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I was just reading a thread about Ultras and thinking about why the Ultralisk sucks. I posted basically this, but I sort of want to hear more thoughts about it and it was kind of off-topic in that thread.
This post will be similar to Lalush's great post at http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/viewmessage.php?topic_id=121769
I think Lalush was correct but he missed some parts of the terrible terrible damage syndrome. In SC2 there are several factors that cause damage dealt to go way up.
I think it was sort of a cascade of things that lead to terrible terrible damage happening:
First, moving shot was removed for many units.
Second, this leads to their damage being increased, otherwise they are not viable anymore. Imagine if Vultures in SC1 controlled like Valkyries and had to stand still for a second or two to fire... They would be much much weaker units.
Third, units clump together very very tightly which causes ranged units to both do more damage overall and to gain an even greater advantage over melee units when in medium-large numbers. This causes melee and short range units to be very weak and either not used much vs primarily ranged armies (think Zergling and Ultralisk) or have such insane stats that they are still good (remember 1 supply 2 armor Roaches?).
Fourth, units are added that are simply put very powerful. Roaches at 1 supply, Marauders, (basically a Dragoon from SC1 with less HP and less cost) Banelings with very high damage, (they need it due to how inflated stats are) Reapers with 18 damage to Light, Thors.
Fifth, some units are buffed defensively for purposes of surviving vs these terrible terrible damage units. Marines gain HP, defensive buildings gain HP, Roaches have insane HP for their cost, Immortals have Hardened Shields.
What we have here is an arms race. Units keep being buffed to compete with the new stronger versions of other units. After several rounds of buffs, (and some nerfs) damage is very high. Too high in my opinion.
This is what I feel is inflated:
Marauders with 20 explosive damage (Marauders are essentially cheaper Dragoons with less HP that don't need a range upgrade and instead have a cheap snare upgrade)
Marines went from 40 hp to 45-55 hp
Reapers at Rax tech being able to hop cliffs and do 18 damage to Light
Roaches doing 16 normal damage
Hydras doing 12 normal damage instead of 10 explosive (yes I know it's 2 supply vs 1)
Banelings doing 35 damage per Baneling to Light units
Air units having inflated damage numbers in general to make up for them all essentially being Valkyries: (not being able to move shoot like SC1)
Banshees with 24(!!) ground damage
Vikings with 28 to armored and 20 to light air damage
BCs and Carriers with absolutely insane damage rates (each interceptor does 5x2 !)
Charged Void Rays doing crazy damage, able to drop anything armored extremely rapidly
Phoenixes doing 20 damage to Light
Brood Lords spawning insane amounts of meat shield for free
Vultures (Hellions) went from 20 concussive to 24 concussive + splash (this is very much related to the moving shot scenario from above, the unit loses its smooth control and to still be a useful unit needs higher damage)
Dark Templars went from 40 normal to 45 normal
Missile Turrets went from 20 explosive to 24 normal and went from 200 HP to 250
Immortals doing 50 damage to armored
Tanks doing 60 normal damage in siege mode, with splash, is insane. The tank's role is 100% flipped from BW. In BW they do explosive damage and so they do great vs large units (dragoons, ultras, lurkers, etc) and poorly vs small units (think zealots) but in SC2 they do less damage but it's normal, so they are great at killing tightly packed clumps of low HP units (zerglings, marines, banelings, zealots) but not as good at killing high HP large units like Ultras, Thors, Colossus, etc
Goliath x3 (Thor) went from 36 normal damage to ground in BW to 60 normal to ground in SC2, and 60 explosive to air in BW to 48 'concussive' (sorta) plus splash in SC2
Bunkers went from 350 HP to 400
Photon Cannons went from 200 HP to 300
I am probably forgetting some other inflated things also. I think people sometimes lose perspective at how much damage has gone up in this game. So many units have received a damage buff, or have been made easier to use, or have been made more effective by tightly packed units, or have been given splash damage.
I think the fact that so many things have been inflated lead to races needing super powerful weapons to compete. I'm talking about things like:
Immortal's Hardened Shield and 50 damage to armored
Crazy Ultralisk HP (it had 600 HP and was still considered weak!)
Brood Lords spawning huge amounts of meat shield
Marauders being basically cheaper Dragoons
Marines getting extra HP
Colossus being essentially a Reaver with the micro done for you. In BW to have a weapon as powerful as a Colossus, you needed a Shuttle to carry the Reaver if you wanted it for anything other than defending one spot. In SC2 you can just make 10 Colossus and a-move them with your army. It makes the game far easier and increases terrible terrible damage syndrome since (correct me if I'm wrong) a big reason why even progamers couldn't have 10+ Reavers with their army was because the micro is too hard.
What I'd do:
Add a little bit of chaos when you move a pack of units. They don't need to spread out and go everywhere but they shouldn't stick together like a super tight ball either. Call it 'Battle Chaos' or something. Units pack together way way too much in this game, it increases the 'terrible terrible damage' syndrome that the game has and it looks stupid and unrealistic.
Slow down damage across the board, try to un-inflate damage that has gone so high.
This would let Zerglings and Ultras be better units, with lower damage they have more time to reach targets.
I'd change Hydras and Roaches to 1food units, lower their costs, and nerf appropriately. Zerg needs to feel like more of a swarm.
Give air units (all units really but air in particular) back the sharpness of control that you had in SC1. Right now when a unit fires it's rooted in place for far longer than it is in SC1. Most units feel like a Valkyrie, so they need to have super high damage to compensate. Lower the damage and give them mobility back. Look at Lalush's post I link at the top if you don't know what I mean.
Make the Thor smaller and reduce the cost by 1/2 to 2/3s. Mech needs a Goliath (even though mech is very powerful now, I think that's at least in part because the counters are so strong: armored air units, the Factory cannot deal with armored air units)
Change Tank siege mode damage to something like 40 + 30 vs armored.
What do you think? Am I crazy?
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I don't think you're crazy but I do think it has to be this way based on the way the game was designed.
First you have the general removal of smooth control over units, which boosts the need for damage inflation and higher range.
Secondly you have the addition of macro mechanics that speed up gameplay. I think this is the second important reason why tech switches need to be as strong as they are in SC2. Tier 1.5 needs to demolish tier 1 in order for the players to be able to survive. The added strength of all-ins and the general uselessness of scouting information pushes the developers to boost damage. It pushes them to boost how hard higher tiers counter lower tiers.
I think Liquid`Drone's article about scouting and "the art of defence" was brilliant in explaining the game's faults in this regard.
On March 29 2010 22:13 Liquid`Drone wrote:With regards to scouting, ZvZ is the worst by far. In Brood War, ZvZ was referred to as the rock-paper-scissor matchup because of build-order determined luck. This occurred even though it had the longest uninterrupted period of scouting, because the initial build orders had to be chosen before scouting could be done. In Starcraft 2, while the early game build orders seem to be of less importance (in particular because zerglings are less dangerous in small numbers), there is a long window where no scouting whatsoever can be undertaken, which forces both players to make pretty blind guesses with regard to economy. Now, in Zerg vs Zerg the strategy isn't much of an issue at all - both players will build roaches. If they both establish expansions, one or both players might also add hydralisks to his force. But the economy is of extreme importance, and this was sort of, the saving grace of ZvZ in BW: You always knew how many drones your opponent had, thus it was always possible to make the correct adjustments. In SC2, you don't even know if the guy has 16 or 24 drones, meaning that you will be playing blind with regards to whether expanding, attempting an all out attack or making slightly more drones than him is the correct choice. The current problem where you can only build roaches, and eventually hydralisks, is significantly less of a concern than the lack of scouting, and in fact, if more strategies become viable, then it becomes even more important to fix the scouting problem. If we compare it to Brood War, we can see that the zvz matchup doesn't require more than two buildable units to work out (unless we actually have higher demands for sc2 than we do for bw - personally I'm quite content with an equally good game.  ). Of course, I also hope they make non-roach builds a viable option, and it seems like has Blizzard tried to do this with their previous patch, but it is secondary to the problem of early game scouting. [...] Now, as I have stated, scouting itself is not necessarily in worse shape than it was in BW. Zergs would often have to make the decision as to whether they wanted to sacrifice an overlord to find out which route terran was taking. Protoss players would often hide probes pretty early so they'd be able to scout zerg after the zergling containment made it impossible to leave his natural - causing quite the loss of mining time. In for example PvT, I have certainly not felt like I was playing blind. The real problem arises when the problematic scouting is combined with a real sc2 problem, and one aspect where the game needs to be more like its precursor: Defense is weakened. [...] However when you add warpgates into this equation and shuttles become able to constantly reinforce, high ground stops giving an advantage and static defense (apart from the massive planetary fortress) is comparably crappy, this won't be possible. In SC2, both players need to constantly have enough units to defend against an attack at any given moment, because no units are much better at defense than attack, terrain bonuses are significantly smaller, and even the time-advantage the defender enjoyed in BW is partially removed. This promotes a style of play where players want to build enough units to attack at a particular moment, rather than in BW, where players could also opt for defending for a certain period of time to allow themselves to either reach a level of tech or economy that would grant them a huge advantage at a later point.
You should read the article in its entirety. Drone and the Art of Defence
I find it odd how Blizzard sort of realise this is a problem, since they've obviously been nerfing pretty much every core unit since the beginning of the beta, but they don't seem to want to consider that it might have something to do with the game's inherent mechanics rather than the balance of units.
They haven't tried tweaking macro mechanics at all. I'm pretty sure the values they initially put in: 4larvas per inject, mule strength, chrono boost strength etc, didn't go through extensive testing, but that they rather were arbitrary values.
If they nerfed macro mechanics (like halfed their efficiency), I think they'd be able to slow down gameplay sufficiently in the early game so that the mid game wouldn't be bottlenecked like it is now. Both players currently have to continue building units rather than continually expanding while harassing/battleing.
The game needs to be slowed down in my opinion (with regards to the macro mechanics). It would allow for greater diversity in the mid and lategame.
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Great read for both 1st and 2nd posters.
One other strange damage inversion I'd like to point out is air units. In SC, you had muta, devourer, scourge, guardian, wraith, valk, BC, corsair, scout, carrier.
4 were essentially final tier units (guardians, BC, carrier, devourer).
The remaining units really couldn't lay much 'smack' down on the ground compared to the air. Scout and Wraith both had really pissy ground attacks. Mutas were a bit of an exception making them the 'super harasser' and the rest were AA. The banshee and VR by comparison have rather devastating AtoG at the same tier. I always figured the old balances were part of the GtoA counter mechanism (hydras/marines/dragoons) but to keep AtoA fairly decisive and not drawn out. That design scheme has been thrown out it seems. It makes air harass a bit too easy (kind of making defence harder again).
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I agree with the broodlord being able to spawn a wall of broodlings for free, it would be nice if it were tweaked so that broodlings had to be purchased like scarabs at a reaver in BW.
If this were changed, then the number of broodlings should be increased to 3, perhaps four maximum at once.
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Dustin Browder suffers from terrible, terrible brain damage
User was warned for this post
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Some defence building don't need to be buffed, I don't know if you ever tryed to kill a turrets with mutalisk but they get literraly raped, 1 turrets can screw up your muta switch tech and you loose the high gas investement.
The anti ground work as a support to your unit, protoss with their mass void ray use canons to block the ramp and it is working fine.
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Yea the battles in SC2 are too fast. There isn't that much time to do SC1-like micro. Also the micro mechanics are worse than in SC1 so it's terrible.
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I think this should be a blog. The topic has been brought up many many times.
This thread is a long winded way of saying the obvious:
In SC2, units can do more and even over double of their original damage depending on the target.
In BW, units could only do LESS or equal their original damage depending on the target.
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United States47024 Posts
On May 24 2010 01:29 Goobahfish wrote:
4 were essentially final tier units (guardians, BC, carrier, devourer).
The remaining units really couldn't lay much 'smack' down on the ground compared to the air. Scout and Wraith both had really pissy ground attacks. Mutas were a bit of an exception making them the 'super harasser' and the rest were AA. The banshee and VR by comparison have rather devastating AtoG at the same tier. I always figured the old balances were part of the GtoA counter mechanism (hydras/marines/dragoons) but to keep AtoA fairly decisive and not drawn out. That design scheme has been thrown out it seems. It makes air harass a bit too easy (kind of making defence harder again).
I definitely agree with this. In particular, I think Blizzard seems to dislike how the air unit dynamic in SC1 played out. The low-tier air (Scout/Muta/Wraith) is relegated primarily to harassment and disruption of units that can't fight back (like Siege Tanks and High Templars), with a few exceptions in TvT, ZvZ, and mech ZvT. Blizzard probably wanted the Banshee and Void Ray to play out reasonably in mid-game unit compositions rather than just being harass/joke units.
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On May 24 2010 05:13 zomgzergrush wrote:
I think this should be a blog. The topic has been brought up many many times.
This thread is a long winded way of saying the obvious:
In SC2, units can do more and even over double of their original damage depending on the target.
In BW, units could only do LESS or equal their original damage depending on the target.
No, this thread is not about your perception issues.
It wouldn't matter in the slightest if a Marauder had a base damage of 20 and dealt 50% to light units.
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On May 24 2010 05:13 zomgzergrush wrote:
I think this should be a blog. The topic has been brought up many many times.
This thread is a long winded way of saying the obvious:
In SC2, units can do more and even over double of their original damage depending on the target.
In BW, units could only do LESS or equal their original damage depending on the target.
Junk post. There's no difference deriving from which damage value is considered the 'base' except what you see in your tooltip.
EDIT: sarnath'd
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On May 24 2010 00:27 LaLuSh wrote:I don't think you're crazy but I do think it has to be this way based on the way the game was designed. First you have the general removal of smooth control over units, which boosts the need for damage inflation and higher range. Secondly you have the addition of macro mechanics that speed up gameplay. I think this is the second important reason why tech switches need to be as strong as they are in SC2. Tier 1.5 needs to demolish tier 1 in order for the players to be able to survive. The added strength of all-ins and the general uselessness of scouting information pushes the developers to boost damage. It pushes them to boost how hard higher tiers counter lower tiers. I think Liquid`Drone's article about scouting and "the art of defence" was brilliant in explaining the game's faults in this regard. Show nested quote +On March 29 2010 22:13 Liquid`Drone wrote:With regards to scouting, ZvZ is the worst by far. In Brood War, ZvZ was referred to as the rock-paper-scissor matchup because of build-order determined luck. This occurred even though it had the longest uninterrupted period of scouting, because the initial build orders had to be chosen before scouting could be done. In Starcraft 2, while the early game build orders seem to be of less importance (in particular because zerglings are less dangerous in small numbers), there is a long window where no scouting whatsoever can be undertaken, which forces both players to make pretty blind guesses with regard to economy. Now, in Zerg vs Zerg the strategy isn't much of an issue at all - both players will build roaches. If they both establish expansions, one or both players might also add hydralisks to his force. But the economy is of extreme importance, and this was sort of, the saving grace of ZvZ in BW: You always knew how many drones your opponent had, thus it was always possible to make the correct adjustments. In SC2, you don't even know if the guy has 16 or 24 drones, meaning that you will be playing blind with regards to whether expanding, attempting an all out attack or making slightly more drones than him is the correct choice. The current problem where you can only build roaches, and eventually hydralisks, is significantly less of a concern than the lack of scouting, and in fact, if more strategies become viable, then it becomes even more important to fix the scouting problem. If we compare it to Brood War, we can see that the zvz matchup doesn't require more than two buildable units to work out (unless we actually have higher demands for sc2 than we do for bw - personally I'm quite content with an equally good game. ). Of course, I also hope they make non-roach builds a viable option, and it seems like has Blizzard tried to do this with their previous patch, but it is secondary to the problem of early game scouting. [...] Now, as I have stated, scouting itself is not necessarily in worse shape than it was in BW. Zergs would often have to make the decision as to whether they wanted to sacrifice an overlord to find out which route terran was taking. Protoss players would often hide probes pretty early so they'd be able to scout zerg after the zergling containment made it impossible to leave his natural - causing quite the loss of mining time. In for example PvT, I have certainly not felt like I was playing blind. The real problem arises when the problematic scouting is combined with a real sc2 problem, and one aspect where the game needs to be more like its precursor: Defense is weakened. [...] However when you add warpgates into this equation and shuttles become able to constantly reinforce, high ground stops giving an advantage and static defense (apart from the massive planetary fortress) is comparably crappy, this won't be possible. In SC2, both players need to constantly have enough units to defend against an attack at any given moment, because no units are much better at defense than attack, terrain bonuses are significantly smaller, and even the time-advantage the defender enjoyed in BW is partially removed. This promotes a style of play where players want to build enough units to attack at a particular moment, rather than in BW, where players could also opt for defending for a certain period of time to allow themselves to either reach a level of tech or economy that would grant them a huge advantage at a later point. You should read the article in its entirety. Drone and the Art of DefenceI find it odd how Blizzard sort of realise this is a problem, since they've obviously been nerfing pretty much every core unit since the beginning of the beta, but they don't seem to want to consider that it might have something to do with the game's inherent mechanics rather than the balance of units. They haven't tried tweaking macro mechanics at all. I'm pretty sure the values they initially put in: 4larvas per inject, mule strength, chrono boost strength etc, didn't go through extensive testing, but that they rather were arbitrary values. If they nerfed macro mechanics (like halfed their efficiency), I think they'd be able to slow down gameplay sufficiently in the early game so that the mid game wouldn't be bottlenecked like it is now. Both players currently have to continue building units rather than continually expanding while harassing/battleing. The game needs to be slowed down in my opinion (with regards to the macro mechanics). It would allow for greater diversity in the mid and lategame.
wheres the article about macro u promised to write ~~, beta is ending and blizzard wont do shit if nobody will touch this subject (i also agree macro is broken in this game)
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Starcraft 2 is not Broodwar. That is all
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On May 24 2010 07:44 shawabawa wrote:
Starcraft 2 is not Broodwar. That is all
You know, I'm glad we have you here to bring that up.
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On May 24 2010 07:44 shawabawa wrote:
Starcraft 2 is not Broodwar. That is all
but i think people simply feel that SC2 should be BW + rather than BW -
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On May 24 2010 07:48 See.Blue wrote:Show nested quote +On May 24 2010 07:44 shawabawa wrote:
Starcraft 2 is not Broodwar. That is all You know, I'm glad we have you here to bring that up.
I guess I just get annoyed with people repeatedly comparing everything to broodwar. Yes everything does more damage. Just that make the game imbalanced? No. Does it make it boring? Not in my opinion. It's still a great game, everything doing more damage means nothing because it's a completely different game. It's like saying "units in wc3 do soo much more damage than in starcraft!". Who cares?
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I liked the mechanincs,unit stats etc in BW better,but I like the worker rally,mass building select etc here.So im torn 
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how many more of these posts is there going to be?
it seems people have been OVERSTATING the obvious every single patch
none of this seems to me to be constructive to WHY you dont like the changes
it just seems like people QQ over something "nerfed" or "imba" and dont bother to give reasons for it
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EPT
