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On February 09 2013 18:38 Rabiator wrote:Show nested quote +On February 09 2013 17:13 NicolBolas wrote:On February 09 2013 16:13 Rabiator wrote:Some people will know Dungeons & Dragons and the producers of this game have split their own community into two factions by releasing a controversial 4th edition a few years ago. They broke with every tradition by making all classes follow the same formula compared to keeping the "Wizards are more powerful but run out of spells quickly while Fighters can swing their sword all day long" principle. Why did they do that? Because people have started whining about "balance" after they started "PvP class comparisons" ... which is kinda pointless in an "us Players against them monsters" game. People were also complaining about "being forced to play a healer" and in the new edition you couldnt really play a pure healer anymore, which means that choice was lost for those who actually LIKE to play the healer. First, no. Every edition of D&D breaks the base. That's what it does. Every single edition, from AD&D 1st to D&D Next, has split the community. There are still people who think 1e is the best D&D ever and the rest is dumbed down drivel. Every edition is controversial. Second yes, they broke traditions. But not the ones you claim. The tradition they broke was "Fighters are just pointless meatshields past level 10, while Wizards get to do all of the useful work." They allowed melee classes to actually have the same tactical and strategic depth as spellcasters. Yes, some people want to play a boring, uncomplicated class. But some of us don't. And some of us who don't also don't want to be forced into playing Wizards just to get combat that's tactically interesting past 10th level. And some of us want our characters to meaningfully contribute past 15th level without being spellcasters. In 4e I can do that. In 3e/Pathfinder, I can't. So while you can't play your pure healer, I get to play the class I always wanted. On February 09 2013 16:13 Rabiator wrote:I feel a similar mindset has been present in the Blizzard development team and this has created a less open gameplay for multiplayer in SC2. You cant play the Terran Siege game anymore and all the promises of Blizzard to make mech viable in TvP have resulted in buffs to some support units which again split the community. Bonus damage to shields and mech units becoming healable are really really terrible decisions which are necessary to keep their house of cards of bad design decisions standing. They really should throw all their holy cows overboard, take a deep breath and try to look at the gameplay objectively ... and then make the necessary changes. It is the "holy cows" (the term is "sacred cow." "Holy cow" is an exclamation) of SC1 that got them into this mess. I suspect if they had their way, Siege Tanks wouldn't even be in SC2. They're only here because they're a popular SC1 unit. We would have had the alpha version of the Thor, which was a big robot thing with a ton of Hp and an AoE barrage special ability. The difference between 4e and SC2 is this: 4e was different, but it was well designed for it's specific purpose. You may or may not like that purpose, but it does the job it's intending to very well. SC2 is basically SC1 with some different, very foreign feeling stuff bolted on to it. Basically, there are two games fighting in SC2: SC1 and some other game with entirely different units and such. SC2 tries to do it half-way and fails because the middle-of-the-road approach doesn't work. There are other areas that SC2 fails in, but that's not important for this point. Sure, 4e was designed to be "computer compatible", but they lost a ton of flavor and flexibility which a computer game simply cant do. (see above) So designing a pen-and-paper game to be computer compatible was a bad idea. They had their grand plan of the "online dungeon system" where people could do the tabletop part of the game, but did that ever work? It reduces the game to the dumbest part of it and makes roleplaying totally impossible. That is what the core of an awesome D&D campaign is and not the fighting. The point of a D&D group is to survive the fights together and if your fighters feel like unimportant pawns it is the mistake of the DM to not threaten the mages enough and put them in their place. Mine did and I never had "awesome power" in those fights as a mage ... the Fighters did all the killing and that was good.
It's not that Fighters in pre-4e D&D weren't "important" (though high-level mages could eventually get by without them). It's that they're not intelligent. What they have to do simply isn't that interesting. Oh, a guy's heading for the mages; better hit him. What attack do I use? Oh, that's right, I only have like 3 to choose from. And so forth.
As far as actual gameplay is concerned, Fighters are boring. Tactically, they have limited options for what to do at any one time, and those options never change. You're doing the same things at level 1 as you are at level 20. Whereas playing a 1st level mage is nothing like playing a 20th level one. I want to have a melee class that has a real range of tactical options, resources to manage, and other such things. You know, the stuff wizards get, only for melee classes.
As for you not having "awesome power", well, that's your fault for not making a good mage build. The fact that you personally didn't exploit your spell list very well doesn't mean that others didn't or haven't.
On February 09 2013 18:38 Rabiator wrote:Why would the technology for Siege Tank production be lost in just a few years? Starcraft 2 is based on a STORY and this happens only a few years after the end of BW. Losing that kind of technology would have made as much sense as not having Science Vessels and Wraiths and Vultures with Spider Mines anymore does.
Who cares why if it makes for a better game? I don't play StarCraft for the lore. I don't have any particular love for any of these units; I'm interested in the gameplay. If taking out Siege Tanks allows the developers the design space to make new, interesting units, then those STs should be able to go.
They weren't. They were considered "iconic" SC1 units and therefore they had to stay. And if that meant we had to lose good unit ideas, then we lost them.
You can always contrive some excuse for something not being available. Nobody makes SVs or Wraiths because they're obsolete or too expensive to make compared to the more economical Ravens or whatever. If someone needs some Fanwank explanation for why a competitive game is as it is, then one can be invented that fits within the universe.
I mean, you accept that EMPs can somehow affect psionic energy, which makes absolutely no sense. You accept that a race thousands of years more advanced than humanity somehow can be defeated by modern humans (consider taking a modern army against an army even 200 years old, let alone Roman legions. They'd get face-stomped). And so forth.
If you don't accept that new units replaced old ones, it would only be because you don't want to, not because it doesn't make sense.
On February 09 2013 18:38 Rabiator wrote:They decided to start with a clean sheet of paper when designing SC2 instead of starting with BW as a baseline and advance in small steps from there on. Thats the problem ... they designed a totally new game instead of improving on a popular and working one. They chose and chose badly, because no one can claim that "BW2.0 with some new units" would have been worse that SC2, but since that would have been a more solid starting point it would have been easier than starting from scratch.
No, they didn't. They started from SC1; the first thing they did was implement all the SC1 units. Then they added units and removed old ones.
Your problem is that you're looking at the game as it is now, not the game as it was developed the way Blizzard built it.
On February 09 2013 18:38 Rabiator wrote:If SC2 had been "BW2.0 with 3 new units for each side" would you have found that boring? I wouldnt.
I would have found it to be lazy design. And probably terrible besides, since SC1 had already taken up most of the unit design space.
On February 09 2013 18:38 Rabiator wrote:The new bonus damage types are just a consequence of a flawed core system which relies far too much on masses of units being easily produced and controlled ... which they are afraid to change (= remove).
That's just being ignorant of how SC2 was developed. The damage bonus system came first; it was part of the game back in the 2007 reveal. The macro mechanics that create "masses of units being easily produced" came much later, in 2008-09.
Also, breaking the game by gimping the UI is not an acceptable means of "improving" the game. If the only way to make a genre of game work is to break the UI, then such a genre is fundamentally broken.
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On February 09 2013 20:43 mrjpark wrote:Show nested quote +On February 08 2013 10:32 avilo wrote:On February 08 2013 10:30 Kireak wrote:
When the game is released blizzard will get a hefty balance hangover. It started out decent, you gave them the benefit of the doubt that they would work it out, but they screwed it royaly. Blizzard will have a pretty hefty balance wakeup when the game is released and tournaments start going. Pretty much this. It's very pitiful that the beta has been out this long and blizzard has been unwilling to make the necessary changes to make mech tvp viable. They refuse to listen and they will not listen it looks like until post-release when they realize mech tvp is still shit. Why do people still say this? They've already made a statement months ago that they don't really care that people want BW mech and that they don't agree with that direction. They'd rather help the game grow towards a more bio-mech style, because it provides more flexibility and interesting games from their point of view, while a pure siege tank mech would be "too slow".
Because even in that they have failed.
As is factory units in the TvP match-up see about as much usage as in WoL.
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On February 09 2013 20:56 pmp10 wrote:Show nested quote +On February 09 2013 20:43 mrjpark wrote:On February 08 2013 10:32 avilo wrote:On February 08 2013 10:30 Kireak wrote:
When the game is released blizzard will get a hefty balance hangover. It started out decent, you gave them the benefit of the doubt that they would work it out, but they screwed it royaly. Blizzard will have a pretty hefty balance wakeup when the game is released and tournaments start going. Pretty much this. It's very pitiful that the beta has been out this long and blizzard has been unwilling to make the necessary changes to make mech tvp viable. They refuse to listen and they will not listen it looks like until post-release when they realize mech tvp is still shit. Why do people still say this? They've already made a statement months ago that they don't really care that people want BW mech and that they don't agree with that direction. They'd rather help the game grow towards a more bio-mech style, because it provides more flexibility and interesting games from their point of view, while a pure siege tank mech would be "too slow". Because even in that they have failed. As is factory units in the TvP match-up see about as much usage as in WoL.
hellbats and widow mines are here to disagree :D
but yeah tanks still suck TvP and i dont know why they give mine + damage to shields instead of giving that to tanks...
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On February 09 2013 07:48 i)awn wrote:Show nested quote +On February 09 2013 06:43 MstrJinbo wrote:On February 09 2013 06:29 i)awn wrote:On February 09 2013 06:17 awesomoecalypse wrote:
In BW, shields took full damage from every attack, regardless of unit type, meaning that shields would take a lot more damage in many cases from attacks than health would--their interaction with enemy attacks was therefore significantly more complicated than it was in WoL, where shields in terms of damage taken are no different from other health apart from a different armor rating. Bonus damage vs shields may be a change from WoL, but its not unprecedented in SC history. It is still unprecedented. It is completely different actually since shields took that "extra damage" from all other units. There was no units with a bonus attack vs shields and others without, it was all units had "bonus attacks vs shields" which is significantly different as the latter mechanic doesn't matter much because the amount of shield a unit has is balanced around the damage it will take. The baneling does a weird amount of damage to buildings. Seems like some odd tweak to the armor type thing to make it possible for zergs to baneling bust Protoss and terrans. I don't see how a tweak to the damage of the widow mine to one shots gateway units but not queens is unprecedented. How can you not see it? It's very simple, a unit damaging attack is doing more damage to one race and not the other. It completely breaks the basic foundation of the game. There is a reason that such changes, that can "easily" fix a lot of three way balance problems were avoided; up until now when the developers became so desperate before the launch date that they actually resorted to this technique. The spore + damage vs biological is not much better since zerg is the only race with bio fliers. Next thing we might have is void rays doing less damage to shields, you know because they might be a problem in PvP. After that maybe Blink research time will be different depending on whom you're playing against, gonna be longer vs terran and shorter vs Zerg. Here is balance getting fixed the easy way. When developers use these techniques it only means they are avoiding bigger problems that they need to fix.
How about qxc's idea that the community was so pleased with but that ended up being rejected by Blizzard: Snipe now does 50 damage, but with -15 to massive units. Obviously zerg is the only race with massive biological units, so it would have been directly targeted at zerg.
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On February 09 2013 21:14 Decendos wrote:Show nested quote +On February 09 2013 20:56 pmp10 wrote:On February 09 2013 20:43 mrjpark wrote:On February 08 2013 10:32 avilo wrote:On February 08 2013 10:30 Kireak wrote:
When the game is released blizzard will get a hefty balance hangover. It started out decent, you gave them the benefit of the doubt that they would work it out, but they screwed it royaly. Blizzard will have a pretty hefty balance wakeup when the game is released and tournaments start going. Pretty much this. It's very pitiful that the beta has been out this long and blizzard has been unwilling to make the necessary changes to make mech tvp viable. They refuse to listen and they will not listen it looks like until post-release when they realize mech tvp is still shit. Why do people still say this? They've already made a statement months ago that they don't really care that people want BW mech and that they don't agree with that direction. They'd rather help the game grow towards a more bio-mech style, because it provides more flexibility and interesting games from their point of view, while a pure siege tank mech would be "too slow". Because even in that they have failed. As is factory units in the TvP match-up see about as much usage as in WoL. hellbats and widow mines are here to disagree :D but yeah tanks still suck TvP and i dont know why they give mine + damage to shields instead of giving that to tanks...
Because when people say factory units--they mean Siege Tank as a core unit.
Hellions and thors are used often in WoL. In fact, all three factory units are used a lot in all three matchups. (Except thors in TvP)
So they aren't complaining about factory units not being used, they're complaining that factory units are being used, designed, and implemented differently from BW.
When blizz put the war hound in, all terrans went factory centric play all day everyday. Why? Because blizz knew that a unit like the war hound would get people to play factory centered units. People complained because they didn't like it that a non-siege tank unit was being massed.
So no, these whines won't be stopping anytime soon.
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Dustin said in an interview that after looking at the new units they would revamped and change the old units. Do you think they will still do that, with less than one month ? Or what we have seen until now was the units being changed ?
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On February 09 2013 21:14 Decendos wrote:Show nested quote +On February 09 2013 20:56 pmp10 wrote:On February 09 2013 20:43 mrjpark wrote:On February 08 2013 10:32 avilo wrote:On February 08 2013 10:30 Kireak wrote:
When the game is released blizzard will get a hefty balance hangover. It started out decent, you gave them the benefit of the doubt that they would work it out, but they screwed it royaly. Blizzard will have a pretty hefty balance wakeup when the game is released and tournaments start going. Pretty much this. It's very pitiful that the beta has been out this long and blizzard has been unwilling to make the necessary changes to make mech tvp viable. They refuse to listen and they will not listen it looks like until post-release when they realize mech tvp is still shit. Why do people still say this? They've already made a statement months ago that they don't really care that people want BW mech and that they don't agree with that direction. They'd rather help the game grow towards a more bio-mech style, because it provides more flexibility and interesting games from their point of view, while a pure siege tank mech would be "too slow". Because even in that they have failed. As is factory units in the TvP match-up see about as much usage as in WoL. hellbats and widow mines are here to disagree :D but yeah tanks still suck TvP and i dont know why they give mine + damage to shields instead of giving that to tanks...
Hellion drops didn't stop scouting factories from happening and neither will hellbats.
The most frustrating thing with HotS is that nobody forced Blizzard to work on mech.
They picked themselves that one job for terran but clearly didn't understand the issues that needed solving.
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On February 09 2013 23:56 Basique wrote:
Dustin said in an interview that after looking at the new units they would revamped and change the old units. Do you think they will still do that, with less than one month ? Or what we have seen until now was the units being changed ?
Ravens, Mutas, Void Rays, Medivacs and to a lesser extent Phoenixes and Hydras have all been changed from their WoL incarnation. If you meant something like "Colossus was changed from a 6 supply cliffwalking war of the worlds thing into a 4 supply nearly immobile mechanical slug that shoots scarabs that may or may not work" then no, that's never going to happen.
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Pneumatized upgrade at hatch is pretty huge, imo. Allows really easy scouting early game at the cost of delaying lair/speed by 50 gas. Not bad.
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Flat modifiers are okay so long as they don't become convoluted. I think it'll be inevitable for micro-adjustments, because there's only so many elegant solutions you can come up with. We also take for granted that the nature of attacks, while they have a pleasing visual relationship, are still arbitrary. Some things you can't visually appreciate, so subtle hints are required. With that out of the way, I still think these are all just bandaid fixes instead of just accepting the Spider Mine is better design (set count of mines on a minelayer), just make them microable for SC2, that'll be its evolution.
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On February 10 2013 00:06 pmp10 wrote:Show nested quote +On February 09 2013 21:14 Decendos wrote:On February 09 2013 20:56 pmp10 wrote:On February 09 2013 20:43 mrjpark wrote:On February 08 2013 10:32 avilo wrote:On February 08 2013 10:30 Kireak wrote:
When the game is released blizzard will get a hefty balance hangover. It started out decent, you gave them the benefit of the doubt that they would work it out, but they screwed it royaly. Blizzard will have a pretty hefty balance wakeup when the game is released and tournaments start going. Pretty much this. It's very pitiful that the beta has been out this long and blizzard has been unwilling to make the necessary changes to make mech tvp viable. They refuse to listen and they will not listen it looks like until post-release when they realize mech tvp is still shit. Why do people still say this? They've already made a statement months ago that they don't really care that people want BW mech and that they don't agree with that direction. They'd rather help the game grow towards a more bio-mech style, because it provides more flexibility and interesting games from their point of view, while a pure siege tank mech would be "too slow". Because even in that they have failed. As is factory units in the TvP match-up see about as much usage as in WoL. hellbats and widow mines are here to disagree :D but yeah tanks still suck TvP and i dont know why they give mine + damage to shields instead of giving that to tanks... Hellion drops didn't stop scouting factories from happening and neither will hellbats. The most frustrating thing with HotS is that nobody forced Blizzard to work on mech. They picked themselves that one job for terran but clearly didn't understand the issues that needed solving.
They did make factory play (their goal) strong and powerful. Then people whined about war hound being too good and so they removed it. They know how to make factory play work--it's BW style mech play that they're avoiding.
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On February 10 2013 00:22 awesomoecalypse wrote:Show nested quote +On February 09 2013 23:56 Basique wrote:
Dustin said in an interview that after looking at the new units they would revamped and change the old units. Do you think they will still do that, with less than one month ? Or what we have seen until now was the units being changed ? Ravens, Mutas, Void Rays, Medivacs and to a lesser extent Phoenixes and Hydras have all been changed from their WoL incarnation. If you meant something like "Colossus was changed from a 6 supply cliffwalking war of the worlds thing into a 4 supply nearly immobile mechanical slug that shoots scarabs that may or may not work" then no, that's never going to happen.
Maybe the thing he's said they'll try to change since ... forever ... the corruptor?
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Since it's the most active thread, I'll just ask my question here:
Do widow mines still target cloaked units without needing detection?
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On February 10 2013 00:32 ZenithM wrote:
Since it's the most active thread, I'll just ask my question here:
Do widow mines still target cloaked units without needing detection?
No that changed a while ago.
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United Kingdom12023 Posts
On February 10 2013 00:32 ZenithM wrote:
Since it's the most active thread, I'll just ask my question here:
Do widow mines still target cloaked units without needing detection?
They haven't been able to since a few patches ago.
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Ok thanks, that's what I vaguely remembered 
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On February 10 2013 00:24 Cloak wrote:
Flat modifiers are okay so long as they don't become convoluted. I think it'll be inevitable for micro-adjustments, because there's only so many elegant solutions you can come up with. We also take for granted that the nature of attacks, while they have a pleasing visual relationship, are still arbitrary. Some things you can't visually appreciate, so subtle hints are required. With that out of the way, I still think these are all just bandaid fixes instead of just accepting the Spider Mine is better design (set count of mines on a minelayer), just make them microable for SC2, that'll be its evolution.
I think widow mines should be renamed because people such as yourself keeps comparing them to spider mines.
For good or for bad, planetaries have taken over the role of Spidermines. Widow mines are diet siege tanks (in essence)
Now I have many qualms against widow mines.
-I don't like Terran having such a front loaded cloaked combat unit--sounds protoss ish to me.
-I don't like the flavor confusion of +35 to shields
-I don't like that its called a mine
-I don't like that it overlaps with the tank so much especially believing that simply cutting tank supply down to 2 and making tank splash 100% around the affected area will be much more interesting than what widow mine is currently doing.
-I don't like that they're stepping on toss toes flavor wise (Protoss have robots while Terran need drivers) the widow mine is an unmanned robot. That's just silly.
The list can go on, and along with the complaints I have many superior suggestions. But... Even still. I wouldn't compare widow mine to the Spidermines just because their name both has mine in it. It's much more similar to the shredder than the Spidermines.
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I'm Terran, and honestly, I wouldn't mined if the widow mine (or some sort of low cost low supply weak AoE space control thing) had gone to Protoss. I think they even needed it in a way.
I like that the new units/revamped units seem kinda overpowered. Like the hellbat or the voidray. We need more stuff to be powerful in SC2, not weaker than in WoL. If you have to balance something, create something equally ridiculous, don't destroy the unit like in WoL.
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On February 10 2013 00:22 awesomoecalypse wrote:Show nested quote +On February 09 2013 23:56 Basique wrote:
Dustin said in an interview that after looking at the new units they would revamped and change the old units. Do you think they will still do that, with less than one month ? Or what we have seen until now was the units being changed ? Ravens, Mutas, Void Rays, Medivacs and to a lesser extent Phoenixes and Hydras have all been changed from their WoL incarnation. If you meant something like "Colossus was changed from a 6 supply cliffwalking war of the worlds thing into a 4 supply nearly immobile mechanical slug that shoots scarabs that may or may not work" then no, that's never going to happen.
Mutas changed ?
And even then, that's not a lot of changes. But I'm not like most of the people on team liquid, I don't care about balance at all, I just want new stuff. For me, watching streams, it still seems too much like wol.
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On February 10 2013 00:40 Thieving Magpie wrote:Show nested quote +On February 10 2013 00:24 Cloak wrote:
Flat modifiers are okay so long as they don't become convoluted. I think it'll be inevitable for micro-adjustments, because there's only so many elegant solutions you can come up with. We also take for granted that the nature of attacks, while they have a pleasing visual relationship, are still arbitrary. Some things you can't visually appreciate, so subtle hints are required. With that out of the way, I still think these are all just bandaid fixes instead of just accepting the Spider Mine is better design (set count of mines on a minelayer), just make them microable for SC2, that'll be its evolution. I think widow mines should be renamed because people such as yourself keeps comparing them to spider mines. For good or for bad, planetaries have taken over the role of Spidermines. Widow mines are diet siege tanks (in essence) Now I have many qualms against widow mines. -I don't like Terran having such a front loaded cloaked combat unit--sounds protoss ish to me. -I don't like the flavor confusion of +35 to shields -I don't like that its called a mine -I don't like that it overlaps with the tank so much especially believing that simply cutting tank supply down to 2 and making tank splash 100% around the affected area will be much more interesting than what widow mine is currently doing. -I don't like that they're stepping on toss toes flavor wise (Protoss have robots while Terran need drivers) the widow mine is an unmanned robot. That's just silly. The list can go on, and along with the complaints I have many superior suggestions. But... Even still. I wouldn't compare widow mine to the Spidermines just because their name both has mine in it. It's much more similar to the shredder than the Spidermines.
You can call them fluorescent giraffes for all I care. They resemble Spider Mines very strongly. Burrowed units that activate within proximity with an explosion. So long as those are the defining features, my mammalian brain is going to associate them.
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EPT
