EPTToo strong defense = too risky to engage = everyones just macro up until the final deathball.
Sky Deathball - A glimpse into the future problem - Page 2
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Insoleet
France1806 Posts
Too strong defense = too risky to engage = everyones just macro up until the final deathball. | ||
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Qikz
United Kingdom12022 Posts
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-Kyo-
Japan1926 Posts
If the maps are fixed then I agree to an extent that the balance would be less of an issue, but to be honest, counter attacks don't really work too well versus protoss now that they have the mothership core which just lets you teleport back to any base if you need. Let alone the fact that generally you leave 10-20 supply open for harass that you can just warp in to defend. I honestly think the tempest and VR need a re-evaluation. edit: I'd like to add that I wish the game would drift away from attempting to use so many sky units, whatever the race. Imho what protoss needed was a new ground unit that could be microed throughout all phases of the game like the blink stalker but with something that made it more of a dynamic unit and was a bit faster like a reaper(or something). Throwing in things like a tempest/oracle that 2 shots workers are going to take forever to balance well and I think blizzard is making it harder and harder to balance with these sorts of units. (Each race has similar units.. which makes it even worse..) | ||
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Big J
Austria16289 Posts
Air in Starcraft has 3 advantages: 1) pathing - the obvious one. Air units fly and are unhindered by other units 2) spacing - you can stack many air units, making them a very efficient ball 3) invulnerability vs many attacks (vs all units without GtA/AtA attacks) It's this 3rd point that is extremly problematic in conjunction with combat units like Battlecruisers, Void Rays, Carriers, Tempests and Broodlords. Basically anytime ground timing attacks get stoppable, the game gets pushed further towards building the best composition possible. And which composition is better than a deathball of highly supplyefficient units that render over half of the opponents options useless, due to invulnerability? Imo, there are only two ways to go about that problem (assuming that blizzard won't remove all of the mentioned units): a) make (nearly) all units directly useful vs Air b) make all AtG units either EXTREMLY weak vs AtA and make AtA come with strong drawbacks make those AtG units or not very useful vs GtA units Right now, we are in the situation that in theory Broodlords and BCs are a (supplywise) hardcounter to every ground unit, so they force airsuperiority from the opponent. And Carriers/Void Rays are very close to this efficiency as well! (Tempests on their own might be OK, as they don't do well against Marines/Hydras/Stalkers) | ||
EsportsJohn
United States4883 Posts
With the design of SC2 giving all units a smart-target AI that avoids overkill as well as giving a lot of air units fairly fast attacks, there's just not a downside to stacking your air units for maximum efficiency damage except perhaps getting stormed or seeker missile'd. Even then, you don't need to spread units TOO far, and the air ball can work at a fairly high efficiency rate. Overkill doesn't affect small groups of air units in BW because you would generally get only enough of those units to snipe things (5-6 mutas will always one-shot a marine, about 5 wraiths will snipe a dropship, etc). In large air battles, it's much stronger to set up as large of a wall as possible. | ||
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ejozl
Denmark3362 Posts
It's very early to say, still I'm under the belief that Terran air death ball is the strongest, but impossible to get to and am still under the consumption that Infestors along with new tools for Zerg can deal with the Toss Death ball. However it is still a death ball and very easy to get to and frankly I dislike having so many air units in my composition game design-wise. But I don't think there's a huge problem with it balance-wise. | ||
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Qgelfich
Germany90 Posts
A wraith had about as much dps as one unstimmed marine vs ground, while being 5 times the cost (including gas). But still you could see mass wraith in TvT or even some wraith strats vs Zerg. Compare that with a Voidray who has as much DPS as an immortal vs armored units (while being charged). Also in Sc2 there is only one dedicated AtA fighter (corruptor) compared to 4 Pure AtA fighters in Broodwar + 2 who were WAY better AtA than AtG. All other units can fight ground directly while phoenix can lift units and kill them and Vikings can land whenever needed (although they are way better in the air then on the ground, which is good). This results in an Air army that is actually capable of fighting ground armies on their own, while also being more mobile and not affected by terrain. This would be reasonable to balance out if there were more AtA fighters ingame, but those cannot be introduced due to the existance and relieance of Protoss colossus. This is why we have Air doomballs and boring gameplay. | ||
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nerak
Brazil256 Posts
On January 29 2013 20:18 rEalGuapo wrote: Starcraft always gets compared to other sports, Soccer 30 years back was incredibly terrible. Wow wow wow. I agreed with all the rest, but this is ridiculous. Soccer 30 or 40 years ago was all about creativity. Now it's an athletism contest. It's all about kicking the ball 30m away and running everywhere. It degraded to European soccer condition. Oh wait... | ||
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Cloak
United States816 Posts
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Sissors
1395 Posts
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ddrddrddrddr
1344 Posts
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Qikz
United Kingdom12022 Posts
On January 30 2013 01:41 ddrddrddrddr wrote: weaken AtG imo. That's what BW had and it worked fine. Air can harass but almost never overpower unless you're way ahead or heavily invested. I think this could work, but only if they weaken the non capital ships. I think Battlecruisers and Carriers certainly need to be high damage due to their weaknesses and Banshees and Mutas for example should do good AtG so they can hurass effectively and actually be good units. I'm not so sure Broodlords and voidrays need to do super high damage though, if anything I always thought the Broodlord was going to be what the tempest is now (tempest should do lower damage too) where it forces engagements rather than creates an entire army itself. | ||
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Seiniyta
Belgium1815 Posts
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sagefreke
United States241 Posts
On January 30 2013 01:13 Cloak wrote: I see it as just a big argument to buff GtA for every race. Stalkers and Hydras are especially mediocre for trading efficiently. (Marines are good until hard countered, and Thor should be a Goliath) It seems that all the viable GtAs also having the same GtG anchors down their bite. Agreed with this completely. Air units in SC2 deal so much damage that they somehow counter GtA units which shouldn't make sense. In particular I'm looking at the Hydralisk. I think it's a joke that this unit consistently loses to air units when it is Zergs only GtA unit besides the Queen. I see the same similarities with Stalkers in ZvP and how they lose to Mutas or Broodlords once a critical mass is reached. Rather than nerfing air units across the board, is rather see GtA units (Thors, Stalkers, and Hydras in particular) receive a buff that makes them more cost efficient against air units. I don't know if that means a special damage modifier to be more effective vs air units only or what but something needs to be done so that SC2 doesn't become an all air game due to GtA being inadequate vs. air. Another point I strongly believe that others have said is the maps. The maps make defending based super easy to the point where on some maps it's possible to defend up 4 or 5 bases with a slow moving deathball. This needs to change. Maps should be wider and much bigger so that its impossible to defend all your bases by moving your entire army from point A to point B. in other words multi pronged attacks should be able to indirectly beat a deathball due to mobility advantage. Instead when these multi pronged attacks occur it either gets easily defended or we see a base trade scenario in which the deathball will still have the advantage because of the stronger army in the end. In addition to making bigger maps I'd also like to suggest removing Xel Naga watch towers from the game as they simply make it too easy to defend against incoming attacks. All races have their own scouting tools and the watch towers just make defending against said attacks too easy. Zerg had Overlords, creep, and ling scouts. Protoss has observers and hallucinations. Terran has sensor towers, scans, and hellions. There's no reason to have watch towers when all races have a variety of ways to scout. This most likely won't happen though because Blizzard would never remove such a thing from the game. | ||
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tehemperorer
United States2183 Posts
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figq
12519 Posts
Air-to-Air > Air-to-Ground > Ground-to-Ground > Ground-to-Air > Air-to-Air Meaning that normally, there should be Ground-to-Air units that can turn the tide of a sky-only battle. Like goliaths vs carriers in BW TvP. | ||
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Protosnake
France295 Posts
On January 30 2013 02:57 tehemperorer wrote: This is all just pure speculation and you're asking Blizzard to make balance changes based on what may happen? In case you missed it, it's in the game right now, pretty much every toss go Stargate because of how powerful it is and turtle until they get their invincible army of death | ||
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eduran
Germany4 Posts
On January 30 2013 04:03 Protosnake wrote: In case you missed it, it's in the game right now, pretty much every toss go Stargate because of how powerful it is and turtle until they get their invincible army of death Could you (or anyone else) provide some replays or VoDs of that happening? Never seen a Skytoss death ball on any stream or in any game I played. | ||
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The_Darkness
United States910 Posts
A few things you should bear in mind. 1. It's of course not true that the race with the best late game army will always win. This is obviously wrong. I don't know how you could write that with a straight face. 2. It's impossible to tell whether any unit combination is "unbeatable" at this point. BL-infestor was always terrifying (post ghost nerf) yet it took the queen buff and about a year to finally get the composition to be "unbeatable" (in ZvT matchups) and of course Zergs still lose all of the time, even with BLord infestor. In any event, it's far, far too early to tell what combination of units is the "ultimate army". 3. Any game with different units, upgrades, etc. is going to have better and worse armies and likely an "ultimate army" that players will strive to get other things equal. I think you mean to say that you don't like games that always go to the super late game stage where players turtle in order to build their ultimate armies. It's always possible to play like that and you see that sort of play from lots of mid tier pros and random GM players (I would guess). But I see lots of games in HoTS that don't get to this stage, where the players have played extremely aggressively for the entire game, so I question how much this is actually a problem. Moreover the best players aren't even playing HoTS seriously so it's not possible to tell how much the "deathball" problem is actually a problem. (As an aside, this problem has been overstated by WOL haters for quite some time. When you watch the highest level players play, quite often, there is action for most of the game. E.g., watch the recent Creator -- Gumiho IPL FC series. Armies clash, one player usually gets the better of the exchange but the loser is usually not totally crippled and the fight stretches on sometimes for 10-20 minutes straight. It was highly entertaining.) | ||
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Plansix
United States60190 Posts
On January 30 2013 04:34 The_Darkness wrote: A lot of your post was garbled so I had trouble following it, but it seems to be in part a balance whine about Protoss and in part crystal ball gazing meta-gaming analysis in an attempt to whine about HoTS. A few things you should bear in mind. 1. It's of course not true that the race with the best late game army will always win. This is obviously wrong. I don't know how you could write that with a straight face. 2. It's impossible to tell whether any unit combination is "unbeatable" at this point. BL-infestor was always terrifying (post ghost nerf) yet it took the queen buff and about a year to finally get the composition to be "unbeatable" (in ZvT matchups) and of course Zergs still lose all of the time, even with BLord infestor. In any event, it's far, far too early to tell what combination of units is the "ultimate army". 3. Any game with different units, upgrades, etc. is going to have better and worse armies and likely an "ultimate army" that players will strive to get other things equal. I think you mean to say that you don't like games that always go to the super late game stage where players turtle in order to build their ultimate armies. It's always possible to play like that and you see that sort of play from lots of mid tier pros and random GM players (I would guess). But I see lots of games in HoTS that don't get to this stage, where the players have played extremely aggressively for the entire game, so I question how much this is actually a problem. Moreover the best players aren't even playing HoTS seriously so it's not possible to tell how much the "deathball" problem is actually a problem. (As an aside, this problem has been overstated by WOL haters for quite some time. When you watch the highest level players play, quite often, there is action for most of the game. E.g., watch the recent Creator -- Gumiho IPL FC series. Armies clash, one player usually gets the better of the exchange but the loser is usually not totally crippled and the fight stretches on sometimes for 10-20 minutes straight. It was highly entertaining.) Also, putting all your units on one screen and a-moving them is easiest way to play the game. As DB said, they cannot stop people from doing it, because it is the easiest way to play. People are always going to blob their units and we are likely to see a ton of it in beta. Why? Because it took forever for people to learn to split marines or use blink stalker micro correctly. | ||
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