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I disagree that Sky Deathball is the unavoidable future of HotS and potentially LotV. Deathballs are here to stay, but I disagree that sky deathballs trump ground ones.
To me, sky deathballs can be a problem depending on the opponent's anti-air. In WoL PvZ, Infestor Broodlord (which is basically a sky deathball with caster support) is really hard for Protoss to stop because Infestors are too strong and Protoss anti-air (Stalkers, Phoenix primarily) sucks. But what about PvT? Protoss can deal with Terran air units just fine, and Terran can also deal with Protoss air units, so a Protoss sky deathball is weaker than a ground one, and a Terran sky deathball isn't that problematic either. What about ZvT? Sure, Infestor Broodlord is also strong here (though less so than in PvZ), but you don't see many Terran sky deathballs. If we go back to PvZ, Protoss sky deathballs only work as a tech switch and if the Zerg is caught unprepared for them- properly prepared, Zerg will smash a Protoss sky deathball because they have great anti-air (Corruptors + Infestors).
You could argue that air units are becoming much stronger in HotS (which is patently true for Protoss at least), but I don't see why the ultimate deathball is necessarily a sky deathball; in WoL, sky deathballs are weaker than ground deathballs for both Protoss and Terran; it's just a coincidence that the strongest deathball of them all, Infestor + Broodlord, happens to be a sky deathball.
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i strongly believe for sc2 to be a great and entertaining game for the viewers, it needs to be roughly 70-80% ground focused and 20-30% air focused
all matchups follow this rule in WoL and are pretty exciting to watch.
Even WoL PvZ and TvZ because while zerg does have lots of broodlords as their ultimate goal, protoss and terran are fighting and do have the tools fo fight against zerg and whittle them down before they can get 20 broodlords
I highly disagree with DB's hots intentions of making "sky play" viable. IMO sky play SHOULD be a niche, and hard to pull off, because if its "easy and highly viable" its just bad for a RTS, IMO
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United Arab Emirates439 Posts
I think your post touched on a critical point, but didn't explore it enough. We see a lot of the Sky Deathball builds working the best on maps that strongly encourage turtling. Easy 4 bases seems to especially encourage the deathball. But a relatively small number of bases also seems to encourage it - because once a player gets most of those bases, their opponent can't counter their turtling/slow army by simply gaining a large resource advantage, and then overwhelming them with standard anti-air units (be it Vikings, or Hydralisks, or Corruptors, or Void Rays, Tempests, perhaps even Blink Stalkers (because of their mobility more than anything). This is the same thing we see in WoL. Once players have secured their expansions
I think there needs to be a strong movement for more open maps, with farther away expansions - especially 4th+ expansions. And also a very high number of expansions I feel is important.
Between that and, as you pointed out, players discovering timings to kill too quick of an air transition, I do not think it is nearly as dire of a problem as you make it out to be.
Perhaps Zerg will need some buff to Corruptor's corruption, or Hydralisks anti-air, if in a few months it's still impossible for them to deal with, even if it's harder for the T and P to get to it. Perhaps some races will need a buff to their Static D as a way to prevent the Air Deathball from just base-trading as soon as it maxes out.
But it is a VERY bad idea to start balancing the game before we start trying to balance through maps, when this change to maps is something people have wanted for a long time, and which encourages more interesting game play. Otherwise we get to a situation where we are stuck with the maps we have because of the game being balanced around them.
So you must always ask yourself first: can we make better maps to improve the situation?
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Not so worried about the sky deathball, Toss currently has the best and it shuts down the air deathballs of the other races (already doing it in WoL after the Infested Terran nerf). I would say with Mothership and Vortex WoL Skytoss wins if you have to control for it. So the HotS one feels for me atleast weaker, but 10 times easier to control.
And Terran can deal quiet okay with it in normal ways. But I am really worried about Zergs Sky defense. If I want to beat someone going skytoss it is mostly waiting till they enter creep. And engage with a few Infestors Queens and a ton of Spore Crawlers. If the Infestors can pull of 3 chain fungals, then most of the toss army dies to some defensive structures, that are immune to storm and easily outhealed by Queens. It looks retarded though ...
But Terran Air aside, they are either extremely fragile or damn expensive and slow. When using Air units you don't really feel that there is a tradeoff for having increased mobility and immunity from alot of units. Toss and Zerg have really tanky air. I guess they wanted to design it in a way so that every race can take air superiority. But overlooked the issue that spellcasters create with ground anti air.
And that it is almost impossible to regain air control once you fall behind. With the super high Air to Ground range, there is also not alot the Ground can do to support the Air. So that once the advantage is taken, there is no way to turn it around except the opponent makes a mistake.
I can't really remember one rts where air units really worked out well in the end. So it would be quiet impressive if Sc2 would succeed there. But I think they were closer in Wings then with the current Swarm to achieve this.
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The problem of a "sky deathball" isnt that it exists, but rather that - due to the mobility - the air units cant be dealt with sufficiently by ground forces AND not all races have an equally powerful air army. This disparity between the races is what could create an imbalanced and rather one sided game.
Ground armies should be able to deal with a serious sky deathball and atm they arent really able to do it. The problem with Protoss doing this is that you might be able to defeat the sky deathball with a lot of Vikings or Corruptors maybe, but are then left with relatively useless units once the Protoss seriously starts warping in ground units again. Vikings and Corruptors are just stupid one-dimensional units and you are forced into building them too often. Now in BW the Zerg T3 units were morphed from Mutalisks and those were really nice to have on their own, but no one builds Corruptors or Vikings to "attack stuff" ... just because you need them to deal with Colossi or air or give vision. That is the real problem of air these days.
On January 30 2013 11:28 bankobauss wrote:
I highly disagree with DB's hots intentions of making "sky play" viable. IMO sky play SHOULD be a niche, and hard to pull off, because if its "easy and highly viable" its just bad for a RTS, IMO
Due to the "ground not able to deal with air" and "not all races are equally able to do it" problems this is exactly the right point of view. In BW it was acceptable to have "Carrier play" because of the huge investment, but in SC2 there is too much money to be able to build too many units - if you set your mind to it - and then there are the "instant tech switch mechanics" of massive numbers of larvae and Warp Gate, which really screw up the game by making it potentially erratic.
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I agree, StarCraft 2 is way too air and caster focused. Heart of the Swarm only adds to this problem. Blizzard really needs to take a good hard look at the game their creating, and start thinking about what will attract viewers and demand skill from players.
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The real problem with air units is there overall design and the way they are implemented in SC2 (and I feel strongly this was an issue in WC3 and TFT too). They simply hover and move and do damage like ground units that have no pathing restrictions and they can stack on top of each other. Furthermore, many of the best anti-air units are air units (Vikings, Corrupters, Phoenixes)!
That leads to incredibly boring play where you A-move anti-air units into air units. Because there is no terrain, sight limitations or pathing restrictions to contend with, the more powerful force just wins. There is very little strategy or dynamic play that can happen, and less opportunities for skill to show.
Compare this to a game like Total Annihilation, where air units don't simple hover and act like ground units, they go on strafing runs, greatly limiting their firepower. Also, ground anti-air defenses are very strong in that game compared to SC2.
Perhaps TvZ has the relationship that works best in SC2. To counter Mutalisks you build Marines and Thors (ground units). This is an interesting dynamic, because even with Marines and Thors on the field the Mutalisk player can do damage, since the Mutalisks can outmaneuver the ground forces.
Compare that to PvZ where Phoenixes counter Mutalisks and PvZ, which is incredibly boring because the Phoenix can outfly and outfight the Mutalisk; even mass Mutalisks can do very little once Phoenix's reach a critical mass and have the range upgrade. The Zerg player simply transitions in PvZ, there is little opportunity for dynamic play, unless the Protoss player didn't get a Stargate or two, and plans to hold with Blink Stalkers and Storm. In that case, it becomes dynamic and interesting.
Blizzard created this problem when they nerfed timings into oblivion. SC2 went from a game with maps like Slag Pits and Metalopolis where timing attacks dominated to a game where it is wisest turtle up and scout for timings and then the side with the best end game composition wins. In my opinion, that is worse. I prefer the middle ground, where timings are viable and difficult to hold unless scouted and prepared for which limits turtle play and removes us from the this sky dominated end game that is boring.
Just because all races can get to the end stage, doesn't mean the end stage is balanced... and far from it. Zerg will always have the advantage in the end due to the Larva mechanic in turtle up games. They can drone and drone and then quickly mass an army with saved up Larva. And unless their late game units are significantly weaker than Terran or Protoss units then they'll dominate the end game since they can switch from a Broodlord dominated army into Ultralisks quickly.
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In BW, a lot of pressure timings exist in all match-ups which made the sky death ball transition difficult to obtain. In Wol however, i feel design is a large problem that contributes to this issue. Let's look at Zerg. The queen buff has essentially allowed safer 3rds which culminates to a stronger macro potential and consequently, made hive tech more accessible by several minutes. (In 2011, the average hive tech unit begins appearing around the 17-18 minute mark. Now, we see blords and ultras appearing 2-3 minutes earlier)
Then queen buff and overall infestor power in WoL is a testament to this problem. In a TvZ, the timings that were once effective ie hellion harass, is defeated by having more than 3 queens on the field (standard play). Furthermore, T and P mid game is weakened further by the added utility and strength of infestors. This eliminated/discouraged timings that were once in existence, resulting in a one dimensional game, where the Zerg player attempts to focus on turtling and macro, to produce a sky/infestor army which will trade very favourably. Meanwhile, the protoss/terran does the same in an attempt to produce counters to those air units, which makes the overall dynamic stale.
What we're experiencing here in Hots is similar to WoL, except now Protoss appears possess the dominant sky force. In WoL however, Z sky deathball was noticeably weaker in large wide maps, which greatly enabled better players such as Rain to abuse that immobility. I'm not complaining OP or trying to balance whine, and i know it's too early to determine balance at this stage, but i would like to see a more vulnerable skytoss such as immobility. As it stands, instant recall limits the risks of dedicated multi pronged for a skytoss comp which doesn't do much but encourage players to turtle and obtain that difficult to stop army.
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Easiest solution is to make the minerals in bases less or at least the natural and make 3rd/4th bases much harder to hold. One of the biggest problems right now is the current map pool keeps making it easy for all races to hold a 3rd, and with all the new added early game protection, this makes it almost impossible to rush unless you all-in. Even then if you fail at the all in you have invested so much you mise well just gg out.
By reducing the minerals at the Nat / 3rd it will force people to squabble over bases more. Right now any race can pretty well create a death ball off 3 bases easily, except maybe zerg. Zerg really needs that 4th sometimes as there unit compositions are not as cost effective. None the less it is still achievable, which turns it into this turtle vs turtle mode matchup till both players have there death ball and merge in the middle of the map somewhere.
Another thing that could help is make static defenses less powerful. It is so EASY to defend a base with static defenses even if your army is miles away, even when your opponent hits it with tier 3 units. Gone are the days of 2-3 over lords filled with cracklings and ultra to do hit and runs on expansions  This makes it very discouraging for anyone to engage early on for the fear there army will be wiped out and then the other player will just counter with an A move and win. If players could engage more earlier on safely this would be less of a problem. Take for example ZvT with a mech build. One of the best strategies is drop play to do damage, or reduce tank/thor numbers while you expand and build up to tier 3. As if you can keep the numbers down you can prevent the death ball from hitting critical numbers making it manageable later on. So take away the ability to hold a 3rd easily or lower resources and boom, less death ball problems or at least you don't see the death balls till very LATE game.
To conclude I think the death ball problem is A.) A design flaw, B.) Current map design makes it to easy to hold 3rd bases / resources are 2 easily obtained giving you all the resources you need for a death ball and its to hard to siege or engage a base as it stands without be suicidal so everyone is just forced to turtle till death ball time or you throw the game away.
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On January 30 2013 00:52 Qgelfich wrote:
Air units in general should not be a strong option vs ground units. For example in Broodwar air units had retarded low dps vs ground (scout, wratih), none at all (scourge, devourer, corsair, valkyrie) or were extremely hard to get while also being well hardcountered by a lot of efficient GtA, AtA units (BC's, Carriers).
This is it IMO.
The other problem is that the best ground anti air comes from units that are super hard countered by aoe (storm, FG, colossus, ect). So the best solution, at least for Terran and Zerg, is to counter air is by going air yourself.
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As a z player i cannot beat mass void and strorm, no matter how many times i remax with corruptor/infestor/hydra whatever i just get smashed no matter what i do
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Zerg needs stronger ground to air. So that means either buffing the infestor(bad idea) or buffing the hydra ( )
Also, I feel that the Carrier really has no place in SC2. With it, Protoss air is way too versatile against Zerg.
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On January 31 2013 05:59 happyness wrote:Zerg needs stronger ground to air. So that means either buffing the infestor(bad idea) or buffing the hydra ( )
Note how there was the exact same problem in WoL, before the infamous infestor buff.
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On January 31 2013 05:59 happyness wrote:Zerg needs stronger ground to air. So that means either buffing the infestor(bad idea) or buffing the hydra ( ) Also, I feel that the Carrier really has no place in SC2. With it, Protoss air is way too versatile against Zerg.
Wrong on both accounts ...
1. From a "common sense perspective" you cant simply "buff everything every time", because you start a never ending cycle of increasing damage and hp. So the only option is "restraint", but I guess that has been an unpopular word for about two or three decades.
2. Not the Carrier should go but all the new - but stupid - air junk Protoss gets with HotS. There are too many air units with HotS and Starcraft has always been great because the number of units to choose from was LIMITED. Too many units to choose from only make the game complicated and not better.
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The problem with Air Deathballs is the same problem as Ground Deathballs. SC2 has many mechanics that encourage deathballing, such as efficient harvesting, de-emphasis on space control, unit clumping, A-move AoE.
I've always believed that the best way to remove deathballs would be to revamp the mineral economy in SC2 to be less efficient and closer to BW. Here's a repost from the other deathball thread:
Honestly I think the biggest change to break up deathballs would be revamping mineral income. The 1st SCV on a mineral patch should harvest more, the 2nd and 3rd SCV should harvest less.
The BW economy was highly inefficient. The difference in income between 30 and 40 workers is much smaller than the difference between 10 and 20 workers. For this reason, at some point it becomes more cost-effective to build units and harass, instead of building exponentially more workers.
In addition, 40 drones on 4 bases was DRAMATICALLY more income than 40 drones on 3 bases or 40 drones on 2 bases. This encouraged expanding before full saturation (actually, there was no such thing as full saturation in BW) and therefore made much more positional play - BW players were encouraged to spread themselves thin, so controlling and occupying space was a big part of the game.
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SC2's economy is too efficient. The difference in income from 50 to 60 workers is just as big as 30 to 40 workers or 10 to 20 workers. Every mineral you spend in combat units greatly weakens the exponential ramp-up of your economy to 200/200. As a result, it is much more difficult to use small harassing attacks. Even if you spend 500 minerals on Hellions and kill 600 minerals of units, your opponent is probably still ahead because he climbed on to the exponential economy curve. Attacks have to do TERRIBLE TERRIBLE DAMAGE or your economy falls far behind. As a result there are way too many all-ins or semi-all-ins and much fewer BW style harasses.
Worse yet, there is no benefit to building multiple under-saturated bases. Therefore there is less incentive to make wide-spread, poorly-defended bases and therefore less importance on space control and positional play.
A simple change to SCV mining mechanics would greatly decrease Deathball Syndrome, even if nothing is changed with regards to pathing, AoE, etc.
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But that logic is essentially what made into Warcraft 3. Both the upkeep and creep-hunting made early skirmishes and map control more preferable than turtling and building economy. I liked Warcraft 3 a lot, but I don't think that's what SC2 fans want.
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For Terran, you only really need the Ravens and BC's. You can't really feedback all 12 or so Ravens because they can start casting one or two PDD's early, potentially wasting shots, plus it's just hard. Infestors get Yamto'd if they even try to get in range to cast an NP or whatever, each Yamato kills a Voidray making Voidrays a terrible choice against late-game BC's, and Corruptors are just awful.
In TvT, to an extent you need some Vikings, but you don't need that many because your BC's will be in front taking the damage while the enemy Vikings try to kite and cannot fire on your Vikings which will be shooting at the enemy Vikings every time they stop. Not to mention PDD's and Yamato Cannon blasts thinning the numbers of the enemy Vikings and wasting a number of their shots.
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I'm really sick of sky compositions, especially mass sky/mass caster compositions. Broodlord/Infestor was our first taste of this problem. Soon it will be Tempest/High Templar and other wacky compositions. My new hatred is the mass Void Ray junk that is happening in PvP. I've been trying to make a Gateway style work, but it becomes increasingly tricky in the late game, and especially a map pool that gives you so many easy bases.
It should be more difficult to just get a bunch of air units or caster units. They should be balanced to take more of a support role than being the best type of army composition. I'd really like to see SC2 head in the direction of a more ground focused game.
These armies shouldn't be common or easy to tech to or achieve. In Brood War, there was usually a crazy back and forth on mid tier units...Tanks, Vultures, Goliaths, Dragoons, Speed Zealots, Zerglings, Hydras, Lurkers, Mutalisks. It usually took a game 25-30 minutes before you would even see a considerable amount of Tier 3 units. For example, once Zergs reached Hive tech, they needed to research Consume, rely on Cracklings/Dark Swarm/Plague for a bit before they could get massive amounts of Ultralisks.
This problem comes down to the way SC2 is paced and the ease of resources on as little as 3 bases. Some changes are definitely needed, but we need to be careful what we change and how. Maybe some rebalancing of the later tier units, maybe regarding production time of either the unit itself or the tech. Maybe we need the standard of mapmaking to change. Maybe Blizzard needs to adjust resources somehow? Who knows what the solution is, honestly? I'd really like to see more mid tier skirmishes and wars of attrition, instead of camping and getting the best army possible while massing gateways/larva/orbitals. So often in this game you see double upgrades and lots of camping. I remember in Brood War, watching pro games you didn't see double upgrades often unless for a specific build (i.e. Flash's Double Armory build versus Protoss), this is because Brood War was so timing focused and build orders had to be very optimized or else you would either not hit a timing, or get killed by one yourself.
TLDR; Mass Air/Caster armies are boring to watch, play with and play against.
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On February 13 2013 13:51 usethis2 wrote:
But that logic is essentially what made into Warcraft 3. Both the upkeep and creep-hunting made early skirmishes and map control more preferable than turtling and building economy. I liked Warcraft 3 a lot, but I don't think that's what SC2 fans want.
Too many "SC2 fans" are gullible and believe everything which Browder says and he always says the stuff they do is awesome. That is a sad fact of todays world, that we arent "responsible consumers" - which we should be - but rather gullible fools who believe in advertisements / the president / politicians / economic spokespersons who claim that making less profit is bad for the nation ...
Browder said in one of those interviews in their big tournament in China that they are looking to get rid of the deathball, but that was a clear lie, because they havent done anything along that line. Deathballs are really boring to watch and despised by many in the community, because they are the only viable strategy - which Browder claimed we wanted to have (in another interview from China) - and no real alternative exists. That is a sad thing and adding yet another deathball to the repertoire is not improving the game.
Getting rid of deathballs WITHOUT A COMPLETE REBALANCE is easy:
On January 31 2013 07:09 Piousflea wrote:The problem with Air Deathballs is the same problem as Ground Deathballs. SC2 has many mechanics that encourage deathballing, such as efficient harvesting, de-emphasis on space control, unit clumping, A-move AoE. I've always believed that the best way to remove deathballs would be to revamp the mineral economy in SC2 to be less efficient and closer to BW. Here's a repost from the other deathball thread: Show nested quote +Honestly I think the biggest change to break up deathballs would be revamping mineral income. The 1st SCV on a mineral patch should harvest more, the 2nd and 3rd SCV should harvest less.
The BW economy was highly inefficient. The difference in income between 30 and 40 workers is much smaller than the difference between 10 and 20 workers. For this reason, at some point it becomes more cost-effective to build units and harass, instead of building exponentially more workers.
In addition, 40 drones on 4 bases was DRAMATICALLY more income than 40 drones on 3 bases or 40 drones on 2 bases. This encouraged expanding before full saturation (actually, there was no such thing as full saturation in BW) and therefore made much more positional play - BW players were encouraged to spread themselves thin, so controlling and occupying space was a big part of the game.
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SC2's economy is too efficient. The difference in income from 50 to 60 workers is just as big as 30 to 40 workers or 10 to 20 workers. Every mineral you spend in combat units greatly weakens the exponential ramp-up of your economy to 200/200. As a result, it is much more difficult to use small harassing attacks. Even if you spend 500 minerals on Hellions and kill 600 minerals of units, your opponent is probably still ahead because he climbed on to the exponential economy curve. Attacks have to do TERRIBLE TERRIBLE DAMAGE or your economy falls far behind. As a result there are way too many all-ins or semi-all-ins and much fewer BW style harasses.
Worse yet, there is no benefit to building multiple under-saturated bases. Therefore there is less incentive to make wide-spread, poorly-defended bases and therefore less importance on space control and positional play.
A simple change to SCV mining mechanics would greatly decrease Deathball Syndrome, even if nothing is changed with regards to pathing, AoE, etc.
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United Kingdom12021 Posts
because they are the only viable strategy
That isn';t true at all. If there were more chokey maps or more maps that benefited attacking in large amounts of areas at once it'd be completely different.
The problem is, is outside of maybe Bifrost and Planet S every proffesionally played Starcraft 2 map rewards people with sitting with their entire army in one place and it doesn't reward splitting your army either.
The big issue is the lack of a decent high ground advantage, but even using more highground and smaller ramps around the map would be much better than what we have now. There's never any positions outside of say the one that gives you access to all three of your bases that you actually need to defend as your bases are so close together they can move in between them, so why would you ever bother splitting up your armies?
The game doesn't cause deathballs, players do. It's easy to split your army, but nobody wants to bother doing it as the maps give no reason to. If maps had bases with less minerals/gas like more maps are being made to have these days, it'd encourage more army movement and more places to defend, which then encourages people to split up more.
I've said this countless times, but look at Cloud Kingdom and Ohana. If you don't attack with your whole army, you'll just lose a base trade. Where bases are so close together on those awful maps, if you kill one base or lose one, there's no turning back since you'll never get back in time to defend your other bases, even with SC2s movement speed you'll lose atleast to your natural on those maps without having a chance to get back.
Fighting Spirit however would be different. The bases are more spread and you're more likely to lose your third, kill there's and still be able to get back and defend your own natural as long as you've split well and are defending the bridge. Maps are too small in SC2, that's why Planet S is so good because it feels big to actually play on it. The issue is when you get large maps so far in SC2 they always have a ridiculous number of bases or a really stupid layout like atlantis spaceship or metropolis. Planet S is probably the best designed map in the entire map pool right now. It's not small, it's large, but with the bases a decent amount apart to allow hurass and also army splitting to attack to be relevant.
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EPT
