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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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i think SC2 is alot better in term of game design philosophy than BW. in SC1, we had too many useless units.
Zerg: Queen and well.... infested terran
Terran: Valks and Ghost
Protoss: Scout and Dark Archon
In SC2 we currently have Ultra and Archon. Blizz is working hard to fix the ultra problem and given the ridiculous power of FF in WhiteRa v Idra, I think Blizz is getting close to finding the solution. And the Archon problem doesnt look hard to fix either.
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On May 24 2010 07:50 chraej. wrote:Show nested quote +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 -
It isn't BW anything, it's SC2
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On May 23 2010 23:52 Nadagast wrote: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)
I agree with most of what the OP said, without this part. It seems this game was designed to have a more diversified army and building strukture, i.e. not only building mass Factories, but also have Starports/Barracks to do AA for example. A Factory itself does not need a good AA alternative, you have got other building for that.
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There was no moving shot in SC. True moving shot are tanks in C&C series. There was however units with little/no firing animation such as vultures and tanks, and ina ddition to the patrol mechanics created this impression of moving shot.
The change with sc2 unit doing terriable terriable damage is not to do with individual damage amounts, but their rate of fire. Goliaths in sc has a rate of fire of 1 per sec, whereas vikings in ground does 2 times per second. On the other hand, high damage low rate of fire units such as vikings AtA still requires the same micro in sc. One just have to adjust the playing style and make the right decisions. For example, in a losing maruader vs stalker engagement, the better decison is to continue to fight and focus fire to inflict as much damage as possible rather than running away in which case stalker's movement + rate of fire means dead maurader for no gains.
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On May 24 2010 00:27 LaLuSh wrote:
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.
they have tweaked macro mechanics once, by reducing the time of chronoboost from 30sec to 20 sec, which is pretty significant.
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The problem that blizzard had was understanding what made the moments in broodwar when entire armies exploding so great. They often involved massive armies clashing together, like tanks on dragoons, while storms were going off on the tanks at the same time, so the entire map was filled with explosions. But this involved the interplay of tens of tanks and a bunch of templar, with a crap-load of zealots, dragoons, and vultures to soak up damage.
What blizzard messed up with was thinking: "wow, explosions are cool, dealing massive amounts of damage to opposing armies is exciting, and look how much fun the fans have watching them." So they went about it by making every unit able to deal a crap ton of damage to something. Where broodwar relied on entire armies, now you can do the same amount of damage as an entire control group of dragoons with a single immortal. Blizzard basically overdosed on damage and explosions: there are so many now, no single moment in a game truly feels epic.
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I think that the Marauder is the primary cause of terrible terrible damage syndrome in this game. It's certainly not the only one, but the Unholy Trinity has played a huge role in driving the balance of the game. Both the Immortal and the Roach finally got their well-deserved nerfs (although the Roach was a bit overboard), now Blizzard just needs to break the final link in the trifecta.
The main problem I have with the Marauder is that it's essentially a cheaper Dragoon that deals just as much damage while also having stimpack and the ability to be healed by Medivacs. In BW, if you wanted to deal that kind of damage, you needed a high-risk unit such as the Reaver, Siege Tank, and Lurker. Even if you massed Dragoons, you would never deal damage on the level of Marauders because Dragoons were so big and had poor pathing. But in SC2, all you need to do is mass a small pack of Marauders and you can pretty much demolish anything on the ground. Five Maruaders alone will give you 100 damage a volley, and when you consider the facts that stimpack allows you to attack twice per second and the fact that most Terrans will have at least 15 Marauders at a time, it's no wonder that everything melts so quickly in this game.
But of course it's not just the Marauder. There are plenty of units that share the same story as the Marauder: Thor, Immortal, Brood Lord, Ultralisk, Colossus. The only reason why the Ultra sucks is because it's so big that it can't reach anything before melting to mass Marauders. Using melee units for damage is pretty much futile since ranged damage is so ridiculously high. Blizzard instead blames all of this on the melee units being too weak and compensates by making them deal terrible terrible damage as well (see: Ultralisk buff). It's a nasty cycle that's making balance weaker and the game less fun.
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Vatican City State1650 Posts
On May 24 2010 07:39 USn wrote:Show nested quote +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
Sarnath? Lol are you from mtgsalvation?
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i think the OP is overreacting. but it has truth in it!
the ultralisk for example should have been buffed in the other direction. so it soaks up more (terrible, terrible) damage.
the roach should have been nerfed in the other direction, so it deals less damage but still regenerates that fast.
they did this with other units. this is why I think the OP is exagerating. storms for example deal far less terrible terrible damage than in BW. also the colossus deals less burst damage than he did before some patches. sentrys deal less. they buffed tanks so they soak up more. and iam pretty sure there are more examples of that.
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On May 24 2010 08:03 dybydx wrote:
i think SC2 is alot better in term of game design philosophy than BW. in SC1, we had too many useless units.
Zerg: Queen and well.... infested terran
Terran: Valks and Ghost
Protoss: Scout and Dark Archon
In SC2 we currently have Ultra and Archon. Blizz is working hard to fix the ultra problem and given the ridiculous power of FF in WhiteRa v Idra, I think Blizz is getting close to finding the solution. And the Archon problem doesnt look hard to fix either.
eh... valks are pretty useful and actually semi-standard in TvZ nowadays ( I can think of at least a dozen games that had a valk within the last 2 months). Others I'll give to ya (although DAs are pretty good sometimes but are just rarely used).
SC2 has reapers past 5 minutes, carriers, motherships, archons, ultralisks, and (I think) battlecruisers. They're about the same.
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On May 24 2010 08:42 orgolove wrote:Show nested quote +On May 24 2010 07:39 USn wrote: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 Sarnath? Lol are you from mtgsalvation?
That's not from salvation, and I don't post there, but yeah, I play magic 8).
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FREEAGLELAND26782 Posts
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Strongly agree with everything in the op, but specifically the (!!) next to banshee damage and the units moving in balls.
I feel like when I watch top level replays I know how every battle is going to play out if basic micro is used because of the lack of unit control and how units move.
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Agree on most points. Need to reduce the fire rate and damage of ranged units and increase the sharpness of control the player has over the units.
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On May 24 2010 08:03 dybydx wrote:
i think SC2 is alot better in term of game design philosophy than BW. in SC1, we had too many useless units.
Zerg: Queen and well.... infested terran
Terran: Valks and Ghost
Protoss: Scout and Dark Archon
In SC2 we currently have Ultra and Archon. Blizz is working hard to fix the ultra problem and given the ridiculous power of FF in WhiteRa v Idra, I think Blizz is getting close to finding the solution. And the Archon problem doesnt look hard to fix either.
this is a very bad post because:
brood war has more units than wings of liberty, and also wings of liberty will have 2 expansions, making potentially more "useless" units. so, arguing the point that "sc2 is better than bw as there are fewer useless units" is not only an unfair comparison (as wings isn't actually "the full sc2"), but also totally irrelevant as to which game is better
that said, I do agree with the main points of the op: the units clumping together and the underlying fact that units are dealing more damage than before
i think the blame can be put probably more on the macro mechanics than the actual unit stats, but ye
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Sorry, I had to bump this topic. I was going to post a topic about this but just found this topic instead.
As Plexa mentioned in this recent article, there are several articles and write-ups being overly critical about SC2 potential and being compared to SC1. I actually agree with most of those articles, but I feel the most important and obvious point was never quite made except here. There are suggestions of there aren't enough "wow" factor spells or "micro and macro are too easy", etc. While all true, this all really goes back to what we always make fun of: Terrible, Terrible Damage.
Think about it for a second, just why aren't there a lot of "wow" spells? Spells have really taken a backseat compared to the "terrible, terrible damage" output that all the units are dealing. Sure, fungal growth, storm, emp, force field, guardian shield, etc. all are very nice spells, but let's look at this a little more closely. Why are they nice spells? Is it because they deal damage/reduce damage? This is the obvious statement, but when you really think about it, these are nice spells for your army, that already deals insane dps, to just mow them down even faster. BW was the complete opposite ideal where units received damage reduction if they were attacking a different size unit, and I really think this is a much better system than applying bonus damage if they have armor.
To diverge briefly, go back to the OP and just look at the point he is making. Everything is bonus bonus bonus damage. Everything just deals absolutely insane damage to the opposing army, and a lot of this has to do with Blizzard's initial plan to implement the "un"holy trinity of roach, marauder, immortal, and also the lack of aerial stacking replaced with insane burst damage, which is explained in another article.
Going back to the spells, let's take a look. Fungal growth, what's the point of this spell? For the damage? It sure does decent amount of damage, but I really see it being the most effective immobilizing the opposing army from escaping and just allowing your insane dps mowing them down even faster. The similar counter part in BW would be plague, and we know just how exciting spell this is. Why is it exciting? It's quite simple. Plague is the real damage dealer. While both zerg and terran deal respectable damage with their armies, when you see that plague just plant over a pack of science vessels or pack of M&M, you can't help but be excited. Plague isn't just some damage supplement. It's not like your army is going to just simply DPS the science vessels down very quickly because they just don't have the ability to do so.
Storm? This spell isn't something that you can just ward off attacks anymore. It was a harsh and crucial timing to get storm out in PvZ in BW, you can literally turn the tides with that first templar. Obviously, this isn't saying storm can't be effective. But it has its "this spell does absolutely an insane amount of damage, I need to get the fuck out of this spell" to "well, it does damage, but me trying to dodge this storm doesn't mean too much sense his army will just mow me down while I try to move out of this storm". Battles just don't last long enough to warrant you to escape storms because in the end, you're just losing damage output and still dying. In BW, you have the incentive to dodge them, especially with hydras. It's not simply because storm will kill your hydras if you don't move them, but since armies don't deal insane dps, you can move around and avoid the high storm damage while the protoss can't really deal a large amount of damage while you're doing so. This is because speedlots have to chase you, and dragoons have, gasp, reduced damage against hydras. It's worth running out of the storm.
Force Field? Don't even get me started on this. It's an interesting spell, but the whole is to allow your insane dps army to just completely destroy even faster.
EMP? Well, it does remove opponent's energy. But once again, reducing shields just to allow the army to kill faster. Though the BW spell serves a similar purpose anyways.
Guardian Shield? Ah, well, to prevent our army to die in 5 seconds, let's make it die in about 8 seconds instead! Great spell, but still just promotes the idea of there is too much "terrible, terrible damage" in this game.
Oh yea, what does Blizzard try to do? Add Contaminate, although not used much, this once against just promotes high damage output. Why are they intent on making battles being shorter? I don't quite understand.
You can see Blizzard try to tone it down a little bit by reducing the damage on some of the units or nerfing their build time, but I feel the pace of the game has already been establish, and that just having bonus damage in the game will promote army dps being the core to any army as opposed to having those "wow" spells. But we can also kinda blame that on the smart-casting system in a way can't we.
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On May 23 2010 23:52 Nadagast wrote: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=121769I 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?
Honestly i agree with you 100%. But i dont think they can undo all this inflation now... its too late. Everything is splash this, aoe that, etc. Its all gotten out of control. With stuff dying so fast, and the clump of units being so strong, there is no reason to separate an army, and micro is pretty stale. Also yea it would be a nice change if they would separate the units a bit more like you suggest.
As for the 1 food hydra/roach, the only plus i really see is that the splash/aoe units of other races (colossi, tank, hellion, etc) wont be AS effective in theory because they can only attack so many units at once, however if you nerf hydra/roach those aoe units will just roast them faster than now. I dont know how it would actually impact battles but it would be interesting to see.
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I don't quite understand. So both damage and health are buffed ... shouldn't this theoretically make for battles that last equally long as their BW low damage/low health counterparts?
I can see how it becomes a problem when you focus down individual units, but otherwise it should balance out, no?
If I understand correctly, a lot of the problem lies in the fact that attack intervals are too short. If Blizzard is intent on keeping their current DPS/health values, many of the problems described here would be fixed by slowing the rate of fire down significantly, while increasing damage to keep DPS constant. This would allow for more intricate micro, playing around with ranges and focus firing a bit more, while also allowing units to escape storms. I do agree that many battles feel a bit too much like a constant stream of damage: if you are near the opponent, you take damage at a constant rate, as opposed to having many shots fired at you that all do a small amount of damage.
One thing that is worrisome though, is if RoF was lowered and damage compensated, abilities like Burrow and Blink would significantly increase in strength. Currently, it's a pretty micro intensive task to Burrow roaches whenever they are about to die, same goes for Blinking Stalkers to the back when they take too much damage. If damage was taken once every second (as opposed to the near-constant damage stream currently seen), however, almost anyone would have enough time to save that Stalker or Roach.
Also, I have my doubts about how players are currently using their armies. I'm not saying I would do it better, but I distinctly remember battles in BW that took a long time because players simply didn't use their entire army to charge at once. Dragoons would be spread out, focus firing down individual units, keeping their distance, Reavers would be behind those lines doing their thing, staying even further out of range, etc.
Most SC2 battles seem like a-move to me. Select your entire army, order them to attack whatever unit strikes your fancy and hope for the best. Ofcourse the good players micromanage their units for efficiency, but I have seen very little of the range 'dancing' that was typical in BW. Why is this?
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On July 24 2010 03:41 DarQraven wrote:
Most SC2 battles seem like a-move to me. Select your entire army, order them to attack whatever unit strikes your fancy and hope for the best. Ofcourse the good players micromanage their units for efficiency, but I have seen very little of the range 'dancing' that was typical in BW. Why is this?
Because the damage in sc2 is so high, not having everything attacking together and having units running around will get you destroyed. Full army A move is simply the best tactic in a lot of sc2 scenerios (especially since the range of units, zealot charge, etc pretty much put your army in a strong formation anyways). Plus with huge control groups u can do everything at once instead of doing it with packs of units here and there, which leads to less dancing.
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EPT
