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Many people in the (latest) Thor discussion thread, myself included, have been basing their arguments at least in part of "Terran racial identity is x," and therefore the (current or proposed new) Thor does (or does not) fit into the Terran mold. Now, this is a little bit silly lore-wise: any smart commander is going to find the holes in his arsenal tactically and strategically and fill them out. "Logically" we would expect all three factions to look more similar in SC2, with Protoss trying to find the sheer numbers to match the swarm, Zerg mutating units that could actually stay alive, and Terran trying to boost their forces' speed - or whatever. These "gaps" can be one primary reason to justify new units lore-wise -
But of course, we don't want three cookie-cutter factions. We like the different feel of the races, and would like to see at least that general feel carry over into the new game. But what do we mean by a race's feel? I submit that the easy way to figure this out is to think about what it looks like when a race is winning a game.
Let's start at the end of the alphabet, with Zerg. I trust most people remember this one:
That's Zerg. Giant swarms of bugs crawling over everything and killing you. Of course the new-found prevalence of muta-micro has diluted this image a little bit - but it still takes a lot of mutalisks to do significant damage and unless you're Jaedong you don't win with pure early game mutalisks. Ultralisks only make it worse, as they don't even die easily (and yet, note, we accept them as part of the Zerg swarm). For the most part SC2 seems to be doing pretty well with this - but some people don't like the queen. That seems to be the biggest current problem feel-wise.
Next let's deal with the Protoss. Of course, many of us often feel like this:
But that's just it. A well-executed Protoss win will leave the opponent fuming as he gets effortlessly steamrolled (apparently) by legions of 9-foot tall monsters and various robotic equipment, leading toi various accusations of gay-ery and endless 1a2a3a memes. Here's another example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSiN-9AV9I8
For the most part Protoss too seems to have carried this over well into SC2, with carriers still around, stalkers added to the mix and looking deadly, and various new ideas being messed with. Currently I see the Colossus as problematic - in the battle reports it just hasn't looked powerful enough to justify the lore or its status as apparent reaver replacement - or even its apparent cost. But that can be fixed, and it looks awesome. I'd also note we haven't seen Immortals actually used much, for whatever reason.
Finally Terran. Of course, this is the main reason I wrote this. In contrast to the other two races, Terran doesn't really have a "hat". They've got a couple: they're slow (except for vultures), they do a ton of damage fast but units are relatively easy to kill, and they turtle very well.
Possibly this picture is not really relevant.
When it comes to Starcraft 2 though, Terran's quickly losing this identity. They still do a lot of damage. They're still fairly easy to kill (at least if you have storm). But the thing they had in SC1 was a lot of units that were really good at one thing while only being sort-of-okayish at the rest. As a result, it's very difficult to mass one unit and win. Even in TvZ, you need medics to keep your marines alive. You have to use your units together.
SC2 is sort of losing the force of this. My diagnosis? too many replacements for old units. They've dropped the Valkyrie and didn't replace it (which is okay since it turned out to not really be useful most of the time) but substituted the kind of awesome Banshee so that's good. They've dropped Vultures, and replaced them with Hellions AND Reapers. They've dropped Goliaths, and replaced them with Vikings AND Marauders AND the Thor. They've dropped the Wraith and replaced it with half of the Viking.
What I'm getting at is this: it wouldn't be too hard to adjust the stats and tech tree so that every single unit mentioned above had a place. Except the Hellion, which looks silly (but that's personal bias) and the Marauder, which just doesn't fit well with the typical Terran infantry feel. It's obviously an attempt to make infantry useful against Protoss, but I think I speak for most people when I say we've grown to like our mech. Plus there's the Reaper and anyway they still die to storm.
Let's try and build this army. We'll call the Marine our basic unit, while recognizing that despite all buffs they're probably not going to be too useful against Protoss at least by mid-game. They don't take damage well and storm looks, if possible, more deadly (meaning less dodgeable). As our main damage-dealer, tank and siege unit, we've still got the siege tank. So the meat-and-potatoes is still in place. The rest then should fit in as support units, correct? So it could look like:
- Reaper - should cover the raiding duties of the old Vulture pretty well. They've even got some mine equivalent so they look like a great vulture substitute that will still be used differently due to the cliff thing and being an infantry unit.
- Viking - it's a Goliath, but it flies (slowly, or it's probably imba). I envision this as main AA, but it could also fill in some of the damage soak the Vulture used to provide depending how Terran play works out.
- Banshee - we can make Reapers a little weaker than vultures, because by mid-/late-game we have the Banshee, which looks like it's primarily a raider. Sure it can provide some air support as well (kind of like a pimped-out wraith, I guess), but I don't see that as its main function.
- Thor - it's massive, and as anything other than late-game battlemech of awesome there's another unit doing its job. Keep it relatively short range, give it a lot of HP but (relatively) low damage - like a walking battlecruiser. Make it vulnerable to air, and slow. Maybe use some of the abilities mentioned in the discussion thread. Use it as the real alternative the battlecruisers for late-game awesome, and
- Nuke - use it as a support weapon. Like storm, only a little harder to pull off and doing a little lot more damage. Make sure it's awesome but not-quite-game-ending, or Terran just has too many options at the end of the game and at least one of them will never be used.
Now, this is a first-approximation sketch of something that makes sense to me. I'm not necessarily right, I'm just not liking the way Terran looks right now - there's a glut of unspecialized tier 1.5-2.5 units that just are getting in each other's way instead of being used together to fit the Terran mentality of the whole being greater than the sum of the parts. If all the units are well-rounded, there's no point to having lots of different kinds. The solution to me seems obvious: un-round the units.
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Well I'd say Goliaths were not replaced by the Viking at ALL
The Viking is a early Air Skirmisher like the Mutalisk, Phoenix, Scout, or Wraith
The Phoenix can attack ground units as long as you have more than 1
The Viking is an air unit that lands to attack ground, rather than a ground unit that flies (it is even built at the Starport)
So the Thor is the Terran GtA (which should beat AtG units on a cost equivalent basis because the air units have greater mobility)
Adding the "meat shield" role is reasonable, but it requires a particular type of unit... a meat shield needs to do Some damage, but not Too much, otherwise it is just overpowered... essentially a meatshield needs to be the opposite of the glass cannon
There is a bit of Reaper-Hellion overlap (anti-light, fast units)
The Banshee I don't see having too much overlap in the raider role, it is more of the part of a balanced Terran Airforce (basically Viking+Banshee=Mutalisk) or rather its a specifically Air based Raider distinguishing it from the others.
The Marauder is possibly too well rounded as a GtG unit....
I think It is designed as the Terran 'Tank'
The Siege Tank is being moved to a support role (more expensive, same hp, but better damage and range)
so your 'meat+potatoes' units
Marine (basic unit)
Marauder (tank)
Support units:
Siege Tank=Artillery
Reaper/hellion=Raiders (better than hellions because of mines and greater mobility.. if not speed)
Hellion/reaper=Anti Light (better than reapers in the army because of splash+greater hp)
Thor=AntiAir
Thor=AntiArtillery
Air units:
Basic: Viking
Support:
Banshee=Anti Ground
Battlecruiser=Heavy [can be specialized to more heavy, dedicated anti air or 'artillery']
Nomad/Nighthawk/Raven.... still uncertain
To differentiate it more, I'd possibly suggest making the Marauders more solidly anti armor, and possibly increase the "light" options available to the races (Archons could be considered Light... they have only ~10 hp).
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Good thread. Since the old battle report thread is slowing down, I'll repost my thoughts on the Terran here since it's dedicated to my issue.
Well I don't think that the Terran identity problem is as bleak as people are making it out to be. It's not like the whole race needs to be revamped; Blizzard just needs to retweak units to fit the "glass cannon" concept that Terrans were built around.
The reason why the Terran identity has been weakened is because Blizzard has focused too much on highly durable units while still maintaining all of the Terran's signature firepower: Mauraders with as much HP as a Protoss unit, Thors that exceed even the most powerful Protoss units in durability and strength, and Mauraders that can demolish both light and heavy units alike due to their slowing grenades and bonus damage against armor. In all honesty I don't blame David Kim for avoiding making too many siege tanks. Why bother when you can just mass Mauraders that are cheaper, easier to build, have almost as much HP, and can probably kill units just as well as the siege tank due to their stimpacks, slowing effect, and healing from Medevacs.
In order to fix this problem, Blizzard needs to step back and re-evaluate where they're going with all these units. I don't necessarily dislike the Maurader in concept, but it's way too powerful in its current form. A Terran infantry unit should NEVER be as strong as a Protoss unit, yet in the current stage of the game that's exactly what we have. And of course the Thor I just dislike entirely in its current state. If it's going to be a huge "OMG" unit, then it should be kept rare and hard to get. Right now it seems like it wants to be a part of the regular Terran arsenal, and I just think that's stepping on the Protoss' toes too much.
So to summarize, Terrans need to stop pretending that they're Protoss. Terrans should be moderately fragile with most of their strength being their long-range firepower and map control. A little extra mobility is fine, but a Terran that doesn't rely on positional gameplay is a Terran that's not living up to Starcraft's legacy.
P.S: As a more quirky suggestion, I actually think they should try making Reapers as the Vulture's spiritual successor instead of the Hellion. Make Reaper mines like spider mines and only give them one mine each. Perhaps give the Hellion a chance to gain a more diverse role since it seems very plain at the moment. Right now the Hellion seems to be in the game for no reason other than to show off the fire physics.
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Why do you want to pigeon-hole terran's "racial identity", for fuck's sake it's a new game, not everything has to be the same, things can be different.
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My impressions have always been that the marauder detracts from the traditional positioning role of the terran more than anything else. It seems to me like a hydralisk or a dragoon, something you can purely mass and a-move with to relative success. It's like a far more cost-effective unsieged tank.
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United States47024 Posts
On October 23 2009 15:31 Crunchums wrote:
Why do you want to pigeon-hole terran's "racial identity", for fuck's sake it's a new game, not everything has to be the same, things can be different.
Because within the flavor of the universe, it doesn't make sense for the Zerg and Protoss to have changed so little, while the Terrans have changed so much. It's a new game, but there has to be some believability in the differences.
Besides, the issue is more that the Terrans don't have a racial identity at all right now, more than they don't have their old one. Right now, other than the holdovers from SC1, they just feel like a hodgepodge of units that all sort of do some quirky things, but have no real theme tying them together.
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That vod of JangBi winning made me ill.
As far as SC2 goes, I have to play it before making any judgements. However, I do hope that terran is as complicated as in starcraft 1 relative to protoss. Nothing about modern TvP strategy is intuitive; vulture / tank combination had to be pioneered by players..
I expect that it will be like SC1, where most of what you need to know for protoss will be in the tutorial and while most of what is required for Z or T will be evolved and constructed by players.
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On October 23 2009 15:38 TheYango wrote:
Besides, the issue is more that the Terrans don't have a racial identity at all right now, more than they don't have their old one. Right now, other than the holdovers from SC1, they just feel like a hodgepodge of units that all sort of do some quirky things, but have no real theme tying them together.
I think that the issue is that you haven't played with them and thus don't know their identity. To you they feel like a hodgepodge. It is like, to me protoss felt like a hodgepodge in starcraft 1 when I played it early and they still to a large degree does.
And the only new thing that don't really fit the terran theme is the marauder, the rest of the units are all more damage oriented than health, often even more so than their starcraft counterparts.
And the reason the thors looked booring is probably mostly because that game did not feature much air units on the protoss side, since thors main role is AA. It is like having goliats in starcraft without any air to fire at, then they are just oversized marines. A thor takes out a muta swarm in 3 volleys at 10 range and are no better at tanking per cost than the old gols, if that doesn't sound "terran" to you then I don't know what does...
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+1 to the op. I say this without having played the game, but from what i've seen so far, and as a terran players, the only pieces which "feel" terran are:
Marines,
Tanks,
Medivacs (even though i hate the unit),
Ghosts.
Everything else feels like some late-night hodgepodge of bad rts shit. NOD buggies! With flamethrowers! Hurr!
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It´s important do differentiate between identity and gameplay. What the OP discribed is the very very basic RTS Rock-Paper-Scissors known as Rush(Zerg), Tech(Protoss) and Turtle(Terran). Maybe it was intentional but as long the races are different they WILL be better at a certain strategy than another.
Terrans HAVE to change the most gameplay wise because the heightend focus on mobility would severely disatvantage their old Gameplayidentity.
Thankfully Races aren´t only distinguished in their "prefered" overall Strategic aproach. A LOT is also character, thats why SC, WC3 and SC2 get Unit portraits.
Racial identity is also depends on unique "quirks", like how construction works or general, unitindependent things like repair, somewhat general abilities like Burrow or Stimpaks.
It is important though to get the prioritys straight, it´s easier(?) to design a units character after it´s gameplay than the other way around - this explains the hassle with "art units" that got in from the art side - Mothership and Thor most obviously. It was awesome when the Thor was build by a SCV or was untransportable but Gameplay dictated these aspects removement.
Therefore we (or actually they) should not say "Terrans can´t get a unit that can take hits, how can we make them balanced anyway" but rather "Terrans need a unit that can take hits, how could it work to still fit in?".
The Marauder, as example, fits because it is either high HP or high Firepower. They were so destructive because used Stimpaks which is ALSO the reason they were melted by the Psi-storms.
If I were to put identity into one scentence (and I hope others try that too to compare) I would say:
Terran: "Survivability through Firepower".
Zerg: "Adaption and Replacement".
Protoss: "Analyze, Specialize and Vaporize" (The typo is intentional  )
TL:DR
Make the units look like they play, not play like they look. Racial Identity is HOW they do something not WHAT they do.
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Thor - it's massive, and as anything other than late-game battlemech of awesome there's another unit doing its job. Keep it relatively short range, give it a lot of HP but (relatively) low damage - like a walking battlecruiser. Make it vulnerable to air, and slow. Maybe use some of the abilities mentioned in the discussion thread. Use it as the real alternative the battlecruisers for late-game awesome
I take from this description that you imagine the Thor should be a Battle Cruiser without wings. This can't work, there has to be some boost to its power to compensate for its lack of mobility, otherwise buying battlecruisers instead of Thors is a no-brainer. I think weak to air but armored against ground, and/or a reasonably large range (not as large as seige tank).
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leomon
Canada169 Posts
Haven't played SC2 yet, but from what I've seen from the numerous articles/videos I've watched...
Marauders is the main change for terrans in SC2 imo. It gives Terrans a mass-able unit like the Hydra/Dragoons to simply mass up and push for the GG. Adding Stim pack into the mix is just a tad imba.
Still not convinced that Hellions are a good unit. The idea of a flamethrower mounting vehicle is cool, but they still feel slow and chunky to me.
And not sure if Nighthawks are still in, but those Hunter seeker missiles back in Battle report #2 seem extremely powerful. (Then again, I guess it's mainly there to replace irradiate?)
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Marauder spam is silly
The infantry unit that should be most prevalent is the MARINE
Marine should be somewhat viable throughout the game imo, at least in some role like drops or so
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I was about to write some large ramblings about this but i got lost in confusion about what the "Terran Identity is". Anyway, I'd like to see less Marauders in the unit mixes and less Thors also.
The solution, I think, would be to lower the damage and SIZE(goddamnit) of the marauder, while still have it slow things down. This way you'd still have to have marines in there.
Maybe the Thor should also have some kind of debuff that doesn't stack well. That way you'd see one or two big mechs out there and not 4-5 like in the last BR. Thors shouldn't be massable.
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I feel terran are too mobile, they used to be a creeping unstoppable ball of death
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Sweden33719 Posts
The Marauder, as example, fits because it is either high HP or high Firepower. They were so destructive because used Stimpaks which is ALSO the reason they were melted by the Psi-storms.
Gonna have to disagree with you here. At 125 hit points, a 10 dmg stimpack is not going to change whether it lives or dies from a psi-storm. The new storm does 80 damage, so you'd have to stim several times before it'd make a difference...
They died because they had to walk through 2 or 3 storms, not cause of stimpacks.
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One thing to keep in mind was that in the last battle report, the Protoss player's army was...well...composed of the wrong units (considering the choices the Terran player made). I mean, if you loaded up on zealots against a vulture heavy army, then people watching the game who had barely seen SC:BW played would probably have odd ideas about each race's "identity."
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On October 23 2009 22:19 FrozenArbiter wrote:Show nested quote +The Marauder, as example, fits because it is either high HP or high Firepower. They were so destructive because used Stimpaks which is ALSO the reason they were melted by the Psi-storms. Gonna have to disagree with you here. At 125 hit points, a 10 dmg stimpack is not going to change whether it lives or dies from a psi-storm. The new storm does 80 damage, so you'd have to stim several times before it'd make a difference... They died because they had to walk through 2 or 3 storms, not cause of stimpacks.
Isn´t that a balance issue? Why would Marauders get 10 HP Stimpacks instead of 1/4th of max HP? 10HP is a lot cheaper for a 125HP unit than a 45/60HP one. Still they shouldn´t be able to tank Psistorms if they are supposed to be dodgeable/migatable.
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This thread is racist.
and I think terrans are too mobile by far with the medevacs(ghosts)/ reapers/ flame Karts. The harassment is kind of absurd, especially with the new "cannot see high ground thing"
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Hi guys ive read from this site for a while but just made an account, really like this site but i cannot hold my silence any longer...
Idra is a faggot. Im sorry, ive watched countless reps and I dont know if hes serious or not but everytime he gets formally raped by cars he says things that make me think he'd be better of playing US East Server with all the other ignorant bastards who cant effectively counter carriers.
Saying something like that to DRACO of all people...what is he 16? (really i dont know seems like it though)
Bottom line is id like to see some better sportsmanship from the pros.
USER WAS WARNED FOR THIS POST
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