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On August 03 2010 10:43 Rabiator wrote:Show nested quote +On August 03 2010 10:31 Ryuu314 wrote:On August 03 2010 10:24 Bibdy wrote:On August 03 2010 10:12 Rabiator wrote:
Terrans are the ones which suffer most from unsafe expansions, because they dont even have a cheap (~100 minerals) static defense to help defend against ground forces. Thus they are REQUIRED to sacrifice part of their army as base defense OR spend huge amounts of cash on a Planetary Fortresses which dont cover a whole lot of ground. The range of a PF is rather short with 7 (if you decide to upgrade) and that covers only slightly more ground (due to the size) than a Protoss / Zerg static ground defense IF the range is counted from the edge of the model and not the center! If you're expanding, you've either got your army standing in front of it, ready to defend, or you're applying pressure and preventing him from putting pressure on you. The idea of 'poor mistreated terrans' having to plop some bunkers down is nonsense. Bunkers mean you can expand easily by investing some minerals (temporarily, thanks to Salvage) to protect what would be a weak bio force and repair the things when you do get attacked. You can completely crush a much stronger force, just by building some bunkers. Nobody is busting in there without the big guns like Immortals or a full-blown all-in gateway/baneling bust. Meanwhile, a Protoss or Zerg who invests a bunch of minerals on Cannons or Spine Crawlers can get easily stomped by a bog-standard bio ball. Those things aren't cheap and they really do suck if they're not positioned on high-ground where they can get some free shots off. But, then you just COMSAT and rape the thing with your range 5/6 units anyway. The joys of not depending on melee units. Not to mention that Terrans can lift their buildings to reposition them for a better wall. And they got seige tanks. Suuure ... and Terrans can always put the Tech Labs and Reactors on the inside of the wall of buildings and once you built these it is totally ok to lift off the main building just to make a wall somewhere else.
Yes, yes they can. Totally worth it if it contributes to defense.
On August 03 2010 10:43 Rabiator wrote:
@Bibdy (the quote from Ryuu)
Bunkers are NOT FREE or only a temporary investment, because you always need to defend your bases / entrances. There is always the possibility of harrass. Saying that they are only a temporary investment is kidding yourself. That statement is only true for the "advancing with bunkers" strategy, but defensive structures at your base need to stay. Saying you dont need them when you move out is just plain stupid, because there is ALWAYS more than one way to get to your base and if your army is out you have no defenses. One or two units could sneak in and wreak havoc in your mineral line for almost no cost. If you have no troops at your front a turret wont help you defending against some sneaky burrowing Roaches or cloaked Dark Templars heading into your base.
You really don't need to rely on a bunker for defense when you move out. You should constantly be producing units, and by time you're moving out a large army to go on the offensive, you should have enough unit producing structures to replenish easily. Bunkers are a useful investment early on, but they can indeed be considered a temporary investment as they're not required to defend in the later stages of the game. Moreover, Terran has always been the race with the units best suited for holding down a position for as long as possible (primarily due to siege tanks and so many other ranged units).
On August 03 2010 10:38 kNyTTyM wrote:
Interesting read. The very first thing I want to see done on a map is heavily increase rush times between mains. It will greatly help zergs since you have more time to react to all the options an opponent can throw at you. You also have more points to battle at since the center can't be just one massive choke (kulas). I will love it if blizzard implements a map like luna with a desert oasis rush distance. Luna was boring to play in brood war but it gave you a good picture of what standard games were supposed to play like.
I think that Luna would be an awesome map to have in SC2. It's large, not overly complicated, but still allows for many interesting variations in play.
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Maps are fine, fix banelings they are soooo strong.
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Baa?21245 Posts
Completely agreed; the small map sizes are probably the biggest issue right now. It's currently impossible to flank a Terran mech army on the maps, which tends to be the standard way to combat it, since charging head on is just a tragedy. Bigger maps please ~_~
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I know I'm repeating a lot of earlier posts, but I really like the ideas presented in the OP. Map selection is very bland as it is, and there's lots of complaints that Metalopolis is the only decent ZvT map.
In addition tot he Xel'Naga watchtower changes mentioned in the OP, I think more strategic placement of brush would help as well. Brush benefits more mobile, short-range armies than it benefits slow, long-range armies (AKA helps Z, hurts T) in a way exactly inverse to watchtowers.
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On August 03 2010 10:55 floor exercise wrote:
Bunkers need to stay? You are just making shit up to suit your argument now.
I agree that virtually every map is flawed in some way
No one knows how far map balance can go to fix the game before we're stuck with the identical map over and over because there are no other viable map designs that will keep the game 'balanced'
So while the maps are terrible, to blame them entirely isn't necessarily good for the game. Ideally you would want a lot of variety in map design and for the game to still be balanced/enjoyable.
How are you going to defend your bases as Terran against anything that attacks them with ground forces until your army arrives to defend? Wall offs dont really work everywhere and Day[9] always repeats his mantra about not wanting to make turrets, because the resources could be spent elsewhere. Well the same should hold true for wall-offs. So how do you put up at least a minimal defense as Terran to delay an enemy and - more importantly - to deny a scout? Just hoping that an enemy will not find / attack the base doesnt really work IMO. Protoss have their warp gates to instantly get reinforcements and Zerg have at least one Queen usually to defend, but what does Terran have? Sure the Queen is 2 food, BUT she serves a useful function for economy at any base. So what does Terran have to defend? Nothing really, because the command center doesnt defend the worker line from harrass if the harrass has the potential to outrange it.
I would not say that every map is flawed, but rather that every race has tactics that work better on some maps than on others and it is the fault of the players not to realize that and adapt appropriately. Take Desert Oasis for example. Massive ground force armies seem pretty bad, because of the really long way, but still most battles are fought with almost exclusively using them in big clumps. This map seems built to teach players two- or three-pronged attacks and especially against Terrans this should work well ... divide and conquer is always good against an immobile army.
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On August 03 2010 13:58 Rabiator wrote:Show nested quote +On August 03 2010 10:55 floor exercise wrote:
Bunkers need to stay? You are just making shit up to suit your argument now.
I agree that virtually every map is flawed in some way
No one knows how far map balance can go to fix the game before we're stuck with the identical map over and over because there are no other viable map designs that will keep the game 'balanced'
So while the maps are terrible, to blame them entirely isn't necessarily good for the game. Ideally you would want a lot of variety in map design and for the game to still be balanced/enjoyable. How are you going to defend your bases as Terran against anything that attacks them with ground forces until your army arrives to defend? Wall offs dont really work everywhere and Day[9] always repeats his mantra about not wanting to make turrets, because the resources could be spent elsewhere. Well the same should hold true for wall-offs. So how do you put up at least a minimal defense as Terran to delay an enemy and - more importantly - to deny a scout? Just hoping that an enemy will not find / attack the base doesnt really work IMO. Protoss have their warp gates to instantly get reinforcements and Zerg have at least one Queen usually to defend, but what does Terran have? Sure the Queen is 2 food, BUT she serves a useful function for economy at any base. So what does Terran have to defend? Nothing really, because the command center doesnt defend the worker line from harrass if the harrass has the potential to outrange it.
a queen could do something against a harass if the only unit involved in that harass was a marine, but even 1 marauder will have no problem to kill a queen
i dont see how a queen could defend you from harass. even 2 crawlers dont do anything against a drop of 4 or even 8 marauders
at the same time zerg doesnt have a unit to effectively harass the terrans expansions, or what unit are you thinking of? as a zerg i would like to have hellions and reapers, especially hellions melt down everything if you dont kill them immediately
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Yeah, I've been ranting about map balance ever since the first "Terran is broken zvt" threads first popped up, ><.
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Been out for most of the day here this thread seems to have degenerated slightly but mostly a lot of agreements with some corrections here and there.
This part is at too many people to list, if you think this OP is whining read it again. I'm not saying Blizzard fix it because Blizzard doesn't know how to fix it. Blizzard is notorious for having bad map making teams in every RTS they release. I'm not telling Blizzard to fix it I'm asking the community to go out of their way to figure out how to make imbalanced maps for zerg and protoss so we can make better maps as a whole.
I saw a problem I thought about it for quite a long time and posted how I think -we- can solve it not Blizzard. This is not whining this is trying to get something done. The problem with the normal course of map making is that players always try to make a balanced map and try new features while trying to make it balanced. Meanwhile people in the map threads about every post will be "this (feature) is imba for (race)" many of them wind up being wrong because they don't actually play it but it's useful to know these features that are imba for what race. It is nearly impossible to make a truly balanced map you can merely hope for a map whose imbalances even eachother out over the course of a game.
So instead of map makers trying to make balanced maps because they want to make a great map and have people play on it, if people were to make the worst maps they can possibly think of in favor of Zerg and Protoss we can adapt some of the small features from those maps and integrate them into current maps to make them better.
To anyone who thinks that maps are not important to balance, you obviously didn't play Brood War. Someone said that above and I couldn't have said it better so thanks.
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The races are not balanced, there is nothing here to discuss you are merely trying to take attention from Terrans to the maps, its the exact same way WoW Arena was ruined when players refused to admit the imbalances and screwed the developers minds up, saying "healing was too high".
They "fixed" this by increasing damage to insane mounts in WotLK and killed the pro scene.
The problem is clear and its right infront of us, derailing it would be bad for this game, stop trying to protect your own interests and be honest, its the only proper way forward.
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United States47024 Posts
As there has been some discussion of zerg's defensive capability and their ability to deflect harassment, I will say that map balance factors hugely into this as well. Look at SC1 ZvP and vs mech ZvT: the ability to deflect early/mid-game attacks and harassment is hugely intuned with the ability to simcity at various positions. In particular, zerg's ability to defend otherwise out-of-the-way and indefensible expansions is directly connected with their ability to set up a simcity at those bases.
As of right now, its very clear that defensive structure placement in SC2 is following the trend that it did in SC1--Terran is the first to develop wall-ins, followed by some rudimentary wall-ins for Protoss (eventually leading to the simcities that are used for forge-FE builds), and zerg is last. In part, this may contribute to why the other races seem so defensively weak at the moment--bunker and depot setups are fairly straightforward, due to the ability to salvage bunkers and lower depots. Equivalent setups for zerg and protoss are harder, but will most likely develop in time.
This of course, will obfuscate map design--SC1 map makers must be keenly aware of what wall-ins and simcities are possible on their maps, but in SC2, without standard patterns for those setups that exist in SC1, this is extremely awkward.
On August 03 2010 19:09 Raevin wrote:
The races are not balanced, there is nothing here to discuss you are merely trying to take attention from Terrans to the maps, its the exact same way WoW Arena was ruined when players refused to admit the imbalances and screwed the developers minds up, saying "healing was too high".
They "fixed" this by increasing damage to insane mounts in WotLK and killed the pro scene.
The problem is clear and its right infront of us, derailing it would be bad for this game, stop trying to protect your own interests and be honest, its the only proper way forward.
What interests? Raelcun is a commentator before a player. If he has vested interests in anything, it's in the long term success of this game, and not petty gains for one race. You don't even know if he plays Terran (and judging by his race icon, it's probably a safe bet that he doesn't).
As I said before, anyone who doesn't believe that race balance and map balance are deeply tied with one another either did not have experience with SC1, or is willfully ignoring that experience. Because there are maps that are less overtly imbalanced than the current SC2 map pool in SC1 that resulted in win percentages on the order of 65% for one race.
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Not so sure about the map criticism - for instance I, as Protoss, like more open naturals against Terran players (flanking tanks) but not against Zerg propably.
What I agree 100% on is that Blizzard needs to establish a map maker community that makes maps also accessable for laddergames.
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YES, i totally agree with everything. I've been repeating those things from the start of the beta till now, every time someone touched ladder maps. We need new maps, not some bullshit as it is now, but something different, BW-like.
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The Blizzard maps are horrible, they're so damn small.
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On August 03 2010 19:20 Dia wrote:
YES, i totally agree with everything. I've been repeating those things from the start of the beta till now, every time someone touched ladder maps. We need new maps, not some bullshit as it is now, but something different, BW-like.
Without units like Defilers and Arbiters, how can you be that sure about statemens like this? I mean, we absolutely dont know, how would the current metagame (I dont give a shit if you like this word or not lol) shift and you suppose that being a definite balance improvement we need?
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On August 03 2010 19:34 Everlong wrote:Show nested quote +On August 03 2010 19:20 Dia wrote:
YES, i totally agree with everything. I've been repeating those things from the start of the beta till now, every time someone touched ladder maps. We need new maps, not some bullshit as it is now, but something different, BW-like. Without units like Defilers and Arbiters, how can you be that sure about statemens like this? I mean, we absolutely dont know, how would the current metagame (I dont give a shit if you like this word or not lol) shift and you suppose that being a definite balance improvement we need?
I played 2 custom maps, that were on ESL tournament, they were a lot more BW like, 3 games, totally different gameplay. Don't have replays tho. And, i don't think they have to be like in BW, sure, there are not those units in SCII that you say, and i totally agree with you. So the point is, that map makers have to study current "metagame" and make maps that fit to it.
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On August 03 2010 19:40 Dia wrote:Show nested quote +On August 03 2010 19:34 Everlong wrote:On August 03 2010 19:20 Dia wrote:
YES, i totally agree with everything. I've been repeating those things from the start of the beta till now, every time someone touched ladder maps. We need new maps, not some bullshit as it is now, but something different, BW-like. Without units like Defilers and Arbiters, how can you be that sure about statemens like this? I mean, we absolutely dont know, how would the current metagame (I dont give a shit if you like this word or not lol) shift and you suppose that being a definite balance improvement we need? I played 2 custom maps, that were on ESL tournament, they were a lot more BW like, 3 games, totally different gameplay. Don't have replays tho. And, i don't think they have to be like in BW, sure, there are not those units in SCII that you say, and i totally agree with you. So the point is, that map makers have to study current "metagame" and make maps that fit to it.
Definitely agreed.
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On August 03 2010 07:44 Necrosjef wrote:Show nested quote +On August 03 2010 07:40 Crabman123 wrote:On August 03 2010 07:31 Necrosjef wrote:
Don't really agree with this at all. OP your logic is flawed.
Let me come at it from a different angle.
"The maps are the maps. The reason Terran are winning more often than not on these maps is because Terran are too strong."
Let me also address the part of your post where you call on SC2 mapmakers to make more Protoss and Zerg favoured maps. Not that there is anything wrong with this idea, but this idea will take time and quite frankly SC2 needs care and attention from Blizzard not a bunch of amateur map makers.
What you should be doing rather than making topics like this is writing "An Open Letter to Blizzard" with the explicit instruction of 2 words. The first one being nerf and the second one being Terran. Excuse me but when have blizzard shown prowess in making good maps that are balanced throughout a games lifetime? I have no idea why people think that blizz are Gods at everything and refuse to admit that the community can do some things better than them. Also assuming that amateur is always worse than professional is really quite close minded. Not really closed minded at all to think that a professional is better than an amateur. I'm a professional engineer and I'd be pretty upset if someone told me that an amateur guy messing about in his garage knows more than me. Also nothing wrong with asking Blizzard to balance a game they made. I'm pretty upset that after waiting for SC2 for 12 years that this is the best Blizzard have managed to come up with. I don't think I'm alone and I don't think it is wrong to ask Blizzard to improve on something which is quite frankly much worse than the original.
Your assuming that since they get paid they are good at what they do and that they know more than the people who play the game. Its not the same as engineering. People play this game on higher levels than blizzard can hope to get to and this game is successful because of the people who play it not the developers talent. SC1 was perfect because of it flaws and bad controls. The community developed the game to where it became great, Blizzard got lucky. In BW the maps were imba and people who spent more time and effort playing the game saw what needed to be done to make them balanced. In other words Blizzard is the amateur who doesn't understand and the players are the professionals and we have to try to tell Blizzard how to do things right because they are not capable of making the game great by themselves.
Look at WoW, that game sucks but the community makes mods and adjustments in order for it to be "good" and then WoW take a popular mod and make a shitty generic version.
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On August 03 2010 13:58 Rabiator wrote:Show nested quote +On August 03 2010 10:55 floor exercise wrote:
Bunkers need to stay? You are just making shit up to suit your argument now.
I agree that virtually every map is flawed in some way
No one knows how far map balance can go to fix the game before we're stuck with the identical map over and over because there are no other viable map designs that will keep the game 'balanced'
So while the maps are terrible, to blame them entirely isn't necessarily good for the game. Ideally you would want a lot of variety in map design and for the game to still be balanced/enjoyable. How are you going to defend your bases as Terran against anything that attacks them with ground forces until your army arrives to defend? Wall offs dont really work everywhere and Day[9] always repeats his mantra about not wanting to make turrets, because the resources could be spent elsewhere. Well the same should hold true for wall-offs. So how do you put up at least a minimal defense as Terran to delay an enemy and - more importantly - to deny a scout? Just hoping that an enemy will not find / attack the base doesnt really work IMO. Protoss have their warp gates to instantly get reinforcements and Zerg have at least one Queen usually to defend, but what does Terran have? Sure the Queen is 2 food, BUT she serves a useful function for economy at any base. So what does Terran have to defend? Nothing really, because the command center doesnt defend the worker line from harrass if the harrass has the potential to outrange it. I would not say that every map is flawed, but rather that every race has tactics that work better on some maps than on others and it is the fault of the players not to realize that and adapt appropriately. Take Desert Oasis for example. Massive ground force armies seem pretty bad, because of the really long way, but still most battles are fought with almost exclusively using them in big clumps. This map seems built to teach players two- or three-pronged attacks and especially against Terrans this should work well ... divide and conquer is always good against an immobile army.
How will you defend your base until your army arrives. This is done with map awareness and knowing that your base is being attacked? Or floating your structure, ensuring half the units in the game can't even hit it anymore and running your scvs away? I'm not sure why you think this is an issue. If you play a harassment style player you can build a bunker. But then you'll say "oh well that's wasting minerals on defense and terran shouldn't do that!!" while you are arguing in the same breath how much better other races are cause of their non-salvageable static defense structures like you've been doing so far. That makes no sense
Not spending money on turrets falls under the same category as not spending money on any static defense. It's always better spent elsewhere. Again you are selectively arguing points that apply to all races to make what is a really stupid point to begin with.
Money being better spent on something other than wall is an absurd suggestion as well. Do you realize that walls are comprised on critical buildings that you would be building anyway? There is virtually no downside. What are you going on about? And do you live in a world where planetary fortress doesn't exist? Terran has nothing to defend their workers? They've got the single most powerful defensive structure in the game, turrets are insanely cost effective against every air unit, not even day9 will argue that, he will just say repeat a very true well known statement that an active defense is always better than a static one because you can do other things with it. That doesn't change the effectiveness of using turrets when you scout something like muta and don't have a thor coming.
I hate to start being an asshole, but I'm beginning to get the sense that you don't even play SC2. when you suggest Terran has no defensive capabilities or that theirs are somehow flawed and have huge downsides that the other races don't have.
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They could add neutral Sensor Towers on some maps instead of Xel'naga Towers.
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I love you Raelcun. Every time you make a thread you hit the nail on the head.
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EPT
