way to make them SCARY to any kind of infantry; both other races have sufficient numbers of "tricks" to deal with static big targets that cant shoot air ... How do you explain BL/Infestor then? Mobile static defenses compensate for slow moving death ball? Sase made a case for that a while back. Both his and your arguments aren't necessarily invalid, especially pertaining to the existing framework of SC2, but the bigger issue is mining. Having more bases vs. an immobile composition is a standard RTS strategy but SC2 doesn't work that way. Mining is simply too efficient and being up 6 base to 3 is near meaningless in terms of mineral economy and the additional gas economy simply means "I'll get my shinier gas units to create my own, better, death ball than yours". Positional play and board control which everyone recognizes is important (including Blizzard, but it seems only superficially) simply isn't THAT important when the whole REASON you're jockeying for such control isn't additional income in an ECONOMY-BASED RTS (as you would hope, and expect) but THE (singular) decisive engagement. This is why Infestors are hard to balance (Zerg needs strong AoE because having more income and units isn't that effective when despite having more bases, they're not mining much more than their T and P counter-parts) and everything from the Protoss race (FF, gateway units, WG, etc.) to map size (there was a reason why early maps were so small, because mining maxed out so early, it made sense to position players in close proximity of each other to "fight for board control"). Mobile static bases do one thing: anchor the units on something and protecting the units (which cost gas) with something that doesnt and is cheap to repair. They do have a "downside" of being immobile and taking a long time to get up. The economy point you raise is sadly true ... and it is valid, because a Zerg on 6 bases basically have unlimited resources to recreate their army as much as they like and due to the larvae inject mechanic that isnt even too hard. So there still is an advantage from that and the Terrans will run out eventually ... and without scary space control units they cant even secure new bases easily after those first three. SC2 does have too many resources to produce units, but sadly Blizzard thinks that "more is better" and they are wrong. The Broodlord is a badly designed unit, because it creates its own "protective screen against ground units", because they have a range of 9.5 which then can even extend because the Broodlings have a decent lifetime and can walk a bit more. No ground unit has a range to beat that, so the only solution to kill these is air with a long range or super mobility in the form of Blink. Couple that with Fungal and you have a terrible unit design. A much better design for the BL would be to change the range to 3 and the mobility to something close to Mutalisk speed. That way you could use them as "bombers" but would have to endanger them while using them. "Invulnerable" units are bad design. Obviously there will be experts who will claim I have no clue to design a game or something like that, but at least I argue the point. Since the Thor is soooooooo sluggish and only has half a range increment over the Broodlord in its AA range it cant ever deal with that threat. You would need a *somewhat mobile* unit like the Goliath, but then you still have Fungal to sort out. The Thor really doesnt cut it and the only way to make it work would be to increase the damage of the new single target attack SIGNIFICANTLY, but then they would be a bit too good against all the smaller early air units, so that sounds like a "no go". On January 09 2013 20:26 Rabiator wrote:
Mobile static bases do one thing: anchor the units on something and protecting the units (which cost gas) with something that doesnt and is cheap to repair. They do have a "downside" of being immobile and taking a long time to get up.
I don't understand what you mean by "mobile static bases". Maybe you mean "mobile static-defenses" like spine/spore crawlers? Looking back, I should've cleaned up my own terminology so there would be less confusion. The bit about anchoring units is incomprehensible, please clarify On January 09 2013 20:26 Rabiator wrote:
The economy point you raise is sadly true ... and it is valid, because a Zerg on 6 bases basically have unlimited resources to recreate their army as much as they like and due to the larvae inject mechanic that isnt even too hard. So there still is an advantage from that and the Terrans will run out eventually ... and without scary space control units they cant even secure new bases easily after those first three. SC2 does have too many resources to produce units, but sadly Blizzard thinks that "more is better" and they are wrong.
No, you misunderstand me. I believe that a player (any race) being ahead on bases does not confer enough of a mineral advantage. There's the illusion of a Zerg on 6 bases having unlimited resources because the additional income is primarily gas and it's simply just massing gas heavy units (typically hive tech, and typically BL/Infestor). I'm referring to one of LaLush's posts. That brings us to the crux of the issue. All this whining about Zerg late-game being OP is generic. If Terran had the best end-game composition then you could easily replace Zerg with Terran and keep the rest of the whine the same. The core issue is the mining system where having more income than 3bases (e.g. "a 6 base Zerg") only serves to bolster a gas-heavy army (for which something like mech would benefit more from than bio and why you don't see people massing 20 OC's late-game and mule-bombing expansions). The mineral advantage should help secure more bases or to trade reasonably with the gas units that a player on lesser bases may be massing. "Reasonably" would mean not completely obliterated, and for free, like with fungal, otherwise it's annihilation and not attrition. On January 09 2013 20:26 Rabiator wrote:
The Broodlord is a badly designed unit, because it creates its own "protective screen against ground units", because they have a range of 9.5 which then can even extend because the Broodlings have a decent lifetime and can walk a bit more. No ground unit has a range to beat that, so the only solution to kill these is air with a long range or super mobility in the form of Blink. Couple that with Fungal and you have a terrible unit design. A much better design for the BL would be to change the range to 3 and the mobility to something close to Mutalisk speed. That way you could use them as "bombers" but would have to endanger them while using them. "Invulnerable" units are bad design. Obviously there will be experts who will claim I have no clue to design a game or something like that, but at least I argue the point.
Since the Thor is soooooooo sluggish and only has half a range increment over the Broodlord in its AA range it cant ever deal with that threat. You would need a *somewhat mobile* unit like the Goliath, but then you still have Fungal to sort out. The Thor really doesnt cut it and the only way to make it work would be to increase the damage of the new single target attack SIGNIFICANTLY, but then they would be a bit too good against all the smaller early air units, so that sounds like a "no go".
That sort of argument is secondary to the real issues at hand, I'll break it down for you: 1.) There must be an increase in the skill ceiling for individual and group unit control for a game that uses mechanics as a subset for strategy 2.) Mining efficiency must be reworked to make board control actually matter for securing income and maintaining a late-game composition instead of the current, "fish for a decisive engagement" function Tweaking unit values and debating the role of a unit are secondary to those 2 issues because the former provides the framework for the latter. I know partially you mentioned a reworking of how the unit works rather than a simply tweaking of numbers, but it's still not quite right. The focus should be on making actually getting to and maintaining BLs to be difficult (because you need those bases). If a game like BW could have units that make BL/Infestor seem quaint in comparison yet still be better balanced due to how mining worked, then this should be the way to approach things (assuming the game emphasizes resource management rather than decisive engagements). Consider this, not too long ago (mid-late 2011), Zergs were struggling to fight Terran and Protoss armies and even the though of increasing the supply cap to 300 was being bandied about. Well we found the answer and it was abusing units like BL/Infestor and mobile static-defenses to make free units (basically having that additional supply). The core issue still remained, which was how mining worked and it's been glossed over by the red herring that is "Who has the ultimate late-game army and how can we nerf it so there are more viable allins to prevent them from getting there?"
I was only talking about turrets and bunkers ... real STATIC defensive structures and not about mobile stuff (although Zerg use their massive Spine Crawler walls for something similar). Bunkers can shield tanks against Zerglings and turrets should push away Overseers, Overlords and Corruptors to reduce vision and drop potential.
I am fully with you on the "units need to require more skill to use", but personally I would think that this cant be done "the Browder way" by adding activateable skills to them (like the turbo boost for Medivacs or Blink or Hellion transformation) but rather by making them harder to use (like the Carrier micro) but still useable without such micro. The Stalker is a really good example why their way is bad, because they balanced the unit stats to REQUIRE blink useage or Forcefield for the unit to be viable. Without these two gadgets Stalkers are simply killed by a-moving a bunch of cheap Zerglings and that is terrible.
The thing is that all Zerg units basically have a "microing ability" (burrow) but that practically no one uses it during a fight. This is the second example against microing abilities, but it also shows untapped potential for Zerg to use while they keep complaining about being so weak.
On January 10 2013 08:25 ch4ppi wrote:
Well that "focus on mech" didnt go as expected lol
Exactly as expected ... Browder is 100% off the target. I cant wait for HotS to be released to have a few months of "WoL Mass Reaper"-equivalent-imbalance in all the big tournaments. Should be entertaining to watch if you can keep sane. "Remove upgrades" is their standard answer to buffing everything now it seems ...
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On January 10 2013 14:53 Rabiator wrote:Show nested quote +On January 10 2013 07:25 dicedicerevolution wrote:+ Show Spoiler +On January 10 2013 05:10 Rabiator wrote:Show nested quote +On January 10 2013 04:13 dicedicerevolution wrote:On January 10 2013 00:28 Rabiator wrote:On January 10 2013 00:14 Telenil wrote:On January 09 2013 20:26 Rabiator wrote:On January 09 2013 17:56 Telenil wrote:
Apart from "it is awesome in Brood War", why is that a terrible thing? There is no building in the game that can make you win games on its own, even barracks need medevacs. You would hate the game if mass stargates could stand against every composition, so why do you want pure factories to do that?
The core of mech is the positionnal play + harassing with faster unit. Something isn't mech just because it comes from the factory, but on the other hand, it can still be mech even if all units don't come from the same building. The "factory style" you describe has enough difficulty on its own due to the immobility, but "forcing" this style to rely upon units from other buildings too much is a terrible thing, because it makes it too complicated and in the end not worthwile. Against the Tempest you basically NEED the Viking, but WHY should it be necessary? Blizzard dont want to admit that they screwed up with the Tempest (and the Broodlord/Infestor combo) and change these units and so they are falling back to the "we dont intend to do this" option and just tell us to build other stuff too to make it work. If I remove the usual "I would design this game better than Blizzard" crap (sorry but that's what it is), the actual argument is "mech shouldn't have to rely on other buildings because, combined with its lack of mobility, it would make it too complicated". That sounds a bit... flimsy. Bio use barracks + vikings + medevacs, PvT protoss use gateway + robo, and if you want tanks involved, the compositions required to face zerglings/banelings/mutas were even more diverse. Factory + vikings is not more complicated than those strategies. In other words, why shouldn't players have to build vikings when TvZ involving marine/tank/medevacs/thors into vikings were considered fine? Mech - IMMOBILITY Bio - MOBILITY You notice the difference? Adding "mobile" units to get around the fact that mech is immobile is stupid, because it simply shows that mobility is too important in SC2 because the developers make these decisions. Its basically cheating and the merging of one upgrade for mech and air already blurs the lines between the races, because you are basically down to three upgrades to do it all ... just like Zerg and Protoss have it. Thats not good. Its all about the additional option of being able to play a "static" game of positioning and slowly creeping ahead. Sadly SC2 is all about mobility and thats a big part of the reason why mech doesnt work / works badly. The only solution to this - in Blizzards framework - is to buff the Siege Tank in such a way to make them SCARY to any kind of infantry; both other races have sufficient numbers of "tricks" to deal with static big targets that cant shoot air ... How do you explain BL/Infestor then? Mobile static defenses compensate for slow moving death ball? Sase made a case for that a while back. Both his and your arguments aren't necessarily invalid, especially pertaining to the existing framework of SC2, but the bigger issue is mining. Having more bases vs. an immobile composition is a standard RTS strategy but SC2 doesn't work that way. Mining is simply too efficient and being up 6 base to 3 is near meaningless in terms of mineral economy and the additional gas economy simply means "I'll get my shinier gas units to create my own, better, death ball than yours". Positional play and board control which everyone recognizes is important (including Blizzard, but it seems only superficially) simply isn't THAT important when the whole REASON you're jockeying for such control isn't additional income in an ECONOMY-BASED RTS (as you would hope, and expect) but THE (singular) decisive engagement. This is why Infestors are hard to balance (Zerg needs strong AoE because having more income and units isn't that effective when despite having more bases, they're not mining much more than their T and P counter-parts) and everything from the Protoss race (FF, gateway units, WG, etc.) to map size (there was a reason why early maps were so small, because mining maxed out so early, it made sense to position players in close proximity of each other to "fight for board control"). Mobile static bases do one thing: anchor the units on something and protecting the units (which cost gas) with something that doesnt and is cheap to repair. They do have a "downside" of being immobile and taking a long time to get up. The economy point you raise is sadly true ... and it is valid, because a Zerg on 6 bases basically have unlimited resources to recreate their army as much as they like and due to the larvae inject mechanic that isnt even too hard. So there still is an advantage from that and the Terrans will run out eventually ... and without scary space control units they cant even secure new bases easily after those first three. SC2 does have too many resources to produce units, but sadly Blizzard thinks that "more is better" and they are wrong. The Broodlord is a badly designed unit, because it creates its own "protective screen against ground units", because they have a range of 9.5 which then can even extend because the Broodlings have a decent lifetime and can walk a bit more. No ground unit has a range to beat that, so the only solution to kill these is air with a long range or super mobility in the form of Blink. Couple that with Fungal and you have a terrible unit design. A much better design for the BL would be to change the range to 3 and the mobility to something close to Mutalisk speed. That way you could use them as "bombers" but would have to endanger them while using them. "Invulnerable" units are bad design. Obviously there will be experts who will claim I have no clue to design a game or something like that, but at least I argue the point. Since the Thor is soooooooo sluggish and only has half a range increment over the Broodlord in its AA range it cant ever deal with that threat. You would need a *somewhat mobile* unit like the Goliath, but then you still have Fungal to sort out. The Thor really doesnt cut it and the only way to make it work would be to increase the damage of the new single target attack SIGNIFICANTLY, but then they would be a bit too good against all the smaller early air units, so that sounds like a "no go". On January 09 2013 20:26 Rabiator wrote:
Mobile static bases do one thing: anchor the units on something and protecting the units (which cost gas) with something that doesnt and is cheap to repair. They do have a "downside" of being immobile and taking a long time to get up.
I don't understand what you mean by "mobile static bases". Maybe you mean "mobile static-defenses" like spine/spore crawlers? Looking back, I should've cleaned up my own terminology so there would be less confusion. The bit about anchoring units is incomprehensible, please clarify On January 09 2013 20:26 Rabiator wrote:
The economy point you raise is sadly true ... and it is valid, because a Zerg on 6 bases basically have unlimited resources to recreate their army as much as they like and due to the larvae inject mechanic that isnt even too hard. So there still is an advantage from that and the Terrans will run out eventually ... and without scary space control units they cant even secure new bases easily after those first three. SC2 does have too many resources to produce units, but sadly Blizzard thinks that "more is better" and they are wrong.
No, you misunderstand me. I believe that a player (any race) being ahead on bases does not confer enough of a mineral advantage. There's the illusion of a Zerg on 6 bases having unlimited resources because the additional income is primarily gas and it's simply just massing gas heavy units (typically hive tech, and typically BL/Infestor). I'm referring to one of LaLush's posts. That brings us to the crux of the issue. All this whining about Zerg late-game being OP is generic. If Terran had the best end-game composition then you could easily replace Zerg with Terran and keep the rest of the whine the same. The core issue is the mining system where having more income than 3bases (e.g. "a 6 base Zerg") only serves to bolster a gas-heavy army (for which something like mech would benefit more from than bio and why you don't see people massing 20 OC's late-game and mule-bombing expansions). The mineral advantage should help secure more bases or to trade reasonably with the gas units that a player on lesser bases may be massing. "Reasonably" would mean not completely obliterated, and for free, like with fungal, otherwise it's annihilation and not attrition. On January 09 2013 20:26 Rabiator wrote:
The Broodlord is a badly designed unit, because it creates its own "protective screen against ground units", because they have a range of 9.5 which then can even extend because the Broodlings have a decent lifetime and can walk a bit more. No ground unit has a range to beat that, so the only solution to kill these is air with a long range or super mobility in the form of Blink. Couple that with Fungal and you have a terrible unit design. A much better design for the BL would be to change the range to 3 and the mobility to something close to Mutalisk speed. That way you could use them as "bombers" but would have to endanger them while using them. "Invulnerable" units are bad design. Obviously there will be experts who will claim I have no clue to design a game or something like that, but at least I argue the point.
Since the Thor is soooooooo sluggish and only has half a range increment over the Broodlord in its AA range it cant ever deal with that threat. You would need a *somewhat mobile* unit like the Goliath, but then you still have Fungal to sort out. The Thor really doesnt cut it and the only way to make it work would be to increase the damage of the new single target attack SIGNIFICANTLY, but then they would be a bit too good against all the smaller early air units, so that sounds like a "no go".
That sort of argument is secondary to the real issues at hand, I'll break it down for you: 1.) There must be an increase in the skill ceiling for individual and group unit control for a game that uses mechanics as a subset for strategy 2.) Mining efficiency must be reworked to make board control actually matter for securing income and maintaining a late-game composition instead of the current, "fish for a decisive engagement" function Tweaking unit values and debating the role of a unit are secondary to those 2 issues because the former provides the framework for the latter. I know partially you mentioned a reworking of how the unit works rather than a simply tweaking of numbers, but it's still not quite right. The focus should be on making actually getting to and maintaining BLs to be difficult (because you need those bases). If a game like BW could have units that make BL/Infestor seem quaint in comparison yet still be better balanced due to how mining worked, then this should be the way to approach things (assuming the game emphasizes resource management rather than decisive engagements). Consider this, not too long ago (mid-late 2011), Zergs were struggling to fight Terran and Protoss armies and even the though of increasing the supply cap to 300 was being bandied about. Well we found the answer and it was abusing units like BL/Infestor and mobile static-defenses to make free units (basically having that additional supply). The core issue still remained, which was how mining worked and it's been glossed over by the red herring that is "Who has the ultimate late-game army and how can we nerf it so there are more viable allins to prevent them from getting there?" I was only talking about turrets and bunkers ... real STATIC defensive structures and not about mobile stuff (although Zerg use their massive Spine Crawler walls for something similar). Bunkers can shield tanks against Zerglings and turrets should push away Overseers, Overlords and Corruptors to reduce vision and drop potential. I am fully with you on the "units need to require more skill to use", but personally I would think that this cant be done "the Browder way" by adding activateable skills to them (like the turbo boost for Medivacs or Blink or Hellion transformation) but rather by making them harder to use (like the Carrier micro) but still useable without such micro. The Stalker is a really good example why their way is bad, because they balanced the unit stats to REQUIRE blink useage or Forcefield for the unit to be viable. Without these two gadgets Stalkers are simply killed by a-moving a bunch of cheap Zerglings and that is terrible. The thing is that all Zerg units basically have a "microing ability" (burrow) but that practically no one uses it during a fight. This is the second example against microing abilities, but it also shows untapped potential for Zerg to use while they keep complaining about being so weak. Show nested quote +On January 10 2013 08:25 ch4ppi wrote:
Well that "focus on mech" didnt go as expected lol Exactly as expected ... Browder is 100% off the target. I cant wait for HotS to be released to have a few months of "WoL Mass Reaper"-equivalent-imbalance in all the big tournaments. Should be entertaining to watch if you can keep sane. "Remove upgrades" is their standard answer to buffing everything now it seems ...
I now understand what you mean by static defenses (they protect your gas investments per location, aka units), but I still don't understand what the point of pointing that out is.
I don't know if it can't be done with "the Browder way". However, one thing is for sure, spellcasters need to be balanced very carefully since they affect every other unit so profoundly (e.g. sentry/gateway unit relationship). Unfortunately even then the framework of whether we're truly operating under an economy-based or decisive engagement-based RTS must be laid out first.
However, as far as burrow goes, that's pure theory-craft. People used to use burrow to circumvent FF until they realized that Protoss can just FF on top of the slow-moving roaches to effective do the same thing as FFing unburrowed roaches (FF so they can't unburrow, retreat and repeat). Moving Infestors or Roaches around the map have already been done (Leenock vs. Life on Cloud Kingdom at MLG Dallas, Life vs. Terran for Infestors). As far as actively using it to fight better and not position or retreat, it's simply no where near the level of blink since you can't attack while burrowed (which with blink you can stop taking damage and continue to deal damage).
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Well i was expecting to be underwhelmed and slightly disappointed in whatever changers Blizz put in but they have really outdone themselves this time. To be fair though the tank change will probably make meching in TvT and TvZ a smidge easier and is a nice buff to TvZ in general as you spend less setting up your Mech and your always going to have siegemode ready vs a Z who does an early Bane or Roach rush
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i dont want mech to be the only unit comp that gets played in hots...the games that we will see will be a lot more boring and stagnant, atleast with bio its a lot more micro and multitasking involved. Mech in my opinion just needs an extra factory unit that tanks and deals enough of the damage needed to make it more viable for the matchup. In my opinion the warhound needs to come back with some added nerfs. But the sound of blizzard trying to make mech more powerful worries me due to tvz and tvt being a lot more varied. Now with any buffs to siege tanks/hellbat's/thors or whatever mech unit it is going to make it harder for both zerg and terran vs terran matchups if you are in a bio vs mech situation. And so therefore making mech the primary unit composition to go for in every matchup is not going to be good for the game due to people actually wanting to watch fun matches and entertaining scenarios. Even for players this is bad unless you just completely hate going any bio units because you cant either micro or just have always preferred mech's style of play.
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On January 10 2013 17:36 Finnz wrote:
i dont want mech to be the only unit comp that gets played in hots...the games that we will see will be a lot more boring and stagnant, atleast with bio its a lot more micro and multitasking involved. Mech in my opinion just needs an extra factory unit that tanks and deals enough of the damage needed to make it more viable for the matchup. In my opinion the warhound needs to come back with some added nerfs. But the sound of blizzard trying to make mech more powerful worries me due to tvz and tvt being a lot more varied. Now with any buffs to siege tanks/hellbat's/thors or whatever mech unit it is going to make it harder for both zerg and terran vs terran matchups if you are in a bio vs mech situation. And so therefore making mech the primary unit composition to go for in every matchup is not going to be good for the game due to people actually wanting to watch fun matches and entertaining scenarios. Even for players this is bad unless you just completely hate going any bio units because you cant either micro or just have always preferred mech's style of play.
There's this misconception that mech, if viable, must lead to boring, uninteresting games. On the contrary, mech in BW introduced a lot of cool early game aggression and timings where both players had an opportunity to showcase their micro. Positional play IS entertaining and creates far more interesting scenarios than "Army 1 attacks Army 2. Cast spells. End." Bio play in TvP is often incredibly stale, tosses have figured out the 10-minute medivac poke and can shut down drops if good. So what happens is that you have the two sides not engaging until maxed and then one battle decides the game. That's the epitome of boring. It's much cooler to see players fighting over a position, because that position is critical to the outcome of the game. But that can't happen if terran can't control space.
Also, what you're saying is a strawman. No one is suggesting that mech be the only composition in all matchups. Just that it be an option. In an ideal world, players could opt for mech based on the map if it were particularly strong.
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On January 10 2013 18:04 gh0st wrote:Show nested quote +On January 10 2013 17:36 Finnz wrote:
i dont want mech to be the only unit comp that gets played in hots...the games that we will see will be a lot more boring and stagnant, atleast with bio its a lot more micro and multitasking involved. Mech in my opinion just needs an extra factory unit that tanks and deals enough of the damage needed to make it more viable for the matchup. In my opinion the warhound needs to come back with some added nerfs. But the sound of blizzard trying to make mech more powerful worries me due to tvz and tvt being a lot more varied. Now with any buffs to siege tanks/hellbat's/thors or whatever mech unit it is going to make it harder for both zerg and terran vs terran matchups if you are in a bio vs mech situation. And so therefore making mech the primary unit composition to go for in every matchup is not going to be good for the game due to people actually wanting to watch fun matches and entertaining scenarios. Even for players this is bad unless you just completely hate going any bio units because you cant either micro or just have always preferred mech's style of play. There's this misconception that mech, if viable, must lead to boring, uninteresting games. On the contrary, mech in BW introduced a lot of cool early game aggression and timings where both players had an opportunity to showcase their micro. Positional play IS entertaining and creates far more interesting scenarios than "Army 1 attacks Army 2. Cast spells. End." Bio play in TvP is often incredibly stale, tosses have figured out the 10-minute medivac poke and can shut down drops if good. So what happens is that you have the two sides not engaging until maxed and then one battle decides the game. That's the epitome of boring. It's much cooler to see players fighting over a position, because that position is critical to the outcome of the game. But that can't happen if terran can't control space. Also, what you're saying is a strawman. No one is suggesting that mech be the only composition in all matchups. Just that it be an option. In an ideal world, players could opt for mech based on the map if it were particularly strong.
Not really, the majority of times when someone went mech they sat there for 20mins and just maxed upgrades and did a "timing attack" it was pretty stale and boring. Korean pro's were monsters so they did completely unorthadox things against mech but due to the units available for P in sc2 that won't be possible (i.e. absence of rev's and arbitors). Instead it will probably turn into the terran a-moving with his heavily upgraded mech army.
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the supply of Siege tank should be reduced 3 to 2.
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On January 10 2013 18:04 gh0st wrote:Show nested quote +On January 10 2013 17:36 Finnz wrote:
i dont want mech to be the only unit comp that gets played in hots...the games that we will see will be a lot more boring and stagnant, atleast with bio its a lot more micro and multitasking involved. Mech in my opinion just needs an extra factory unit that tanks and deals enough of the damage needed to make it more viable for the matchup. In my opinion the warhound needs to come back with some added nerfs. But the sound of blizzard trying to make mech more powerful worries me due to tvz and tvt being a lot more varied. Now with any buffs to siege tanks/hellbat's/thors or whatever mech unit it is going to make it harder for both zerg and terran vs terran matchups if you are in a bio vs mech situation. And so therefore making mech the primary unit composition to go for in every matchup is not going to be good for the game due to people actually wanting to watch fun matches and entertaining scenarios. Even for players this is bad unless you just completely hate going any bio units because you cant either micro or just have always preferred mech's style of play. There's this misconception that mech, if viable, must lead to boring, uninteresting games. On the contrary, mech in BW introduced a lot of cool early game aggression and timings where both players had an opportunity to showcase their micro. Positional play IS entertaining and creates far more interesting scenarios than "Army 1 attacks Army 2. Cast spells. End." Bio play in TvP is often incredibly stale, tosses have figured out the 10-minute medivac poke and can shut down drops if good. So what happens is that you have the two sides not engaging until maxed and then one battle decides the game. That's the epitome of boring. It's much cooler to see players fighting over a position, because that position is critical to the outcome of the game. But that can't happen if terran can't control space. Also, what you're saying is a strawman. No one is suggesting that mech be the only composition in all matchups. Just that it be an option. In an ideal world, players could opt for mech based on the map if it were particularly strong.
The timing window heavy early game depended on early bio rushes being essentially cheese, and bio being pretty bad in the match up in general. Protoss had map presence at all stages of the game in BW. In wings of liberty you have to turtle or deathball anytime after your literal first couple of units are out, save for dropping suicide squads out of a warp prism.
I guess protoss has a couple more scouting options in HotS. They're going to need them to be robust if we want to preserve WoL bio and try to make mech work like BW.
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I feel like the siege mode upgrade destruction basically tells terrans:
Hey terrans, you no longer need to spend 100/100 on siege, so get Ghost academy right away, and pump a few ghosts.
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On January 14 2013 13:39 naastyOne wrote:
I feel like the siege mode upgrade destruction basically tells terrans:
Hey terrans, you no longer need to spend 100/100 on siege, so get Ghost academy right away, and pump a few ghosts.
getting a ghost academy just feels like going biomech than... MECH
~_~
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On January 10 2013 21:26 bLueSkY) wrote:Show nested quote +On January 10 2013 18:04 gh0st wrote:On January 10 2013 17:36 Finnz wrote:
i dont want mech to be the only unit comp that gets played in hots...the games that we will see will be a lot more boring and stagnant, atleast with bio its a lot more micro and multitasking involved. Mech in my opinion just needs an extra factory unit that tanks and deals enough of the damage needed to make it more viable for the matchup. In my opinion the warhound needs to come back with some added nerfs. But the sound of blizzard trying to make mech more powerful worries me due to tvz and tvt being a lot more varied. Now with any buffs to siege tanks/hellbat's/thors or whatever mech unit it is going to make it harder for both zerg and terran vs terran matchups if you are in a bio vs mech situation. And so therefore making mech the primary unit composition to go for in every matchup is not going to be good for the game due to people actually wanting to watch fun matches and entertaining scenarios. Even for players this is bad unless you just completely hate going any bio units because you cant either micro or just have always preferred mech's style of play. There's this misconception that mech, if viable, must lead to boring, uninteresting games. On the contrary, mech in BW introduced a lot of cool early game aggression and timings where both players had an opportunity to showcase their micro. Positional play IS entertaining and creates far more interesting scenarios than "Army 1 attacks Army 2. Cast spells. End." Bio play in TvP is often incredibly stale, tosses have figured out the 10-minute medivac poke and can shut down drops if good. So what happens is that you have the two sides not engaging until maxed and then one battle decides the game. That's the epitome of boring. It's much cooler to see players fighting over a position, because that position is critical to the outcome of the game. But that can't happen if terran can't control space. Also, what you're saying is a strawman. No one is suggesting that mech be the only composition in all matchups. Just that it be an option. In an ideal world, players could opt for mech based on the map if it were particularly strong. Not really, the majority of times when someone went mech they sat there for 20mins and just maxed upgrades and did a "timing attack" it was pretty stale and boring. Korean pro's were monsters so they did completely unorthadox things against mech but due to the units available for P in sc2 that won't be possible (i.e. absence of rev's and arbitors). Instead it will probably turn into the terran a-moving with his heavily upgraded mech army.
BW TvP wasn't boring... At least not when I was following the pro-scene closely. Most terrans followed Flash in doing 2-2 timings. So yea, there was turtling. But you still had constant vulture harass, placing mines, probing all over the map. You usually had the toss doing a reaver or DT harass which was exciting. And when the timing push hit, it was anything but boring. Toss had several tactics (zealot bombs, storm/reaver drops on the army, etc) to break the push. On the terran side there was a lot of positioning and insane amount of multitasking going on. And usually you had action happening in several places on the map, not just in one spot.
Also you did have some terrans doing aggressive 2-fact (ForGG basically only 2 factory pushed in TvP for long while) or 4-factory timings. Those games were really fun.
Contrast to TvP bio in SC2. If the toss doesn't do an all-in, and the terran is playing standard, there is zero action for 10 minutes of game time, a couple minutes of drop play depending on how aggressive the terran is and how on-top-of-shit the toss is. Assuming neither side takes crippling damage, it's a turtle fest until 200/200. Then we get to watch to deathballs circle each other until The Battle and the game is over in about 15 seconds. Those fights boil down to composition and whether the terran hits emps/snipes. It's just not as entertaining...
If mech is viable in SC2 you will not see a-moving mech armies, because that's not how mech armies work. Unlike stimmed bio, tanks have to siege and unsiege.
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On January 14 2013 13:39 naastyOne wrote:
I feel like the siege mode upgrade destruction basically tells terrans:
Hey terrans, you no longer need to spend 100/100 on siege, so get Ghost academy right away, and pump a few ghosts.
Maybe it is basically telling you have to spend 100/100 less on siege tech and it has nothing whatsoever to do with ghosts?
Pumping out a few ghosts directly is imo just a very bad idea. Not because ghosts are useless with mech, but because several ghosts that early in a game (remember a bio player wont have ghosts at that stage while having far more gas to spend) hampers your tank production so bad you end up with a bio army and 2 tanks.
Ghosts can be helpfull, but making them that early in game means you only have support and nothing to kill the toss units.
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EPT
