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I agree with the some of the OPs thoughts, especially the point about free seige tech. Somebody please tell me, what problem exactly did that change solve? compare that with the problems that it undoubtedly created for the other races. Now tell me how a hellion transforming into a hellbat gives it biological properties. Its like they took these retarded ideas and forced themselves to create the illusion of balance by constantly tinkering with a broken formula. I have no expectations at all for how I think this expansion is going to do.
Also, did they not say that they were going to try to break up the deathballs, make mech viable in tvp, and (i guess they didnt say this, but its a reasonable expectation) and make lategame zerg more than broodlord infestor? What posetive changes have we seen in regard to any of those concepts? absolutely none if you ask me, I think if anything its gotten worse.
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On February 15 2013 07:09 Spyridon wrote:Show nested quote +On February 15 2013 06:18 Beakyboo wrote:On February 15 2013 05:40 Spyridon wrote:On February 15 2013 04:50 Beakyboo wrote:
I don't recall them making any awkward changes like this in WoL (although snipe +damage to psionic was a little strange) and it was reasonably balanced throughout its lifetime. There were stat tweaks here and there, but you never had oddly specific changes like +damage to shields.
Really? Are you forgetting the biggest complaint of WoL was because nearly every single unit in the game was based upon hard-counters? Are you forgetting the balance changes to Fungal, how Ultralisks used to be balance, how Reapers used to be, how Voids used to be, how Marauders used to be at release, their numerous changes to how massive unit counters worked? What about how bunker and turret pushes were at release and how they were handled through patches? And those are just a few of the examples I can think of off hand. Things are much less specific than WoL was, and units in general are much less "hard counters" than they used to be in WoL. This is exactly why the matchups involve many more units than they used to in WoL. In WoL you could use the same strat with the same units in every game, and barely have to adapt based upon what you scout. It's not like that anymore, theres much less early cheese, the early aggression timings are all ~7mins for all races and involve more scouting than before, and races have to adapt based upon what they scout much more rather than go the same path the whole game. Even Zerg (which had the least options in WoL) has many more options, and the other races got more variations than Zerg did in HotS (especially when it comes to early game). But even with the least amount of new options, Zergs in a much better state than they were in WoL. It's funny that WoL got a ridiculous amount of complaints about these things, and they were problems through the entire lifetime of WoL, then they got changed in HotS for that specific reason... and now people are acting like they were never probs in WoL but are now??? It's crazy... People need to actually play the game before complaining. On February 15 2013 05:35 Big J wrote:
To be honest, you are hardly touching design concepts here. Tech requirements are in the game 90% for balance reasons to begin with. Exactly. But that's because you can't understand the design or balance decisions without actually playing the game. I guess sometimes a hater just gotta hate... All the WoL changes you mentioned were much more natural tweaks to the units than adding "+ damage to shields" or "+ damage to mutalisks." Changing the build/research time of something or changing its damage is hardly the kind of change being referred to here. I get the feeling that this concept is going right over your head. You're rambling about a lot of stuff that's totally irrelevant here. This has nothing to do with balance. From a balance perspective I might want to individually tune every unit's damage against every other unit. Point is these changes are weird, and I'm pretty damn sure that there's more natural fixes. +damage to anything has to do with balance. And it's in no way irrelevant. Your complaint was about units having +damage to a specific unit type. I gave many examples of WoL having more widespread usage for nearly every unit compared to HotS. You even gave an example of +psionic yourself, basically proving your own point false. They are all +damage to a specific unit type. Yet you decide to determine which are natural or not. So I guess psionic is more natural than shields or bio, or more natural than nearly every unit hard-countering a specific unit type such as it was in WoL. Okay then... What about the fact that everyone praises BW for it's balance, and they had specific damage types that ALWAYS did extra damage to shields? Also people act like having +damage to something specific will make the game "too hard and complicated to learn", when BW's damage types were in no way transparent to anyone who didn't do research. And the effect of unit specific abilities were much harder to understand without testing, for example how Devourer spores didn't affect Carriers, etc. BTW, Mutas arent the only air bio unit. So just the fact that you have to word it as "+damage to Mutalisks" shows how much you are reaching and how desperate you are to find something to complain about. How could you claim none of this has to do with balance? Everything that has to do with damage factors in to balance. The fact of the matter is there are much less hard-counters in HotS than WoL, you are using more units, and more micro. This means HotS is much more similar to BW than WoL. Yet people still complain... Show nested quote +On February 15 2013 06:48 Niska wrote:
There is a simple way to stop all noob bitching in its tracks. Since TL won't have users connect their BNET accounts to TL so we can see how noob these noobs really are, we should instead FORCE a replay. If you have a problem with balance please show a replay where you encountered this problem. I bet these forums would die down a lot! But TL won't get its view numbers if they do this. That would be marvelous.
I love the people who claim that the damage values are bad and then cite BW as a better game. It warms a little place in my heart to know how uninformed they are. The fact is that when Blizzard made SC2, they made the game simpler to understand for everyone. They surfaced the damage values and modifiers, rather than having them buried like they were in BW. They made the interaction with between the units easier to understand, not harder. Yet people forget that part and just see the + damage as something to whine about saying “Why do they do it better? Like a more-better solution that is less complex and that is better.”
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One of the things I am sensing beneath many people's posts is the concern with the damage system not being sophisticated enough to handle the different types of relationships between units that Blizzard wants.
On the critiques of "armchair designers" and "fundamental design issues"
+ Show Spoiler +Now whether or not this is actually an issue is something that one could label a "fundamental design issue" and with that in mind, it could use another look (just like everything from warpgates to high ground mechanics, macro mechanics and resource income might also require a look). Now for many of these, Blizzard has said that they are happy with how they operate, and that means that Blizzard will not consider changing those things, even if they happen to be flawed.
Ideally, Blizzard would be (ideally, would have been, during WoL alpha/beta) trying to take into account how these base design assumptions affect the game and if they noticed things that were not working well they would opt to change them in HotS or LotV. But no one sees this because they assume the foundation of their game is 100% solid without actually knowing for sure (many fans/players, not just "armchair designers" would argue that it is not).
So back to my original point: a good bonus damage system might require a revamp, allowing more sophisticated and precise unit interactions. But we'll never know because Blizzard has refused to test it.
As an example, they could add a building armor type (why are all buildings armored?), or add different armor types beyond light/armored/massive, and also tidy up the modifiers that they have (psionic, biological, shields, mechanical, robotic, etc). It's weird if the bio modifier exists only for 1 or 2 units bonus damage. Those types of modifiers should be reserved for abilities mostly.
One of the interesting things about Broodwar was that, while it was archaic in many ways, it allowed units with different types of damage to do different amounts of damage to different armor types. So a colossus could do (as a very crude example), (15+10)*2 vs light, (15+5)*2 vs armored, and finally, only 15*2 vs massive. It doesn't even have to be that complicated: they just need to get a system in place that is flexible and simple enough to offer a solution to almost any set of issues. Once you leave the established framework, it becomes weird and people start wondering why the shield modifier suddenly exists (even though it originally existed in beta for the colossus).
KISS
+ Show Spoiler +After all, it is Valentine's day!
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On February 15 2013 07:25 Logo wrote:Show nested quote +On February 15 2013 07:20 Qikz wrote:
They couldn't buff spores against toss or Terran as they're already amazing, so to help against mutas they gave some bonus damage to them. There's nothing wrong with it, Broodwar had tons of that sort of stuff it's just it wasn't written in game. Could you give examples of stuff like that in BW?
Rather than specific units doing bonus damage to other unit types, there were damage types that did different damage to specific unit classes. Explosive damage, concussive damage and standard damage were a few of the damage types. I am not as much of an expert in the damage types, but most some units took reduced damage from specific damage types. SC2 does the reverse, where some units take more damage from other units, which is pretty much the same thing, but easier to wrap your head around.
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On February 15 2013 07:26 Plansix wrote:
I love the people who claim that the damage values are bad and then cite BW as a better game. It warms a little place in my heart to know how uninformed they are. The fact is that when Blizzard made SC2, they made the game simpler to understand for everyone. They surfaced the damage values and modifiers, rather than having them buried like they were in BW. They made the interaction with between the units easier to understand, not harder. Yet people forget that part and just see the + damage as something to whine about saying “Why do they do it better? Like a more-better solution that is less complex and that is better.”
It's pretty debatable whether or not BW was simpler. Yes +dmg is nice because you can calculate/memorize it easierly, but the size/dmg type relationship didn't have as much mix and match overlap. 100% damage to shields is far easier to remember than one particular attack having +dmg to shields. Especially since now modifiers like biological are used for more than targeting. With +dmg you also give up the advantage of having 3 levels of damage (the 100/75/50 relationship BW damage types had) that give more control. It's too cumbersome to give a unit 20 damage +10 heavy +5 light.
@Plansix Thanks!
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On February 15 2013 07:25 Logo wrote:Show nested quote +On February 15 2013 07:20 Qikz wrote:
They couldn't buff spores against toss or Terran as they're already amazing, so to help against mutas they gave some bonus damage to them. There's nothing wrong with it, Broodwar had tons of that sort of stuff it's just it wasn't written in game. Could you give examples of stuff like that in BW?
-Shields Take Full Damage from all attacks
-Tanks suffer a 50% damage penalty to small units
-Lurkers suffer a 75% damage penalty to large units
-Corsairs only deal full damage to small air units--Mutalisk and Scourge were the only Small air units, in otherwords, Corsairs get -75% damage from non-zerg units.
etc...
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On February 15 2013 07:26 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On February 15 2013 07:09 Spyridon wrote:On February 15 2013 06:18 Beakyboo wrote:On February 15 2013 05:40 Spyridon wrote:On February 15 2013 04:50 Beakyboo wrote:
I don't recall them making any awkward changes like this in WoL (although snipe +damage to psionic was a little strange) and it was reasonably balanced throughout its lifetime. There were stat tweaks here and there, but you never had oddly specific changes like +damage to shields.
Really? Are you forgetting the biggest complaint of WoL was because nearly every single unit in the game was based upon hard-counters? Are you forgetting the balance changes to Fungal, how Ultralisks used to be balance, how Reapers used to be, how Voids used to be, how Marauders used to be at release, their numerous changes to how massive unit counters worked? What about how bunker and turret pushes were at release and how they were handled through patches? And those are just a few of the examples I can think of off hand. Things are much less specific than WoL was, and units in general are much less "hard counters" than they used to be in WoL. This is exactly why the matchups involve many more units than they used to in WoL. In WoL you could use the same strat with the same units in every game, and barely have to adapt based upon what you scout. It's not like that anymore, theres much less early cheese, the early aggression timings are all ~7mins for all races and involve more scouting than before, and races have to adapt based upon what they scout much more rather than go the same path the whole game. Even Zerg (which had the least options in WoL) has many more options, and the other races got more variations than Zerg did in HotS (especially when it comes to early game). But even with the least amount of new options, Zergs in a much better state than they were in WoL. It's funny that WoL got a ridiculous amount of complaints about these things, and they were problems through the entire lifetime of WoL, then they got changed in HotS for that specific reason... and now people are acting like they were never probs in WoL but are now??? It's crazy... People need to actually play the game before complaining. On February 15 2013 05:35 Big J wrote:
To be honest, you are hardly touching design concepts here. Tech requirements are in the game 90% for balance reasons to begin with. Exactly. But that's because you can't understand the design or balance decisions without actually playing the game. I guess sometimes a hater just gotta hate... All the WoL changes you mentioned were much more natural tweaks to the units than adding "+ damage to shields" or "+ damage to mutalisks." Changing the build/research time of something or changing its damage is hardly the kind of change being referred to here. I get the feeling that this concept is going right over your head. You're rambling about a lot of stuff that's totally irrelevant here. This has nothing to do with balance. From a balance perspective I might want to individually tune every unit's damage against every other unit. Point is these changes are weird, and I'm pretty damn sure that there's more natural fixes. +damage to anything has to do with balance. And it's in no way irrelevant. Your complaint was about units having +damage to a specific unit type. I gave many examples of WoL having more widespread usage for nearly every unit compared to HotS. You even gave an example of +psionic yourself, basically proving your own point false. They are all +damage to a specific unit type. Yet you decide to determine which are natural or not. So I guess psionic is more natural than shields or bio, or more natural than nearly every unit hard-countering a specific unit type such as it was in WoL. Okay then... What about the fact that everyone praises BW for it's balance, and they had specific damage types that ALWAYS did extra damage to shields? Also people act like having +damage to something specific will make the game "too hard and complicated to learn", when BW's damage types were in no way transparent to anyone who didn't do research. And the effect of unit specific abilities were much harder to understand without testing, for example how Devourer spores didn't affect Carriers, etc. BTW, Mutas arent the only air bio unit. So just the fact that you have to word it as "+damage to Mutalisks" shows how much you are reaching and how desperate you are to find something to complain about. How could you claim none of this has to do with balance? Everything that has to do with damage factors in to balance. The fact of the matter is there are much less hard-counters in HotS than WoL, you are using more units, and more micro. This means HotS is much more similar to BW than WoL. Yet people still complain... On February 15 2013 06:48 Niska wrote:
There is a simple way to stop all noob bitching in its tracks. Since TL won't have users connect their BNET accounts to TL so we can see how noob these noobs really are, we should instead FORCE a replay. If you have a problem with balance please show a replay where you encountered this problem. I bet these forums would die down a lot! But TL won't get its view numbers if they do this. That would be marvelous. I love the people who claim that the damage values are bad and then cite BW as a better game. It warms a little place in my heart to know how uninformed they are. The fact is that when Blizzard made SC2, they made the game simpler to understand for everyone. They surfaced the damage values and modifiers, rather than having them buried like they were in BW. They made the interaction with between the units easier to understand, not harder. Yet people forget that part and just see the + damage as something to whine about saying “Why do they do it better? Like a more-better solution that is less complex and that is better.”
You misunderstand them. They like BW's damage system because it was invisible.
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On February 15 2013 07:59 Thieving Magpie wrote:Show nested quote +On February 15 2013 07:26 Plansix wrote:On February 15 2013 07:09 Spyridon wrote:On February 15 2013 06:18 Beakyboo wrote:On February 15 2013 05:40 Spyridon wrote:On February 15 2013 04:50 Beakyboo wrote:
I don't recall them making any awkward changes like this in WoL (although snipe +damage to psionic was a little strange) and it was reasonably balanced throughout its lifetime. There were stat tweaks here and there, but you never had oddly specific changes like +damage to shields.
Really? Are you forgetting the biggest complaint of WoL was because nearly every single unit in the game was based upon hard-counters? Are you forgetting the balance changes to Fungal, how Ultralisks used to be balance, how Reapers used to be, how Voids used to be, how Marauders used to be at release, their numerous changes to how massive unit counters worked? What about how bunker and turret pushes were at release and how they were handled through patches? And those are just a few of the examples I can think of off hand. Things are much less specific than WoL was, and units in general are much less "hard counters" than they used to be in WoL. This is exactly why the matchups involve many more units than they used to in WoL. In WoL you could use the same strat with the same units in every game, and barely have to adapt based upon what you scout. It's not like that anymore, theres much less early cheese, the early aggression timings are all ~7mins for all races and involve more scouting than before, and races have to adapt based upon what they scout much more rather than go the same path the whole game. Even Zerg (which had the least options in WoL) has many more options, and the other races got more variations than Zerg did in HotS (especially when it comes to early game). But even with the least amount of new options, Zergs in a much better state than they were in WoL. It's funny that WoL got a ridiculous amount of complaints about these things, and they were problems through the entire lifetime of WoL, then they got changed in HotS for that specific reason... and now people are acting like they were never probs in WoL but are now??? It's crazy... People need to actually play the game before complaining. On February 15 2013 05:35 Big J wrote:
To be honest, you are hardly touching design concepts here. Tech requirements are in the game 90% for balance reasons to begin with. Exactly. But that's because you can't understand the design or balance decisions without actually playing the game. I guess sometimes a hater just gotta hate... All the WoL changes you mentioned were much more natural tweaks to the units than adding "+ damage to shields" or "+ damage to mutalisks." Changing the build/research time of something or changing its damage is hardly the kind of change being referred to here. I get the feeling that this concept is going right over your head. You're rambling about a lot of stuff that's totally irrelevant here. This has nothing to do with balance. From a balance perspective I might want to individually tune every unit's damage against every other unit. Point is these changes are weird, and I'm pretty damn sure that there's more natural fixes. +damage to anything has to do with balance. And it's in no way irrelevant. Your complaint was about units having +damage to a specific unit type. I gave many examples of WoL having more widespread usage for nearly every unit compared to HotS. You even gave an example of +psionic yourself, basically proving your own point false. They are all +damage to a specific unit type. Yet you decide to determine which are natural or not. So I guess psionic is more natural than shields or bio, or more natural than nearly every unit hard-countering a specific unit type such as it was in WoL. Okay then... What about the fact that everyone praises BW for it's balance, and they had specific damage types that ALWAYS did extra damage to shields? Also people act like having +damage to something specific will make the game "too hard and complicated to learn", when BW's damage types were in no way transparent to anyone who didn't do research. And the effect of unit specific abilities were much harder to understand without testing, for example how Devourer spores didn't affect Carriers, etc. BTW, Mutas arent the only air bio unit. So just the fact that you have to word it as "+damage to Mutalisks" shows how much you are reaching and how desperate you are to find something to complain about. How could you claim none of this has to do with balance? Everything that has to do with damage factors in to balance. The fact of the matter is there are much less hard-counters in HotS than WoL, you are using more units, and more micro. This means HotS is much more similar to BW than WoL. Yet people still complain... On February 15 2013 06:48 Niska wrote:
There is a simple way to stop all noob bitching in its tracks. Since TL won't have users connect their BNET accounts to TL so we can see how noob these noobs really are, we should instead FORCE a replay. If you have a problem with balance please show a replay where you encountered this problem. I bet these forums would die down a lot! But TL won't get its view numbers if they do this. That would be marvelous. I love the people who claim that the damage values are bad and then cite BW as a better game. It warms a little place in my heart to know how uninformed they are. The fact is that when Blizzard made SC2, they made the game simpler to understand for everyone. They surfaced the damage values and modifiers, rather than having them buried like they were in BW. They made the interaction with between the units easier to understand, not harder. Yet people forget that part and just see the + damage as something to whine about saying “Why do they do it better? Like a more-better solution that is less complex and that is better.” You misunderstand them. They like BW's damage system because it was invisible.
Well if that's true, it kinda dumb. Hidden systems suck, are confusing and raise the learning curve on the game. It's bad for everyone.
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On February 15 2013 08:06 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On February 15 2013 07:59 Thieving Magpie wrote:On February 15 2013 07:26 Plansix wrote:On February 15 2013 07:09 Spyridon wrote:On February 15 2013 06:18 Beakyboo wrote:On February 15 2013 05:40 Spyridon wrote:On February 15 2013 04:50 Beakyboo wrote:
I don't recall them making any awkward changes like this in WoL (although snipe +damage to psionic was a little strange) and it was reasonably balanced throughout its lifetime. There were stat tweaks here and there, but you never had oddly specific changes like +damage to shields.
Really? Are you forgetting the biggest complaint of WoL was because nearly every single unit in the game was based upon hard-counters? Are you forgetting the balance changes to Fungal, how Ultralisks used to be balance, how Reapers used to be, how Voids used to be, how Marauders used to be at release, their numerous changes to how massive unit counters worked? What about how bunker and turret pushes were at release and how they were handled through patches? And those are just a few of the examples I can think of off hand. Things are much less specific than WoL was, and units in general are much less "hard counters" than they used to be in WoL. This is exactly why the matchups involve many more units than they used to in WoL. In WoL you could use the same strat with the same units in every game, and barely have to adapt based upon what you scout. It's not like that anymore, theres much less early cheese, the early aggression timings are all ~7mins for all races and involve more scouting than before, and races have to adapt based upon what they scout much more rather than go the same path the whole game. Even Zerg (which had the least options in WoL) has many more options, and the other races got more variations than Zerg did in HotS (especially when it comes to early game). But even with the least amount of new options, Zergs in a much better state than they were in WoL. It's funny that WoL got a ridiculous amount of complaints about these things, and they were problems through the entire lifetime of WoL, then they got changed in HotS for that specific reason... and now people are acting like they were never probs in WoL but are now??? It's crazy... People need to actually play the game before complaining. On February 15 2013 05:35 Big J wrote:
To be honest, you are hardly touching design concepts here. Tech requirements are in the game 90% for balance reasons to begin with. Exactly. But that's because you can't understand the design or balance decisions without actually playing the game. I guess sometimes a hater just gotta hate... All the WoL changes you mentioned were much more natural tweaks to the units than adding "+ damage to shields" or "+ damage to mutalisks." Changing the build/research time of something or changing its damage is hardly the kind of change being referred to here. I get the feeling that this concept is going right over your head. You're rambling about a lot of stuff that's totally irrelevant here. This has nothing to do with balance. From a balance perspective I might want to individually tune every unit's damage against every other unit. Point is these changes are weird, and I'm pretty damn sure that there's more natural fixes. +damage to anything has to do with balance. And it's in no way irrelevant. Your complaint was about units having +damage to a specific unit type. I gave many examples of WoL having more widespread usage for nearly every unit compared to HotS. You even gave an example of +psionic yourself, basically proving your own point false. They are all +damage to a specific unit type. Yet you decide to determine which are natural or not. So I guess psionic is more natural than shields or bio, or more natural than nearly every unit hard-countering a specific unit type such as it was in WoL. Okay then... What about the fact that everyone praises BW for it's balance, and they had specific damage types that ALWAYS did extra damage to shields? Also people act like having +damage to something specific will make the game "too hard and complicated to learn", when BW's damage types were in no way transparent to anyone who didn't do research. And the effect of unit specific abilities were much harder to understand without testing, for example how Devourer spores didn't affect Carriers, etc. BTW, Mutas arent the only air bio unit. So just the fact that you have to word it as "+damage to Mutalisks" shows how much you are reaching and how desperate you are to find something to complain about. How could you claim none of this has to do with balance? Everything that has to do with damage factors in to balance. The fact of the matter is there are much less hard-counters in HotS than WoL, you are using more units, and more micro. This means HotS is much more similar to BW than WoL. Yet people still complain... On February 15 2013 06:48 Niska wrote:
There is a simple way to stop all noob bitching in its tracks. Since TL won't have users connect their BNET accounts to TL so we can see how noob these noobs really are, we should instead FORCE a replay. If you have a problem with balance please show a replay where you encountered this problem. I bet these forums would die down a lot! But TL won't get its view numbers if they do this. That would be marvelous. I love the people who claim that the damage values are bad and then cite BW as a better game. It warms a little place in my heart to know how uninformed they are. The fact is that when Blizzard made SC2, they made the game simpler to understand for everyone. They surfaced the damage values and modifiers, rather than having them buried like they were in BW. They made the interaction with between the units easier to understand, not harder. Yet people forget that part and just see the + damage as something to whine about saying “Why do they do it better? Like a more-better solution that is less complex and that is better.” You misunderstand them. They like BW's damage system because it was invisible. Well if that's true, it kinda dumb. Hidden systems suck, are confusing and raise the learning curve on the game. It's bad for everyone.
I'm just saying that people would not have been happy with 70 to large, 35 to medium 17.5 to small.
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On February 15 2013 07:57 Thieving Magpie wrote:Show nested quote +On February 15 2013 07:25 Logo wrote:On February 15 2013 07:20 Qikz wrote:
They couldn't buff spores against toss or Terran as they're already amazing, so to help against mutas they gave some bonus damage to them. There's nothing wrong with it, Broodwar had tons of that sort of stuff it's just it wasn't written in game. Could you give examples of stuff like that in BW? -Shields Take Full Damage from all attacks -Tanks suffer a 50% damage penalty to small units -Lurkers suffer a 75% damage penalty to large units -Corsairs only deal full damage to small air units--Mutalisk and Scourge were the only Small air units, in otherwords, Corsairs get -75% damage from non-zerg units. etc...
That's not etc.. like it's some complex system. You have 4 damage types, 3 sizes, and each damage type does 100% to one size, 75% to another, and 50% to a third. Then a single exception for shields. By comparison the list of units with each +dmg type and units with that type is much larger.
If I ask you how many auto-attacks do 100% damage to zerglings in BW it'd be far easier to think of all the concussive & normal damage units in the game than it would be to look up every single unit in SC2 and list all the ones that either have +dmg to bio, +dmg to light, or no +dmg to anything (thus doing 100% dmg to zerglings). The %s run into issues more with understanding upgrades and calculating # of hits to die, which is important, but hardly more complex.
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I agree with a lot of the op's points. There's been an eleventh hour attempt by the hots team to make the widow mine and hellbat band aids capable of covering every weakness Terran has in both bio and mech. While this isn't bad in and of itself, there are just too many weaknesses to cover... The result is a hellbat that needed to be buffed in odd ways to help both mech and bio, and nerfed in strange ways (cargo space) to make up for its borderline op stats, which themselves were necessary to force mech into being viable vs toss despite the lack of inherent bonus damage vs shields (a key factor in making bw mech viable, with vultures not being so hard countered by goons and tank's explosive damage able to shave off tons of zealot health).
Simple fact is that toss units are simply larger and less vulnerable to splash than the other races... Without an "all bonus damage applies fully to shields" rule, this presents an insurmountable problem: you can't balance mech, with its reliance on splash, vs toss without making it op vs Zerg. Blizz is trying to get around this by turning hellbats into a "biomech" unit - a sloppy solution. The cargo size change, meanwhile, is yet another symptom of the fact that hellbats are much better than hellions in nearly any scenario - possibly too good for their cost.
Its hard to find ways to fix the inherent problem of mech v toss without falling back on brood war concepts: specifically, the bonus damage vs shields. Damage "types" are not much different from bw -> sc2, so I dont see any reason to focus on them; its the shield damage that matters here. One thing that might work is slightly reducing the splash radius and increasing the attack damage of mech units - while taking care not to create problems like tanks 1 shotting infestors. This would make mech more viable on the back of tanks, hellions and reduce pressure on hellbats, mines to "do work" in this matchup, with the result that the mine buff vs shields and hellbats crazy stats could be toned back. And then cargo size could also be rolled back....
With a more solid foundation, you don't need as many complex, unit specific rules and workarounds to create balance.
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On February 15 2013 08:20 Logo wrote:Show nested quote +On February 15 2013 07:57 Thieving Magpie wrote:On February 15 2013 07:25 Logo wrote:On February 15 2013 07:20 Qikz wrote:
They couldn't buff spores against toss or Terran as they're already amazing, so to help against mutas they gave some bonus damage to them. There's nothing wrong with it, Broodwar had tons of that sort of stuff it's just it wasn't written in game. Could you give examples of stuff like that in BW? -Shields Take Full Damage from all attacks -Tanks suffer a 50% damage penalty to small units -Lurkers suffer a 75% damage penalty to large units -Corsairs only deal full damage to small air units--Mutalisk and Scourge were the only Small air units, in otherwords, Corsairs get -75% damage from non-zerg units. etc... That's not etc.. like it's some complex system. You have 4 damage types, 3 sizes, and each damage type does 100% to one size, 75% to another, and 50% to a third. Then a single exception for shields. By comparison the list of units with each +dmg type and units with that type is much larger. If I ask you how many auto-attacks do 100% damage to zerglings in BW it'd be far easier to think of all the concussive & normal damage units in the game than it would be to look up every single unit in SC2 and list all the ones that either have +dmg to bio, +dmg to light, or no +dmg to anything (thus doing 100% dmg to zerglings). The %s run into issues more with understanding upgrades and calculating # of hits to die, which is important, but hardly more complex.
Um...
Explosive, Concussive, Normal
vs
+Armor, +Light, +Other
It's the same...
But really--it looks more like this.
Explosive (A,B,C), Concussive (A, B, C), Normal
vs
+armor, +light, +other
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I don't think Brood War is the gold standard of elegant game design. Which I think demonstrates why such words are tricky: because we like a game we want to use it as an example of elegance, even if there might not be anything about BW that makes it particularly so.
Zerg has hardly any modifiers. In HotS only corruptors and banelings seem to have damage bonuses. I think this shows that a game need not have a complicated bonus system, you can have units be strong vs each other without specifically encoding it in the game as a rule.
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On February 15 2013 07:09 Spyridon wrote:Show nested quote +On February 15 2013 06:18 Beakyboo wrote:On February 15 2013 05:40 Spyridon wrote:On February 15 2013 04:50 Beakyboo wrote:
I don't recall them making any awkward changes like this in WoL (although snipe +damage to psionic was a little strange) and it was reasonably balanced throughout its lifetime. There were stat tweaks here and there, but you never had oddly specific changes like +damage to shields.
Really? Are you forgetting the biggest complaint of WoL was because nearly every single unit in the game was based upon hard-counters? Are you forgetting the balance changes to Fungal, how Ultralisks used to be balance, how Reapers used to be, how Voids used to be, how Marauders used to be at release, their numerous changes to how massive unit counters worked? What about how bunker and turret pushes were at release and how they were handled through patches? And those are just a few of the examples I can think of off hand. Things are much less specific than WoL was, and units in general are much less "hard counters" than they used to be in WoL. This is exactly why the matchups involve many more units than they used to in WoL. In WoL you could use the same strat with the same units in every game, and barely have to adapt based upon what you scout. It's not like that anymore, theres much less early cheese, the early aggression timings are all ~7mins for all races and involve more scouting than before, and races have to adapt based upon what they scout much more rather than go the same path the whole game. Even Zerg (which had the least options in WoL) has many more options, and the other races got more variations than Zerg did in HotS (especially when it comes to early game). But even with the least amount of new options, Zergs in a much better state than they were in WoL. It's funny that WoL got a ridiculous amount of complaints about these things, and they were problems through the entire lifetime of WoL, then they got changed in HotS for that specific reason... and now people are acting like they were never probs in WoL but are now??? It's crazy... People need to actually play the game before complaining. On February 15 2013 05:35 Big J wrote:
To be honest, you are hardly touching design concepts here. Tech requirements are in the game 90% for balance reasons to begin with. Exactly. But that's because you can't understand the design or balance decisions without actually playing the game. I guess sometimes a hater just gotta hate... All the WoL changes you mentioned were much more natural tweaks to the units than adding "+ damage to shields" or "+ damage to mutalisks." Changing the build/research time of something or changing its damage is hardly the kind of change being referred to here. I get the feeling that this concept is going right over your head. You're rambling about a lot of stuff that's totally irrelevant here. This has nothing to do with balance. From a balance perspective I might want to individually tune every unit's damage against every other unit. Point is these changes are weird, and I'm pretty damn sure that there's more natural fixes. +damage to anything has to do with balance. And it's in no way irrelevant. Your complaint was about units having +damage to a specific unit type. I gave many examples of WoL having more widespread usage for nearly every unit compared to HotS. You even gave an example of +psionic yourself, basically proving your own point false. They are all +damage to a specific unit type. Yet you decide to determine which are natural or not. So I guess psionic is more natural than shields or bio, or more natural than nearly every unit hard-countering a specific unit type such as it was in WoL. Okay then...
Unit types modifying damage is a core part of the game though, albeit not the most intuitive one. They've avoided adding any other modifiers to base damage up to now. At least if you learn the unit types and what units happen to have bonus damage then you can get a general sense of how units should counter each other.
It starts to feel like they're abusing their own system a bit though when they want to buff spores vs mutas specifically in ZvZ, but to work within their ruleset they're only allowed to buff it vs a whole unit type, which conveniently works out because spores never touch any other bio fliers. The +shields buff to widow mines is just weird and unprecedented. No other attack has that.
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On February 15 2013 07:37 Logo wrote:
100% damage to shields is far easier to remember than one particular attack having +dmg to shields. Especially since now modifiers like biological are used for more than targeting.
Disagree. Because that's simplifying how BW worked.
Sure it was 100% damage to shield, but all the damage types had different ratios for all the different unit sizes.
It's a lot easier to remember X damage to shield, rather than this attack does X damage to shield, X damage to small, X damage to med, X damage to light, for every unit type.
On February 15 2013 08:58 Beakyboo wrote:
Unit types modifying damage is a core part of the game though, albeit not the most intuitive one. They've avoided adding any other modifiers to base damage up to now.
The modifiers were +35 to shield, and +15 vs bio. How could u act like that's any different from all the other modifiers in the game? You gave examples of some, how could u act like they haven't added other modifiers?
On February 15 2013 08:58 Beakyboo wrote:The +shields buff to widow mines is just weird and unprecedented. No other attack has that.
So it's weird and unprecedented to be influenced by Brood War, in a game and expansion that takes a lot of influence from Brood War? How do you figure?
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On February 15 2013 09:01 Spyridon wrote:Show nested quote +On February 15 2013 07:37 Logo wrote:
100% damage to shields is far easier to remember than one particular attack having +dmg to shields. Especially since now modifiers like biological are used for more than targeting. Disagree. Because that's simplifying how BW worked. Sure it was 100% damage to shield, but all the damage types had different ratios for all the different unit sizes. It's a lot easier to remember X damage to shield, rather than this attack does X damage to shield, X damage to small, X damage to med, X damage to light, for every unit type. Show nested quote +On February 15 2013 08:58 Beakyboo wrote:
Unit types modifying damage is a core part of the game though, albeit not the most intuitive one. They've avoided adding any other modifiers to base damage up to now. The modifiers were +35 to shield, and +15 vs bio. How could u act like that's any different from all the other modifiers in the game? You gave examples of some, how could u act like they haven't added other modifiers? Show nested quote +On February 15 2013 08:58 Beakyboo wrote:The +shields buff to widow mines is just weird and unprecedented. No other attack has that. So it's weird and unprecedented to be influenced by Brood War, in a game and expansion that takes a lot of influence from Brood War? How do you figure?
Because dude, +15 bio on an SC2 archon is so much harder to remember than -7.5 to medium and -15 to small unless you get upgrade--in which case you get even more fractions as now you're looking for 25% of a +3 attack as well as 25% of a +9 attack.
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Canada11439 Posts
I think although I might agree that some of the changes are kinda weird and perhaps indicative of a patchwork fix, I have a hard time making use of 'elegant' and 'inelegant' design. What do we mean by that? What is our criteria and is an 'elegant' solution truly the best solution? I don't know, but I'm not even sure elegance matters so much as good gameplay changes.
Take a look at some of the BW coding bugs and I'm sure people wouldn't consider it elegant and perhaps a bit of a nightmare, but the result was amazing gameplay. One could argue that the Hellbat solutions aren't resulting in the same sort gameplay as moving shot, but I'm not sure 'elegance' is necessarily the problem. At least not how it has been defined here.
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On February 15 2013 09:25 Falling wrote:
I think although I might agree that some of the changes are kinda weird and perhaps indicative of a patchwork fix, I have a hard time making use of 'elegant' and 'inelegant' design. What do we mean by that? What is our criteria and is an 'elegant' solution truly the best solution? I don't know, but I'm not even sure elegance matters so much as good gameplay changes.
Take a look at some of the BW coding bugs and I'm sure people wouldn't consider it elegant and perhaps a bit of a nightmare, but the result was amazing gameplay. One could argue that the Hellbat solutions aren't resulting in the same sort gameplay as moving shot, but I'm not sure 'elegance' is necessarily the problem. At least not how it has been defined here.
Moving shot is not elegant. But neither is move cancels and hit boxes in fighting games.
I think people are unhappy and, because its unclear to them how to properly lash out, they lash out at whatever is most visible and recent. For example, the problem with BW having moving shot and SC2 not having moving shot is not that Moving Shot is needed in a videogame; the Moving Shot allowed people to "out-skill" someone with a maneuver that is not gained from planning, but is gained from practice. People miss that they old days when "build order losses" could be salvaged if your opponent forgot to micro since "he's pretty much won anyway" and you overcome the deficit because of mechanics like moving shot, or because the RNG of high ground allowed your tank to survive 6-7 tank shots allowing you to win the fight. Or because your opponent was bad at moving his army and so random dragoons suddenly wandered out to the wilderness to be killed off by your pack of lings slowly whittling down the advancing protoss deathball.
The moving shot, the high ground, the cargo size of the Hellion--those are all arbitrary things that people complain about because it seems comforting to attack something that looks present and visible. But its actually a much deeper hurt that is being hidden.
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United Kingdom12025 Posts
On February 15 2013 07:25 Aveng3r wrote:
I agree with the some of the OPs thoughts, especially the point about free seige tech. Somebody please tell me, what problem exactly did that change solve? compare that with the problems that it undoubtedly created for the other races. Now tell me how a hellion transforming into a hellbat gives it biological properties. Its like they took these retarded ideas and forced themselves to create the illusion of balance by constantly tinkering with a broken formula. I have no expectations at all for how I think this expansion is going to do.
Also, did they not say that they were going to try to break up the deathballs, make mech viable in tvp, and (i guess they didnt say this, but its a reasonable expectation) and make lategame zerg more than broodlord infestor? What posetive changes have we seen in regard to any of those concepts? absolutely none if you ask me, I think if anything its gotten worse.
It makes opening mech in TvP a hell of a lot safer and this is coming from someone who tank/hellion/viking'd all the way through WoL as well as tank/hellbat/hellion/viking since I got a betakey.
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On February 15 2013 05:27 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On February 15 2013 04:52 i)awn wrote:On February 15 2013 04:33 MstrJinbo wrote:On February 15 2013 04:24 i)awn wrote:
Some really good points esp about the Terran tech tree. To be honest I think it's mostly unfinished work and Blizzard knows that. The spore +damage to bio and the mine +damage to shields aren't elegant at all. There is a lot to fix and polish. This sort of comment is really irritating. Elegant and inelegant are completely meaningless terms used to complain about balance changes with giving any kind of thought to it. The way blizzard is putting in tiny moddifications to things like damage bonuses and cargo size are very clever ways to balance the game without as many wide reaching side effects. I'll put it this way. If you are David Kim what is your "elegant" solution to all of this? It's not about whether things "look" elegant. The term has simply been used so I won't have to drill in the details why a modification is good or bad. I do not have a problem with a hellbat taking more cargo space as long as it addresses the problem. In fact if it really solves all issues; it will be an "elegant" solution to the hellbat drop problem. However as pointed out by the OP; the terran mech tech tree can actually use some modification. Another modification is the new spore +bio damage which was a result of poor design choice. I'll qoute Ben... on this as he really pointed it out: On February 15 2013 03:41 Ben... wrote:
It feels like both with the muta patch and the hellbat patch, Blizzard has got into a cycle of breaking things then breaking other things or doing oddball patches in an attempt to unbreak them rather than simply revoking the bad patch and trying something else.They completely wrecked ZvZ and turned it into a muta war with the muta patch so instead of putting mutas back to how they were or buffing them in a different way that would maybe prevent muta wars they did that awkward patch to spores for ZvZ, then they also had to buff phoenixes to make it so Protoss didn't die to mass muta every game, but because of the buff is still forces muta vs. Protoss into being a really weird matchup where Protoss has to get mass phoenixes or starve and die because they can't expand or move out. So, wait, by your own admission, you don’t have a problem with the change itself as long as it gets the job done? So you want argue the “artistic merits” of the new balance changes? I mean, that’s is what these arguments are all about. If the balance changes have “natural lines” and if they are easily comprehended by the viewer and player. That flow of the balance and progression of the match ups are pleasing to peoples expectations of the gameplay and feel natural. I mean, people can have that argument, but I would rather just play more SC2.(Can’t now, on break at work).
Indeed but what I'm pointing at is that it's not just the "shape" of game that changes from one design to another it actually affects the game play. It's beyond just achieving balance after all; checkers and chess are both really balanced games but there is a huge difference between one and the other. Specifically; the flow of the game and the abilities do affect gameplay too.
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