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On April 07 2010 11:53 heyitsme wrote:I was really sad when I first saw this on the SC2 website... Show nested quote +The remaining dragoons have become the immortals, refitted with twin phase disruptors and hardened energy shields that can shrug off the most powerful weapon strikes - though at the cost of leaving them more vulnerable to the pinprick attacks of lesser foes. The heavily armed and shielded immortals give critical fire support to the ferocious legions of zealots by eliminating enemy artillery and ranged attackers, allowing the zealots to close in and complete their work of destruction. Protoss Immortals' shields are very effective against Siege Tanks Was there really a need for this Blizzard? Protoss were already stronger against Siege Tanks for the following reasons... - Charge - Blink - Smartcast + Storm - Warp-in - no more spider mines But for some unknown reason they decided to create this unit so that breaking a push would be much more simple... Are statistical counters more fun then tactical or strategical counters? EDIT: funny thing about the picture... there's not a single zealot on it!!!
IF you have played Sc2 you will see that immortal are the only way that a protoss has nowasays to win a game..without it he will be simply destroyed..
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On April 07 2010 16:54 lolaloc wrote:
I have previously posted a topic about 'supposed roles' for each unit in the game regardless of match-up. I think that Blizzard should design the units around these concepts.
Terran:
Marine - Bio DPS'r
Marauder - anti-melee unit (what's the slow for?)
Ghost - unit sniper and anti-shield
Reaper - harass
Hellion - Mech AoE DPS'r
Siege Tank - longranged Mech AoE nuker
Thor - unit sniper, anti-air
Viking - Anti-air, harass
Banshee - air dps'r, Harass
Medivac - Bio Army Support, Transport
Raven - All-around support unit
Battlecruiser - dps'r and unit sniper
DPS = damage-per-second? What do you mean by that? My guess is that you're referring to the unit having a fairly fast attack speed...
The problem with your categories - according to my theory - is that you're still thinking about design in "game terms". "Damage per second" may affect how the unit balances, but it can't define a concept. "AoE" isn't a concept, it's again something that you apply as a result of a concept. Siege Tank provides artillery support; it has an AoE attack because that's how artillery is effective. You see what I'm getting at?
On April 07 2010 13:20 Two_DoWn wrote:
The immortal should be a unit that provides staying power- it allows a protoss army to move forward in the face of fire by drawing fire and staying alive for a long time. This in no way requires hardened shields, although that ability is cool. Instead, Immortals could simply be beefy- give them massive shields and health that allows them to stay alive, without discriminating against certain types of units. In this circumstance, the immortal fits its role, a hard to kill unit that provides staying power for protoss without forcing other races out of certain tech choices just because certain units would be overly ineffective.
The problem with this is that you're essentially arguing for the Immortal to be a ground-based Capital unit, similar to the Thor or Ultralisk. This is fine in concept, but it doesn't fit - within the game outline - at the Immortal's current tech level. You would have to move it to be a Robo Support unit, or it's OP for its in-game availability.
On April 07 2010 13:20 Two_DoWn wrote:In similar fashion, the marauder appears to be a unit that is designed to provide some heavy firepower to a bio army.
I want to deal with this - rather than critique your changes for the marauder and roach - because I think it's another case where you missed the point (or maybe Blizzard did). There is, on my hypothesis, no such thing as a "bio army". There may be the fact that in one matchup you build mainly biological units, but this is a negative fact: you are not-building mech, rather than "going bio", even though we talk about it that way.
[Case in point: TvZ. In SC:BW you can use either mainly bio or mainly mech builds - or occasionally builds with both, like Flash has come up with occasionally. But your point is winning, not "going bio", and you're choosing to use your resources either to give yourself mobility and high damage rate (bio) or stability and toughness (mech) because these help you win. "Ideally" you'd be able to build and control both at the same time - to use your entire army - but the economy model of the game gives you limits and "a little bit of everything" leaves you without a core to build your composition on.]
Let me say that again: You do not have to have a fully-rounded biological army. The Terran army (or whichever army) is an army itself. If you have units on different parts of the tech tree which do the exact same thing, that's not good design, it's redundant - especially if one of them does it worse. This is why the scout is never used in BW: primarily it's anti-air, and the corsair does it better and cheaper. This is why when you do see the scout it's anti-ground, in desperation because the P hasn't had time to tech to carriers. Absolutely everything the scout does is done better by either the carrier or the corsair.
Right now, the Marauder is in a muddle of similarly-roled units - Tank and Thor and maybe Viking and sometimes even overlapping with Marines - and is dominating Terran unit compositions because it does the job best.
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On April 07 2010 18:13 GoDannY wrote:+ Show Spoiler +I kinda agree to what Artosis said in one of his interviews - SC2 is close to be balanced - tough a lot of stuff is not yet figured out and people tend to have a short ranged view to things - I agree to that and even I often find myself seeing low-ranged solutions.
For instance - the role of the Immortal: Terran has a whole lot of heavy units, so it perfectly fits the role in pvt as an expensive(!) ground-only counter to that. Changing the Immortal and also the Marauder would lead to a leak of counters for protoss against not only roaches but also against thor and tanks. Zealots die a lot faster than in SC:BW and tough there are no mines, tanks are still hard to reach. In PvZ the Immortal gives Protoss the ability to deal with mass roaches and also having a "sunkenbreaker" or "spinebreaker" unit that can deal a lot of damage in one shot. Also it fits great into a counter-ultralisk strategy combined with forcefields.
What I'd like to see, coming back to the "roles" is a better mix for terrans like "bio+mech" or "mech+air" instead of mech only or bio only. There are still a few things that need to be tweaked to give that game a better drift - for instance
Thor got splash in patch 7 so they fullfill also their anti-air role, tough protoss is leaking anti-air options - sentries do not quite counter muta that well and phoenix are slightly to expensive regarding their "role".
Marauders need a slight change - they are to strong in the very early game stage since they counter all early units except propably speedlings. The most significant hole in the role-play is that marauders are strong vs almost any ground unit from early to late game - but thats another discussion.
Zerg's roach since the nerfs fits more and more into the "tank" role, I'm curious when they will discover the strength of ultra-combos as well.
We are heading towards a good balance if you ask me, tough I hope Blizzard takes its time instead of rushing for a summer-release to fill the whole little balance issues that come from cheese play - e.g. marine-all in, warpgate rush in pvp, massive roach-burrow action and now the proxy marauder push.
But that is one of the intresic problems of these two (possibly three, i think the immortal's position is balance with a bit of tweaking on the damage at best) units: Roach and Marauder. They're so much a superior unit to their t1 counterparts in a lot of cases that, espcially in the case of the marauder, we're seeing them used by themselves and with no unit variety at all until much later in the game (if then).
I think this is a core issue with the game that is tandem with unit balance (I agree that balance isn't incredibly far from competetive), not because building one unit is more boring than building another, but because most matchups boiling down to mass marauders or mass roaches for the majority of the game is boring. It saps variety from the gameplay and the entertainment of watching the gameplay.
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On April 07 2010 22:49 Musoeun wrote:
The problem with this is that you're essentially arguing for the Immortal to be a ground-based Capital unit, similar to the Thor or Ultralisk. This is fine in concept, but it doesn't fit - within the game outline - at the Immortal's current tech level. You would have to move it to be a Robo Support unit, or it's OP for its in-game availability.
I'd argue the immortal is close to fine aswell. You might say the ghost (or emp) doesn't fit at t2, but that's a very concurrent and integral part of the early-immo counter. I have no idea why it should be moved to the support bay unless you think having colossai out at t2 would be balanced.... poor zerg. =(
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First of all: Really nice point of view 
My first thought was there is one thing dropping out of the unit system because blizzard focussed so much on units countering instead of the, as you called it, positives of a unit.
There seemed way less options of having some kind of map control to me. Blizzard tryed to replace that with Xel'Naga towers seemingly but I don't really like that because they have a preset radius of what you can see.
What do protoss have to gain map control? Obviously Observers, I don't think that this changed alot.
Zerg? Mainly overlords/-seer now plus sending single lings.
Terran?... ___ ???? Anything at all??
As you can see, I then realised that it was just terran suffering this problem alot. Then I thought "hey, they still can go for Vikings against Zerg and gain map control!" and this was when I realised that map control just doesn't mean alot anymore! If it was important, Terran Vikings against Zerg would be a really cool tactic as it is possible to use 2-4 vikings nearly cost efficiently plus I thought that the fact "terran just gained an information advantage over Zerg" should in theory mean alot.
Instead, they rather build loads of marauders with vacs, because actually, people don't (have to) care as much about map controll as they used to.
When they wan't to expand, they will do so anyhow because they usually need some kind of advantage in terms of fighting power to do so, such as terrans bunker in early game when the provided protection still means something. So in the end scouting information (apart from "what does my enemy build inside his base", what also is a thing that doesn't necessarily have to be connected to map control) just became not ultimately useless but very less important compared to army size and composition.
Back to "units need to have positives instead of beeing focussed on countering specific units":
I think counters should be moved to way higher tiers. Low tier gameplay should not be about countering other units already but more about "what do I want to do?"
For example, hellions have been used quite alot until Zerg decided just to build a roach warren right away. They were the unit good for harassment. Early success of Hellions-Banshees showed that this role worked for a little time and for certain skill levels, the idea of putting the enemy behind in economics and delay his attack so the fast tech to counter Z low tier units can have good success.
This was good game design in my opinion. Z may say "it's so hard to counter" if it wouldn't be so easy to counter but that's usually the problem you face when your opponent takes initiative.
Following the same logics, Tanks are like "ground superiority against low tech units" - You might call it "thats some kind of countering already!" but the efficiency of tanks depends on more than only what your opponent plays. Tanks are mid tech already so I think they should be able to compete with equally teched units but may be countered by specialized high tier units.
For example, he might try to counter it with zealot drops, which is not a hard counter but always an interesting attempt that can succeed or not. Or he might tech further and just take all our tanks or blocking units away for a moment with a mothership, so he can use it as a very hard counter to win a battle.
Instead, tanks face an equally far teched hard counter. Equal tech it does not go for "you can make attemps in equal battles to reciece a result depending on your micro and positioning" but "you win or you loose for sure because you either counter or get countered".
Good example for high tier hard counters are Ghosts and HTs imo. Both of them can be very extreme counters but are part of their very unique and kinda late branch of tech trees (well, ghost is not that late but at least it has a unique branch). Neither of them is suitable to serve as a whole armies' backbone. Thus, they are in a good position to serve as counters.
Actually the only units that are more or less taken out of the hard countering against equal tech right now are the infamous three - immortals, roaches and marauders.
-> I think that such hard countering effectively beginning at tier one is a bad thing, hard countering should be a higher tier matter.
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On April 08 2010 03:12 T33K3SS3LCH3N wrote:First of all: Really nice point of view My first thought was there is one thing dropping out of the unit system because blizzard focussed so much on units countering instead of the, as you called it, positives of a unit. There seemed way less options of having some kind of map control to me. Blizzard tryed to replace that with Xel'Naga towers seemingly but I don't really like that because they have a preset radius of what you can see. What do protoss have to gain map control? Obviously Observers, I don't think that this changed alot. Zerg? Mainly overlords/-seer now plus sending single lings. Terran?... ___ ???? Anything at all??...
I believe that you are not using "map control" as usually understood. I would like to clarify this before answering any of your points. You seem to be talking about scouting, as you cite observers and overlords. Terran have sensor tower and scan, as well as - as you mentioned - viable scouting from their harass units: reaper, hellion, banshee, viking. The major problem with the Xel'Naga watch towers is that it actually reduces the difficulties of scouting as well as the "risks" - the units you have to send. It's still a cool mechanic though.
"Map control" refers to actual physical control of the map: do you have units or can you move units around the map safely? How much map control is necessary depends on the matchup and builds and stuff: to go back to TvZ, a bio Terran is aiming for map control with marauding groups of m&m, while a mech Terran, after the early-game vultures, gives up a lot of map control in return for (at least theoretical) indestructibility. Day[9] talks a lot about this - he'll also use the analogy of a "ball" in sports - especially about games on Match Point where the design of the map makes who has map control really really clear.
Yes, good scouting always helps with map control, but it's not the only factor. Tanks, for example, really improve Terran's control with their range, while mutalisks do the same for Zerg because of their damage output and mobility.
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On April 07 2010 22:49 Musoeun wrote:Show nested quote +On April 07 2010 13:20 Two_DoWn wrote:
The immortal should be a unit that provides staying power- it allows a protoss army to move forward in the face of fire by drawing fire and staying alive for a long time. This in no way requires hardened shields, although that ability is cool. Instead, Immortals could simply be beefy- give them massive shields and health that allows them to stay alive, without discriminating against certain types of units. In this circumstance, the immortal fits its role, a hard to kill unit that provides staying power for protoss without forcing other races out of certain tech choices just because certain units would be overly ineffective. The problem with this is that you're essentially arguing for the Immortal to be a ground-based Capital unit, similar to the Thor or Ultralisk. This is fine in concept, but it doesn't fit - within the game outline - at the Immortal's current tech level. You would have to move it to be a Robo Support unit, or it's OP for its in-game availability.
There are many things to consider here.
First, in response to the OP, whether you call it a 'role' or a 'counter' is irrelevant. The difference is in your perception of the unit and your semantic interpretation of those two words.
When Blizzard introduced the Immortal they showed how it is a powerful counter against the Siege Tank. They didn't explain it that way because that is it's only purpose and without Siege Tanks in the game it's worthless. They did it that way to highlight its usefulness. They could have just as easily shown Immortals being dropped next to a Planetary Fortress which also would highlight their usefulness with the Hardened Shields and + damage to armored targets.
As for the quote above which suggests changing the Immortal to be a "beefy unit with massive shields", that would not only be incredibly boring, but would completely negate the Immortals main weakness. Immortals get torn up by a group a low damage/high attack speed units. A group of Marines would fare far worse against a "ground-based capital". That is why removing or altering Hardened Shields would be bad, not because of how it would fit in tier 2.
Finally, Blizzard hasn't drastically altered or ruined the game by creating the Immortal, the Marauder, and the Roach. They've merely tipped the balance of the scales to place more importance on scouting. Yes, it is true that if you blindly make units you will lose. However, that is a GOOD thing.
If you don't continue to scout out your opponent throughout the game you risk missing a tech or transition that you didn't anticipate and being punished severely for it. Like it or not, that is where SC2 is headed, and I for one support this direction.
With that said, I am NOT advocating the current balance state of the game. I realize that everything isn't perfect yet. I think the Roach's reduction in armor in patch 8 is a great step in the right direction. Moving the Marauder's slowing effect to the Tech Lab is also a good step. These units don't need to be removed. They need to be tweaked (along with a number of other things). That's why we have a beta, is to find and fix slight imperfections like these.
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On April 08 2010 04:07 Musoeun wrote:
I believe that you are not using "map control" as usually understood. I would like to clarify this before answering any of your points. You seem to be talking about scouting, as you cite observers and overlords. Terran have sensor tower and scan, as well as - as you mentioned - viable scouting from their harass units: reaper, hellion, banshee, viking. The major problem with the Xel'Naga watch towers is that it actually reduces the difficulties of scouting as well as the "risks" - the units you have to send. It's still a cool mechanic though.
"Map control" refers to actual physical control of the map: do you have units or can you move units around the map safely? How much map control is necessary depends on the matchup and builds and stuff: to go back to TvZ, a bio Terran is aiming for map control with marauding groups of m&m, while a mech Terran, after the early-game vultures, gives up a lot of map control in return for (at least theoretical) indestructibility. Day[9] talks a lot about this - he'll also use the analogy of a "ball" in sports - especially about games on Match Point where the design of the map makes who has map control really really clear.
Yes, good scouting always helps with map control, but it's not the only factor. Tanks, for example, really improve Terran's control with their range, while mutalisks do the same for Zerg because of their damage output and mobility.
Yep allright sorry for mixing that up. However, I don't think having view on important parts of the map has the effect it should have. Nor does map control, as it mostly means that as soon as your opponent wants to do something and moves out it comes to one huge clash that often decides the game already.
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On April 08 2010 05:21 SilverSeraphim wrote:Finally, Blizzard hasn't drastically altered or ruined the game by creating the Immortal, the Marauder, and the Roach. They've merely tipped the balance of the scales to place more importance on scouting. Yes, it is true that if you blindly make units you will lose. However, that is a GOOD thing.
If you don't continue to scout out your opponent throughout the game you risk missing a tech or transition that you didn't anticipate and being punished severely for it. Like it or not, that is where SC2 is headed, and I for one support this direction.
Wait, what? This wasn't the case in Brood War? 'cuz damn I have definitely seen 'toss players gg over just seeing the cloaked outline of an incoming Dark Templar because they ignored getting an Observatory up to scout incoming DTs and to detect them as well in favor of trying to eek out a stronger first push.
Not to mention the constant TvT concern of Wraiths, TvZ interest in if Zerg is going Spire or Hydra Den early and then when Zerg goes T3 and if Ultras or Defiles are inbound first, etc...
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How units died in BW:
3-12 at a time to lurker / storm / reaver
3-9 at a time to plague + muta
1-3 at a time to tank
2-9 at a time to a mine
1 at a time to melee and ranged units.
Faster with better concave
Slower when behind choke
How units die in SC2:
2-4 at a time to Colossus
1-5 at a time to tanks
1-5 at a time to hellions
3-12 at a time to seeker missile (Much less in high level games because this is pretty easy to dodge if you are paying attention, at least when compared to plague / storm / reaver shot)
1 at a time to melee and ranged units.
Faster with better concave or fungal / storm
Slower when behind choke or under guardian shield
Note: Concave and Choke can be created with Force Field
BW ground units with substantial hitpoints: Ultralisk, (zealot to an extent considering cost / resistance to explosive damage)
SC2 ground units with substantial hitpoints: Ultralisk, Immortal, Thor, (marauder and roach to an extent considering their costs)
It think the major reason why people don't like SC2 is that terran isn't one giant glass cannon any more and every race is more like protoss due to the addition of low tier units that don't die in one shot, and as a consequence things just don't die as fast anymore.
It still is a good game, and balanced. But the game is a bit more boring with the removal of things like 2 lurkers at the top of a ramp killing hundreds of marines, 1 storm or 1 reaver shot killing every zerg unit and every terran barracks unit, mines and with them the concept of a push (Notice all the new SC2 users calling timing attacks "pushes"? This is because there is no such thing as a push in SC2, the name now means timing attack)
I think this is why people bitch about the "armored trifecta". Its the main substantial difference between BW and SC2, and all it does is make the game less exciting because whole tier 1 armies don't die to a handful of tier 2/3 units any more.
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On April 08 2010 05:21 SilverSeraphim wrote:
First, in response to the OP, whether you call it a 'role' or a 'counter' is irrelevant. The difference is in your perception of the unit and your semantic interpretation of those two words.
It really does make a difference, though. Is a hydralisk a dragoon counter, or a ranged infantry unit? If I think of the hydralisk as "dragoon killer", then any changes I make are making sure that hydras still kill goons, and something else kills hydras: we're talking hard counters here as the mentality of the game design. If hydras are "ranged infantry" or "ranged units at tier 1.5", then they a spot, that another unit doesn't fill, and the game can be balanced on whole army terms: hydras get nerfed if they're used for everything, and buffed if no one ever uses them (at least if they're needed: see the scout).
Now consider the Immortal. If it's designed to "take punishment" - that is to draw heavy fire which won't actually kill it, that's great, as long as there's a place for it in the game. My argument was that there actually isn't a place for it, because the siege tank is the only unit that does anything like that much damage. Against most units, 10 damage is enough damage being done that the Immortal has to be hugely buffed to actually make it able to survive, making it in danger of being OP within its race. And say, vs. Protoss there's no use for it, really, because nothing does that much damage, really.
The immortal's shield, if we're going to make the thing useful, should either be focused vs. a specific damage type or vs. a specific unit size, not an arbitrary number of damage which, in fact, is only really a relevant difference against tanks. For instance, have the shield deflect/reduce all ranged attacks, give the Immo a short range so it has to wade in close - and then patch, to make sure it's not too massive for the AoE/line/melee/magic attacks it's vulnerable to to kill it. And you also have to think about how the shield treats storm, or a hunter-seeker, or so on.
What I'm getting at is that the way the immortal is stat-ed and designed makes it clearly anti-tank and that's about it, so it's OP to make it useful, where it would actually make more sense to change the shield mechanic slightly.
On April 08 2010 05:21 SilverSeraphim wrote:
Finally, Blizzard hasn't drastically altered or ruined the game by creating the Immortal, the Marauder, and the Roach. They've merely tipped the balance of the scales to place more importance on scouting. Yes, it is true that if you blindly make units you will lose. However, that is a GOOD thing.
If you don't continue to scout out your opponent throughout the game you risk missing a tech or transition that you didn't anticipate and being punished severely for it. Like it or not, that is where SC2 is headed, and I for one support this direction.
This is nonsense on two counts. First, the existence of a particular unit or its particular stats doesn't change whether or not you have to scout. Pretty much any time you have two units your opponent could be building, you have to scout. You Have To Scout. It's like rule number 2 of RTS, right after Make Stuff.
Second, the problem - or the alleged problem - with Immortal, Marauder, and Roach is that they're so OP compared to the rest of their native race's tech tree that they made the most effective strategies in all situations "Rush to X unit". This is (or pre-patch, assuming the patch is actual, was) most true of the marauder, but is a problem that needs to be addressed - and when there really is only one "best" opening, that actually decreases the need for scouting.
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@OP : All 3 units mentioned (Roach immortal and marauder) fill a role that previously did not exist as clearly in SC:BW.
Tank.
Only a few units could fill this role in SC:BW but none of them really were made for it they just happened to fit the role.
These units were:
Vultures to soak dragoon fire so for your tanks
Zelots and archons due to their high shield/hp to take hits while goons/templar dealt the damage
Lings to soak for lurker hydra and ultras to soak for lings
For cost all three new units deal lower damage per second than other units available to the race however they have the ability to take much more damage than their high dps counter parts.
Examples:
Roaches due to their short range are always closest to the enemy line so they are targeted before the much high damage dealing but lower hp and lower base armored hydra.
Marauders deal slightly less dps than 1 marine vs light and slightly less dps than 2 marines vs armored marines also scale better with both stim and +attack upgrades in terms of damage output. While marauders do not have a shorter range than marines they do slow down incoming attackers (this now requires an upgrade as of patch 8) thus increasing the amount of damage the marines can deal before melee/short range units can start attacking such as roaches lings and zelots.
Immortals do the most damage out of the 3 new tanking units in SC2 and also can take the most hits due to it taking a minimum of 10 hits just to break the shield. However, this comes at the cost of being much more expensive than the other 2 and requiring 4 supply each. Immortals, due to the massive ability to take damage, are extremely effective at increasing the overall efficiency of the rest of your units.
The only issues I see with this dynamic is low level play may revolve completely around tank units because they are fairly effective vs everything and they do not require micro to control but I believe they fill a useful role in SC2 that may require some re-balancing but certainly not remaking.
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I very much agree with the OP that armies should have a diverse base of units that are there for their own sake rather than a unt A gets +dmg to Unit B gets +dmg to unit C gets +dmg to unit A style.
However, DoomBacon comes very close to my own belief on what is currently the issue, not with balance, but with the spirt and structure of the game.
On April 08 2010 08:04 DoomBacon wrote:+ Show Spoiler +@OP : All 3 units mentioned (Roach immortal and marauder) fill a role that previously did not exist as clearly in SC:BW.
Tank.
Only a few units could fill this role in SC:BW but none of them really were made for it they just happened to fit the role.
These units were:
Vultures to soak dragoon fire so for your tanks
Zelots and archons due to their high shield/hp to take hits while goons/templar dealt the damage
Lings to soak for lurker hydra and ultras to soak for lings
For cost all three new units deal lower damage per second than other units available to the race however they have the ability to take much more damage than their high dps counter parts.
Examples:
Roaches due to their short range are always closest to the enemy line so they are targeted before the much high damage dealing but lower hp and lower base armored hydra.
Marauders deal slightly less dps than 1 marine vs light and slightly less dps than 2 marines vs armored marines also scale better with both stim and +attack upgrades in terms of damage output. While marauders do not have a shorter range than marines they do slow down incoming attackers (this now requires an upgrade as of patch 8) thus increasing the amount of damage the marines can deal before melee/short range units can start attacking such as roaches lings and zelots.
Immortals do the most damage out of the 3 new tanking units in SC2 and also can take the most hits due to it taking a minimum of 10 hits just to break the shield. However, this comes at the cost of being much more expensive than the other 2 and requiring 4 supply each. Immortals, due to the massive ability to take damage, are extremely effective at increasing the overall efficiency of the rest of your units.
The only issues I see with this dynamic is low level play may revolve completely around tank units because they are fairly effective vs everything and they do not require micro to control but I believe they fill a useful role in SC2 that may require some re-balancing but certainly not remaking.
Specifically, I believe the issues originated with the high hp of the roach, (although having 2 armour was also rather obscene, it was not the primary issue), which necessitated the addition of the +armour damage modification which resulted in significant reverberations throughout the game (notice that only zerg has no +armour units, as roaches can deal with roaches).
However, in an instance of a rather epic fail, I have been unable to discover how to create a new topic in which to discuss it. 
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IMO the whole problem starts with "rock, paper, scissors". Having bonus damage against certain types of units is a neat idea, but it is also a choke which restricts the usefulness of many. An example:
The Phoenix is an air-to-air fighter, which deals "5 + 5 vs. light" damage. Coupled wtih its Graviton Beam it seems capable of killing ground units (in a group), but due to the damage bonus it is actually only feasible to do it with light units. Since many of the "bread and butter units" are armored the Phoenix is more or less incapable of fulfilling the role it might play.
The example above shows that the pet idea of Blizzard is backfiring and actually limiting the role of certain units, while making others really really really good. Roaches and Hydralisks are not encumbered by any "+X vs. Y" damage and are two of the strongest units in the game. I am not saying that removing bonus damage would be better, just that in some cases it really screws up some units.
In the original Starcraft there was no bonus damage, right? A unit was good because of the way it worked, i.e. the super range and splash damage of the tank or the spider mines from the vulture. This is the better way to make units desirable instead of simply slapping on a damage boost and trying to make it fair by only making it work against some units.
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On April 09 2010 15:21 Rabiator wrote:In the original Starcraft there was no bonus damage, right? A unit was good because of the way it worked, i.e. the super range and splash damage of the tank or the spider mines from the vulture. This is the better way to make units desirable instead of simply slapping on a damage boost and trying to make it fair by only making it work against some units.
It had the inverse of bonus damage, attack types that fared variably against different armor types (ie explosive doing 50% to small, 75% to medium, and 100% to large).
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You know, I was completely on board until you started talking about the three "imbalanced" units everyone keeps bitching about. I was under the impression this was something other than a complain thread. Clearly I was mistaken.
Roaches don't "counter" anything. They're just beefy units that are appropriate for massing. Same with marauders. In the absense of armored-type units, Marauders still have a purpose thanks to their slowing attack. Of course they do well vs armored unit types, but that in itself doesn't make a unit that is only counter-focused. Dragoons did well against vultures in BW, and vultures did well against marines/zealots/zerglings. Why are different standards being applied here in SC2?
You claim to be a religious watcher of Day9's stream. Did you catch the one with his PvT opening where he uses immortals to harass (D9D #95 4/05 My Cool PvT Opening)? They have their uses outside being anti-tanks. +armored damage is also great against buildings (Which are coincidentally armored). You're right when you said the game isn't PvT, but to a large degree it is PvBuildings. Sunken colonies still need to busted in PvZ, don't they?
There really should be a rule against posting in the SC2 section if you don't have a beta key. I'm really getting sick of reading the same thread posted in different words three times a day, and each time seeing it's somebody who has never even played the beta. >:[
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There is nothing inherent to the design of the units that makes them either "negative" or "positive"; it's just a matter how you're phrasing things. You could call psi storm a "negative counter" to lings or a "positive role" to aoe damage. just as easily as you could call hardened shield a "positive role" to large damage tanking or a "negative counter" to thors. There's no difference.
A much better distinction to make would be specific purpose vs. general purpose.
Let's think about warcraft 3 as an example.. (ignoring the actual gameplay which people disliked). Why was it so difficult to balance? Why weren't all units viable in the game? Well, there were 4 races, 24 heroes, item drops and creeping, and a bunch of units having many spells / abilities. You can't really have so many options and have them all be equally valid. (despite this, blizzard did manage to balance the game pretty well)
I think in sc2 the addition of the new units and new abilities does make the game more complex than sc1 from a purely unit standpoint, but it doesn't hold a shred to the complexity of wc3 and it will be balanced eventually. At the core of the game, the gameplay is still simple, fun, and fast paced, and feels very much like starcraft.. that is what will shine through in the end. I just watched day9s most recent daily an he had a game vs. Jinro where he immortal harassed. Well, the game stretched on for quite a while, and I have to say watching it felt like watching a good old game of starcraft 1.
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EPT![[image loading]](http://www.starcraft2.com/features/protoss/images/immortal-thumb2.jpg)
