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On April 05 2010 14:01 Koltz wrote:Show nested quote +On April 05 2010 13:58 Half wrote:Also, I hope I don't get booted for "bad manners for this", but seriously, the people going on about hardcounters need to...STFU.  --- Let me explain something about "Hardcounters". I'm tempted to make a new thread, nobody seems to get it. SC2 is not about hardcounters any more then SC1 was. The metagame is still volatile, a formulaic build is still being developed, so your going to see a lot of fights ending because of "hardcounters". Was MM hardcountered by storms and reavers in SC1? You betcha. Thats an entire tech option/alternative, hardcountered by 1/2 units. Their isn't even a definable difference between a hardcounter and a normal counter. Only counter and softcounter. No hardcounters. Counters encourage things. The hardcounter to mass light units is aoe, so it encourages AoE. Is this a good thing? Many would say yes, yes is agreeable. That is all they do. Bios hardcounter encourages mech. etc etc. They shape the metagame, and through feedback and patching, the game itself. What do roaches encourage? A lot of things, outlined in my post, and most of them aren't good by any stretch of the imagination. Hard counter is just a word used to differentiate the degree in which one type negates the other type. And you seriously cannot claim that some units are countered to a higher degree than other units? Hard counters in SC2 are to such a high degree that they almost do not allow for the countered unit to be produced, where as in BW we had inequalities of vulture > zealot > tank > goon > vulture. although the vulture countered the zealot, it did not mark its disappearance from PvT
Hard counters in SC also existed to a pretty high degree, too I'd argue. For example, you (almost) never see Bio play in BW because storm and reavers hard counter Bio. In fact, 1/2 units basically do not allow marines to be produced, except for the first 4 or so in the very beginning of the game. (In most cases. Yes I know there is a MM timing push that has recently been done in proleague. But it's very rare, and I don't believe it works very often.)
Also, I personally believe that the presence of hard counters do not necessarily mean that particular units cannot be used at all. For example another BW reference. Defilers with dark swarm or even plague hard counters Terran Bio play pretty damn hard. Why is Bio still very viable in TvZ? Because players adapted and learned how to deal with it. The same can be true in SC2. The Immortal hard counters Terran mech pretty damn well, but perhaps with time (time as in more than 2 months) people will learn ways to adapt and make mech viable in TvP despite the presence of immortals. Perhaps it will come with an increase in micro-ing skill allowing lots of Ghost EMPs to take out immortal shields. There are some builds in BW that the average or noob player simply cannot execute properly; sair+reaver in PvZ come to mind. However, when done in the hands of a very experienced player or a pro, sair+reaver is one of the best builds in PvZ. Perhaps mech in TvP will become such a build; a very potent, deadly one, but one that requires very good APM and mechanics.
My point is, hard counters have existed in SC:BW. The difference is that the way damage was calculated made it seem less obvious perhaps than the way it is in SC2. But despite clear hard counters, SCBW metagame thrived and people made it work. Just because a hard counter is there doesn't mean it should be HOMG WTF NERF.
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not really sure how immortals came into the picture here. can't blame something that is ultimately a response to other units as being op because it equalizes match-ups. it would probably need to be balanced a bit differently if roaches or marauders are changed, but op? yeah right.
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i still like the idea of the roach having low damage output against anything but light, so it becomes a way of managing basic infantry, then having the hydra do bonus against armored so it puts a stop to mass roach mid-game... which i think would also make it good against immortals and marauders, right? i dunno this is my fairly unprofessional two cents but it sounds believable to me.
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On April 05 2010 11:00 pzea469 wrote:
i think i get what OP is saying. Roaches SHOULD be OP by looking at their stats. However, they are not because Protoss and Terran have direct counters to it. But due to designing counter units around a unit that SHOULD be OP we get these other problems of those units being too effective such as Immortal not allowing terran to go mech and marauders just owning.
Very interesting read
yea. this is the point. if you cant understand the OP then you do not have very honed critcal thinking skillz. the idea is that the imbalances in the game are inter-related and to single any unit out as OP is to see the forest for the trees.
you cant rework the colossus, roach, or marauder (the most controversial units) without reworking all of them in unison. this is the task of the design team and it needs to be done before retail otherwise i do not see the metagame/competitive gaming/esports succeeding for more than a year (after when the thrill of SC2 will have degenerated into boredom from the trite massing of units and stale but effective strats a la war3)
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I think if cloak and emp were both innate (not something I'm suggesting, would be problematic in so many ways, balance just one of them), mech would be viable. The issue is by the time your in range to emp the immortals already soaked up his sheilds worth of siege damage.
Siege damage is also just not high enough against anything other then light. The only MU where its viable is TvT because Bio isn't strong enough in that MU, and TvZ because it only does decent damage against Hydras
Honestly I wonder if 55 flat damage would be OP.
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Man this is a good thread, and I agree what the OP says, and I think that the Roach doesn't belong in the Zerg race. About the Marauder, it's the same thing as the Roach it's like those units define their races, Zerg to me is the most boring race to play because they lack so much diversity, I kind of feel the same way with Terran but you can be a bit more creative than Zerg. Protoss has to be the most diverse race, although my race is actually Zerg. (I just can't give up my love for them even when they're boring as shit to play) If I didn't love Zerg so much I'd probably switch to Protoss immediately which I'm still thinking actually. But nonetheless something should be done about Mara/Roach/Immortals
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This thread is spot on.
The point isn't that these units are so powerful and widely used. The point is that they are too similar and have no racial identity, AND they are powerful and widely used. Marauders and Roaches need to go.
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Koltz, biomech might work in rare situations but in the pro-scene meta-game it doesn't work. But why focus on biomech, which is an entire suite of units? Hard counters definitely do exists in BW and to a large degree:
Lurkers vs. zealots - it doesn't even matter how well you micro your zealots; half a dozen lurkers at a choke point will make them wasted minerals
Zerglings vs. dragoons - again, unless you're blocking a ramp (something you can do in SC 2, as well), dragoons cannot go against mass zerglings no matter how well you micro
Reavers vs. zerglings - again, doesn't matter how well you micro; a reaver in a shuttle, or even two reavers on ground, will kill any number of zerglings
Vultures vs. zerglings - same thing; this, along with biomech hard countering hydras, is the reason TVZ's meta game is lurkers & mutas
Siege tanks & vultures vs. biomech - biomech just doesn't work, which is the reason TVT is mech vs. mech
And of course, the whole stealth & air vs. ground hard counters that have always been in SC.
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On April 05 2010 14:32 Azarkon wrote:
Koltz, biomech might work in rare situations but in the pro-scene meta-game it doesn't work. But why focus on biomech, which is an entire suite of units? Hard counters definitely do exists in BW and to a large degree:
Lurkers vs. zealots - it doesn't even matter how well you micro your zealots; half a dozen lurkers at a choke point will make them wasted minerals
Zerglings vs. dragoons - again, unless you're blocking a ramp (something you can do in SC 2, as well), dragoons cannot go against mass zerglings no matter how well you micro
Reavers vs. zerglings - again, doesn't matter how well you micro; a reaver in a shuttle, or even two reavers on ground, will kill any number of zerglings
Vultures vs. zerglings - same thing; this, along with biomech hard countering hydras, is the reason TVZ's meta game is lurkers & mutas
Siege tanks & vultures vs. biomech - biomech just doesn't work, which is the reason TVT is mech vs. mech
And of course, the whole stealth & air vs. ground hard counters that have always been in SC.
read my post here:
http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=118476¤tpage=9
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On April 05 2010 11:43 Mora wrote:Show nested quote +On April 05 2010 11:38 Rothbardian wrote:On April 05 2010 11:35 Mora wrote:On April 05 2010 11:31 Half wrote:On April 05 2010 11:14 Skyze wrote:
Uhh.. if Roach is the problem to the whole SC2 Balance.. how come PvT is still so bullshit? No roachs in PvT, yet T always wins with ease massing one unit still.
You are right about one thing though, The whole problem in SC2's balance does rely in one unit.. MARAUDERS. They are bio speed tanks with slow. Once they fix them, and fix thors, the game is going to be almost perfect. Uh yeah... I explained that. Maraunders only exist as they do because they are a necessity against roaches. If you nerfed marauders to be more reasonable against toss, roaches would steamroll terran. I mean seriously. Two armor? Really? gl with those marines. can you make me a list of all the terran units that are hard-countered by the roach, not including marines? Every Terran unit except Air/Marauder. If the Zerg is semi-competent he'll throw in a few Hydra and decimate your air. So, basically we are back to square one; Marauder. The Roach is a joke of a unit. in my experience marines/tanks do just fine against roaches. banshees do well vs roaches. vikings with micro do well against roaches. Reapers do not counter roaches (and they shouldn't), but they certainly don't have a hard time avoiding them. Hellions are in the same boat as the reaper. So... roaches counter... marines and scvs? holy fucking broken batman!
So WRONG, roaches counter helions and reapers easily (which is the main reason why you even build them early game cause terrans will usually build lots of marauders), as well as marines and thors and tanks for cost.
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While I'm normally of the 'wait and see how it turns out' camp, and think that the whole 'hard counter' craze is overblown, in this particular case, I do agree that things could be improved.
My attention was especially caught by the Marauder, which has stats practically identical to the Protoss Dragoon in Brood War. The Dragoon has more total hp due to Shields, but Shields are far less valuable than normal hit points. The Marauder also costs 25 less gas. Aside from that, the Marauder has traded the ability to attack air for a slowing attack, Stimpacks and the ability to be healed by Medics/Medivacs.
It's problematic that something that is powerful enough to be a Protoss core unit is considered Terran infantry.
As for the Roach, I do think it has lost some of the peculiarity that made it interesting.
I don't know how to fix it, but if Blizzard were to try something, I think that a possibility would be to substantially decrease the Marauder's hp, slightly decrease its damage and decrease its supply cost to 1 (maybe its resource cost too, depending on balance requirements). That way it could keep the roles of powerful building and armoured unit destroyer, while also fitting in with the theme of Terran Bio.
As for the Roach, I'd like its hp reduced and its regeneration speed increased, if necessary for balance, increase its armour. I think the concept of the Roach should be that it does very well against low damage per attack (like Marines, Zerglings and to an extent Zealots), but be very vulnerable to powerful bursts like those from Siege Tanks or Immortals. High armour and regeneration would allow them to shrug off huge numbers of small blows while still being fairly well dispatched by the appropriate counter.
Immortals are less of a concern, they're fairly unique in their role, and due to tech requirements and expensive cost, they're not as liable to be overused, I think.
Well, that's my opinion anyway. I would like something to be done.
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My previous negative stance on the fallacy that is "hardcounters" being said, I do feel like that SC2 early game is just going to be more dynamic. Simply because you have more units (medics didn't really count, considering their was no reason you'd go bio without them and no real reason to get them if you weren't).
With 3 units open in T1, early game play is going to be a lot more fluid, and a lot more varied. I doubt we'll ever get the hard "safe openings", but I don't think its enough to cause "lucking" a hardcounter.
Overall, thats probably a good thing. Though it makes it much harder to balance.
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Koltz, I read your post, but disagree with your premises. SC 2 doesn't have overly hard counters. Rather, it has three units that hard counter almost everything except each other and units that you can't possibly get before they overrun you.
Let's look at this carefully.
In SC 2, what do zerglings counter? They counter marauders. Can marauders still be used for zerglings? Yes, they can. In fact, quite well. So zerglings are not an overly *hard* counter.
What do zealots counter? Zerglings. Can zerglings still take down zealots? Absolutely. In fact, the zealot vs. zergling dynamic isn't TOO different in SC 2.
What do marines counter? Well, one thing is void rays. Can void rays still kill marines? Yes! In fact, there was a game in the invitationals when the protoss massed void rays against BCs and was still able to take down a number of supporting marines. This is almost as much of a hard counter as you can get without going into the air vs. ground realm, and yet void rays can still do *something*.
You'll notice that I mostly ignored marauders, roaches, and immortals. That's because marauders, roaches, and immortals don't really have any early game counters. Marauders are good vs. zealots, sentries, and stalkers - ie every tier 1 protoss unit. Roaches are good vs. zealots, sentries, and stalkers - ie every tier 1 protoss unit. Immortals also have this problem, but to a lesser degree because the real reason immortals exist is to give protoss a fighting chance against the aforementioned units.
The presence of hard counters isn't necessarily the problem. Rather, the problem could be the presence of *un-counterables*.
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On April 05 2010 14:43 Half wrote:
My previous negative stance on the fallacy that is "hardcounters" being said, I do feel like that SC2 early game is just going to be more dynamic. Simply because you have more units (medics didn't really count, considering their was no reason you'd go bio without them and no real reason to get them if you weren't).
With 3 units open in T1, early game play is going to be a lot more fluid, and a lot more varied. I doubt we'll ever get the hard "safe openings", but I don't think its enough to cause "lucking" a hardcounter.
Overall, thats probably a good thing. Though it makes it much harder to balance.
yeah. plus i keep reading that sc1 was pretty much broken until bw came out. i wasn't playing much online and definitely not watching vods back then so i can't confirm that but maybe you can. i'm trying to stay optimistic that if a year plus change after retail release the balance has got into a rut, the expansion will have units and upgrades designed to fix that. then the next expansion after that. that's two major content revisions after retail release. stuff like walls of roaches are frustrating now, but i think blizzard is aiming for the long haul here. it IS the follow-up to a game that lasted 12 years.
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On April 05 2010 14:48 Azarkon wrote:
Koltz, I read your post, but disagree with your premises. SC 2 doesn't have overly hard counters. Rather, it has three units that hard counter almost everything except each other and units that you can't possibly get before they overrun you.
Let's look at this carefully.
In SC 2, what do zerglings counter? They counter marauders. Can marauders still be used for zerglings? Yes, they can. In fact, quite well. So zerglings are not an overly *hard* counter.
What do zealots counter? Zerglings. Can zerglings still take down zealots? Absolutely. In fact, the zealot vs. zergling dynamic isn't TOO different in SC 2.
What do marines counter? Well, one thing is void rays. Can void rays still kill marines? Yes! In fact, there was a game in the invitationals when the protoss massed void rays against BCs and was still able to take down a number of supporting marines. This is almost as much of a hard counter as you can get without going into the air vs. ground realm, and yet void rays can still do *something*.
You'll notice that I mostly ignored marauders, roaches, and immortals. That's because marauders, roaches, and immortals don't really have any early game counters. Marauders are good vs. zealots, sentries, and stalkers - ie every tier 1 protoss unit. Roaches are good vs. zealots, sentries, and stalkers - ie every tier 1 protoss unit. Immortals also have this problem, but to a lesser degree because the real reason immortals exist is to give protoss a fighting chance against the aforementioned units.
The presence of hard counters isn't necessarily the problem. Rather, the problem could be the presence of *un-counterables*.
my premise revolves around the maurader, immortal, and roach and their respective counters... not the other units.
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From what I can tell the only reason why anybody is watching Broodwar ZvZ is the impressive Ling and Muta/Scourge micro. After all that matchup is all about slight BO variations and the massing of a single unit, until you have to micro your butt off, so that you don't die to Scourge. I am a total noob, I'll admit it right away. But i think the only reason, why good players microed their mutalisks in a ZvZ was to not get hit by Scourge. So if it wasn't for Scourge, there would not be a need for micro in ZvZ (other than with Lings which is there in SC2 as well I think).
I can imagine a Roach with significantly less HP but with burrow (no upgrade) and high HP-regen (also no upgrade necessary). If you just a-move, you die. If you a-move and burrow damaged Roaches with some nice micro, you win. That makes it hard to play and i bet there can be exciting moments where a crowd goes crazy over some Pro-Zerg constantly burrowing and unburrowing like 20 Roaches at once. If you got 2000 Roaches tho, you cant micro them all, thus making this micro dependant unit bad in masses. So that encourages Zergs to tech up I guess.
I think it would fit the original concept of the Roach and it would sure as hell be more fun. I also think, it adds a lot more neat micro which I think a lot of good players complain about in the current Beta-build. It prevents the earlygame from being just like metagame, since once you got a higher number of Roaches it might be smarter to switch to Hydras or something for you cant micro the Roaches well enough (and if you can, well then every one just loves watching your gosu micro i guess :D).
Even if this fails hardcore in the other MUs (which I am too tired to think about just now) there must be a way to balance it out, especially since the idea (which i don't claim to be all mine btw) requires a nerf of marauders and immortals anyways i assume.
At least it would make the Roach stay with its concept and make it an nice unit, that is hard to use but rewarding if you have mastered the micro of a bunch of Roaches. Imagine a 5 minute ZvZ battle with both players microing Roaches all the time at 300 APM and trying to keep an eye on all those Roaches while trying not to burrow them too early or too late! (and macroing at the same time lol)
BTW, I think if Blizzard just changed the way some of the attacks in the game work, there could be a lot more nice dodging micro. The best shuttlemicromoments were when it was tried to defuse Mines without taking damage or when the Toss tried not to get hit by Goonfire. That was only possible due to a delay between the attackanimation and the dealing of the damage (or between the flying time of the animation and the damage respectively). I think there are too few such things in the game as of now. I think if Blizz just changed some attacks (like Colossus for example!) so that superior micro could make you dodge them, the game would become far greater, since it would widen the gap between me and a good player or even a pro.
Oh and now that I think about it: the moment I saw the roach and especially the damn Marauder for the first time i just KNEW i hated them...
SB, dont bash on me 2 hard
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This isn't about hard counters. This is about racial identity and both Zerg and Terran having GtG dragoon strength units and things are boring with these massed marauders and roaches. They need to go.
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On April 05 2010 14:26 Half wrote:
I think if cloak and emp were both innate (not something I'm suggesting, would be problematic in so many ways, balance just one of them), mech would be viable. The issue is by the time your in range to emp the immortals already soaked up his sheilds worth of siege damage.
Siege damage is also just not high enough against anything other then light. The only MU where its viable is TvT because Bio isn't strong enough in that MU, and TvZ because it only does decent damage against Hydras
Honestly I wonder if 55 flat damage would be OP.
I'm pretty sure EMP is innate. The only downside to EMP is that the range is shorter than feedback making them vulnerable to HT. But perhaps with cloak and good positioning...you never know.
And i'm pretty sure siege damage does 60 base damage to all units...so I'm not quite sure what you mean by it not being good against anything other than light...
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On April 05 2010 14:53 Koltz wrote:
my premise revolves around the maurader, immortal, and roach and their respective counters... not the other units.
Well, it seems that what you were focusing on was that hard counters in SC 2 are "too hard," but then you make use of examples almost strictly from the holy three (immortals, marauders, roaches), so I guess we are sort of in agreement.
The meta-game currently depends on the presence of these three units, which were made to counter each other, and which, in order to become powerful enough to counter each other, became overpowered against everything else, leading to a meta-game (at least for Zerg; Terran still has the reaper play) that is essentially static.
This is what the OP was mostly saying, if I'm not mistaken.
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On April 05 2010 15:00 0neder wrote:
This isn't about hard counters. This is about racial identity and both Zerg and Terran having GtG dragoon strength units and things are boring with these massed marauders and roaches. They need to go.
yeah but this is down the road from sc/bw. those 3 races were originally pitted against each other with what they already had. now they've had time to respond to their opponents' strengths. roach makes sense in that context cos there was a desperate need for the zerg to evolve a strain that could take hard hits without investing in a ton of ultralisks.
not saying that excuses boring gameplay. just saying it'd be ridiculous in real life to cling to flimsy spacesuits just because "hey, i'm a human and therefore i wear flimsy spacesuits."
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EPT
