|
OP, you're right about the roach, but you're wrong on so many levels about the metagame.
In patch 1.08 and 1.09 blizzard fixed a SHITLOAD of bugs. The reason they didn't fix muta stack is because they saw it evolved zerg play to another level and the bug was discovered 8 years after the release, so why would they bother?
Btw, MMM are bugged as well. You can load all your units at the same tiime. unlike BW where units are loaded 1 by 1.
EDIT: guess what, that Medivac bug could open up a shitload of drop micro for terrans 
EDIT2: Given how blizzard saves all their spellcasters for expansions. There will be lots of spellcasters for all 3 races in the expansions, just wait and see.
|
Roaches are pretty awesome imo, there are so many other things wrong, but Roaches really don't need much change, maybe +1 range or something like that.
|
Starcraft isn't what it is today without Brood War(original Starcraft has an immensity of failings) Alot of things seen in current Sc1 play were introduced with the Brood War expansion. The same can be said for War3 RoC and TFT. TFT balanced alot of units and introduced some needed niche units.
I purchased SC2 knowing Full well that it would take an expansion to settle the score on balance and gameplay.
|
I agree very much with OP -with the way the damage system works and the way units are currently "micro"ed, SC2 feels much more locked down than SC1. Units only do what they were originally intended to do.
|
I do agree with the point about blizzard nerfing or buff anything someone complained about before giving players a chance to learn new ways to counter things, but it does sound like you just want SC2 to be just like Brood War and that defeats the purpose of making a brand new SC...
|
Roaches have a place. They deal with the Terran mech units better than hydras due to the high health and burrow tactics. They're useful against early 2 gating protosses and against a heavy colossus composition.
|
I have no issue with the Roach. I like the unit and find it really fun.
|
I like roaches. In fact, in my opinion they are an example of what Blizzard did right with Starcraft 2. They are fun to use, the tunneling claws and rapid regen when burrowed creates opportunities for interesting micro that is fun to do and fun to watch, they integrate well with other units (roach hydra is a very natural combination), and most importantly they are viable throughout the entire game in every matchup. I like the unit micro focus in SC2, and I like the fact that many units are viable in early, mid and lategame and in each matchup.
I also think it's unfair to complain that some units seem tailored for specific purposes. How multidimensional were lurkers, scourge, goliaths, valkyries or corsairs? I also think it's safe to say that we haven't seen the end of what's possible with SC2 units. BW was around long before players began to rethink how some units could be used, and SC2 is much more polished and balanced than BW was for years.
|
Roaches are awesome until the late game. Having a 200/200 army of roaches is very detrimental compared to toss or terran 200/200 army, I don't see roaches being viable in the late game unless you have three hatchries, queens on each with saturated larvae and munny to boot - instant army galore.
I'm kinda sadden that roaches don't play a larger role than they did in beta, the staple units for Zerg right now seems to be lings and mutas. I kinda agree that Blizzard should leave things overpowered for a bit to see how it goes. There were so many units in BW that seemed overpowered but it somehow balanced out.
|
So Blizzard made it an early game tank at 1 supply, high hitpoints, and 2 armor. It should have been obvious to them at the time, but this made it incredibly over powered. To compensate, Blizzard has the Marauder and Immortal, which hard counter roaches very convincingly.
I've heard this argument before, but never found it particularly compelling. Both the Marauder and Immortal predate the Roach (at least that we saw); they certainly predate the version of the Roach at the beginning of the beta. Early versions of the Roach had an anti-Bio bonus, not 16 damage straight up.
The Immortal was always anti-armored. It wasn't always to the tune of 20+30, but it always had a fat bonus to armored units. And so did the Marauder; it was always dealing ~20 damage in any of the versions we saw. So if anything, the Roach became what it was to compensate for the Immortal and the Marauder, not the other way around. Not that I buy that logic either. See below for how the Roach became what it is.
To me, these and others are merely contrived excuses to encourage micromanagement.
So what you're suggesting is that Blizzard should have just assumed that micro and macro would spontaneously appear ex nihilo. That they should not have bothered with skillful abilities and just assumed that unit speed and position-based micro would be sufficient.
I love most of these "contrived excuses" you mention. They really change the dynamic of the game. Blink allows Stalkers to function in ways that simple movement and position micro could never have allowed. Graviton-Beam allows Phoenixes to have so many possible uses beyond simple AtA: worker harassment, air support against certain unit compositions, sniping off of certain critical units (ie: Siege Tanks), etc.
Cliff climbing also has its skillful uses. It may seem simple on the surface, but having units that can use terrain better than others is a good thing. It doesn't matter if this is due to an explicit ability or is implicit based on damage attributes (ie: Siege Tank range+AoE+cooldown). What matters is the effect it creates in-game.
Giving units actual abilities is fine, so long as those abilities encourage skillful play. Force field does; there are many ways to use it and they all create interesting play. I'm pretty sure that Blizzard didn't think of ramp blocking when they first came up with the ability, yet it is a powerful technique.
Corruption/whatever-they're-calling-it doesn't encourage skillful play. That is a one-dimensional ability that is difficult to make worthwhile. The only thing that makes it even remotely interesting is the fact that it is essentially "free", coming with the Overseer.
Basically, don't throw the baby out with the bathwater. If you want to rail against actually bad abilities, fine. But when you put Blink, Force field, and cliff climbing under the same axe as Corruption, you've gone too far.
The abilities in Starcraft 1 existed more for the sake of existing. This led to tricks that were completely overpowered, but I want to argue that this is precisely the reason Starcraft 1 was so balanced.
- Vultures were never meant to counter dragoons.
- Shuttles weren't designed to shoot scarabs.
- Mutalisks weren't supposed to cost 600/600 and one-shot workers.
I find it curious that you brought up Shuttle/Reaver. Because Blizzard most certainly did nerf Shuttle/Reaver. They made it so that units dropped from transports need a full cooldown cycle before they can fire. In fact, I believe Blizzard's response to people being upset at the nerf was something along the line you use: Shuttles weren't designed to shoot scarabs.
What you're not understanding is why Blizzard allowed some things and not others. Why they allowed Mutalisk stacking (not that they could possibly have fixed it) and yet nerfed Shuttle/Reaver.
My guess is that Blizzard dumped Fazing for several reasons:
1: It made no sense. No other unit behaves that way. Switching targets doesn't magically cause them to do more damage overall. The only way someone would figure that out is by randomly trying stuff.
2: It didn't add good gameplay. So you do a bunch of clicking; that doesn't make it good gameplay. It encourages extreme focus on a single unit's micro in detriment to everything else. And it doesn't even look particularly cool the way Muta micro does; you just have a VR or two twitching back and forth.
3: They would have had to rebalance Void Rays around Fazing. Just as with Shuttle/Reaver, rules exist for a reason. Would you rather that they kept Fazing and halved the shields/Hp of VRs instead? And took out Flux Vanes?
So that's how we have the Roach. A terrible, one-dimensional unit that never worked as intended, and is now a poor orphan, devoid of purpose in life.
Except that's not really what the current Roach is. The current Roach is really 2 units artificially made into one; the Roach is a unit with two souls.
It wants to be a ground-based harassment unit. That's what burrowed movement is for. But it also wants to be a tanking unit; that's why it is armored and has high Hp for its cost, and that's why it regenerates fast when burrowed. But the two halves of its soul don't really work well together.
The Roach, through the course of SC2's development, evolved into this half-state. It started out as a pure tanking unit, based on having fast regeneration. However, they found that the concept (a tank based on fast regeneration) didn't work too well. They still needed the Zerg to have a low-tier tanking unit, something that could take hits. So, without the regen, they had to bump the Hp up.
But at the same time, the Roach didn't really do anything. It needed something more. So they played with burrowed regen. Then, with the Roach focused on burrow so heavily (a skilled player could theoretically burrow and unburrow Roaches in combat, somewhat like Blink micro), it became natural to talk about burrowed movement.
The problem is that burrow, even with burrowed regen, doesn't really fit with the whole idea of a tanking unit. After all, if it's burrowed, it probably can't be attacked. So they were left with this unit that really ought to have been broken into two.
|
My concern is that they balanced units with often-gimmicky abilities (concussion shells, blink, burrow regen, cliffclimb etc) instead of with stats.
ex: dragoons are fast and have a strong attack against heavier units, but against light units they are vulnerable to swarming and deal less damage while zealots are melee units with lots of hp for absorbing attacks. They get faster later and deal great damage for their cost. You can see how they work together without blinking and charging.
Now every unit and its mother has a special ability that needs to be used in battle. Its not a terrible thing in a lot of cases, but the simplicity is kind of gone. I know lots of people dont like that dragoons/tanks/hydras were so plain yet so dominant, but these units allowed the player to transition to more specific counter units without losing ground in a battle.
Now i like that my stalkers can blink, because it opens up a lot of potential roles and opportunities for it, but i really dont like it that it feels weak and vulnerable until it has it. That just feels like poor design to me. It basically requires blink to work right but you dont get blink till tier 2 and i have to put up with marauders stimming around until then.
For me, SC2 fixes almost no flaws that BW had (except maybe interface which is a different kettle of fish entirely) and just adds a lot of new ones.
The biggest example for me is air units which were a really big design flaw (imo) in broodwar. SC2 just takes pretty much the same air model and doesnt improve it at all.
Its still fun, but it has many problems that should have been addressed earlier.
|
On August 22 2010 07:27 heishe wrote:
I think we really have to wait for the next 2 expansions, when they have more time working on the other 2 races in detail. Imo Terran is really well designed in Starcraft 2, there's just a huge amount of stuff that you can do with the race. The other two races fell a bit behind, but that's because Blizzard focused on Terran first for this game (because they needed something ready for the singleplayer devs guys to work with).
In general, you can really see the games development through the complexity of the races and the campaign missions. The campaign missions start really basic, first it's marines vs marines, then it's marines vs lings and hydras (obv. the first Zerg units to make the cut) etc, and later in the campaign we first deal with advanced Protoss units before we move on to the late game Zerg units (Broodlords etc.)
Also, they started out with designing Terran and then moved on to Protoss, and only then started with Zerg when they were done with the other two races. You can see it in unit count and unique-ness. Terran just has a ton of different units and is undoubtedly the most flexible race, Protoss is kind of in between and Zerg is really at the bottom with very few things they can do (compared to the other two races).
I'm pretty sure Zerg will get at least 2 or 3 new units for the next expansion, while Toss and Terran only get changed mechanics and abilities (or new ones). I'm sure we're not the only ones aware of the fact that Zerg has the fewest units in the game.
Blizzard always stated that WoL would be a complete game, so it's a shame they favored one race over the two others. I really hope Zerg will get some loving before the expansion, because more and more players are switching races.
|
- Shuttles weren't designed to shoot scarabs.
You think Blizzard never anticipated people using shuttles to cart around reavers?
Roaches may not be flashy but I don't see why that detracts from the game. They need to be used as part of a comprehensive strategy, which encourages a well thought out game plan.
|
What i hate th roach for is that it has high hp, is slow and has weak damage.
From sc bw i got the feeling zerg were the fast/high damage/low hp race ...
the roach simply destroys race diversity!
|
Am not gonna touch on the roach since it's been done to death already. Fazing as well. But there's two points in your post that isnt quite true, namely:
- Creep spreading let Queens go on the offensive. Queens are "supposed" to be defensive, so Blizzard nerfed that.
- Spine crawlers are supposed to be defeinsive, so Blizzard nerfed them too when they became offensive.
Why blizzard nerfed the queens movement speed off creep, and the time it took for spine crawlers to root, was because of ridiculous queen + spine crawler rushes that korean players figuered out. Rushes that were basically impossible to survive for the opponent. What it did was brake the game. Not because the unit/building didnt do what it was intended to but because it just broke the game(which nothing in the game is intended to do ofc, so in a way you are right).
|
I love roaches. Nothing like the feeling of popping up a swarm of burrowed roaches in an unsuspecting enemies mineral line and under their army.
|
On August 22 2010 07:30 drlame wrote:Show nested quote +On August 22 2010 07:08 DeckOneBell wrote:
Because in SC2, speedlings aren't the unit used by zerg to deal with hellions early game, reapers can't take out roaches with proper micro when used en masse, and more recently, mutas haven't been evening it up against thors.
Nerfing something like "fazing" isn't removing something COOL about the game, it makes the game actually balanced. There's no reason void rays should be good against basically everything.
Yes, they do want all the gameplay to conform to their intentions for the unit. The units are designed from the bottom up with a concept in mind, a piece of lore, and mechanics unique to that unit. They were created to be something specific. Intuitively, most players understand that the zergling is weak, but quick, and easy to mass. Marauders are buff infantry units that pack a punch. Void rays are great charged up, but crap when they're uncharged.
Just because for some reason, SCBW ended up balanced, there is no reason Blizzard should just go away, and come back in a couple years and hope a tournament scene pops up around SC2. Yes, SCBW is great, no doubt. No, SC2 is not the same game, and further, no, SC2 is not reliant on what are essentially glitches to balance the game. Correction; Idra just proved you wrong on all your points about the zerg.
this has yet to be seen... that was ideal contidions with no marines, or any other anti... all it proved is that terran can not get 5 thor and be immune to 100% gas into muta
however there is an interesting future there
|
OP is well written and well thought. +1
I actually like the roach, and I believe that its changes in beta are what has created the very very fragile early game for Zerg. The problem, IMO, lies in that the roach is too expensive for how easily it is countered. Just a few marauders in your largely marine or hellion army will deal quite cleanly with a good number of roaches. Immortals pwn roaches so hard it's not even funny, and it is quite easy for a Protoss player to mix a few of these in if they happen to see lots of roaches, because standard PvZ is 3 gate robo into collossi anyway. So the problem? Roaches are meant to be a tank unit for zerg armies, but they really really suck at tanking because a smattering of marauders or immortals cleans them up super super quickly.
How do you fix this? I'm not a game designer, but I do think that this is the fundamental problem with Zerg early game. Basically, before Lair tech (which is often a bit delayed as Zerg typically need to fast expand to get the larvae and resources they need to be competitive), Zerg basically have Speedlings, Banelings, and Roaches. Speedlings are great, but they have a very onvious weakness, their lack of health. Enter the Roach. However, the problem with Roaches is that because they are so easily hard countered, if a Zerg player decides to go Roach, he must do so knowing there is a very very good chance that the investment in roaches will become detrimental in the mid-game. Therefore, my opinion is that roaches either need to be better out of the egg, so to speak, or their upgrades need to be buffed to help compensate for the ease with with they are countered. The health regen from tunneling claws seems like a likely candidate.
|
it's an interesting though but you gave a lot of proof (blizzard eliminating micro tricks) to your statements. however, looking through the strategy sections should show you that Blizzard can't just sit idly and let the game develop due to all the "#1 PLATINUM PLAYERS THINK _____ IS OP" shouts.
nice writeup.
|
10387 Posts
On August 22 2010 07:49 brn4meplz wrote:
original Starcraft has an immensity of failings
I doubt you've even played many melee games in the original Starcraft.
|
|
|
|
|
|
EPT
